Lenny DellaRocca is founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. Winner of the 2017 Yellow Jacket Chapbook contest, Things I See in the Fire, DellaRocca is also a Pushcart nominee. His work has appeared in Third Wednesday, Seattle Review, Wisconsin Review, Poet Lore and other fine journals.
“…DellaRocca does what all good drivers (and poets) should do- he steers into the skid.”
– Denise Duhamel
Laura Schulkind’s new chapbook, The Long Arc of Grief, (Finishing Line Press) was released in August, 2019. This collection tells stories of grief impelled by the loss of her parents. It also move beyond her own grief, exploring how we support those we love in their grief, and ultimately how we all not merely carry on, but live.
Laura Schulkind‘s work radiates intelligence, compassion and a nuanced understanding of what it means to be a daughter, a mother and a friend. She’s a fearless truth-teller, shining the light of her poetic language on details we well might have missed otherwise–the small, miraculous moments of discovery, heartbreak and redemption.
–Barbara Quick, Author of Vivald
Laura Schulkind’s new book, The Long Arc of Grief addresses the sorrow of loss and even the anxiety and sorrow of impending loss. But also present in these well-crafted and touching poems is great affection and devotion, and a wonderful generosity of spirit which lift the poems and the reader up.
–Rafaella Del Bourgo, Author of I Am Not Kissing You, and Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild.
Laura Schulkind’s newest collection of poems The Long Arc of Grief dazzles in the scope of life experiences she shares. In the telling of these stories she uses seemingly inconsequential details to capture the moments when our hearts are pierced by misfortune.
–Irma Herrera, Playwright/Solo Performer, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, (Best of Festival, 2017 San Francisco Fringe Festival)
Laura Schulkind, attorney by day, is entrusted with others’ stories. Through poetry she tells her own. She has two chapbooks, The Long Arc of Grief, and Lost in Tall Grass (Finishing Line Press). Her work can also be seen at: www.lauraschulkind.com, along with musings on why “lawyer-poet” isn’t an oxymoron.
Read The Art of Silence by Laura Schulkind
Traversing the urban geographies of the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe, Cityscapes offers searing and intimate portraits of Damascus, Yerevan, Hyderabad, Delhi, Isfahan, and many other cities through the lens of war, peace, love, and despair. The collection opens with poems about the cosmos, before moving to earthly urban topographies, and concludes in a series of still lives chronicling urban spaces. Gould combines the insight of someone who has resided in the geographies she describes with a poetic gift for generalizing her personal experience. Includes original photography of Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), India, and Armenia.
Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of the award-winning monograph Writers & Rebels (Yale University Press, 2016). She has translated many books from Persian and Georgian, including After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry (2017) and for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize (2017). This is her first poetry collection.
Published by Alien Buddha Press, Cityscapes is available at 
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over 1,500 of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction.
Pski’s Porch Publishing prides itself on promoting passionate, weird, unfashionable poetry, and The Arrest of Mr. Kissy Face is a prime example—far, far away from the MFA poetry mill, and a breath of fresh air.
I kissed the woman who slices lunch meat
at King Sooper’s
She shoved smoked turkey at me
leaned away
and called: Next!
Patricia Williams planned to write about Chinese art after retiring from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, as a professor of Design History. Things took a different turn and in 2013 she began writing poetry – proof that it’s never too late to do something new. Life, like poetry, is always subject to revision.
I’ve read lots of poetry and appreciate a good poet’s careful and often spare use of words. Patricia Williams belongs to that group. In two of my favorites, “The Midwinter Night is Long” and “Magic in Collapsing Stars” much is expressed in a few words about the aspects of being human. I especially like the poignant lines from “Islands” and the great story, vast application and wonderful ending in “There Goes the Neighborhood.” – Jerry Apps, Award-winning author of 35 books on rural history and country life, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin
Williams’ intimacy with the Midwestern countryside, its souls and circumstances, tumble forth from these well-crafted poems. We sojourn through “the season’s bullying chill” as “gales sweep the lawn clean of needles” and sense the “mortuary stillness” before a twister. In lovely language, her Midwest Medley resonates elegant simplicity and truth. — Nancy Austin, Author of Remnants of Warmth
Patricia Williams’ poems about “the middle of America” virtually glow with the beauty – and many of the irresistible quirks and foibles – that she finds there. Some gleaming freeze-frames of winter are particularly stunning, as in “The long-night moon / shimmers over a glacial setting / polished by winter’s breath”. We’re also treated to Williams’ fresh take on the area’s Great Indoors, where we feel right at home under the antlers and beer signs of the Northland Bar and Grill or crashing a sing-along with Aunt Mae at the player piano. Williams’ guided tour through a part of the country too often bypassed (or flown over) is a poetic experience not to be missed. – Marilyn L. Taylor, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Emerita
Midwest Medley: Places & People, Wild Things & Weather is available at:
John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, and Chants. His newest collection, Sundowning, will be out this year with Main Street Rag. Besides Third Wednesday, John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, and many others.
John is a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud. A former New England Poet of the Year, John is the prose editor for the online journal Abstract Mag TV. He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.
You can order John Stanizzi’s books at these links:
Hallelujah Time! (Big Table Publishing, 2014), Dance Against the Wall (Antrim House Books, 2012), Four Bits (Grayson Books, 2018), Chants (Cervena Barva Press 2019).
