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The famed New York School bard's ruminations and deep ponderings, written during random Manhattan lunch hours.

Nonfiction. Spinoza's theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology, with a single infinite substance, and all beings as the modes of being of this substance. This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical propositions and ontological propositions. His ethics is an ethology, rather than a moral science. Recent attention has been drawn to Spinoza by deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher, and this new reading of Spinoza by Deleuze lends itself to a radical ecological ethic. As Robert Hurley says in his introduction, Deleuze opens us to the idea that the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us. One wonders, finally, whether Man might be defined as a territory, a set of boundaries, a limit on existence.

An Iraq War vet's bracing, visionary response to the challenge posed by global warming and his hope in the humanities.

"Secrets of Voodoo" traces the development of this complex religion (in Haiti and the Americas) from its sources in the brilliant civilizations of ancient Africa. This book presents a straightforward account of the gods or loas and their function, the symbols and signs, rituals, the ceremonial calendar of Voodoo, and the procedures for performing magical rites are given."Voodoo," derived from words meaning "introspection" and "mystery," is a system of belief about the formation of the world and human destiny with clear correspondences in other world religions. Rigaud makes these connections and discloses the esoteric meaning underlying Voodoo's outward manifestations, which are often misinterpreted. Translated from the French by Robert B. Cross. Drawings and photographs by Odette Mennesson-Rigaud.Milo Rigaud was born in Port au Prince, Haiti, in 1903, where he spent the greater part of his life studying the Voodoo tradition. In Haiti he studied law, and in France ethnology, psychology, and theology. The involvement of Voodoo in the political struggle of Haitian blacks for independence was one of his main concerns.

The sequel to his famous book, More Notes of a Dirty Old Man reprints rare Bukowski columns unseen in decades.

The first novel written in the Yoruba language and one of the first to be written in any African language.

First and only book of speeches on racism, community, freedom, and politics in the U.S. by international icon Angela Davis.

World-famous musician Ry Cooder publishes his first collection of stories, with a nod to Raymond Chandler and Nathanael West.

In spontaneous, direct, and concrete verses, the author confesses his joy in poetry and life.

The lives of working class Mexican America, where everyday stories offer a portal to myth and fable.This collection of eleven stories is the newest installment of an ongoing, multi-volume literary documentary project, penned by one of the contemporary legends of Chicanx literature.Dagoberto Gilb's cast of characters includes a young family whose exposure to a mysterious cloud of gas alters their lives forever; a high school dropout whose choice to learn the ways of the world from the adults at work in his uncle’s industrial laundry leads him into a dangerous dalliance;  a former high-rise union carpenter who agrees to meet up with an eager old flame; an aging Chicano, living alone, whose children watch over him for signs of decline; and more.These are stories about working class people who come and go mostly unnoticed or ignored, whose lives are not fodder for literary tropes or cliches. They are neither heroes nor villains, just regular people with their flaws and merits, facing the challenges and questions posed by everyday life. Gilb writes in a distinctive, appealing voice, welcoming the reader in with an easy sense of familiarity, and the effect is spare on the surface, but profound. Deftly capturing the nuances of interpersonal relationships in a simple word or gesture, he peels back the surface of seemingly unremarkable encounters to reveal layers of myth and uncanny surrealism, propelled by the momentum of new, changing times.

The original American surrealist returns in a new edition of the 1967 classic. "I am eager to do a book of yours," Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote to Philip Lamantia in Nerja, Spain in 1966. "What about SELECTED POEMS OF PHILIP LAMANTIA?" The missive came at the right time, as Lamantia had recently reembraced the surrealism of his youth and sought to publish his current work alongside his key poems of the 1940s, when the then-15-year-old poet was published by war-exiled leader of the Surrealist Movement, André Breton. For Breton, the young poet was a new Rimbaud, but Lamantia also became known as a poet of the Beat Generation, participating in the 1955 Six Gallery Reading where Allen Ginsberg debuted "Howl." A pioneer of San Francisco's psychedelic culture, Lamantia reemerged through City Lights at the crest of the Summer of Love. Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia reflects each facet of the poet's development up to the point of its publication. "Revelations of a Surreal Youth (1943-1945)" includes the incendiary poems from his teenage years which brought him early avant-garde fame, including his signature "Touch of the Marvelous." "Trance Ports (1948-1961)" covers the Beat years, evincing increasing involvement with mysticism, esoterism, and religion. Finally, "Secret Freedom (1963-1966)" heralds his return to surrealism, cementing his countercultural bona fides with the LSD-fueled "Blue Grace," the zig-zagging Kundalini-inspired "What Is Not Strange?" and the Aquarian Age ode "Astro-Mancy," which prefigures his later engagement with Native American culture. This new edition includes an afterword by poet and editor Garrett Caples, recounting the book's genesis through correspondence between Lamantia and Ferlinghetti and including archival images. A much-needed restoration to the Pocket Poets Series of today, Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia glows like a red-hot coal still burning with the revolutionary fervor of its time.

COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO meditates on the extraordinary time of loss, isolation, and bizarre rituals of the Covid era and its aftermath. "Yep, she's still got it. . . . Like the most inspiring religious services, 'Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco' ends on an optimistic note, with Finley pivoting from shock and horror at the lives lost, access and control over one's body into hope-for change, peace, courage, love. And art. Always art."-Elisabeth Vincentelli,The New York TimesFirst performed at sold-out theaters in New York, where the Village Voice compared Karen Finley to Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, this vivid suite of poems invokes a maelstrom of feelings that will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. In COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO, Finley processes the pandemic in all its complexity-from the collective coping strategies during isolation and loss to the absurd new habits we acquired, from handwashing to wiping down groceries to decorative double masks and zoom dance parties. The New York City hotspot echoes an earlier AIDS era; that rage and sorrow remain part of the City's DNA. During COVID, tragic historic events such as the police murder of George Floyd and the continued brutality on Black and brown bodies, challenged the nation. Revolution took to the streets. The reversal of Roe v Wade and the criminalizing of trans peoples' bodies, mental health realities, houselessness, essential workers' rights, and social isolation brought desperate conditions. Finley reflects on these traumas, asking how do we employ love despite the hate, to encourage humanity despite proliferating violence?On the fifth anniversary of the pandemic lockdown, COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO looks back while also looking forward, offering art as salvation, and the deep belief in the power of words, compassion, and humor to transcend the harsh realities of today.

"A memoiristic travelogue that illuminates the enduring legacy of the mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II"--

An underground denizen of San Francisco soars above it in a state-of-the-art long poem. Over a decade ago, Patrick James Dunagan stoically refused to be published in the Spotlight series, citing his desire to maintain critical independence as a prolific reviewer of contemporary poetry. Finally, he has been prevailed upon to turn over a manuscript, City Bird and Other Poems. Defying the media narrative of the city's demise, the poems of City Bird celebrate the joys of San Francisco, invoking artists like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, poets like Bill Berkson and Lew Welch, and local landmarks like O'Farrell Street, St. Anne of the Sunset, and Thrasher magazine, all the while foregrounding Dunagan's lightly worn erudition. But the book stands on its lengthy title poem, a tour de force combining composition and collage, filtered through the poet's laid-back lyricism. Unapologetically literary with its understated formal imperatives, City Bird is at once a self-referential poetics, examining itself unfolding, and a stream-of-consciousness narrative of Hugh, the nominal protagonist, seemingly engaged in eating a sandwich. Proustian in its sweep, even as it courts a ludicrous Beckett-like minimalism, the poem takes sidelong glances at our contemporary political malaise, while contemplating consciousness itself. If Ashbery had written "The Skaters" about skateboarders, it might have come out very like City Bird. A major achievement in contemporary American poetry, City Bird further confirms Dunagan's reputation as the best-kept secret of San Francisco. "Nothing is left unseen, including present memories years before with friends, or a dramatic monologue through recent readership, receiving everyone's voices into a huge collage . . . City Bird is all this and more. A meditation and intense easy stroll through a poet's city and all the things that make up a gorgeous life within it, listening and living."-Micah Ballard, author of Waifs and Strays

"More than simply a book, Cartoons proposes itself as a genre of imaginary writing in opposition to the realism of most contemporary U.S. fiction, aligning itself with the French symbolism and Latin American fabulism its author is known to translate. A giant cricket with a tiny Kit Schluter in a jar, The Girl Who Is a Piece of Paper, an umbrella who confuses the words porpoise and purpose in its quest for self-fulfillment, these are just a few denizens of its pages, suffused with a fairy tale-like animism. A pair of slugs go on a bender. A microwave oven decries microaggressions. A beer bottle is filled with regret. An escalator mechanic's shoe conceals a terrible secret. As befits its title, Cartoons defies the laws of physics and fiction alike, eschewing tonal consistency in favor of a simultaneity of joy and horror, ecstasy and disgust, wrapped in an extravagant layer of black humor. The stories blur the boundary between microfiction and poet's prose, featuring impossible transformations and surrealistic events, even as they wrestle with urgent psychic and moral dilemmas. Heightening the atmosphere of pervasive unreality are a number of drawings by the author, which don't so much illustrate as parallel the tales with their own fantastic scenarios"--

"This recently discovered treasure is a stunning portrait of sex, family, religion, culture of origin, and the betrayals of the body. Tender and blistering, erotic and spiritual - Cuadros dives into these complexities which we grapple with today, showing us how to survive these times, and beyond"--

A conjuration of ancient consciousness aimed at rehumanizing our contemporary cyborg condition. "Referring to the American continent, 'Abya Yala' ('land of life') is a pre-Columbian term of the Guna people of Panamá and Colombia. Harrison wrestles with language, racism, and humanity in political and spiritual poems."-Publishers Weekly, Most Anticipated Poetry Books, Spring 2024"Abya Yala"-"land of life" or "land of vital blood"-is a Pre-Columbian term of the Guna people of Panamá and Colombia to refer to the American continent and more recently has signified the idea of a decolonized "New World" among various Indigenous movements. In Isthmus to Abya Yala, Panamanian American poet Roberto Harrison summons a mythic consciousness in response to this political and spiritual struggle. In his poems, with mystic fervor, Harrison finds phonetic unities concealing conceptual oppositions he must transcend. Invoking "mobilian" as an ur-language against racism and toward an all-inclusive humanity-in opposition to the "mobile" of phone-mediated existence-the poems of Isthmus to Abya Yala burn with a visionary ardor that overpowers rationality through an intensive accumulation of imagery. They even sometimes manifest as visual poems in the form of drawings he calls "Tecs," opposing the dominance of technology to the advocacy of pan-Indian nationhood by 19th century Shawnee leader Tecumseh. "Tecumseh Republic" is the poet's name for a new post-racial, post-national, post-binary, post-colonial, holistic and earth-oriented society with no national borders, with Panamá, the isthmus, as its only entry and exit.

"Short stories from 25 emerging and established writers of Middle Eastern and North African origins, a unique collection of voices and viewpoints that illuminate life in the global Arab/Muslim world. Stories from the Center of the World gathers new writing from the Greater Middle East, a vast region that stretches from Southwest Asia, through the Middle East and Turkey, and across Northern Africa. The 25 authors included here are either native to the region, or part of a diasporic community, a diverse mix of men and women, queer and straight, who come from a wide range of cultures and countries, including Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco, to name a few. Selected from among a wave of new fiction published in The Markaz Review, this 'best of' collection features both well-established and emerging writers, some being published in English for the first time. The stories span a number of styles and genres, from literary fiction to sci-fi, epistolary to noir. In 'Asha and Haaji,' Hanif Kureishi takes up the cause of outsiders who become uprooted when war or disaster strikes and they flee for safe haven. In Nektar Anastasiadou's 'The Location of the Soul According to Benyamin Alhadeff,' two students in Istanbul from different classes--and religions that have often been at odds with one another--believe they can overcome all obstacles. MK Harb's story, 'Counter Strike,' is about queer love among Beiruti adolescents; and Salar Abdoh's 'The Roots of Heaven' invites us into the world of former militants, fighters who fought ISIS or Daesh in Iraq and Syria, who are having a hard time readjusting to civilian life. In 'Eleazar,' Karim Kattan tells an unexpected Palestinian story in which the usual antagonists--Israeli occupation forces--are mostly absent, while another malevolent force seems to overtake an unsuspecting family. Omar El Akkad's 'The Icarist' is a coming-of-age story about the underworld in which illegal immigrants are forced to live, and what happens when one dares to break away. The Markaz Review, an online journal of literature and the arts, was founded in 2020 with a mission to showcase work from a cultural region that's often overlooked or misrepresented. Here, we get a different viewpoint. Moving from the margins to the center, or the markaz--a word and a concept shared among languages and cultures of the region--the writers featured here establish a worldview that highlights the vanguard creativity and humanity of the various populations represented in their stories"

Presents key voices and essential texts relevant to understanding today’s abolitionist movement. Supporters of the contemporary abolitionist movement, which has exploded since the George Floyd protests of 2020, will be eager to read this book. Includes an unpublished communique by Angela Davis written in her 20s while she was in jail. Co-editor Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous political prisoner alive today.The editorial arc of the book is historical, beginning with the anti-slavery era and continuing through to the present day. Book is accessible, inspirational, and rhetorically powerful. Co-editor Jennifer Black will schedule a speaking tour for PA, NY, NJ, DC, MD, MA, and beyond. Institutional partnership with the Prison Radio Project, a resource-strong not-for-profit organization dedicated to giving voice to incarcerated people.

Incendiary, lyrical poems of liberation from the oppression of Black womanhood. "To encounter the words of mimi tempestt on the page, or in performance, is to witness the rare transcendency of language where the line becomes an exacting blade. i dare you not to sleep on any prodigious Black woman’s soliloquy. i dare you to hold these words & find yourself implicated in the violent acts that serve as the backdrop to the blood spilled onto these pages. Read this book. You have no choice. Approach with caution. Defend yourself with claims of nuance and complexities. Do what you must, but know that once unsheathed these words, as Hanzo steel, have a way of cutting through the whiteness to get to the realities of Black and Brown truths."—Truong Tran, author of Book of the Other: Small in ComparisonWedding fierce, even jagged lines to an uncompromisingly lyrical flow honed over years of performance, mimi tempestt writes poems that are by turns cerebral, profane, revolutionary, comedic, erotic, and sentimental, with a visual sense that explodes across the page. the delicacy of embracing spirals is her second book, an investigation of the ways in which the personal narrative of Black womanhood can be expressed through a radically human lens, to expand on the possibilities of selfhood, liberation, and autonomy. Beginning with microcosmic poems of personal struggle and spiraling out into macrocosmic texts of social and political critique, the book culminates in an account of the impossible staging of a play where the lives of the characters and the audience are at stake. The three central questions this collection raises are “What haunts you? What hunts you? Who and what are you hunting?” the delicacy of embracing spirals blends theatre, melodrama, art, and lyricism through fragmented language, mosaic pieces, narrative, histories, and characterizations. It prioritizes the use of an ongoing dialectic to express a consciousness about being Black, being woman, being queer, being radical, being complex, being imperfect, being beautiful, being alive, being oppressed, and most essentially, being complicatedly human. The poems utilize memory and narrative to radically engage with the “performance” of oppression that gets in the way of Black womanhood and prevents Black humanity from being fulfilled. Most importantly, this collection unapologetically holds the white gaze hostage.

This is Clark Coolidge's most famous book, the one everyone references, long out of print after a 2nd successful publication with Sun & Moon Press in 1995. (The book was originally published by The Figures Press in 1986)This new edition features new material: a preface by poet and scholar Peter Gizzi, and an interview in the afterword where Coolidge addresses the genesis of the poem.Clark Coolidge is associated with the New York School and writers Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, and Larry Fagin.He is also linked with the Language Poets including Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Michael Palmer.In Gizzi's preface, he mentions the many authors who consider Coolidge to be their favorite poet. This includes: James Schuyler, Robert Creeley, Alice Notley, John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Bill Corbett, Geoffrey Young, Barbara Guest, Peter Straub, Michael Palmer, Rosmarie Waldrop, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Blaser, David Shapiro, John Yau, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Raworth, Paul Auster, Bernadette Mayer, & Fanny HoweThe Crystal Text is comparable to Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," a meditation on an object.Bay-area events are planned.

This novel offers a lyrical discussion of the rights, roles, and obligations of citizens in society as artificial intelligence plays a growing role in our lives. It’s a philosophical reflection on how Google & Co. meddle with our individual lives and our relationships with each other, and the increasingly ubiquitous control they exert on the general circulation of information, ideas, and capital.         It joins the ranks of other works of fiction that dive into these topics, such as Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail, Dave Eggers's The Every, Sherry Turkle's The Empathy Diaries, and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.      The author combines an unflinching look at the contemporary realities of class in the capitalist, consumer societies with a deep affection and caring for the humans who live in them.       This novel concentrates specifically on the pervaviseness of Google—in many respects the air that many of us in the United States and Europe breathe—in terms of ethics, morals, philosophy, and human values.      Gopegui dives into these topics with beautiful and thought-provoking prose. The story will resonate with people concerned about how the internet, and social media, impact our daily lives      For readers of Machines Like Me, by Ian Mc Ewan and Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which are both similar in the way they care about our future and different because this novel does not focus on the nature of machines but rather, how we humans are machines—complex and fascinating but machines in the end, and how it is for precisely that reason that why we should be more careful, tender, and brave.