Bottom Dog Press, Inc.

The Long River Home:

A Novel by Larry Smith

A family saga set in Appalachia/ 240 pages 

9781933964317 paper $16/ 9781933964308 hardcover $22

The Long River Home: A Novel

by Larry Smith

In this fine Appalachian novel, Larry Smith chronicles four generations of McCalls, their joys and sorrows, their sins and their nobility….Such regional fiction has always been about people: their connections with one another, their home place, their struggles to survive and to prosper. It’s all here, set, in the grand tradition of Wendell Berry and Conrad Richter, against the Ohio landscape: its hills and its rivers, its frontier beginnings and its later industrial development. We care about the place and its people. Finishing the novel, we understand ourselves and our nation with a deeper knowledge.
        -Annabel Thomas, author of Stone Man Mountain
 

Historical introduction by Larry Smith, senior editor

Here are the Poets:

David Adams, Laura Treacy Bentley, Roy Bentley, Jeanne Bryner, Jennifer Burd, Imogene Bolls, David Canalos, Michael Cole, d.  steven conkle,  Jim Daniels, Todd Davis, Robert DeMott, Robert Flanagan, Allen Frost, Chris Green, Jeff Gundy, Richard Hague, Denish Hassan, Terry Hermsen, Meredith Holmes, Brooke Horvath, Marci Janas, Milton Jordan, Diane Kendig, David Kherdian, Ron Kittell, Kip Knott, Tom (T.L.) Kryss Naton Leslie, d.a.levy, Chris Llewellyn, Joanne Lowery, Ray McNiece, Herbert Woodward Martin, Ken Meisel, Richard E. Messer, Don Moyer, George Myers Jr., Joe Napora, Kenneth Patchen, Edwina (Eddy) Pendarvis, Paul Piper, Maj Ragain, Gloria Regalbuto, Jerry Roscoe, Timothy Russell, Karen St. John-Vincent, Philip St. Clair, Russell Salamon, Michael Salinger, David Shevin, Daniel Smith, Larry Smith, Rob Smith, Merry Speece, Deborah Ellen Stokes, Robert Tener, Daniel Thompson, Alberta T. Turner, John A. Vanek, John Volkmer, Michael E. Waldecki, Mary E. Weems, Loren Weiss, Mary Ann Wehler, William C. Wright

Special Edition of Bottom Dog Press Poetry Anthology

comes with publisher orders only

includes 8 page color pamphlet

of all the book covers. 

Contributors: Ed Sanders, T.L. Kryss, rjs, Karl Young, Allen Frost, Joel Lipman, Kent Taylor, Mark Kuhar, Ingrid Swanberg, Larry Smith, Russell Salamon, John Jacob, Doug Manson, Michael Basinski, Jim Lang, and others.    

Book includes 2006 dvd of Kon Petrochuk’s film if i scratch, if i write

1-933964-07-3  276 pages  $20

Both a poet laureate primer and a collection of fine poems,
Awake at the End collects the poetic output of the first three
Cleveland Heights, Ohio, poet laureates:
Meredith Holmes, Loren Weiss, and Mary E. Weems,
poets  awakened by their tenures as poet laureate.

"This anthology shows just how poetry can matter—for a community, from a community and by a community. Holmes, Weiss and Weems describe the synergy between artist and populace as they give their perspectives from "the greenest, leafiest streets" of the Heights to "the real picture, the cold gray one...where winter has us by the icicles,” from bustle of Coventry to the lawns of Oakwood, from the Lee Road Library to Cain Park, they have their ears to the streets and pens to the pulse of this diverse neighborhood that is a microcosm of Cleveland."  Ray McNiece, author of Our Way of Life

978-1-933964-21-8   108 pgs.  $14

Jeff Vande Zande has spent most of his life in Michigan, where the talk is always of jobs, loss of jobs, and the beauty of the landscape. His books include a novel, Into the Desperate Country (March Street Press), a collection, Poems New, Used, and Rebuilds (March Street Press) and, also a short story collection, Emergency Stopping and Other Stories (Bottom Dog Press). He lives in Midland with wife, son, and daughter and teaches English and writing at Delta College.

Jeff Vande Zande's new novel is a wonderful contemporary working-class story.  This crafted story is an engaging page-turner filled with keen detailing and vivid style. Landscape with Fragmented Figures is the real deal--an intense story about real people involved in day-to-day life experiences that readers will identify with and relate to their own neighborhoods and Midwest houses, not in New York, LA or Chicago. This is a novel full of working-class heart and soul that will appeal to all readers.” 
           -M.L. Liebler, author of Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream

 Recent review, interview, excerpt.

ISBN 978-1-933964-23-2  234 pages. $16.00

Flanagan wins me with his rich humor and compassion, his keen ear and sharp eye, his technical skill, his ability to slam a poem shut with a crash, his way with simile and metaphor. Here is a rich, long overdue gathering of Flanagan’s finest and most insightful poems, the harvest of four decades. Open this book and you just might find it irresistible. – X. J. Kennedy

These intelligent, sharply focused poems recall a gritty past of rented apartments (“cramped endurances”), “cracked tar,” the fight game, and turf wars in scenes of working class urban America, 1950s.  But this poet is also at ease with the natural world as he sinks his roots in the river beds of Ohio, dreaming “peace for his children,” flashing forward to insights of a life lived through…I greet this strong and moving book with admiration and joy.     – Colette Inez

Robert Flanagan was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. A graduate of the University of Toledo and the University of Chicago, he taught at Ohio Wesleyan University where he directed the creative writing program. Flanagan has published the novel Maggot, three collections of short stories, five chapbooks of poetry, as well as essays and reviews.

978-1-933964-28-7   104 pgs.  $15.00

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Cultural Timeline, Articles, Interviews, Profiles.
Big 40 Poet Anthology with statements from poets.
304 Pages/ 40 photos/

See our new webpages: 
Cleveland Poetry Archives  web page
Cleveland Poetry Scenes Chronology

Rushlight: Poems by Chris Green

 Poems of Place in Appalachia and of Family

A rich rewarding book by a young poet.

Chris Green's Rushlight is a powerful new book of poems. Rushlights were made from rushes growing in marshy ground by old-time working people as substitutes for candles, to push against the darkness of the night. For me, Chris’ poems light the world in a similar way.  I see better in my own dark through these brilliant poems, for which I thank this very necessary writer.            — Gurney Norman, Kentucky Poet Laureate and author of Kinfolks

104 pages  $15.00

 Yes, this writer is a woman who knows that "every mouth's it's own love language,/ lust first cousins." And yes, she is a black woman, for whom the eyes of Barack Obama "are so deep brown/ I see blue in then,/ ocean water,/ bones rising,/ right fists raised." And yes, like the rest of us, she's getting older, "hair graying in places/ I shouldn't have hair." But beyond all divisions, she is a poet, who knows that poetry is music, and music is "the first place Black and White/ came together like unwritten notes/ in a jazz composition." In these poems Mary Weems both challenges and embraces America in all its turbulence and beauty. We should be grateful. "   -George Bilgere, author of Haywire 

978-1-933964-18-8   80 page

Hear Mary Weems read from her book.