Bøger udgivet af Nixes Mate Books

New England without winter is a blessing and a curse. ¡Gracias, El Niño!Here at Nixes Mate headquarters, graveyard for pirates, mutineers, and booze cruises, we're excited about our new books, and this issue which features fifteen new authors to Nixes Mate Review. Every year or so, we change the size of the Review and our books. Of course, we've always shunned the standard size of books and journals. This year is no exception. Who needs 6 x 9 when you can have 5.83 x 8.27! The Review is 6 5/8 x 10 1/4. Go figure.You must be asking yourself, why does that matter. It doesn't. Afterall, New England with or without winter heralds a new Spring. ¡Gracias, El Niño!

In a descent toward what might make our epoch sing in its most falsetto pitch, Vincenz troubles our ears by running a narrative script thru it to plumb its bottom. In a word, the theft of his own ear has felt its echo disguise upon disguise to make these poems carom off one another thence to settle into their proper end. Thieves' Canto is a return from any meta-beyond back into our world, or, "Present Patience." - t thilleman

Dot Girl is a memoir written in verse, with technicolor story bursting from the most beautifully wrought bare-knuckle lines. With courageous truth-telling (and fierce humor!) Linda Carney-Goodrich shares her personal roadmap from childhood poverty and family trauma to remembrance, mourning, and reconnection, reminding us that it is more than possible to emerge whole. Traipse alongside her in stealthy solidarity through the darkened dirty streets of pre-gentrification Boston, to the smashed-beer-bottle sands of Dorchester Bay and, ultimately, to the imagined horizons of a girl dying to be free.- Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie

Capp Road is a brutal, unflinching portrait of small town America. Here, Matt Borczon trains his laser-focus upon the claustrophobic, suffocating, sinking feeling of not being able to escape the nowhere fate that threatens, at every turn, to capture us like bugs under glass. What makes this book work, really work at a fundamental level, is Borczon's minimalistic storytelling approach. The broken characters that wander Capp Road are neither good nor bad - they simply are. They are doing the best they can with the fucked-up situation they were born into. Their hopes, dreams, fears, stories, and journeys through madness and redemption, through Borczon's trademark smashed-up sentence narrative, becomes ours. Capp Road is not a book to be read - it is meant to be ingested, injected, scraped from under our fingernails and shaken off like dust. This book is a triumph. -- Wolfgang Carstens, Epic Rites Press

Lisa Brognano's poetry is the vocal expression of those most beautiful things. Seemingly simple and familiar experiences and observations from everyday life come unannounced from Lisa's own memories and take a reader by the throat. As serious poems do. And although the experiences are completely hers, we are struck by some universal truths that she so inconspicuously reveals to us with such easiness and simplicity.-- Stevan V. Nikolic, Editor, Adelaide Literary Magazine

Eileen Cleary's Wild Pack of the Living is not simply a retelling of Steven Stayner's abduction at the age of 7; rather, the poems of this volume are haunting and intimate visitations of his experience conducted by means of startling arrangements of lyric and image. Subject matter one might initially read as fodder for tabloid tales is transmuted into the profound knowledge of the scope of the loss and its terrifying repercussions. I am both heartbroken by these poems and astonished by their writer's enviable skill.- Cate Marvin, author of Event Horizon

We're tight into hurricane season here at Nixes Mate Headquarters. No better time than to sit with our Summer/Fall 2023 issue and read your way through family dilemmas, ekphrastics, and the spirits of color and place. We have 18 writers newly joining the Nixes Mate family. In the future, we hope to read more of their work. We are happy to announce that Hannah Larrabee, who guest edited our climate change issue back in 2021, has joined our editorial staff. In addition to editorial duties, Hannah is our Explorer.

These poems let you eavesdrop on an intense lovers' dialogue at the table next to you, a dialogue completely unpredictable, comic and profound. They will refresh your views of love, and of poetry, and will make you leave the restaurant full of wonder. You should put down your fork and listen.- J.D. Scrimgeour, author of Banana Bread

Welcome to the second print issue of Nixes Mate Review featuring new voices and returning voices. In this issue, we tackle memory and mortality and what it means to publish in a winter that seems like a memory. Is it early Spring in New England when it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit out in February? Is it late winter when, a week earlier, it was -8 degrees Fahrenheit? Is it even winter when Boston has only received 8 inches snow versus its usual 2 feet by the middle of February? Where are the Nor'easters? Are we speaking too soon, jinxing us here at Nixes Mate headquarters surrounded by a rising and warming sea? Will we retain a memory of the winter that wasn't long after it fades?

Devon Balwit's Spirit Spout - a poetic vision directly engaging with Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale - is an eschatological tour de force. The poet practices an intertextual jouissance showcasing singular gifts for sound and image. We encounter "the thrown gauntlet // the poking prod of the devil's own advocate"; there is salt, wind, brine and ocean; Melville as god, as demon; Melville in the throes of creation and also grieving. Ishmael, Ahab, and Queequeg beckon. Both travelogue and existential reckoning with life, there is a painterly attention to the physical, to the body; there is a grappling with sociology and philosophy: "Our thinking // always butting up against the ribs / of the paradigms we travel in." Balwit's powers are on full display - this book's spirit is deep and wide. - Charles Kell, author of Ishmael Mask

I seldom see American poets write in Chinese. J.D. Scrimgeour is a special case. It's amazing for an American to write such wonderful poems in idiomatic Chinese. I particularly appreciate the methods of word-play and humor used in these beautiful poems.- Zhang Ziqing, Poet, Translator, Scholar, author of A History of 20th Century American Poetry (3 Volumes)

Comito’s range is expansive, painting emotions and scenes with a stunning ferocity. Bury Me in the Sky is a marvel of language and insights. The imagery alone is enough to steal your breath.Underlaid in each piece are layers of tripwire that make youreexamine what you’re reading so as not to miss out on the full scope of experience Comito renders seemingly effortlessly. She can beguile you with sardonic humor and then take you out atthe knees with sharp sprigs of pathos, often in the same piece.— Len Kuntz, author of This is Why I Need You

There is a deceptively light touch here. The humor is nevervicious but is always cognizant that we laugh when we have cried enough. Brad Rose’s microfictions and prose poems – each piece the exactly right size and shape – slide easily into the mind fromseveral directions at once, then stick around to scratch at the brain. Read this book and savor it.— Sally Reno, Editor of Blink Ink

With their ravening grace, these blood bright poems call echoes of their kindred – Sappho, Plath, di Prima – not as source but as sisters. Deweese understands the empty spaces between loneliness and desire and the sanctity of flesh as refuge. Her poems seduce. She speaks of “the most pure incarnation of human love,” and I believe her. Here is a masterful poet glowing in her power. Donot miss this book.— Jeff Weddle, winner of the Eudora Welty Prize

Lauren Leja is a terrific writer. Her characters inhabit that elastic, kaleidoscopic space between believing that they are good people while all along they are drenched with the backwash of their own decisions. Ms. Leja doesn't go for the easy knock out in these stories full of keenly observed mayhem populated by a range of quirky and spontaneously combustive types. Instead, she deftly jabs them around the ring, giving them, and the reader, just enough hope that maybe they will punch above their weight class.- Jack Gantos, author of Hole In My Life

In his latest collection, accelerant, Bill Yarrow bears witness to nature's and mankind's fierce wiles. But Yarrow never forgets to be poetic, nor does he skimp on his trademark zaniness. While most poets opt for serenity, Yarrow opines that "the only chance for happiness / is to excommunicate all calm." By eschewing tameness for his unique brand of mayhem, Yarrow does exactly what poets should do: speaks his mind and throws caution to the wind.- Cindy Hochman, author of Habeas Corpus

Body Bag should be required reading for every President and member of Congress considering sending their citizens to war. These poems, none more than four lines, are dollops of horror, heartbreak, endurance, humanity, vulnerability and a whole lot of love. Although I wish Borczon didn't have to write Body Bag, I am grateful for this book and I am grateful knowing Matt is out there using his immense artistic skills to give us an idea of how it was and what it's like.- Bob Pajich, author of The Trolleyman