Parallel Press Chapbooks ~ Et Alia
This "and others" collection of chapbooks includes a variety of poetry, reflections, or bibliographies printed by the Parallel Press. These chapbooks are part of the Et Alia collection because they can stand alone as a single publication.
The first prose chapbook in this collection, American Trilogy, was printed in September 2002. Since then, additions include a one-act play, a bibliography of poetry by Dennis Brutus, poetry based on a collection of African artwork that was on exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art, and a collection of bouts-rimés adapting new topics to the rhymes of a Shakespearean sonnet.
The Et Alia collection will continue to cover diverse material, and future chapbooks will include essays and other material suitable as short free-standing publications.
To Sit Beside a Bird is Infinite Enough
David Hayman
$10
David Hayman has been publishing criticism and scholarship since 1958, in Comparative Literature, mainly on Joyce and Beckett.
The title of his chapbook was written 55 years ago when he began writing poetry.
Most of what is his first book of verse was written more recently, however, in response to summers on
Deer Isle, Maine and Fall-Winter-Spring in Madison, Wisconsin but also out biographical and travel-related recollections.
He is currently toying with a memoir. The creative process is a passion. Robert Toomey worked for the University of Wisconsin–Madison Memorial Library for close to thirty years. His collection of poems
written during that time, reveal his comical observations of life, his love of jazz, and the anguish of how he feels when close family members die. Toomey’s
partner, Jane Cooper, and sons Robert and Daniel, edited the poems and chose pieces that represented Toomey’s character—one that was generous and known
for evoking laughter out of friends. The chapbook’s title is derived from its final poem, “Family Reunion”—which Toomey wrote after attending a family reunion
in 2004 and encompasses the entire collection. “We drank the breeze and tasted the water,/Marking its slow decline: our own/Reflections carved in sand
and stone.” If the Whole Body Dies explores the life and career of Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959). Lemkin's obsession with stopping genocide (a word he coined) led to the adoption of the U.N. Treaty Against Genocide.
Forward is a collection of poetry showcasing the work of UW-Madison's first-year Masters of Fine Arts writing students and the undergraduate winners, honorable mentions, and finalists of the 2005 George B. Hill Poetry Prize. Encore is an anthology of poetry from Parallel Press poets. The collection is wonderfully representative of the poetry chapbook
series that started in 1999. Each of the forty poets contributed a poem and a statement commenting on their experience with writing the poems. The
anthology also contains a foreword by Ken Frazier, Director of the UW-Madison Libraries. Forward is a collection of poetry showcasing the work of UW-Madison's second-year Masters of Fine Arts graduate writing students and the undergraduate winners, honorable mentions, and finalists of the 2005 George B. Hill Poetry Prize. The idea that would be collectively borrowed to generate the sonnets gathered herein occurred to Stephen Cushman when he came upon a photograph of his young son playing "dress-up": just as the boy had donned someone else's clothes, so would the poem the picture inspired adorn itself in another poem's rhymes. Cushman had chosen, then, to play a private round of bouts-rimés, whose rules require a new poem to be fitted with a prescribed sequence of rhyme-words. The sequence he assigned for himself came, appropriately enough, from Shakespeare's "Sonnet 20". — selection from Foreword of Fashioned Pleasures by William Thompson Bruised Totems is a limited-edition chapbook published in conjunction with the 30th anniversary conference of the African Literature Association and the opening of an exhibition at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 16, 2004, of some sixty pieces from the 800-strong Bareiss Family Collection of African Art. The Bareiss family commissioned Kwame Dawes to write the poetry based on his observations of the art. The chapbook includes images of the wonderful pieces that inspired Dawes' poetry. Dennis Brutus is a world-renowned South African poet, scholar and activist. In 2004, he turned 80 years old and it seems fitting to honor the occasion by producing Poems of Dennis Brutus: A Checklist, 1945-2004, as a record of his entire corpus to date of published poems. Brutus' poems were published extensively outside of South Africa; however, this publication brings to light the little known fact that Brutus also published poems in South Africa — this despite being banned and proscribed by the South African Government and imprisoned on Robben Island. Brutus left South Africa on an exit visa in 1966 and has been a resident of the United States for more than 30 years. American Trilogy is a limited-edition chapbook published as part of a university-wide reflection on the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks one year later. The piece features historical reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The edition includes a thought-provoking introduction by Stephen E. Lucas, Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at the UW-Madison. An insightful afterword by the director of the UW-Madison Center for the Study of the American Constitution, John P. Kaminski, describes the public responses to these documents 200 years ago. By popular demand, the book was reprinted in 2004, thanks to a generous gift from Richard A. Gonce. The entire chapbook is available for download here as an Adobe PDF file. To request a printed copy of American Trilogy, send an e-mail to Parallel Press.
Family Reunion: Reflections Carved in Sand and Stone
Robert G. Toomey
$10
The chapbook contains an introduction by Ken Frazier, director of UW-Madison General Library System.
If the Whole Body Dies: Raphael Lemkin and the Treaty Against Genocide
Robert Skloot
$10
Forward - Best Young Poets 2006
$10
Preface written by Amaud Jamaul Johnson, assistant professor of English in the Creative Writing Program
Encore: More of Parallel Press Poets
$15
Forward - Best Young Poets 2005
$10
Preface written by Amy Quan Barry, associate professor for the Program in Creative Writing, Department of English
Fashioned Pleasures
Edited by William Thompson
$10
Bruised Totems
Poems Based on the Bareiss Family Collection of African Art
Kwame Dawes
$10
Poems of Dennis Brutus:
A Checklist, 1945-2004
Compiled by Andrew Martin, National English Literary Museum
$10
American Trilogy
Introduction by Stephen E. Lucas
Afterword John P. Kaminski
One to two copies will be sent free of charge.
3-99 $1.00/each (shipping & handling included)
100+ $ .75/each (shipping & handling included)
