While I was away at the BGSU Winter Wheat extravaganza, my poet buddy (Zen Master Dauro) pointed out a series of well printed, very impressive chapbooks at one of the tables. The Wick Series chapbook put out by Kent State University were very cool looking and contained some pretty awesome pieces. All of the works, I believe, are done by Ohio based writers. I'm fairly sure it works on the contest level with as far as I can tell, most of the works centering on poetry. The books were well edited with a strong sense of physical and tactile beauty. So much so that I bought three of them and have finally found sometime working through the first of them.
Jim Murphy's "The Memphis Sun" is great little collection. Murphy pulls the reader through the American social and physical landscape using references to rockabilly musicians, blues' men, and negro league baseball gods. It's an older book in the series, but it a fantastic collection to snap up. The look and feel of the chapbook really help to pull the poems along. Easy one of the most beautiful poems in the collection is "Junk Travel Through West Memphis." The piece starts with "Woman with a starshell light behind her eyes/turns slowly on the sugar of a ride cymbal,/and moves her hands towards the Pleiades/" and just gyrates into expansive/microcosmic explorations of scene. No sense in talking too much about it. You should check it out. All the chapbooks are available on Amazon from between $4.50 to $6 or through Kent State Press.
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