ALICE JAMES BOOKS has been publishing poetry since 1973 and remains one of the few presses in the country that is run collectively. The cooperative selects manuscripts for publication primarily through regional and national annual competitions. Authors who win a Kinereth Gensler Award become active members of the cooperative board and participate in the editorial decisions of the press. The press, which historically has placed an emphasis on publishing women poets, was named for Alice James, sister of William and Henry, whose fine journal and gift for writing went unrecognized during her lifetime.

September 2010ISNB: 978-1-882295-82-1

paper l $15.95

parable of hide and seek

NEW BOOKS

Chad Sweeney

FALL 2010 Catalog

“The poems in Chad Sweeney’s new book view the world through strangely faceted eyes (perhaps those of a dragonfly?)—actually they behold it, and as such they display a dazzling Rumiesque ecstasy, one that holds the reader as rapt as the creator of these poems is held by Creation. At any rate he is a shaman presiding over—of all things—the wedding of simplicity and sophistication.”

―Mary Ruefle

“Chad Sweeney’s poems are matryoshka dolls of imagination: strangeness inside longing inside charm. Relentlessly figurative, they read as dreamscapes and translations: if the human soul has peripheral vision, these poems are what it sees. And gentleness, gentleness abounds here, and makes me think the point of fancy is to unite, to bring one thing beside another and build a home of their touch. I penciled a small equation on this manuscript: imagination=optimism. Not so small, really.”

—Bob Hicok