What the Body Remembers

Adèle Slaughter’s first book of poems, What the Body Remembers, was published by Story Line Press in 1994. It is an autobiographical collection of glimpses into a childhood fraught with familial violence, alcoholism, and trauma, and the life that has been led in its wake; the failure of a marriage and the experiences that forever mold us as human beings. Through all the abuse and suffering these poems portray, however, the driving theme behind What the Body Remembers never falters: the reader is left with an inspiring picture of courage, perseverance, femininity, and the survival of the truest self. The subject of the work remains always the poet, the speaker, even as great attention is drawn to the circumstance surrounding her, providing an impactful example of how our greatest pains may leave us changed, but not defined, and never defeated. Pat Monaghan called the book “a stunning debut volume.”

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540692
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586540791

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Adele Slaughter What the Body Remembers Poem, white script text against emerald green background.

Adele Slaughter ( Author Website )

Publication Date: May 11, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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The Long Conversation

The Long Conversation combines David Dooley’s books The Volcano Inside and The Revenge by Love to create an extended dialogue between past and present, between stories of everyday life and accounts of historical figures, between the demands and delights of art and those of life, culminating in an eleven-poem sequence about the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Lyrical moments flourish within traditional dramatic monologues and a bold and unusual mix of other narrative strategies. The language ranges from vigorous Southern dialect, and even profanity, to a confident and original high style. In The Long Conversation, love is always complicated, the angle of vision is often surprising, and language must be able to cope with every kind of challenge.

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540739
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586540876

Story Line Press legacy tittle, David Dooley The Long Conversation Poems, white script text against emerald green background.

David Dooley

Publication Date: April 27, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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The Island

The Island begins with a haunting 1848 journal entry from a man jailed on Spike Island in Ireland: “Gazing on gray stones, my eyes will grow stony.” Nearly 150 years later, Rosemary Canavan, a poet and painter, teaches literacy at the prison on Spike Island. How do her painter’s eyes and poet’s spirit meet the stony gray of prisoners’ eyes? Throughout these poems, and especially in her long sequence “The Island,” Canavan explores with tenderness and pathos the plight of the incarcerated. With lyrics that seem to be written in primary color, Canavan also celebrates love and children, her struggles as a working mother, and the emerging, vibrant feminist consciousness of a new generation of Irish women.

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540593
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586540845

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Rosemary Canavan The Island Poems, white script text against emerald green background.

Rosemary Canavan ( Author Website )

Publication Date: May 11, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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Counterpoint

Counterpoint, the first full collection of poems by David Alpaugh, was selected out of over 800 manuscripts for the seventh annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize by Story Line Press in 1994. The subjects of the book’s contemporary, witty, bizarre, and often moving poems range from POWs and salespeople to art and the dead. Alpaugh’s works speak to one another—child to adult, animal to human, ad man to poet, New Jersey to California, and past to present. He writes with affection and care for each of these points of unlikely connection. Harold Witt called Alpaugh “a unique voice to hear now and to listen for in the future.” More than twenty-five years after Counterpoint’s initial publication, these words ring more true than ever.

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540708
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586540913

Story Line Press legacy tittle, David Alpaugh Counterpoint Poems, white script text against emerald green background.

David Alpaugh ( Author Website )

Publication Date: April 27, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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Oldest Mortal Myth

The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge. Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to both denizens and voyeurs of the world’s freakshows, or describing with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance, with the last line of “De Wallen, Amsterdam”: “The moon above the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque.” I so admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you’d have to do is add the grammatical, but colloquial, “as.” Which would have ruined the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone! There’s much to admire here, much to enjoy.
—Marilyn Nelson

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586543709
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586543709

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Joanna Pearson Oldest Mortal Myth Poems, white script text against emerald green background.

Joanna Pearson ( Author Website )

Publication Date: April 6, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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The Crane Wife

Sharon Hashimoto explores themes of what is heard and misinterpreted, what is left unexplained, and what is passed down in The Crane Wife. In these pieces, the Sansei poet leafs through old photographs—one of which is of a newlywed couple with the groom’s image cut away. Here is the rediscovered piece of barbed wire from outside the Heart Mountain concentration camp. That wire, a lei, and a car trip to an empty lot are all bits of evidence. Her questions address grandparents, mothers and fathers, siblings, and the next generation. Hashimoto also reinvents Japanese folktales and explores the different voices of the members of a downed JAL jet. Her poems travel in new directions in an attempt to fill in the gaps.

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540999
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586541002

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Sharon Hashimoto The Crane Wife, white script text against emerald green background.

Sharon Hashimoto

Publication Date: April 13, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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Excontemporary

Excontemporary, a collection of poems by Beth Baruch Joselow, was published by Story Line Press in 1993. Jousting with form and language, the book combines image and idea in a painterly style. It contains poetry of sharp observation, coalescing gracefully into a thoughtful meditation on the inner life and the everyday. Mark Wallace, winner of the Gertrude Stein Prize in poetry, was among many that met Excontemporary with high praise: “Joselow’s poems discover, and uncover, keen truths that always surprise and unsettle and make us think again about things we believed we understood.”

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586541019
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586541026

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Beth Baruch Joselow Excontemporary Poems, white script text against emerald green background.

Beth Baruch Joselow

Publication Date: April 13, 2021

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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A Walled Garden in Moylough

A Walled Garden in Moylough demonstrates the ultimate gift of Joan McBreen’s poetry: her ability to distill the essence of a moment. She does this with an effortless elegance, a sure touch, and a lyric voice, which is attuned to the inward echoes of the psyche.

Price
Tradepaper: $20 / ISBN: 9781586540630
Casebound: $30 / ISBN: 9781586540777

Story Line Press legacy tittle, Joan McBreen A Walled Garden in Moylough, white script text against emerald green background.

Joan McBreen ( Author Website )

Publication Date: December 8, 2020

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Story Line Press

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