New Book Out: All the Beautiful Dead

All the Beautiful Dead (Along the Side of the Road) 

is out now. 

Winner of the 2015 Bitter Oleander Library of Poetry Book Award. 

It has been beautifully put together by Paul B. Roth at Bitter Oleander Press. 

The cover by Roderick Martinez alone is worth the price of the book.

$12.00 
(cheap!)

Currently available at:

  

SPD

(Small Press Distribution)

&

Bitter Oleander
(The Bitter Oleander Press site: shipping free!)

(It's up on the Amazon site, but not quite available there. I'd prefer it if you bought the book through SPD, though. If you don't have the bucks for the book, no problem - I never have any money, either - just go to the SPD site and 'like' the book. Many thanks.)

Blurbs from the back cover:

"Gholson's ALL THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD (ALONG THE SIDE OF THE ROAD) is a harrowing, razor-biting collection which addresses the wounded and the outcast, in a landscape of boxcars, poppies, crows, empty fields, the lights of Las Vegas which can't overpower the open black mouth of the desert night, and the rusted lives and emotional shrapnel ranging from Wales to Colorado, New Mexico to Gaza. This poet's range is wide, able to enter the surrealist canvases of Remedios Varo, as well as everyday struggles, such as unemployment, the death of his father. The voice that immaculately gathers all of these rune-like fragments informs us how he has been 'desperately trying to read them, knowing there is no answer.' But the poems themselves are a candle, even if it's flickering. And Gholson's voice is a prayer 'in the coldest of winters.'"

Anthony Seidman, 
author of A Sleepless Man Sits Up in Bed 

"Yes, the days are darker and the nights are over-lit, but don't worry - in poet Christien Gholson we have a guide who sees 'the way an angel sees...'"

Erling Friis-Baastad, 

author of Wood Spoken: New & Selected Poems

Here is a poem from the book 

(many other poems can be found online - some links listed below):

History Dissolves Into

                                   Light off cliff walls

                   changes, keeps changing:

                                                 blue, salt, green,

                                                      ochre

                                              accidental blood

           Look down: our boot prints in red dust.

                                    Same as the ones on the moon.

           I take several pictures of the imprints for proof

                                                that we are here

             (but when I flash through them  minutes later,

                        all I see

                 are images of a Vietnamese monk on fire).

   Out there,

            someone is building a granary with stacked stone

                    (1,000 years ago, 1,000 years from now).

    Their hands mark the hours. The sound of dust

                                                                  against dust

                                                            mark the minutes.

                                           there are no accidents

                                                           

               Red clouds lengthen, change, keep changing.

             A raised claw bears the likeness of Andromeda.

Some links to other poems in the book:

The 2River View 20.1 (Fall 2015): Dolphins During a Storm, Plumbing a Pipe 

  Blazevox (Spring 2014): Dios de Muertos, Gower Peninsula; Song of the Raven Lover; Lions at the MGM Grand; Spiral

Mudlark Flash No. 76 (2013): 6 From "All the Beautiful Dead"


 

Buy it. 

Buy one for a friend who is interested in the world.

Have no money? 

Recommend it to your local library.
Thanks. 

(Added November 2016: All the Beautiful Dead
was a finalist for the NM Book Awards)