New from Local Authors

AN IMPOSSIBLE CAST by D. Shane Andrews and Jeremy Miller

Jerry McKinnis, host of The Fishin’ Hole, described Glen Andrews as “simply the greatest bass fisherman I’ve known, and I’ve known them all.” Bass fishing legend Bill Dance insists that Glen Andrews “is my mentor, my friend, my advisor and absolutely has always been among the top contributors to the success of the name Bill Dance!” Bobby Murray, 2001 Bass Fishing Hall of Fame inductee, describes Glen as “the first true, professional bass angler.” Glen Andrews dominated early tournament bass fishing, yet most fishermen have never heard his name, those of his remarkable competitors, or the history of professional fishing before Ray Scott’s first tournament in 1967.

An Impossible Cast, written by his son, D. Shane Andrews and Jeremy Miller, fills all of the gaps. What so many bass fishing fans have missed are groundbreaking sport fishing history, Glen’s competitive fishing insights, and most importantly Glen’s American struggle, his meteoric rise and fall to fame and obscurity, which will touch all readers with the spirit of human determination. An Impossible Cast gives readers an observer’s seat in Glen’s boat to witness the previously undocumented creation of a bass fishing Goliath and the unfolding of the birth of professional bass fishing.

More information about the book can be found at: http://www.animpossiblecast.com/

Reviews can be found on ESPN here and here and at the Tulsa World.

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ANGEL IN MUSIC by John Woosley

In August 2005, University of Kansas Freshman John Woosley picked up a copy of Gaston Leroux’s book “The Phantom of the Opera” and decided he was going to make the first truly faithful film adaptation. It was going to be feature length, done while in college, and for $20,000. Four years later, Woosley released the film Angel of Music, about a modern day reporter investigating a dark secret behind the classic novel. Between those two moments, Woosley faced constant struggles from cast, crew, students, and teachers, but was able to overcome them all to make an original film that would leave a lasting impression on the Phantom mythology. For anyone who has ever been told you can’t do something, Woosley shows that in the end, persistance does indeed pay off. Since being completed in May of 2009 the film has been released on DVD through Amazon, and has since been distributed through IndieFlix, Bigstar.TV, and most recently Netflix. Many notable people helped with the making of the film, including Kansas filmmaker and professor Kevin Willmott. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NIGHT VISION:  OWLS AND OTHER VOICES FROM PLACE (Essays toward Ecological Identity) by Doug Hitt

Doug Hitt has created an enriched journal that could be characterized as “minding the landscape.”  His chronicles chart a deepening awareness of, and interaction with, owls that expands into a mindfulness of place that nurtures not only the owls and the land that he and the owls share; it also roots human awareness into the living landscape, and in so doing, provides a home for spirituality itself.  Hitt’s re-examination of the Pawnee Hako ceremony reconnects the mind and the landscape in the same way that the mind’s awareness is knitted to and emerges from the body, to the benefit of both.  – Ken Lassman, author of WILD DOUGLAS COUNTY

Doug Hitt is a physical therapist and holds and M.A. in Earth Literacy from Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods College.  He convened and is a participant in Kawsmos, a deep ecology practice group.  Doug, Shirley and Jubi live on the west bank of Spring Creek in northwestern Douglas County, Kansas.

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THE INTENT ON: COLLECTED POEMS 1962-2006 by Kenneth Irby

Kenneth Irby has practiced his craft at the center of the American poetry scene for decades, yet is little known to the mainstream. An associate of the legendary Black Mountain poets as well as of the celebrated seventies L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group of literary experimenters, he was a close colleague of writers such as Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, and Robert Creeley. This comprehensive collection marks the first time the full range of Irby’s artistry has been presented in one place.

Irby’s early career, starting in the 1960s, paralleled the late Beat era and the counterculture, and his blend of innovative wordplay with personal and political themes made him an important voice of that era. At the same time, he was able to forge his own path, conjuring a style that was both universal and distinctly American. Critics and other poets especially have noted his avant-garde use of sound, silence, and unusual sentence structure to seduce readers. His surprising, incantatory style conjures the feel of jazz in a striking blend of heart and mind. As poet Robert Kelly has observed, “No one . . . has ever rooted down and plumbed the mystery of American places, land, name, history of our taking space, as Irby does. No one . . . has so clearly articulated the living fact, that America is an intelligent thing, and that . . . each human being has a root awareness of the inadequacy of this place, and that is vision.”

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RED ALERT! SAVING THE PLANET WITH INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE by Daniel Wildcat

“What the world needs today is a good dose of Indigenous realism,” says Native American scholar Daniel Wildcat in this thoughtful, forward-looking treatise. The Native response to the environmental crisis facing our planet,Red Alert! seeks to debunk the modern myths that humankind is the center of creation and that it exerts control over the natural world.

Taking a hard look at the biggest problem that we face today—the damaging way we live on this earth—Wildcat draws upon ancient Native American wisdom and nature-centered beliefs to advocate a modern strategy to combat global warming. Inspiring and insightful, Red Alert! is a stirring call to action.

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BOONS and THE CAMP by David Ohle

From the author of the legendary MOTORMAN comes two twined novellas–BOONS and THE CAMP. BOONS, co-written with an eccentric and anonymous South African professor of entomology, deals with the cultivation of half-bird half-simian creatures called Boons. The professor travels the world in his search for a Boon he can mate with, perhaps love, and finds Ruthie, the object of his dreams and the subject of his oddball experiments. THE CAMP takes place around a provincial mill that spins sheep’s wool into theatrical and Santa beards. In the mill camp, workers live in brutal poverty under Mr. Ganzfeld, a cruelly whimsical boss who lost his nose in a lightning strike and will commit any depredation to find a “real” replacement, including murder.

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THE SECRET OF INVISIBILITY by John C. Ralston

Having just moved to Lawrence, Kansas, ten-year-old Thomas Wax finds a mysterious scroll in his new house—a house once owned by an explorer. Decoding the scroll leads to the secret of invisibility. How is that possible? It’s ridiculously easy, if you’re a reader.

Thomas and his new friend Fred Estre have a great time sneaking around invisible. They scare his sister at a slumber party, sneak into a life drawing class, and learn magic tricks from a strange magician. But who is stealing jewels all over town in broad daylight? Why is even the underworld quaking in its boots? Are Thomas and Fred the thieves? Or is it all just a big misunderstanding?

When they realize that someone’s on their trail—someone dangerous, someone invisible—can they keep themselves hidden long enough to save the town… and themselves?

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TO THE STARS: KANSAS POETS OF THE AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT, edited by Denise Low

IMAGINATION & PLACE: AN ANTHOLOGY, published by Imagination & Place Press, the Committee on Imagination & Place of the Lawrence Arts Center

This eclectic anthology offers poems, essays, and fiction that broaden the conversation about place and its relation to the natural world and human culture. Edited by The Raven’s own Kelly Barth, it features works by Harley Elliott, Benjamin Grossberg, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Linda Rodriguez, and others.

Front cover painting (detail): Josh Adams, Untitled, 17″ x 17.875″, oil on panel, 2008.

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THE HOLE IN THE WALL by The Raven’s own John C. Ralston

Discovering a mysterious hole in the side of a mountain on their island, two cats enter a strange underground world. Drawn in a turn-of-the-last-century pen and ink and watercolor style, and with an introduction by David Lasky, author of “Don’t Forget This Song”. The Hole in the Wall was part of John C. Ralston’s A Year in Comics project, and was previously only viewable on Top Shelf Comics 2.0. This edition has been cleaned up and reformatted, and you can hold it in your hands.

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TWO NEW TITLES FROM KANSAS POET LAUREATE CARYN MIRRIAM-GOLDBERG

THE SKY BEGINS AT YOUR FEET: A Memoir on Cancer, Community and Coming Home to the Body by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

A marvelous storyteller, a wise woman, and a teacher in the true sense of the word, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg takes us on a challenging yet ultimately joyful journey that leaves us fundamentally changed. Anyone who reads this memoir (and you must!) will never forget it. - Harriet Lerner, Ph.D, author of The Dance of Anger

Preface: Singing the Body Electric
I cannot figure out who I am as a body these days. I look in the mirror each morning, each night. I look right into the scars, trying to read them like the dreams I have at night of driving around lost for hours, or not being able to make a call on a pay phone without punching in the wrong numbers. There is always an emergency in those dreams.

LANDED (poetry) by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

The poems in Landed are as close to prayer as language can get, if prayer is vision that sees into the souls of things and music that makes us move to old healing rhythms. I find myself writing whole stanzas in my journal and quoting phrases to friends wondering, “Now who said that?” Caryn Miriam Goldberg gives voice to what can’t be put into words, she sets us free of old paradigms, she writes like a dream. –Julia Alvarez, author of novels, poems, essays and books for young readers, including The Woman I Kept To Myself and Return to Sender

Jubilee
Are you ready to give it all up, the news
that isn’t news, the sullen child calling the shots,
the scared grip of the fingers, the longing
of the spine? Are you ready to step out
into this new life, naked in the night rain?
Will you bring here the supposed treasures –
lost boys buried in cigar boxes, a glass bird
perched on the window box, the earnest wish
for someone to change her mind about you?

Jubilee is not all dance and fall.
Get up from that curb where you wait
for the parade of acceptance or the
nightmares of fear. Your life is not
made of the nameable.

The party has already started,
only a small flame that catches it all:
paper, rages, old shoes, miscarriages, empty
medicine bottles and torn blankets.
The fire that, once invited, consumes itself
and makes warmth for you, sitting there
in your new skin.

Now find or make another house.
Whatever comes, give away.
Don’t wait for answers from authority,
don’t push choices before their time.
Stand on the threshold, looking out,
imagining how one small bulb,
the size of dead newborn rabbit,
once in the ground, can winter itself
into the power of hyacinth.
Don’t settle for anything less.

Check out Caryn’s website.
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THE MARKET BASKET:  COOKING AND EATING IN LAWRENCE, KANSAS 1921-1949 by Jane Garrett

Jane Garrett is a native Kansan who spent a large part of her childhood out in the remotest parts of Wilson County countryside with a mother who possessed a fierce passion for Kansas history. Whether it was exploring the remains of an early-day homestead or combing through weeds in search of a lost cemetery, what really captured her imagination along the way were the objects she could pick up off the ground and hold in her hand: things like an old medicine bottle, a grinding stone, an arrowhead, a shoe, a marble. These found things told amazing stories.  In 1999, when quite by accident she stumbled across Mrs. Shultz’s prize-winning recipe for apple butter in a 1933 issue of the Lawrence Journal-World, she knew she’d found a small, yet curious piece of someone’s past. That’s when the 18-month search began. At the microfilm reader in the basement of the Lawrence Public Library, she found 1,400 recipes–all of them winners in a weekly recipe contest sponsored by the Journal-World, beginning in August 1921 and ending in November, 1949. Roughly half of the recipes are contained in this volume. The remaining ones will appear in a forthcoming book, The Market Basket: More Cooking and Eating in Lawrence, Kansas, 1921-1949.

After working nearly 20 years as a secretary in the English Dept. at KU, Jane Garrett “dropped everything” to pursue a culinary degree, during which time she served as a Chef’s Apprentice at the Kansas Alumni Association–about the time she started researching The Market Basket. In 1982, I co-edited (with Barbara Paris), a funny little cookbook called Malice’s Restaurant: Bill of Fare by the KU English Dept.

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JAIL TIME:  POEMS by Brian Daldorph
From Jail Time

Mad Dog

Douglas County Jail

On the outside he keeps
screwing up.
A buddy will say, Mad Dog,
try this, so he does,
and before he knows it
he’s high
and there’s cops
busting down his door.
In here he likes it
though he don’t say that.
He can hide in his cell,
write to his girl, tell her,
Wait for me.
Maybe she won’t, maybe she will.
He sends her his poetry.
Reads his Bible.
And his head is clear,
clear as Absolut
before it messes him up.