announcing a new publication! – march 4, 2024

Within Flesh: In Conversation with Our Selves and Emily Dickinson, Poems with Al Salehi

available on Amazon

About: “Within Flesh” is a surprising and inventive conversation between two contemporary poets and Emily Dickinson about the national reckoning on race and injustice provoked by the Black Lives Matter movement. This original three-way communion crosses time, space, and cultural boundaries: Al Salehi is an Iranian-American Muslim who lives in California and Ivy Schweitzer is a Brooklyn-born Jew who lives in Vermont. Dickinson was, of course, the daughter of an elite Puritan family in rural Massachusetts in the mid-19th century. Yet despite these differences, they establish a profound connection. Cover art by Lesley Dill.

here’s what else is new and exciting

Wonderful new work from two long-time poetry buddies, with whom it was a privilege to workshop many of the poems in these new publications, and a young poet who has become like a second son to me.

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Ewa Chrusciel—a poet, translator and educator originally from Poland, just published her fourth book of poetry, Yours, Purple Gallinule (Omnidawn Press, 2022).  It is a funny, brilliant and moving account of the mental health of birds, also beautifully illustrated.

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Lisa Furmanski, a remarkable poet and dedicated gerontologist, has self-published Two Bodies in a Room, a gripping and harrowing account of her medical training and subsequent work as a doctor to the elderly in rural New England. Evoking the stressful emotional labor that falls disproportionately on women, she explores her own struggles with burn-out, shows how this burden is driving female doctors out of the profession in droves, and makes a compelling case for fixing our broken system of medical training and the provision of care. You can order a hard copy or ebook from Lulu.com.

Lisa also has a chapbook of poetry titled Tunnel coming out in the spring from Finishing Line Press.

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Eliot Cardinaux has a new chapbook out titled Caprice, published by his own Bodily Press. This young and multiply talented poet continues to explore intensely lyrical poetry in the style of Paul Celan. Eliot is also an amazing pianist, improvisor and composer, and so prolific. Check out his three new albums:
“For Who Is King,” an improvised duo with Caleb Schmale, a pianist and saxophonist
“Deleted Scenes,” with Gary Fieldman (percussion) and Caleb Schmale
“Pavane,” a duo with Gary, which is absolutely gorgeous and includes a composition Eliot created with his good friend and my son Isaac Luxon (guitarist), characteristically titled “Mystery, Always to Yourself.”
You can listen to all three at https://bodilypress.bandcamp.com/

Pavane

For words I am too
overwhelmed not
to break your likeness

Shirt
the water married
to your body

No statue to live by
shadowlike to offend
& validate

Cool musics venting you
to want them shifting 

The modern opening
of dawn to raise the stars

A memory of terror

Pavane not a dead pavane,
the sixth made to ring
with the number of living ends

Home changes
as you are released

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