Bottom Dog Press Catalog

Backlist 2000-2005

================== OTHER TITLES ===================

KP is Out of Print

Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America
Larry Smith

Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) emerges as a rebel poet who created stunning work for five decades. As poet, novelist, artist, performer, he becomes a model of an engaged artist. His and wife Miriam's life becomes one of the great love stories in American literature.
“It has taken more than 25 years for this poet's life to finally see the light of day in this rich, thorough, compelling biography... Hallelujah Anyway!” -Norbert Blei
“He represents all that a poet should, whether expressing himself in verse, in prose, in paint, or in action”
-Henry Miller
“Kenneth Patchen was a poet; he was that all the time. He is that still. That is what is meant by ‘Poet.’ The poetry never stops working if it is real.” -Miriam Patchen

New CD with Booklet
Zen Poems of Wang Wei and Taigu Ryokan
Read by Larry Smith, Flute by Monte Page

Meditations as Poems/ Poems as Meditations

Translations by Larry Smith & Mei Hui Huang
who did Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain
50 minutes of lyric images and insights.
Harmony Series

Recorded at SoundWaves, Huron, Ohio
isbn 0-933087-80-2 $15.00 ($16 postpaid)

WORKING HARD FOR THE MONEY
AMERICA’S WORKING POOR IN
STORIES, POEMS, PHOTOS

Edited by Mary E. Weems and Larry Smith

A book that matters, a witness by, for, and about America’s Working Poor

Working Lives Series

“I hope that this book, this collection of work by and about the millions of poor working-class folks in this country, who cross all race, religious, and cultural backgrounds will help our reading audience add images of people to this reality.That it will encourage them to become active participants in both acknowledging, respecting, and reducing the number of poor working-class and homeless Americans.” – Mary E. Weems

“In coming to this book on America’s working poor, Bottom Dog Press opens its eyes and heart to a real world of struggle and quiet strength. These are writings that witness and participate. The lives may be those of the writers or projections of the lives of others they know, but in all cases they are personal and involved in the world they describe. The character of the life they describe is authentic and valued by the writer.”– Larry Smith

ISBN 0-933087-77-2206 pages, $12.95

Milldust and Roses:

Memoirs by Larry Smith

“

Milldust and Roses is a beautiful tapestry, the substance of which describes an Ohio Valley working-class family from the mid-century onward. Larry Smith is an accomplished poet, teacher, and biographer. But these memoirs are not about his life as a poet, but about the metamorphosis of self and family life in the urban Midwest as he has experienced it. The book is formatted like a family album with wonderful prose snapshots illustrating the town, his growing family, his wife and himself .”— Holly Beye
“It is Smith’s simple directness, human scale, and respect for reality that makes Milldust and Roses such a sweet, kind, modest, touching, and unassuming book....It is his simple pride in being ‘common’ that most touches me about this book and most informs its sweet modesty.” — David Budbill

ISBN 1-56439-114-0 152 pgs. $12.00

<>(The Writer's Voice/Ridgeway Press; Available through Bottom Dog Press.)

Throat: Poems

Mary Ann Wehler

“Here is an unvarnished, urgent story of an extraordinary woman surviving the wilderness of middle age…Written both at the top of her lungs and in a low, throaty whisper, Mary Ann Wehler makes poems that sing the opera of contemporary woman’s life. Here is a book conceived in experience and born into wisdom.”

-Molly Peacock

ISBN 0-933087-79-9, 104 pgs. $12.95

ECLIPSE: STORIES
JEANNE BRYNER
*Out of Print*

“In Jeanne Bryner’s Eclipse, there’s a master storyteller at work. The rich, textured world of these stories, and the strong, refreshingly frank narrative voices, bring to life the everyday kindnesses and betrayals that mark the calendars of our lives. While the characters in these stories struggle, it is a struggle blessed with hope. A hope we can all carry with us into the future.” - Jim Daniels

Working Lives Series/ Bottom Dog Press
ISBN 0-933087-78-0 150 pgs. $12.95

Ripe: Poems by Todd Davis

Fresh and Ripe Poems by a New Midwest Voice

“Ripe, a strong first collection, is about as close to the earth as poetry can get. It is filled with loving awareness of the poet’s immediate world, and all that lives for and around him.“All I ever wished for,” he writes, “was the light of fields in late August, / third mowing just cut, / old apple trees left behind.”All we wish for is poetry as sensitive and moving as Ripe gives us.” -Lucien Stryk

Midwest Writers’ Series

ISBN 0-933086-76-4 $10.95 86 pages, August 2002

_________________________________________________________________________

THREE MILES FROM LUCKEY
POEMS
by David Shevin

<>“In Three Miles from Luckey, David Shevin displays a hard-earned wonder
<>at the world. Full of wry humor and surprise, these poems make us laugh
where it hurts. Shevin reveals the odd ironies and juxtapositions and
out and out absurdities of this screwed-up world. He merges the personal
and the political with a jazzy twinkle of his eye.
We need his wise, compassionate voice.”
-Jim Daniels
Working Lives Series/ 80 pages

0-933087-74-8 Paper $10.95 / 0-933087075-6 Hardcover $18.95

Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer’s Story,
Poems & Journal
by Maj Ragain

“There is no book like Twist the Axe. No good book. Maj Ragain’s love affair with the horses and luck and life and sweet naming, and betting on the outcome, is just that, exactly, so buy a ticket, buy two, feel what happens."

-Gary Gildner, author of The Bunker in the Parsley Field.

168 pgs. Perfect bound. 6 x 9 / ISBN 0-933087-70-5 $10.95

Neon

Poems and Stories

by Michael Salinger

“Hell yeah, I like these poems. They’ve been around, they can take care of themselves, and they hope for the best. They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty in the service of the common good and, like anybody you wouldn’t mind having a drink with, they can make surprising leaps from a seated position.”
– Michael DeCapite, author of Through the Windshield
“As readers travel the Neon route—by bus, boxcar, bicycle, steam roller, van and convertible—they’ll move across the landscape of American pop culture. This is a primo collection of poetry postcards and prose photos, shot through Michael Salinger’s quirky lens.”
—Gail Bellamy, author of Victual Reality and Design Spirits
$10.95 isbn 0-933087-72-1

                    Our Working Lives:
                    Short Stories of People and Work
                    Edited by
                        Bonnie Jo Campbell & Larry Smith
                    21 Short Stories of People and Work

    carpenters, painters, waitresses, nurses, teachers, plumbers, custodians, stock boys, social workers, ushers, factory and cannery workers, car salesmen, hardware salesmen, chicken butchers, junk dealers, miners, lifeguards, doctors, dental hygienists, welders, fish and game managers, out-of-workers.   *OUT OF PRINT--Sorry

* Winner of Ohioana Book Award for Poetry...2001



Two Midwest Voices:
        Mirror Lake by Jerry Roscoe and
        The Weather in Athens by Robert DeMott

"Roscoe is especially inventive in this delicate pairings of love and memory, or growing up and 'the tearing down' that begins, and not always sadly, at just that moment. Mirror Lake launched me into a place that I almost forgot to remember and be thankful for. Read and enjoy; you'll know yourself better for it."
- George Myers Jr.

"Bob DeMott's poems achieve what is to me one of the most important accomplishments any poet can offer. Their style, which is straightforward and conversational--with figurative language gracefully and humbly eased in--is almost always transparent...This is a reader's poetry, inviting, heartfelt, generous and moving."    -Ted Kooser

ISBN 0-933087-67-5 112 pgs. $9.95

         Rhapsody with Dark Matter:

             Poems by Jeff Gundy

These vivid meditations call us to enter the whirl of our desires.
In a voice both brave and tender he carries us through
rain-streaked darkness and sun's glare towards love,
toward those who call us to 'bring yourself home.'"
-Jean Janzen
Jeff Gundy is the author of Inquiries (1995), Flatlands (1998),
and A Community of Memory (1998). He is the recipient
of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships and teaches at
Ohio's Bluffton College.

ISBN 0-933087-65-9   88 pgs.   $9.94

NO PETS: STORIES
by Jim Ray Daniels

"Jim Daniels's No Pets brings us sad, acutely-observed stories of people
who know in their bones that the American Dream does not apply to them."
-John Sayles, author of The Anarchists' Convention

Nine telling stories of working-class life by one of our great poets.
ISBN 0-933087-54-3   132 PGS. $10.95

W R I T I N G   W O R K
Writers on Working-Class Writing
Edited by David Shevin,
Larry Smith, & Janet Zandy

Bruce Springsteen Interview with Will Percy and
Essays by
Arhtur L. Clements...Paul Christensen...Thomas Rain Crowe...Bob Fox...Curt Johnson...Karen Kovacik...Joe Mackall…Edwina Pendarvis...Wayne Rapp…Heidi Shayla...Helen Ruggieri …Scott Russell Sanders …David Shevin...Larry Smith …Jean R. Trounstine...Janet Zandy
"We seek to lay the foundation for a working-class criticism here. As editors we were moved by the way these writers and writings present what is best in our human way of building knowledge."   -Introduction
    ISBN 0-933087-52-7 224 pgs. $10.95

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