Ravenna Press

We Have a Nervous Job

Kathryn Rantala — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 19:45:50 +0000

David R Bunch, whose visionary short story collection Moderan was restored to print by New York Review of Books Classics in 2018, published one poetry collection during his lifetime. A few copies of this collection, the chapbook We Have a Nervous Job, are now available from Alba Press, a partner of Ravenna Press. Published in 1983 by Harold Bowes, the current editor of Alba magazine, who was at the time an extremely young individual, with the passion, earnestness and foresight that implies, We Have a Nervous Job is the first book-length, single-author offering from Alba Press, which later went on to publish several short-poem anthologies, and is now offered for its historical as well as poetic value.

Many of Bunch’s Moderan stories would fit comfortably in a prose poetry collection, but We Have a Nervous Job is the first collection of poetry, a second appearing one month before he passed away.

Sixteen pages in length, the item is 5.5′x8.5″, stapled, and in its original published condition. This is not a reprint, but one of only four uncirculated copies located in Harold’s files.

Triple No. 11

Kathryn Rantala — Thu, 28 May 2020 14:34:53 +0000

MARS

Kathryn Rantala — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 21:36:05 +0000

The brief, energetic and quirky tales in MARS are set in the future, 3500-3700, on the planet Mars. Regret infuses the stories as human participation in Earth’s climate change cannot be undone and has caused the need for planetary evacuation. (Cover image by Greg MacDonald.)

from Stargazers:

Star Gazers…point the telescope…. That one is Earth.

What happened to the people? Their Children say.

Some stayed and some came here.

Why did they leave?

Because they ruined their planet.

What did they do to it?

They drilled into it and took stuff out—oil, coal. They burned the oil and coal and made the air kind of like the air on Venus. Everything got too warm. And then it was too late.

What are the people who stayed doing?

Those people are dead now. That was a long time ago. Star Gazers shake their heads. But who knows. Maybe some lived and had children and fixed things.

Do you think they can see us through their protecto-dome?

LÜZ

Kathryn Rantala — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 17:20:43 +0000

Lindsay Stern’s second publication of progressive and innovative fiction, featuring a cover image by Leandro Katz:(“Lunar Typewriter,” from The Lunar Alphabet project, ©1978), is an inventive novella-length experiment in uniting argument and myth to explore a society both united and estranged by its use of signs, and draws on the ideas of Luis Buñuel, Anne Carson, M.C. Escher, Sigmund Freud, Kurt Gödel and Plato.

Daniel Hall, author of Under Sleep, called LÜZ, “an ingenious braiding of fiction and philosophical inquiry, a creation myth so strange and so queerly told it seems to have been ‘fed through a prism.’ It is a surprisingly original work by a surprisingly young writer, although the only thing about the book that hints at her youth is its sheer audacity. Here is a captivating new voice, darting, mercurial, and wise.”

Collaborations

outlierdesign — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:46:29 +0000

Collaborative poetry in the English language has always been a little like the poor relative invited to the banquet as a charitable gesture – something of an afterthought and not taken very seriously. Thus, it is poetry that is usually available only in small literary journals and chapbooks, and must be sought out with some dedication by those with an interest. Collaborations offers an eclectic mix of poetry drawn from other publications and gathered together for the first time. While books like this are scarce, collaborative poetry is indeed alive, robust, and flourishing, especially on the internet in blogs and mass or collaborative poetry web sites like The Spoonbill Generator.

Contributors:

Lee Ballentine, Ted Berrigan, Bruce Boston, Ray Bradbury, Clark Coolidge, Oliver de la Paz, Tom Disch, Denise Dumars, Roger Dutcher, Larry Fagin, Robert Frazier, Sarah Gambito, Marilyn Hacker, Ron Horning, Andrew Joron, Richard Kostelanetz, Joseph Legaspi, David Lehman, Michael Marsh, Todd Mecklem, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ron Padgett, Jon Pineda, Charles Platt, Jonathan Vos Post, Kathryn Rantala, Barbara Reyes, Patrick Rosal, The Spoonbill Generator, Steve Sneyd, W. Gregory Stewart, Gene van Troyer, T. Winter-Damon