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Deborah L. Fruchey

Author, Editor, Publisher

The Return of the Vampyre Mike Classic!

What do the ancient Viking Gods do on their day off? They slum in a bar in San Francisco, of course! Get the whole low-down from the lowest-down guy of all, Loki, God of Mischief, as he dishes all the dirt in The Worlds According to Loki. You'll never hear Wagner the same way again...

This beloved spoof of Norse Mythology has been unavailable for years due to the small print run in the days of traditional publishing. But now thanks to the new technology, everybody who wants a copy can get one! This second edition is possible through the generosity of Mike's sister, Jane Kassel Haver, with the help of Pasha DeSaix and Jack Edwards, who beautifully reproduced the text. From Last Laugh Productions.

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The posthumous collection from Rudy Jon Tanner

 

"Tanner’s work is simultaneously beautiful and expansive and tells us that a poem is no more the vehicle of its ‘ideas’ than a piano is a piece of furniture. His language is the sound of spirit as it nudges its often-complex musings into the ecstatic expectations of a consciousness that is always elevated, brilliantly tuned, and turned towards ‘the sounds of above.’ It is all in tempo rubato: ‘between the darkly limned blossoms boldly circumscribed.’ It is a poets’ poetry that always remembers that people must be carefully seduced into a condition of joy.”

—Jack Foley, KPFA Radio host & author of A California Beat Literary Timeline (The Beat  
    Scene Press, England, 2014)

GYPSY & OTHER POEMS

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“Steve Arntson is our own Mt. Vesuvius of imagery, flowing over with perceptions, energy, and feeling. He begins “Slip into madness / like hand into the glove…” and so inserts us into his lava flow of experience with his well-tuned musical ear and bubbling imagination. Steve Artnson’s Gypsy and other poems is a great read!” 

 — Bruce Isaacson, 1rst Poet Laureate of Las Vegas; publisher, Zeitgeist Press

 

Touchstones

"Maria writes characters who invite us to laugh and to empathize: the little girl who uses her bus fare to buy toast and beans, planning to make her treat last “by eatin’ the beans one at a time but usually I’m too hungry by then. I eat it fast and then have to walk all the way home”; the child left on the wrong side of the road because “someone’s hand didn’t reach for me, and the necklace of siblings, a ragged chain of skinny arms, lurched across with one missing link”; the woman of a certain age asking her mirror “Who stole my mojo?…but there’s no reply from the haggard face staring back.” Maria offers us the consolation she finds in the natural world...She conjures spirits––of people”––and of places.

— Laura Wine Paster, from the Introduction    BUY A COPY

Armageddon Bootcamp & other poems

"Armageddon Bootcamp is the perfect collection for the times we are living in. The poems in this book are the quintessential survival guide and teach us how to “make room for loss."  In this book, Rosales imbues the essential elements of family, history, travel and memory to find the strength to navigate hard times. There are a number of ekphrastic poems which add to the overall backdrop of being both “bereft and exhilarated” all at once.  The work in this collection takes the reader to see sisters across a stone circle, wildfire, confessions, metal beds in rows, flash floods, chapped hands and a Madonna statue found in the ruins. The poet helps us find who we are, amidst those ashes. As the reader absorbs these indelible works of art, they will know that “silence may be necessary, or not," but either way, they will be changed.  In each line, each stanza, and each metaphor, one will close these pages and will understand what it means to feel “like a shaman, thanking the sacrifice."
 
—Connie Post, author of Floodwater, winner of the Lyrebird Award,  and Prime Meridian,  finalist in the Best Book Awards  BUY A COPY

Hollow Quills and Jackal Fur

"Like the ghostly ballet of the early morning fog tip-toeing through the mail-drop of a used bookstore in the Mission district, Bana Witt’s poems tend to sneak up on you.  Like the colorful parrots on Telegraph Hill, they carry an element of surprise.  Savor the ode to to a canine pet-extraordinaire and the funereal pilgrimage to a reggae star’s homeland and her elegies to friends fallen by the wayside but still lingering in memory."    
        
    —Paul Aloogian, author of Pomegranate Wine (isitas Press, 2020); co-author of the anthology, Armenian Town (Word Dancer Press, 2001)
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Bana Witt

If Thirst is Proof of Water

Rudy Jon Tanner is known and loved by Bay Area poetry audiences from as far back as the Old Spaghetti Factory readings in North Beach.  This is his third book, and should cement his position as a uniquely important voice continuing the great Bay Area poetic tradition.

Rudy Jon Tanner studied piano and 20th century composing at Oklahoma City University, where he also began writing poetry. He moved to California in 1980. He attended the Old Spaghetti Factory readings in North Beach, where he became friends with Julia Vinograd, along with her many friends, who just happened to have a very natural talent for stunning poetry. He has published two chapbooks, Picasso’s Monkey (Paul Landry) and The Accidental Beacons of Things Worn Away (Deep Forest Press). He continues to compose. This is his first full-length collection. Edited by Deborah Fruchey. From Zeitgeist Press.

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Rudy Jon Tanner

Tributes to Julia Vinograd from her contemporaries

Produced in the year following her death, these are pieces of love & memory from her peers & friends: Becky Bishop White, Bobby Coleman, Bruce Isaacson, Bucky Sinister, Cassandra Dallet, Charlene Moskal, Clive Matson, David Gollub, David Lerner, Deborah Fruchey, Eliot Schain, Fred Dodsworth, Giovanna Capone, Glenn Ingersoll, Hew Wolff, Jack Foley, Jack Hirschman, James Norman, Jan Steckel, Jeffrey Grossman, Jodi Mae Floatingclouds, John Rowe, Joie Cook, Judy Wells, Katharine Harer, Kathleen Wood, Kimi Sugioka, Lisa Yount, Maureen Hurley, Neeli Cherkovski, Paul Corman Roberts, Richard Loranger, Rudy Jon Tanner, Sherna Shalit, Tom Odegard, Vampyre Mike Kassel

Deborah Fruchey edited this collection, which was produced by Bruce Isaacson of Zeitgeist Press, a press which Julia & Bruce founded together back in the days of the wild "Babarian Movement," named after the untethered poetry gatherings that met in the Cafe Babar on Thursday nights in San Francisco in the 1980s and 90s.     BUY A COPY

Bat Flower: poems, plays, & other perversions

Vampyre Mike, aka Michael Alan Kassel, was one of the stars of the poetic explosion called "The Babarian Movement" in San Francisco in the 1980s and 90s. They were named after their meeting place, the Cafe Babar in the Mission District. Here at last is a treasure trove of Vampyre Mike's unpublished works - cartoons, plays, poems, songs, flyers and posters of the era, and even an unfinished novel. This is what Vampyre Mike fans have been waiting for!

Michael Kassel wrote, published and performed enthusiastically in the San Francisco poetry and music scene for decades. He died in 2008, and will be mourned by many women and several cats. This is his second posthumous collection. Lovingly edited over a period of 10 years by Deborah Fruchey. Published by Last Laugh Productions, www.lastlaughproductions.net.    BUY A COPY

A charming fairytale

"Once upon a time, when the skies were so blue, brutally streaming into the white powder of shriveled clouds and kissing mountain ridges with a roaring sound of winds;" in that time and place live a family of three innkeepers , an old man with two sons ,  one of whom was a young artist who became a real hero , as a native of his regular village near the lake and many ponds around the huge charming forest alongside. He was circumstantially pushed into a horrible story which would test him out and make him well known through the decades. He made his life brightly visible through the goodness of his heart when the world around him was in deep darkness … (written by the composer of a ballet suite for this story, Ven Olac, and edited by Deborah Fruchey)     BUY A COPY

Personal color therapy for the layman

Did you know that each color relates to a part of your body and a set of personality characteristics? That too much or too little of a color can be connected with particular health problems? Most people don't realize that we can work with these colors in many easy ways to improve ourselves and make our lives better. Here for the first time is a thorough guide to integrating color into your personal work of self healing and spiritual evolution. You may also wish to try the "Colors of Sound" CD that was written for this album by Robert Hamaker. It provides musical meditations on the frequency of each color covered in the book. By Jean Luo. Edited by Deborah Fruchey     BUY A COPY

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