Publication party and reading for “I Dream About You Baby”, poems by Lester Afflick, at SOLAS, 232 E. Ninth Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Wednesday, June 11, 7-9 pm, free.

Book release Party July 19th 2008 4-5:30 pm @ The Bowery Poetry Club- Readers TBA

Fly By Night Press is proud to announce the publication of I Dream About You Baby, poems by Lester Afflick.

Born in Jamaica, Afflick was a vital force and fixture on the New York poetry scene from the early 1980s until his untimely death in January 2000. This posthumous collection of his finest poems has been compiled by Afflick’s dearest friends and most discerning readers.

Said the poet Hal Sirowitz: “He reminds me of the British painter Turner. Turner painted the turbulence of war and the ocean. Lester used words to paint the turbulence of life. The power of his metaphors combined with a deep voice, like Paul Robeson’s, made you marvel at the narrative.”

Another poet and friend John Farris explained: “Afflick’s death at 43 cut short a literary voice that was just beginning to find its maturity, a force that had just begun to hurricane density, that spoke to desert and crag, the heat of an unforgiving sun and maudlin existence, rendering the maudlin with a tool both dry and sharp. The poems in this collection represent Afflick’s vision: Island culture and alienation in an urbane and witty top hat.”

poem-idreamaboutyou.jpg

In conjunction with the book’s publication, A Gathering of the Tribes, in conjunction with Redtape Productions and Solas, will present a reading of poems in the collection by an array of Afflick’s friends and admirers, (including at press-time: Steve Cannon, Michael Carter, Steve Dalachinsky, John Farris, Marci Goodman, Ruth Siekevits, Carl Watson and others TBA) at Solas, 232 E. Ninth St. (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Wednesday, June 11,

7-9 pm.

For more information about the event or about “I Dream About You Baby”, poems by Lester Afflick, contact A Gathering of the Tribes, Inc. at 212-674-3778, info@tribes.org, or visit www.tribes.org.

From Fly by Night Press
Chavisa Woods

“Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind”

$14.95 195 pages available for order on amazon.com and at any Bookstore in the U.S.A.

Links to reviews

Go Magazine

The Brooklyn Rail

www.lovedoesnot.com

“Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind” is a collection of short stories focusing on the formative and tumultuous moments in the lives of two women as children and adults, whose relationship to one another is cast in an ambiguous light, and whose characters are abstracted within the context of each story. Primarily set in rural America and other transient realms, this book combines realism with elements of meta-fiction, magnifying the extraordinary interpersonal worlds created by the circumstances of their outer reality.

“Woods writes about love with a calloused hand, filling the spaces left by others. Her words etch a dotted line across your heart, instructing it precisely in where to break.”

-Sabrina Chapadjiev (Cliterature, LiveThrough This: Women artists and Self-Destruction)

“Chavisa’s stories are definitely written from an American Outsider perspective. She’s a writer who watches, waits, and thinks for herself, bringing us close to the infernal life of the Americanly Ignorant and the articulate seer who lurks among them.”

—-Jennifer Blowdryer, (author of White Trash Debutante, Good Advice for Young Trendy People of all Ages, and Modern English.)

“Juanita Torrence-Thompson’s delightful collection is more than a tapestry, it is a collection of tapestries. Juanita has stitched together the times and the places of her life with people who share them with her. The result is an heirloom of insight and image; a source of wisdom, identity and especially of comfort. By her gratitude we all become grateful.”

— Daniel Thomas Moran, 2nd Poet Laureate, Suffolk County New York

“Juanita Torrence-Thompson carefully considers and perfectly shapes her lines of verse. As a result, her poems are lucid and immediate. You get a feeling of ‘Yes, I’ve been there; I’ve felt those things.’”

— Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Tetched and Roughhouse

“From New York to Uganda, England to Chin, Sydney to Africa, Juanita Torrence-Thompson’s poems lead us on a mother-daughter journey, each separately finding her own way in the world of women, searching for the human sparks that unite us all. Issues tackled from September 11 in New York to Peace Corps work with disadvantaged youth, to the simple act of dancing with her husband.”

— Rochelle Ratner, author of Balancing Acts

“In Juanita Torrence-Thompson’s book, New York and African Tapestries, the 9/11 poems reveal her nobility of character. I found the ”Mother You Knew How to Live“ poems to be tenderhearted and revealing of a mother who had very special qualities for her daughter and for the world at large. The mixture of enthusiasm for life, insight into human foibles and strengths and awareness of tragic conditions that exist for some while others dance in a more utopian realm are her own unique medley”

— Poet Barbara Hantman.

Selections

• September 11, 2001
• We’ll Always Have Queensborough Bridge
• Climbing The Great Wall Of China

About Juanita Torrence-Thompson

Juanita Torrence-Thompson has read extensively at U.S. universities, schools, libraries and on radio and TV. She has also read in Switzerland, Singapore and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Juanita Torrence-Thompson’s poetry is published in Europe, Canada and widely in U.S. journals and in her newspaper poetry columns (The Culvert Chronicles in New York and in Point of View in Massachusetts). In 2006, she became editor of the 25-year old international Möbius, The Poetry Magazine.

Juanita Torrence-Thompson is a poet and the editor of Möbius, The Poetry Magazine.