gulfofmainebooks

gulf of maine poetry site

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

To start the new year, we have created a Gulf of Maine Books poetry site, where we will post one or two poems a week, with links to more information about the poem or poet. We hope that you will view the site, keep it as a favorite, return often, and forward it to friends. You can connect to it
here

Holiday Season

2011-11-02T14:11:00.001-07:00

Hello friends,
This holiday season will be a new experience for us. For the first time in our 32 years as a bookstore we will be the only bookstore in town for Christmas. We will trying a few new things, repeating a lot of older things, and trying to provide books quickly for our customers.
We will be open Friday nights until 8 PM and Sundays from 10-4, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, with events on several Fridays and Sundays. We welcome special orders,but advise that if you want a book before Christmas you should order it from us by December 15.
Our events schedule follows:
Sunday, Dec 4, 4 PM, a book publishing party for Spindleworks Speaking - a new anthology of writing from Spindleworks, with readings and a signing
Friday, Dec. 9, 7 PM David Solmitz reading from his memoir Piecing Scattered Souls: Maine, Germany, Mexico, China and Beyond, and Howard Waxman, author of the new novel Venceremos (set in 1970 in the US, Canada, and Cuba).
Sunday, Dec. 11, 4 PM - Martha White reading from her book In the Words of E B White - Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers. Martha is E B White's granddaughter and literary executor.
Sunday, Dec. 18, 4 PM - Pam Burr Smith reading from her new book of poems Heaven Jumping Woman, from Moon Pie Press.

Once again we have a wide variety of Christmas cards, advent calendars, and 2012 calendars. We have recently received "We are the 99%" stickers and buttons, as well as "61%" stickers and several other Gov. LePage related stickers for good stocking stuffers.

For Holiday charitable giving, this year we are suggesting the Brunswick - Trinidad (Cuba) sister city's Library Project. We have been sending boxes of books in Spanish to our sister city public library. They have lots of readers, but no money for books. Now we are trying to raise $5000 for basic repairs and some air conditioning to protect the books once they are in the library. Donations can be made via Gulf of Maine.

So, now, on to lists of new and recommended titles for the holiday season:

In the Maine section we have two new books by Crash Barry - his novel Sex Drugs and Blueberries and his new Tough Island - True Stories from Matinicus, two new E B White titles - In The Words of E B White (edited by his grand daughter Martha White) and The Story of Charlotte's Web, a new book of writing from Spindleworks called Spindleworks Speaking, two Maine mysteries by Paul Doiron - The Poacher's Son and Trespasser, two Frances Perkins titles - her book The Roosevelt I Knew and a bio of her called The Woman Behind the New Deal, a new Landscape History of New England and The Best Nature Sites of Mid-Coast Maine. We have a new edition of New Maine Cooking by Jean Ann Pollard, Desserted - Recipes and Tales from an island chocolatier by Kate Shaffer (a book that comes highly recommended by Bowdoinham chef Sam Hayward), Shells by photographer Joyce Tenneson, August Gale by Barbara Walsh, Settled in the Wild by Susan Shetterley, Eva Murray's Well Out to Sea, and Jeff Foltz's novel Birkebeiners.

New non-fiction includes two Hemingway related titles - Hemingway's Boat and Letters of Hemingway 1907-1922, Wade Davis' book on Mallory and Everest called Into the Silence, Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore, Walking With the Comrades by Arundhati Roy, Blue Nights by Joan Didion, Boomerang by Michael Lewis, The Price of Civilization by Jeffrey Sachs,Greg Palast's Vultures' Picnic, Leslie Silko's Turquoise Ledge, 1493 by Charles Mann, Midnight Rising (John Brown) by Tony Horwitz, The Swerve, as well as the book it chronicles: Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, Colin Woodward's American Nations, Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic,and new biographies of Van Gogh, Steve Jobs, Coco Chanel, the Keats Brothers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Catherine the Great, Joe Hill, Alfred Jarry, William Carlos Williams, Jessica Mitford, Jack London, Jane Fonda, Karl and Jenny Marx, Cleopatra, Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X and even Rin Tin Tin.

New fiction includes The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman,Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Great Leader by Jim Harrison, Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmed, Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks, Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, and Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. New fiction in paperback includes Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife, Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, and Venceremos by Bath Author Howard Waxman.

New titles in the nature section include The Fungal Pharmacy, Becoming Animal by David Abram, Nature as Measure - selected essays by Wes Jackson, Eaarth by Bill McKibben, Eels by James Prosek, a new illustrated edition of Food Rules by Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin's Folks This Ain't Normal, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, Cro Magnon, Beeconomy - What Women and Bees Can Teach Us About Local Trade and the Global Market,and a new paperback version of Jon Turk's The Raven's Gift. For the animal lovers in your life we have the Puppy Diaries, How the Dog Became A Dog, and the great gift book of animal photographs Unlikely Friendships.

New titles in the poetry section include Pam Burr Smith's Heaven Jumping Woman, Kristen Lindquist's Transportation, Beauty Is A Verb - the new poetry of disability,
A Happy Life by David Budbill, Bern Porter's Found Poems, Jonathan Skinner's Birds of Tifft, Nobel winner Tomas Transtromer's Great Enigma, Solar Throat Slashed by Aime Cesaire and arguably the loveliest book published in Maine this year -Robert Gibbons' This Time (from Nine Point Publishing) and a really great new issue of the Cafe Review.

New titles in the children's area include Lost Trail - the graphic novel version of Don Fendler's story of being lost on a mountain in Maine, a new Dahlov Ipcar Wild Animal ABC book and her My Wonderful Christmas Tree, A House In The Woods by Inga Moore, Sammy in the Sky by Barbara Walsh and Jamie Wyeth,I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, Chris Van Dusen's new King Hugo's Huge Ego, Shel Silverstein's Every Thing On It, Pig Scramble by Jessica Kinney, Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, The Boy Who Bit Picasso, Fairy Houses of the Maine Coast, and lots and lots of Tin Tin.

We hope that you have a wonderful Holiday season, and we hope to see you in the bookstore!
Beth and Gary

Fine Art By Margaret Leonard

2011-07-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Margaret Leonard has worked here with us at the bookstore over the last 32 years, but her real work, her creative work, is as a painter. You can see her work online
here
or by appointment (207-833-6051)
We encourage you to take a look!

summer bookstore events

2011-06-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of Summer Events at Gulf of Maine Books
134 Maine Street, Brunswick 729-5083
All events are free and open to the public.

July 2, 4PM - reading/booksigning with Susan Conley and Joseph Dane
Susan Conley's new book is The Foremost Good Fortune - a memoir of her family's two year stay in China, a narrative which becomes more complicated when Susan learns that she has cancer. Publisher's Weekly said that she "pulls the reader into her world like a close friend." Susan is the co founder of The Telling Room in Portland.
Joseph Dane's new book is a memoir, Dogfish Memory. Joseph is a Maine native who has recently been teaching at the University of southern California, but returning each summer to Harpswell, to write and to sail. Carolyn Chute said of Dogfish Memory that it is "not a ghost story, but there are ghostly and foggy desires, epiphanies and yearnings wavering in and out of ordinary days...A memoir like no other." Franklin Burroughs said the book "combines memoir, elegy, quest narrative, sailing chronicle, and a love story, and is held together by a remarkable voice." In Chris Bohjalian's review of the book he says that "It also made me want to see Maine. I think Henry Miller would have been pleased."
The makers of Dogfish Ale have promised to provide liquid refreshment.

July 9, 4 PM Watersheds and EcoPoetics
a poetry reading and booksigning with Kathleen Ellis and Jonathan Skinner.
Kathleen Ellis is a poet and professor at the University of Maine. Her new book is Narrow River to the North, a beautifully done celebration of the Penobscot River watershed, using poetry, prose and photographs. Baron Wormser said of these poems "Ellis has deep feeling for the trembling energy that informs life on earth."
Jonathan Skinner is the editor of the journal ecopoetics (dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings). Jonathan's latest book of poems is With Naked Foot. He lives in Bowdoinham.

Date changed to July 18, 7 PM
Emily Dickinson Out Loud!
Marion Jeffery reads the poems of Emily Dickinson
Marion Jeffery is performing in The Belle of Amherst, a play based on the life of Emily Dickinson, at Centennial Hall in Harpswell July 12- July 26. She will share an evening of Dickinson's poetry with us for this one evening.

March Gulf of Maine Book Events

2011-03-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here is our book event schedule for March:

Friday evening, March 18, 7 PM at Frontier Cafe - a book table to accompany the showing of the film JFK & The Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters by James Douglass - sponsored by PeaceWorks - $5 admission

Saturday, March 19, 3 PM at Gulf of Maine - a talk by Tricia Shapiro, author of Mountain Justice - Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal,For the Future of Us All. Tricia Shapiro has been closely following and writing about efforts to end large-scale strip mining for coal in Appalachia since 2004.Her book tells a number of first hand stories about living with mountaintop removal and offers on-the-scene and behind-the-scene reporting of what people are trying to do to stop it. She lets the victims of mountaintop removal and their allies tell their own stories, allowing moments of quiet dignity and righteous indignation to share the stage.
Mike Roselle, one of the founders of the Earth First! movement, and author of Treespiker, has said "Shapiro is one of the few writers on this subject who actually understands the strategy, the tactics, and the internal politics of a dynamic and growing movement. This is environmental journalism at its best." To see a short video on a recent anti-mining violations protest click here

Also Saturday,March 19, 7-9 PM at Curtis Library, Brunswick, a publishing party for Maria Padian and her new young adult novel Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best. Check out Maria's website here

Saturday, March 26, 4 PM -at Gulf of Maine Books - a dramatic reading from the novel Ancient Rage, with author Rev. Mary Lee Wile and guest readers Emily Vail and Diana Krauss.
In the novel the author looks at Mary, mother of Jesus, and her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, as they deal with grief, suffering, and the silence of God. This brief dramatic presentation will focus on the heated argument between the two widows, now childless, who struggle to come to terms with their deeply human grief.

Friday evening, April 1, Curtis Memorial Library, a book table for a talk by author Izzeldin Abuelaish, and his book I Shall Not Hate - A Gaza Doctor's Journey On the Road to Peace and Human Dignity

Gulf of Maine Birthday

2011-01-17T13:52:00.001-08:00

In February we will celebrate 32 years in business on Maine Street in Brunswick.
To celebrate we will have 2 events in the bookstore:

Sat., Feb. 19, 3 PM
Maine author Chris Van Dusen will be here. Chris is the author of The Circus Ship, Learning To Ski With Mr. Magee, Down To The Sea With Mr. Magee, A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee, If I Built A Car, and is the illustrator of the Mercy Watson. One of his first books as an illustrator was Silas The Bookstore Cat, based on the true story of Silas, a large white cat who lived in our bookstore space back when it was MacBeans Bookstore. Chris lives in Camden, Maine

Sat., Feb. 26, 3 PM
a birthday party for the store featuring a publishing party for two new books from Blackberry Books:
Artifacts of Ice Age Maine by Stephen Petroff
Medvedb's Journal revised and expanded) by Kendall Merriam

Both events are free and open to the public.

seasonal newsletter

2010-11-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

Friends,
Welcome to our Holoiday newsletter.As Gulf of Maine Books enters our 32nd Holiday season, we want to let you know about things happening at the store, and about some of the new books about which we are excited this season.

We will be open seven days a week from the day following Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, with a series of readings on Sunday afternoons at 4 PM:

Sunday, Dec. 5, 4 PM - Mushroom Day with Greg Marley - author of Mushrooms for Health: Medicinal Secrets of Northeastern Fungi , and Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares:The Love, Lore and Mystique of Mushrooms.

Sunday Dec. 12, 4 PM - a poetry reading with Dennis Camire, Nancy Henry, and Ricardo Zarate Jr.

Sunday, Dec. 19, 5 PM - Phil Hoose will be signing books and singing songs to celebrate the paperback release of his National Book Award winng boook for kids Claudette Colvin - books, food, music and Phil!

We recently went to the Frankfort (Germany) Book Fair, the largest book fair in the world. At the fair Beth ordered some nice German advent calendars, as well as a beautiful line of handmade blank journals from Florence, Italy, which are now on the shelves here.

Margaret Leonard has just put up a new show of over 30 paintings, here in the store, so look up when you come in.

With the idea of buying local in mind, we want to recommend a number of books for children by local authors: Cynthia Lord's Touch Blue, and also Hot Rod Hamster, Janet Bonney's Martha To The Rescue, Charlotte Agell's Accidental Adventures of India McAllister, Chris van Dusen's Circus Ship, and also Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee, Maria Padian's paperback Brett McCarthy:Work in Progress, Phil Hoose's Claudette Colvin in paperback, Robin Hansen's Ice Harbor Mittens, Sandra Dutton's Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth, Calef Brown's Hallowilloween, Katie Clark's Grandma Drove the Snowplow, and seven titles by Dahlov Ipcar. (plus copies of Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown)

In the Maine section we have Stephen Petroff's Artifacts of Ice Age Maine - Tales of Growing Up in Bowdoinham and Beyond, Susie Moran's House at Bunganuc Landing, a new History of Harpswell, Robert P T Coffin's Christmas in Maine,Paul Doiron's novel The Poacher's Son, Crash Barry's new novel Sex, Drugs and Blueberries, The Hard Way Around - a Joshua Slocum biography by Geoffrey Wolff of Bath,Beginner's Grace by Kate Braestrup, Maine Farms at Work - a lovely book from the Maine Farmland Trust with photos by Bridget Besaw, Well Out to Sea - year round on Matinicus Island by Eva Murray, Dis Place - a true history of Malaga Island by Matt Herrick, and a new lovely Geology of Baxter State Park and Mount Katahdin.

New in nonfiction we recommend Leslie Silko's memoir Turquoise Ledge, Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia, Simon Winchester's The Atlantic, Keith Richards' Life (we also have a new Ginger Baker autobiography) Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye, Eastern Passage by Farley Mowat, Brilliant by Jane Brox, Bad Girls Go Everywhere - a life of Helen Gurley Brown by Jennifer Scanlon, the new volume 1 of Mark Twain's Autobiography, Lauren Hillenbrand's Unbroken , My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, Savor - mindful eating, mindful life by Thich Nhat Hanh, Shop Class As Soul Craft, Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt, Patti Smith's Just Kids, Grand Design by Stephen Hawking, The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers, Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, Hero - the Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda, Carol Merrill's Weekends With O'Keefe, Yves the Porvocateur (Yves Klein), In Giacometti's Studio, Kurt Schwitters - Color and Collage, and Journal of an Ordinary Grief -autobiographical essays by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

In the nature section we have James Prosek's wonderful new book Eels (he will be speaking in Brunswick in January for the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay) the Edward Abbey issue of Matter magazine, David Abrams' new Becoming Animal - an Earthly Cosmology, Elizabeth Tova Bailey's Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, the story of Wesley the Owl, Wendell Berry's Imagination in Place (also his book Leavings, and his new story for children: Whitefoot - A Story from the Center of the World) Tom Wessels' Forest Forensics - A field guide to reading the forested landscape, a new Field Guide to Feathers, and A Spicing of Birds - a beautiful book of poems by Emily Dickinson with 19th century bird illustrations.

Neew titles in the poetry section include two by Mary Oliver: Evidence (in paperback) and Swans - poems and prose poems (in hardcover), Gary Snyder's Etiquette of Freedom (which comes with a 2 hour dvd documentary) Nancy Henry's poem collection SARX, Dennis Camire's Stone by Stone - poems about the art of dry stone walling,Maine In Four Seasons - 20 Maine Poets, Dickinson by Helen Vendler, Here by Wislawa Szymborska, Alice Walker's Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, Giacomo Leopardi's Canti, Ice Floe - an anthology of poems from the circumpolar north,The Cubalogues - Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana (Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Amiri Baraka all traveled there) and Sardine Shards by Gary Lawless (!)

In hardcover fiction we have Lily King's new Father of the Rain, Sara Gruen's Ape House (and if she gets you interested in Bonobos we have three non fiction books she recommends: Bonobo Handshake, Kanzi - Ape at the brink of the human mind, and Next of Kin - my conversations with the chimpanzees) also Exley by Brock Clarke (new to the Bowdoin Dept. of English),Salman Rushdie's Luka and the Fire of Life, Jaimy Gordon's Lords of Misrule, John Casey's Compass Rose, David Mitchell's Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, What Is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman,John le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor, Paul Auster's Sunset Park, Nicole Krauss' Great House, Lydia Davis' new translation of Madame Bovary, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen, Ken Follett's Fall of Giants, Philip Roth's Nemesis, Thomas McGuane's Living on the Rim, Dennis Lahane's Moonlight Mile, and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk - animal stories by David Sedaris.

In paperback fiction we have Will Bonsall's Through the Eyes of A Stranger, Debra Spark's Good For the Jews, Eileen Myles' The Inferno, Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna, Lorrie Moore's Gate at the Stairs, Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, The Zone by Mathias Enard (gary's favorite novel this year!) Chris Abani's Graceland, A S Byatt's Children's Book,Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Paul Harding's Tinkers, Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky and Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin (We also recommend two other title by him - Zoli and Dancer).

We hope that you will visit the store during the holiday season, and we wish you Happy Holidays, Happy Solstice, and a wonderful New Year!
Beth and Gary
Gulf of Maine Books

October bookstore events

2010-10-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

Halloween Party - Saturday, Oct. 23, 4 PM
A publishing party for Brunswick author/illustrator Calef Brown's new book Hallowilloween - nefarious silliness from Calef Brown. Calef will be reading from his new book - surely an entertainment for all ages. Calef is the author of Flamingos on the Roof, Soup for Breakfast, Polkabats and Octopus Slacks and more - To visit his wonderful website click on this!
Costumes and Treat are welcome!

Are you ready for Hallowilloween?
with wolves, witches,
and everything in between?
A human collage! A shrunken head!
An evil vumpire not quite dead!
...
So don't lose your way, or dilly-dally.
It's a magic night; a silly, spooky scene.
Welcome one and all,
to Hallowilloween!

Saturday, Oct. 30, 4 PM
A publishing party for:
A Spicing of Birds - poems of Emily Dickinson, with illustrations by early masters of bird art
Co-editor Jo Miles Schuman, of Phippsburg, will read from and speak about, this beautiful collection of poems by Emily Dickinson paired with classical works of ornithological art.The book contains thirty seven of Dickinson's poems featuring birds common to New England, and a wide range of illustrations. Also included are an editors' introduction to Dickinson's relationship with birds, and brief biographies of the illustrators - a lovely gift book for birders as well as lovers of poetry.

new ed abbey journal

2010-10-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

We have recently received a great new issue of Matter magazine - the Ed Abbey issue, with essays on Abbey, interviews with Doug Peacock, Charles Bowden, Jim Stiles, Katy Lee and more, poetry by Antler, Drum Hadley, Andrew Schelling, Dennis Fritzinger and lots more, fiction including a piece by Ned Mudd and a novella called The Last Four Boats on Lake Foul, great photographs and a monkeywrench postcard - A really lovely publication - 432 pages - $17

common ground fair bestsellers

2010-09-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here is our list of our top 15 bestsellers from Common Ground Fair - 2010

Notes on a lost flute (keynote)
slow money (keynote)
sound of a wild snail eating
forest trees of maine
Holy Shit - Gene Logsdon
Mushrooms for health
forest forensics - Tom Wessells
vegetable gardener's bible
natural landscapes of maine
mushrooms of northeast north america
animals make us human - temple grandin
Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of the Northeast and Canada
WeMoon Engagement calendar
Through the Eyes - Will Bonsall
Radical Simplicity - Jim Merkel

gary's poetry blog

2010-09-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

To view the poetry blog of Gulf of Maine Books co-owner Gary Lawless, clickthis!

poetry reading september 9

2010-08-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

Gulf of Maine Books will host a reading by poets Danny Glenn and Dennis Lopez Thursday, September 9, at 7 PM.
Danny Glenn will be reading from his new book of poems Night Heron. He comes to us from Greensboro, North Carolina, where he has retired from UPS, and teaches a course called Demystifying Gita, which explores the primary concepts of Hinduism. He has traveled to India and Nepal to learn more about Hinduism and Buddhism.
Dennis Lopez will be reading from his new book Freight Train To Avalon - poems and stories. Dennis is a carpenter, writer and musician, living in mid-coast Maine.

A silver world is speeding by o9n the road below.
Messages come in on the machine,
but I've turned off the ringer,
to make way for spectacular dreams
in railroad colors with
cameo roles played by old friends.

Dennis Lopez, from Fire Fly

Summer Reading Series

2010-05-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

We have a number of author events lined up for the summer, and more to come!

Saturday, June 26, 4 PM - Susan Drinker Moran - author of The House At Bunganuc Landing - local Brunswick history - Susie will talk about the Bunganuc area of Brunswick and read and sign her book -

Friday, July 16, 6 PM Stonecoast Alumni Nonfiction Authors - A reading with Katherine Briccetti (Blood Strangers), Kim Dana Kupperman (I Just Lately Started Buying Wings - missives from the other side of silence)and Penelope Schwartz Robinson (Slippery Men)

Saturday, July 17, 4 PM - Brunswick author Jane Brox - Her new book Brilliant:The Evolution of Light was just reviewed by Publisher's Weekly "A superb history of how the availability of ever more artificial light has changed the world over the centuries, from stone lamps in prehistoric caves to contemporary light emitting diodes (LEDs). Her readings are invariably fascinating and often original. In addition, she conveys technical information clearly and concisely.With Brox's beautiful prose, this book amply lives up to its title."

Saturday, July 24, 4 PM - Kids Day with local authors Charlotte Agell and Sandra Dutton
Charlotte's new book is an illustrated chapter book called The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister
You can meet India, her family and friends at India's blog:
http://indiasink.wordpress.com
Sandra Dutton's new illustrated book for kids (and adults) is
Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth - wherein trilobites and Noah's Ark meet the Fundamentalist history of a 6000 year old earth
Find out more at:
www.marymaeandthegospeltruth.com

Friday, August 13, 7 PM - A Publishing Party for Maine in Four Seasons - 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Year, edited by Wes McNair, from Down East Books, with poets Stu Kestenbaum, Pat Ranzoni, Robert Siegel, Martin Steingesser and artist/illustrator Jan Owen.

Siberia book event - The Raven's Gift

2010-03-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, April 10, at 4 PM, we will have a booksigning and talk with Jon Turk, author of The Raven's Gift - a scientist, a shaman, and their remarkable journey through the Siberian wilderness.
In 2000, while kayaking the Siberian coast, Jon Turk met an elderly woman named Moolynaut, a Koryak shaman, and learned about her journeys to the spirit world. A year later Moolynaut entered the spirit of a great black raven to help mend Turk's pelvis, which had been previously injured in an avalanche. When the healing was complete, Turk was able to walk without pain. Turk, as a scientist, could find no rational explanation for the healing, and the experience changed his life, irrevocably altering his view of the connection between the natural spiritual worlds.
Searching for the spirit raven, he traversed the frozen tundra where Moolynaut was born, camping with bands of reindeer herders and recording stories of their lives, and of their spiritual beliefs. Framed by high adventure across the vast and forbidding Siberian landscape. The Raven's Gift is a life altering vision of the ties between the natural and spiritual realms, informed by one man's awakening and guided by the ancient spirit bird with wide black wings and the power to heal. The tension between Turk's logical scientific background and the mysterious shamanistic wisdom is at the heart of this wonderfully told story.
Jon Turk is the author of 25 environmental and earth science textbooks, and 2 adventure travel titles. He has climbed big walls in the Canadian Arctic, mountain biked the Mongolian Gobi, skied high peaks throughout the world, kayaked around Cape Horn, traversed the northwest passage, and paddled the Pacific Rim from Siberia to Alaska.
The event is free and open to the public.
For more information please call 729-5083

Gulf of Maine Birthday Party

2010-02-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

Gulf of Maine Books opened in late February, 1979. We are again having a birthday party, and now that we are in our 30s we will be giving a 30% discount on all in stock books for our birthday week, Feb. 22 through Feb. 27.
On Saturday, Feb. 27, we will have a birthday party at 3 PM, with food, drink, and readings. This year's readers are Maine nature essayist Susan Shetterly (her new book Settled in the Wild - Notes from the Edge of Town) and Maine poets Rob Farnsworth (his new collection Rumored Islands) and Peter Felsenthal (his new collection More Scents, Please)
Please join us for the celebration!

even more booklists

2009-12-13T16:12:00.000-08:00

From Jonathan Skinner - poet -With Naked Foot, editor - Ecopoetics

Peter Culley:
Age of Briggs and Stratton

Greg Marley:
Mushrooms for Health - Medicinal Secrets of northeastern fungi

Mark Nowak (with Ian Teh)
Coal Mountain Elementary

Jane Sprague
Port of Los Angeles

Anne Waldman
Manatee/Humanity

From Patricia Ranzoni, poet, author of Only Human:

Catherine Schmitt, editor :
Coastal Companion - a year in the Gulf of Maine from Cape Cod to Canada

Etain Addey:
Silent Joy - diaries of an Italian hill farm

Donna Loring:
In the Shadow of the Eagle - A Tribal Representative in Maine

Thomas Fox Averill:
Secrets of the Tsil Cafe

Brian Yarvin
A World of Dumplings, Filled Dumplings, Pockets and Little Pies from around
the globe

more 2009 booklists

2009-11-29T20:31:00.000-08:00

Simon Pettet, poet, Hearth

Carl Jung - The Red Book
Gerrit Lansing - Heavenly Tree Northern Earth
Cecilia Vicuna (ed.) Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry
Bill Berkson - Portrait and Dream
Edmund Berrigan (ed.) - Selected Poems of Steve Carey

Charlotte Agell, young adult novels - Shift

Bo Caldwell - The Distant Land of My Father
Janice YK Lee - The Piano Teacher
Rebecca Stead - When You Reach Me
Marina Lewycka - Strawberry Fields

Michael Gizzi, poet - The New Depths of Deadpan

Bill Berkson - Portrait and Dream
Richard Holmes - Age of Wonder
Robin Kelly - Thelonious Monk
Keith Waldrop - Transcendental Studies
Brian Evenson - Last Days

2009 book lists

2009-11-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

Recently we emailed a number of writers who have read at the bookstore during the last year, are about to read at the store, or whose books we have featured this year. We asked them to list 5 books they have found wonderful/interesting/useful over the last year. We will list them here as they come in, so do please check back.

Debra Spark, novelist, Good For the Jews:

Dave Eggers - What is the What
Adrian Blevins - Live from the Homesick Jamboree
Michael Greenburg - Hurry Down Sunshine
Karen Shepard - Don't I Know You
David Shields - Reality Hunger

Clayton Eshleman, poet/translator - The Juniper Fuse:

Laura Solorzano - Lip Wolf
James Hillman - Animal Presence
Robert Kelly - Fire Exit
Novica Tadic - Assembly
Pierre Joris - Justifying the Margins

Karin Spitfire - poet - Standing With Trees:

Michael Harris - Lament for an Ocean
Carolyn Chute - The School at Heart's Content Road
Barbara Maria - Palace Boulevard
Ruth Moore - The Weir
Linda Hogan - People of the Whale

Bill Berkson, poet, Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems:

Curzio Malaparte - Kaputt
Aileen Ward - John Keats: The Making of a Poet
Morton Feldman - Words and Music, vols. 1 & 2 Musik Texte
Kenneth Koch - Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

Gary Lawless, Gulf of Maine Books co-owner:

Andrzej Stasiuk - Fado
Jonathan Skinner (editor) ecopoetics #6/7
Clayton Eshleman - The Juniper Fuse
Linda Hogan - People of the Whale
Ingrid Rowland - Giordano Bruno

Fado

2009-11-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite books of 2009 is Fado, by Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk, translated by Bill Johnston and published by Dalkey Archive Press. Stasiuk says that he set out to write a "Slavic On The Road", and you can hear Kerouac in the first pages "Somewhere on the horizon are the fires of human settlements, indistinguishable from the distant glimmer of stars. Oh, the flickering artery of nothingness, oh the recollection of ancient times when we were homeless in the world, when space was terrifying in its immensity. Now it irks us with its elusiveness."
He takes us, thru a series of travel essays, on his road:Ukraine, Romania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, limestone karst, Accursed Mountains, Carpathians, Slovakia, Great Hungarian Plain...
"I always drift toward that part of the world... toward the hollows amid high ground, those narrow places in the landscape inhabited by forgotten people leading inconspicuous lives."
"I felt I was alone in the world, and this brought me joy. Beneath the dark night sky, amid the smell of cattle, somewhere at the end of the world, I was more aware of my own existence than ever before or ever again."
He tells us of places, but also of people, of authors (Danilo Kis, Bulatovic, Adam Bodor) and a Polish Pope (His face "looked like all of the faces to be found at markets, in village inns, at fairs and in buses leaving county towns for even smaller places. With the passage of time his face became the face of a peasant, the face of a wagon driver. It was as if in old age he were returning to his people."
The fado of the title refers to the style of Portuguese song, and a moment of hearing a Portuguese fado on the radio in Albania " the melancholy of the music and the melancholy of the town intermingled...and i thought to myself that Portugal is in a sense similar to Albania. Both lie at the edge of a landmass,at the edge of a continent, at the edge of the world. Both countries lead somewhat unreal lives beyond the main flow of history and events."
Stasiuk loves the Carpathians. He says: I've lived in the Carpathians for seventeen years, and I've learned to think of them as a separate country or even continent...To live in the Carpathians is to live in solitude and at the same time to have a sense of remote community."
He says that " an inhabitant of this part of the world looks back and sees the last few decades as a series of defeats, betrayals, and bloody experiments performed on the living organisms of societies. He looks back and doesn't find anything he can lean on. The past has been stolen, tarnished, ransacked...We emerged from nonexistence before we were able to find ourselves a form, a character, an identity precisely; but it turned out that we didn't need to do even this. It's enough to take on the grotesque gestures of contemporary mass culture for us to be instantly absorbed into the universal community of individuals living, playing, suffering and experiencing emotions all in exactly the same way."
Gypsies keep appearing in the narrative ."I thought about the Gypsies. Truth be told, I think about them often...Their presence disquiets me yet at the same time arouses my admiration" "They'd taken a shortcut here from the depths of times long gone, and they felt perfectly comfortable in the present.""Here is a dark skinned, unlettered people that for centuries has been passing through Europe and Europeanness as though these were poor, sparsely populated, unattractive lands. From time to time they come upon something they can make use of, but mostly it looks as though they already have all they need with them. Everything suggests that they've learned nothing from us and that they're unimpressed by the things we're so proud of."
Travelers. Stasiuk says "To travel is to live". and to read these essays is to travel with him for a short while, and to loive in new places, where he has lived.
We also now carry three works of fiction by Stasiuk: Nine, White Raven, and Tales of Galicia.

December reading at Gulf of Maine

2009-11-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, December 6, at 3 PM, novelist Debra Spark and poet/translator Michael Gizzi will read at Gulf of Maine Books.
Debra Spark will read from her new novel Good for the Jews, published by the University of Michigan Press. She has previously published two novels and a collection of essays about fiction writing, and directs the creative writing program at Colby College as well as teaching in the Warren Wilson College MFA program for creative writers.
Michael Gizzi will be reading from his new book of poems New Depths of Deadpan, from Burning Deck publishers. We also have in stock two other collections of his poetry: My Terza Rima (the figures) and Continental Harmony (Roof Books) as well as his translations of contemporary Italian poet Milli Graffi in Embargoed Voice (also from Burning Deck) He currently teaches at Roger Williams University.

Here is a fall poem from Michael Gizzi's new book New Depths of Deadpan :

Autumn By Ear

Scent of the sun under things
first of all things
last as well
a belief that life is all smiles
and bleeds
during which little or nothing is achieved

The King of Dust shuts the door
at the end the ear is spoken for

Lew Welch

2009-11-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

I love Lew Welch's poems. I keep hoping that he will come back into the poetry conversation in this country, and maybe he is. Last week on Sunday Tony Hoagland, giving a poetry reading for River Arts in Damariscotta, mentioned Lew's poem Step Out Onto The Planet. Less than 24 hours later the poet Bill Berkson, reading at Gulf of Maine Books, mentioned Lew's poem Olema Satori.This week I bought the new DVD documentary One Fast Move or I'm Gone - Kerouac's Big Sur and watched it, knowing that Lew would appear. There he was, in a photo with Kerouac, and mentioned in the narration, having driven Kerouac down from San Francisco to Big Sur, and figuring in Kerouac's novel.
I first read Lew Welch in 1971, discovering him in Jim Koller's magazine Coyote's Journal. I arrived at Gary Snyder's home in California in the spring of 1973, too late for Lew. (Lew and Philip Whalen had been Snyder's housemates and poetry brothers at Reed College). Lew had come to Snyder's ridge land in 1971, hoping to build a cabin, but carried with him his alcohol demons. He walked into the woods, with a gun, leaving behind a note, and his belongings. I got to drive his jeep, but I never got to meet Lew. He did leave behind wonderful poems, and I still hope that people will discover his Ring of Bone - Collected Poems 1950-1971 for the treasure that it is.

Step out onto the planet.
Draw a circle a hundred feet round.

Inside the circle are
300 things nobody understands and, maybe
nobody's ever seen.

How many can you find?

Lew Welch

new issue of ecopoetics magazine

2009-10-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

We have just received the great new edition of Jonathan Skinner's ecopoetics magazine, no 6/7, 2006-2009. Jonathan has gathered together a wide range of work, with a big feature on Australian eco-poetics, two interviews with Gary Snyder, a wonderful Ted Enslin piece (with photographs), art by Isabelle Pelissier, a mIEKAL aND interview, work by Forrest Gander, Robert Grenier, Jim Koller, Andrew Schelling, Jack Collom, Jose Marti, Ben Friedlander (and much much more) and this incredible poem, by Fatho Amoy, translated by Kristen Andersen:

Advice

Evening travelers who follow the rumor of
Waves and blue star of bays,
Refrain from reflecting too much on your dreams
And from long accomodating sorrows that
Devastate your passed life.
At the tip of the night, it is one land all together
Close and distant as the birthing day is
Stirred by swallows and the scents of guava.
One country to the range of heart and smile
Where the desire to live and the fortune to love
Burn the same fiery green as the filaos.
Be wary of traversing it without your knowledge:
The seasons upon your heels cloud the landscape;
But each step is the luck of a single dream.

common ground fair bestsellers

2009-09-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

This was our 30th year selling books at Common Ground Fair, and we thought that it would be fun to share our bestseller list from this year's fair:

1 - Bringing It to the Table - Wendell Berry
2 - Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada - David Spahr
3 - Forest Trees of Maine - Maine Forest Service
4 - Winter Harvest Handbook - Eliot Coleman
5 - Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollen
6 - Notes on a Lost Flute - Kerry Hardy
7 - Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows
8 - No Impact Man - Colin Beavan
9 - Not Far From the Tree - John Bunker
10 - Mushrooms of Northeast North America - George Barron

Bill Berkson poetry reading

2009-09-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

Poet/author/art critic Bill Berkson will give a poetry reading on Monday, October 19, 4 PM at Gulf of of Maine Books. He will be in Maine reading from his new collection:Portrait and Dream - new and selected poems (Coffee House Press), appearing at Bates, Colby and UMO.Other Bill Berkson titles in stock here include: Hymns of St. Bridget & other writings - a collaborative poetry collection by Bill Berkson and Frank O'Hara, with a cover by Alex Katz,What's your idea of a good time? = a book of interviews questions and answers between Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer,The Sweet Singer of Modernism and other art writings 1985-2003, and Sudden Address - selected lectures 1981-2006 (with a philip guston cover) which includes a lecture given at the Skowhegan School of Art and Sculpture. Here is a poem by Bill Berkson from that talk:

A Lady At Her Writing Table

I chose love and friendship over
work, then
work and friendship over
suspended disbelief
- won't love conquer all?
I'll never work again.
Don't call me.

Mahmoud Darwish

2009-09-04T10:29:00.001-07:00

We have just received a new collection of poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (we carry a number of his books) His new book A River Dies of Thirst - journals - is translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham and published by Archipelago Books. Darwish has said "I want to find a language that transforms language itself into steel for the spirit - a language to use against these sparkling silver insects, these jets. I want to sing, I want a language...that asks me to bear witness and that I can ask to bear witness, to what power there is in us to overcome this cosmic isolation."
Here's a poem from the book:
I am only him

Far away, behind his footsteps
wolves bite moonbeams

Far away, ahead of his footsteps,
stars light up the treetops

close to him
blood flows from the veins of stones

Therefore he walks and walks and walks
until he melts away
and the shadows swallow him up at the end of this journey

I am only him
and he is only me
in different images.

Mahmoud Darwish
1941-2008

Wandering with Empedocles.

2009-08-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

Ever since our visit to Sicily, Beth and I have been talking about going to Tunisia to see ruins, mosaics, Carthage, desert and mountains. I have been searching out poets from the northern coast and mountains of Africa, looking for English translations. One poet I am interested in is Habib Tengour, an Algerian who has written about the voice of the Maghrebian writer, and has written an essay on "Maghrebian Surrealism".
Asking "who is Maghrebian" he writes:
Indeed there exists a divided space called the Maghreb but the
Maghrebian is always elsewhere. And that's where he makes himself
come true.
Duration Press has published Tengour's long poem Empedocles's Sandal, translated by Pierre Joris, as a chapbook. The poem begins with a quote from the German poet Friedrich Holderlin, from Holderlin's unfinished tragedy The Death of Empedocles:
this country where the violet grape once loved
to grow for a better people, and the golden fruit
in the dark thicket, and noble wheat, and some day
the stranger will ask, treading through the rubble
of your temples, if that's where the city
rose...

This led me to a new translation of Holderlin's Odes and Elegies, translated by Nick Hoff and published by Wesleyan, which contains this Holderlin poem for Empedocles:
You search for life, you search, and a divine fire
Gleams and wells from deep within Earth to you,
and with a shuddering urge you
Hurl yourself down into Aetna's flames.

Thus the whim of the queen once melted
Pearls in wine - and well she should have! If only
You, O poet, hadn't sacrificed
Your wealth to the fermenting cup!

But you're holy to me, like the powers of Earth
That seized you away, the boldly killed!
And if love no longer held me in its grasp,
I'd gladly follow this hero down into the depths.

Empedocles threw himself into Sicily's volcano Mount Etna,Holderlin, at age 36, is declared insane and spends the last 37 years of his life living in a tower room in Tubingen, Germany.

We have also received a new translation of Holderlin's only novel - Hyperion - translated by Ross Benjamin and published by Archipelago Books. Friedrich Nietzsche said of Holderlin's novel "It makes an impression upon me similar to the beat of the waves of the troubled sea. Indeed, this prose is music, soft melting sounds interrupted by painful dissonances, finally expiring in dark, uncanny dirges."
The cover blurb also claims that " it was reading Holderlin that gave Rilke the impetus for his Duino Elegies."

Habib Tengour's poem ends:
the visible and invisible world is decomposing
science assures the poet of his wording
the risks hidden in the hands' palms

let's leave tears and blood
our friends are everywhere
the voyage completes itself
by day as by night
all things astounded

Parcelled
out they glitter under the moon
motionless

the white armed virgin flies over the offerings.

(translation by Pierre Joris)

mystery in Paris

2009-05-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

In May we spent 7 days in Paris and, as bookstore owners, we visited a number of bookstores there, including Shakespeare and Company. On Monday nights Shakespeare and Co. has English language readings, and we were lucky to catch a reading by Cara Black and Leighton Gage. Both are published in the Soho Press mystery series, with Cara Black setting her books in Paris (murder in the marais, murder in montmartre, murder in the latin quarter...) and Leighton Gage setting his in Brazil. Both readers gave short readings and then answered questions. Cara Black introduced a Parisian police inspector from whom she has learned much about criminal investigation in Paris. He gave a brief account of his work on the Princess Di case, saying that there are 20 deaths per day in Paris, but because of political and media pressure, a large amount of time had to be spent on this case, resulting in a 3,000 page report!
We were already fans of Cara Black, and do carry her novels in the store. Now we will add Leighton Gage to the selection as well.

new poems from jonathan skinner

2009-04-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

With Naked Foot
a new collection of poems from Jonathan Skinner, now available at Gulf of Maine Books. Here's a poem from the book:

Birds of the Holy Lands

Jerusalem is just above the thirtieth parallel
about the latitude of Charleston, Montgomery, Jackson

I often listen for the birds of the Holy Lands
sometimes you can hear them
behind the news, between the gunshots
and imagine the dappled shadows
beside the fountain in a courtyard
with olive trees and myrtle bushes

and the peaceful chirping of sparrows
creates a restful space for the mind

I would like to go birding in the Holy Lands
For sparrows alone, there is a great
Biblical tradition - with forty instances
of tzippor, Hebraic chirping or twittering
in the Old Testament, and two
strouthion (sparrows) in the New

According to my Bible Dictionary,
"The birds above mentioned are found in
great numbers in Palestine, and are of
very little value, selling for the merest trifle
and are thus strikingly used by our Saviour
Matthew 10:29 as an illustration of our Father's
care for his children."

Unfortunately the Authorized Version
renders the Hebrew indifferently
as "bird" or "fowl" ignoring
the great variety, such as -

the Yellow-vented Bulbul, Clamorous Reed Warbler, Crested
Honey Buzzard, Lappet-faced Vulture, Cream-Coloured
Courser, Crowned Sandgrouse, Little Green Bee-eater, Mountain
Chiffchaff, Arabian Babbler, Palestine Sunbird, Isabelline Shrike,
Yellowhammer, Cinereous Bunting

According to Dr. Thompson, the house-sparrows
and field sparrows of Palestine "are a tame,
troublesome and impertinent generation,
and nestle just where you do not want them

They stop up your stove- and water-pipes with their rubbish,
build in the windows and under the beams of the roof,
and will stuff your hat full of stubble in half a day"

Cuba week in Brunswick

2009-03-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

At the end of March Brunswick will be celebrating Cuba Week, a celebration of our connection to Cuba through our official sister city there, the Cuban city of Trinidad. Here are two poems from my favorite contemporary Cuban poet, Nancy Morejon:

As in days gone by

We could sit down, as in days gone by
to read the famous writer's last book.
We prefer the river, the dam, the bird,
the bottom of the heart open
for the reaper.
O what blessed smoke from the future
vanishes between our hands.

Divertimento
for the pleasure of Rafael Alberti

(for guitar)

Between the sword and the carnation
I love utopias.
I love the rainbow and the kite
and I love the song of the pilgrim.
I love the romance between the bear and the iguana.
I love passports: when will passports cease to exist?
I love daily chores and the taverns
and guitars in the evening.
I love a thorny island in the throat of Goliath
like a palm tree in the center of the Gulf.
I love David.
I love liberty, which is an everlasting flower.

Two poems by Cuban poet Nancy Morejon

Transparency

2009-03-18T06:16:00.000-07:00

For several years now, the word "transparency" has been big with politicians, diplomats, news reporters ... I have never felt right when I hear a politician say that we need transparency , but now I have a new take on it. I have been reading a book called Living with Djinns - Understanding and Dealing with the Invisible in Cairo (by Barbara Drieskens) and in it there is a whole section on transparency.
In this book, the author says that "Almost everyone I met in Cairo at least once went through a period in their lives in which they were searching for answers to the "secrets of Allah". They searched for shafafiya, transparency."
In Cairo people might say "he has transparency". "Shafafiya is not a fixed state of being, but of becoming. One can never be transparent except ina certain context, for a certain amount of time, when Allah blesses you with some transparency. "Some people are more sensitive to the influences of angels and djinns, demonstrated by their having meaningful dreams and premonitions. These qualities can be developed and extended by trying to reach transparency." "Part of reaching this state of transparenct is personal effort but a greater part of it comes through Allah's grace.
The road to transparency is a journey into oneself. It entails serious questioning of what one is doing, why and how. But there is also the second element: the deepening of religious knowledge and its application as a moral standard."
Now when the politicians talk about the necessity of transparency, I will understand.

Poet's Life in Palestine

2009-03-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

from a wonderful new book My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness - A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century - by Adina Hoffman, from Yale University Press - a life of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammed Ali, but also of his family, his town, and a history of Palestine in the second half of the twentieth century. Here is something to think about :
"For a full decade almost no Arabic books were available for sale in Israel, a situation brought about by the Arab states' blockade of Israel and Israel's strict censorship policies. Arabic books were neither imported nor printed within the country for several years, and even after initial attempts were made to publish locally, the number of volumes that emerged was miniscule. One scholar who has surveyed the situation that prevailed during the first ten years of Israel's existence counted just eight books of Arabic poetry, written by five poets - this, though poetry had been for centuries that language's most privileged and popular form of literary expression. The overall situation was perhaps summed up best in a single line (novelist Anton Shammas calls it "the best known line in local Arabic literature") written in 1956 by Nazareth poet Michel Haddad, who had recently come to be one of Taha's best friends "Farewell to thee, ability to breathe."

Gulf of Maine Books 30th birthday

2009-02-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

Beth Leonard and Gary Lawless opened Gulf of Maine Books in late February, 1979, at 222 Maine Street in Brunswick (the building is no longer there). In 1980 we moved to 61 Maine Street, now the location of Henry and Marty's Restaurant, and in 1995 we moved to our present location, at 134 Maine Street in Brunswick.( The group photo above is from our first moving day, the inside photo is from our second moving day.)
We want to celebrate our 30 years in business with a small gift to our customers, so we will be offerring 30% off on all books in stock Wednesday, Feb 25 through Saturday, Feb. 28. We will have a birthday party at the bookstore at 3 PM Saturday, Feb 28, with food and drink, door prizes, and a poetry reading by Simon Pettet. We hope that you will join us for this celebration of bookstore and community, and take advantage of the 30% off sale as well.

Simon Pettet will also be reading at Bates College in Lewiston on Thursday, Feb. 26, 730 PM in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall.

March events scheduled at Gulf of Maine Books include:
Saturday, March 7, 4 PM
Book publishing party for "New Mainers: Portraits of our Immigrant Neighbors" with Photographer Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest, and Reza Jalali, author of the book's introduction, who says of the book "This project fulfilled my dream of putting a human face on the immigrant community...Often we label people as refugees or immigrants, but they are individuals with very different experiences. This was an attempt to give them a voice."

Thursday, March 12, 7 PM
a publishing party for "Brunswick and Bowdoin College" a volume in the Arcadia Press postcard history series, with author Elizabeth Coursen.

All events are free and open to the public.
For more information please call Gulf of maine books at 729-5083

jayne anne phillips - lark and termite

2009-02-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

This morning, while in the barn cleaning donkey stalls, I heard Jayne Anne Phillips on Public Radio, talking about her novel Lark and Termite. Back in the mid 1970s I was a big fan. David Wilk was sending me issues of his magazine Truck, as well as chapbooks that he was producing, and he turned me on to her work. When Beth and I opened Gulf of Maine Books we of course kept her books in stock. Then one year I heard that she would be signing books at the New England Booksellers fall gathering. I looked forward to meeting her and to getting a signed book. I waited in line, and when I reached the front of the line she took the book, signed her name, and slid it back to me, never making eye contact and never breaking her conversation with the publisher's rep who was helping her with the signing. Too important a conversation, apparently, to actually greet a bookseller who tried to handsell her books. I have not stocked her books since.
I hope that authors (and publishers) will realize that when you are at bookseller conferences, or anywhere else where you are greeting the public and hoping to sell your book, that it is important to make contact. Let us know that you have seen us, give us some connection to your book. Make us happy every time that we sell a copy for you. There are still old fashioned booksellers who get a thrill when we sell a good book.

Dogtown/Charles Olson

2009-01-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I was reading through a catalog of summer and fall titles forthcoming from Free Press. A September title caught my eye: Dogtown - Death and Enchantment in an Island Ghost Town. What little I know of Dogtown comes from reading Charles Olson's Maximus poems (and listening to Folkways recordings of him reading them) and follow up readings of Ferrini and Anastas, with a side path looking at Marsden Hartley - and an Olson pilgrimage to Gloucester) so, yes, I was interested. The second paragraph of the book blurb "Dogtown has inspired various people...the Modernist painter Marsden Hartley, whom Dogtown saved from a crippling depression; the drug-addled poet Charles Olson, a coven of witches..."
OK - "the drug-addled poet Charles Olson"? Charles Olson, one of the major figures of 20th century poetry, listed here as "drug addled poet" - I find this to be more than insulting, more than just stupid and lazy, but with that I not only do not want to carry the book at our store, but I wonder why anyone else would want to trust what the author Elyssa East (who has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University's School of the Arts and lives in NYC) has to say?
The nice thing about owning your own bookstore is that you are free to carry the books that interest you, and free to skip over the ones that don't. I would still like to read a book about Dogtown, but certainly not one identifying Charles Olson only as a "drug addled poet". (but they do praise her luminous, insightful prose...)

Part Two
Two days after posting part one of this message, and I have heard from several people who all doubt that the author would represent her book in this way. The author herself wrote that she "just wanted to clarify that Olson is not characterized as a drug addled poet in my book. I think it may be in the catalogue copy, but it is most definitely not in the text and will not be on the flap copy.
The majority of my very brief Olson chapter focuses on how passionately he loved Gloucester, and Dogtown's role in helping expand the Maximus poems."
In these days of cutbacks at the publishing houses, independent bookstores like ours rarely see book reps anymore. We get catalogs in the mail (or some, now, only online) and perhaps a phone call from a phone sales rep, but in many cases the catalog copy is the only source of advance information on a particular book, and many of us don't spend a lot of time pondering each title. When we see someone we respect being characterized as a "drug addled poet" that quickly colors our perception of the book and the author's point of view, and makes an ordering decision that much easier. Free Press should be reminded of this fact, and the importance of catalog copy should be emphasized.
We look forward to reading this book, and hope that others will read it also.
Thanks to Elyssa East for her prompt clarification.

voices from Native traditions

2009-01-13T11:31:00.001-08:00

We have just received a lovely new book from the Parabola anthology series: The Inner Journey - Views from Native traditions - edited by Linda Hogan. This collection contains two pieces by our friend and customer Tim Buckley, who lives in West Bath and used to have a small zendo upstairs above us on the second floor. It also has several pieces by Joseph Bruchac, who has read here, and an interview with Richard Nelson, who has also read here at Gulf of Maine. Other featured authors include Leslie Silko,Vine Deloria Jr., Oren Lyons, Black Elk, N Scott Momaday, and Peter Matthiessen, as well as many other wonderful contributions.

Christmas season report

2009-01-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Carolyn Chute reading at Gulf of maine books
photo by Roger Leisner, The Maine Paparazzi

The Christmas season has come and gone, and we keep hearing words like dismal, disappointing, flat...We had no idea what to expect this year - with Bookland closing, Grand City closing, the first squadron from the base leaving at Thanksgiving, but our sales were actually better than we expected. Part of this seems to have been new customers who used to do their Christmas book shopping at Bookland. A number of people told us that they used to buy their calendars at Bookland, and we certainly sold a lot more calendars than in past years.
The shopping trend also tended toward buying local. Our best selling calendars were the Maine tide calendar, the Maine Geographic, and the Down East calendars (with the usual strong showing from WeMoon and the Audubon and Sierra engagements -). Our top two best selling titles were published by the Maine Department of Conservation - The Forest Trees of Maine, and Your Maine Lands - a guide to Maine's public lands by Tom Hanrahan. Maine authors led our hardcover fiction sales (Carolyn Chute's School on Heart's Content Road and Colin Sargent's Museum of Human Beings) and our childrens book sales were led by Dahlov Ipcar (My Wonderful Christmas Tree, and The Little Fisherman) Charlotte Agell's Shift, Karen Schneider's Adventures of Skiff, and the Harpswell Anchor's book about Janet Bonney resuscitating her chicken - Martha To The Rescue - quite a diversity of information and ideas.
We want to thank everyone who came in, made purchases, said hello, came to readings, authors who came and signed books, and small local publishers who are bringing
out such good books, even in a time of economic gloom.
We do have the inauguration to look forward to, and on Feb. 28 there will be a party at Gulf of Maine to celebrate our store's 30th birthday, most books 30% off.
Thank you all, and a very Happy New Year!
Gary and Beth

allen ginsberg/gary snyder

2008-11-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

We have received copies of the new "Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder", and here is a quote from a letter written by Allen Ginsberg.It is 1975 and Allen is teaching at Naropa: Merwin, Anne (Waldman), Gregory (Corso) and I each read Shelley's Ode to the West Wind our own interpretations in one class - three or four older poets listening in each class. I started with "Seafarer" and read thru Shelley and Marvell and Smart when I discovered half my class never read but Snyder and Kerouac and Howl in high school and college, half the class had never read West Wind so i went back in time and taught weird selected survey course "Scepter and Crown must tumble down" etc.Winding uo tonight with William Carlos Williams and Kerouac end session - my father taught Keats my last class."
Allen Ginsberg to Gary Snyder July 11, 1975

Yankee Magazine "Best Five Bookstores"

2008-10-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

The November/December 2008 issue of Yankee Magazine has a column called Best Five Bookstores by novelist Suzanne Strempek Shea. Gulf of Maine is the only Maine bookstore mentioned, saying "Small, serene, and nobody bugs you when you browse for hours. Don't miss the magazines and cool postcards." The other four stores are Broadside Bookshop in Northampton Mass., Baker Bookshop in North Dartmouth Mass., Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley Mass., and The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough NH.

encounter at Gulf of Maine

2008-08-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon, and a woman brings a blank journal with a picture of Che on the cover to the front counter.

Woman:
"Why do you have this book?
He was a filthy Bolshevik. He was vermin.
Do you know how many people he killed?

Gary:
I think that our president has killed more people -

Woman
"You're an old hippy.
Get your hair cut."

Gary
When you sew your lips shut, I'll cut my hair."

What year is this? What Decade? What century?

Fall Book Events at Gulf of Maine

2008-08-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to the fall/pre-Christmas season, we see an exciting year for new books by Maine authors. We hope to have book events at the store for the following books/authors: Lee Sharkey with her new book of poems "A Darker, Sweeter Thing", Colin Sargent for his new novel "Museum of Human Beings", Carolyn Chute and her new novel "School on Heart's Content", Phyllis Austin's new book on Buzz Caverly and Baxter State Park "Wilderness Partners", two books by Brunswick authors for children and young adults: Calef Brown's "Soup for Breakfast" and Charlotte Agell's "Shift", and an apple sampling event with John Bunker, author of Not Far From The Tree: The apples of Palermo Maine".
We will also host a reading by British poet Tom Pickard on Sunday afternoon, October 5.
Other books we look forward to this coming season include Linda Hogan's new novel "People of the Whale", Gioia Timpanelli's new novel "What Makes A Child Lucky", Terry Tempest Williams' new "Mosaic", Bill Porter/Red Pine's new book on his travels in China - "Zen Baggage", a collection of the Correspondence between Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg and a new book by Tom Butler : Wildlands Philanthropy - The Great American Tradition - (features Baxter, Acadia, and Norton's Island).
It looks like a good fall for books!
Dates so far:

Sunday, October 5 British poet Tom Pickard reading with Stephen Petroff at the Old Goat Pub, Maine Street in Richmond, 530 PM (to follow the memorial event for artist Richard Lee)
Sunday, Oct. 19, 430 PM - Charlotte Agell at Gulf of maine with her new book Shift
Saturday Nov 1, 3 PM John Bunker with his new book about apples in Maine - Not Far From the Tree
Saturday, Nov. 15, 4 PM reading and signing with Colin Sargent for his new novel "The Museum of Human Beings" and Lee Sharkey for her new book of poems A Darker Sweeter Thing"
Saturday Nov. 29, 3 PM - Phyllis Austin with her new book about Baxter State Park - Wilderness Partners

Christina Gillis booksigning

2008-07-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

Christina Gillis will read from her new book: Writing On Stone - Scenes from A Maine Island Life at Gulf of Maine Books on Saturday, August 9, at 4 PM.
Here's a blurb from the back of the book:
"My picture of Gott's Island has been a mytho-poetic one, informed by the novels of Ruth Moore. Christina Gillis roots that vision in rock, pulls you down to the stone and sea, and builds an accurate picture of the island through thoughtful story and perceptive listening, watching and telling. She takes you there, and you begin to feel at home." Gary Lawless.
OK, so I wrote the blurb, have been to the house where she lives on Gotts island, the house where Ruth Moore's family lived a century ago, where Ruth Moore was born, but this is really Christina's story, and the island's story.
The book was co-published by the University Press of New England and the Island Institute, with photos by Peter Ralston, and an introduction by Philip Conkling.
Please come listen to this voice from Gott's Island!

Those Lizard People

2008-05-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

from the book God Laughs and Plays, by David James Duncan:
One sip of the fire in the water and he began telling of a friend of his, new to visionary experience, who'd recently sought council from a Brazilian shaman. The friend had been traumatized, during a lengthy initiation rite, when he had a vision of a bunch of fearsome, remorseless Reptile Beings, The Reptile Men surrounded John's terrified friend, informed him that they controlled the entire world, and prophesied that they were going to devour the whole thing.
In response to this revelation, the old shaman waved his hand dismissively and chuckled, "Those Lizard People! They think they run everything!"

James Lenfestey reading at Gulf of Maine

2008-05-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

Poet James Lenfestey will leave his hermit cave to come read to us on Friday, May 30, at 7 PM from his new book A Cartload of Scrolls - 100 Poems in the Manner of T'ang Dynasty Poet Han Shan.

Here are two poems from the book:

#44 Plumes of paper mill steam

On a piece of lined paper the size of a Chinese poem
I write a Chinese-sized poem.
The words sound like English because I stand where I was born,
on the shore of a Great Lake. Her forests and rivers
unroll around me in plumes of paper mill steam.
I hope to get to China before I die,
where paper was invented, poetry before that.
There my verses will turn into faces.
The people will nod with gentility and respect.

#14 The Poet Joke

So three poets enter a bar.
The first gets drunk and raves.
The second seethes jealously in the corner booth.
The third? Ahhh, the third
rises up off the barstool
in smoke and flames,
ash floating in the air like dark feathers.

literary blogs

2008-05-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

I have been reading some literary blogs, but I am sure that there are many others I have not yet discovered. Please send along your recommendations for literary, poetry and bookstore blogs, and I will add them to the list here, or you can add them as a comment .
Here are a few of mine:
Favorite literary blog: Pierre Joris http://pjoris.blogspot.com
Favorite bookstore blog: Karl Pohrt Shaman Drum Books www.thereisnogap.com
My own poetry blog: http://mygrations.blogspot.com
My blog featuring poetry from countries embargoed by the US: http://embargopoets.blogspot.com

Novelist Elizabeth Hand recommends:
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/
Poet and editor Karla Merrifield suggests her "Vagabond Poet" blog
http://karlalinn.blogspot.com
Poet/editor/networker Tom Fallon recommends:
http://pjnights.blog-city.com/
or: www.geocities.com/pj_nights
Therese Broderick recommends a blog on Ekphrasis (poetry inspired by art)
http://poetryaboutart.wordpress.com
Brunswick author Charlotte Agell has a website:
www.charlotteagell.com
as does Phippsburg novelist Ellen Cooney:
http://ellencooney.com

Calef Brown Booksigning

2008-05-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

gary snyder recommends

2008-04-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Reading recent posts on Karl Pohrt's great blog on books and bookselling,thereisnogap, I came across his mention of a recent visit from Gary Snyder. Gary was recommending recent reading, audio and video. Here are the recommendations:
Books -
The People's Act of Love - by James Meek
Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology - Robert Bringhurst
Learning from Native Wisdom - Gary Holthaus
Video - A Zen Life - on D T Suzuki (Gary was interviewed for the film)
and a new 2 cd set of Gary Snyder reading with musicians in Japan, at the Tokyo 2002 summer festival. The Japanese import is called Mountains and Rivers without end, and sells for $30 in the US.
We will be carrying all three books and the cd set.

Nancy Henry: new book of poems

2008-03-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

We are told that poets can't change the world - just words on a page with no power in the real world, but poems do change the world, every day, some for the better, some for the worse, but language is moving through us, all of the time.
One beautiful proof of this is Nancy Henry's new book Who You Are. She shows us that wisdom, compassion, love and a sense of justice and yes, finding just the right word, can reach into someone's soul, change the way that they see the world, the way that they act in the world, make the world a little bit better place not just for humans, but for all living creatures.
Nancy has been to places of pain, places of loss, suffering and despair, has lived through them, uses poetry as a way to look at those experiences, to talk about them, to get them outside of the body into air, light, and language, to make that language into a chant of healing, to help others confront their "moments of doubt and pain", to help us find strength, courage, creativity and heart, to live our lives in a more loving, compassionate, honest way.
These are not facile poems of shallow experience, no cute little stories with happy endings. These are poems from the hard world, poems from the heart, the soul, the deep interior, passing through a poet of wise intelligence, empathy and love.
"If she writes this poem
something might happen
that she can't control."

There is no better language than the language that heals, and these poems work in that way. Read these poems, and feel your heart change.
Gary Lawless

The book is:
Who You Are - Poems by Nancy A Henry
Sheltering Pines Press
2008

March 11 booksigning for Brunswick author

2008-03-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

We invite you to celebrate the March 11 publication of Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, the first novel by Brunswick author Maria Padian, at Gulf of Maine Books (134 Maine Street, Brunswick) on Tuesday, March 11, at 4 PM. There will be a reading and booksigning, with refreshments.

Brett McCarthy is being published by Knopf Books for Young Readers, and is described as a "literary debut with a laugh-out-loud coming of age story about one smart mouthed 14 year old (also the best eighth grade cornerkicker in Maine) who is learning the hard way that she is a work in progress."

Please join us in celebrating this arrival of a new Brunswick author!

For more information, please call Gulf of Maine Books : 729 5083.

David Thodal Poems

2008-02-14T07:47:00.001-08:00

David Thodal worked at Gulf of Maine Books the first year we were open, 1979, keeping the store open on Friday nights, filling in at other times, and becoming a regular member of the Bums Academy.For a number of years now he has been living in Montana, with his wife and daughter. He has just published a collection of poems called "Bird Songs", saying that "I am thinking...of the bird song as an exclamation of home, "this must be the place". These poems are my song of place."

Here's a poem given to David by the birds at Chimney Farm, where Beth and I live:

Never enough time

to sit and listen.

Loons last night

whip-poor-will at dawn.

will I ever understand the full tale

of a daffodil's bloom

or the new maple leaf

speak of the long winter's snow

In the dark of night

I wake,

and listen to geese

sing ancient tales of spring

around the moonlight.

Chimney Farm

Spring 1986

Boston Globe Review

2008-02-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday the Boston Globe had a piece called Seven Shops For Book Lovers, by Jonathan Levitt. Our store was one of the seven, and here is what the piece said:"From their sunny storefront just down the hill from Bowdoin College, poet Gary Lawless and his wife, Beth Leonard, run Gulf of Maine Books. Since 1979 they have devoted themselves to the bookselling life. Lawless is editor at Blackberry Books, a publisher of out-of-print Maine classics and poetry. In the store's early days Leonard worked at the local Post Office and Lawless worked nights in the warehouse at L L Bean. These days they make a living offering books difficult to find in mainstream bookstores: a mix of small press poetry, obscure regional titles, alternative politics, and social justice."All of the usual left liberal causes are well represented here - and the right wing not at all," says Leonard,"We don't feel any obligation to be fair and balanced in that way."

Gulf of Maine Birthday Celebration

2008-01-29T11:37:00.001-08:00

This year Gulf of maine Celebrates 29 years in business with our yearly sale, and two special events.
Saturday, February 23, at 3 PM we welcome Brunswick author Jaed Coffin, reading from his memoir "A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants" This is the story of Jaed's trip to his mother's native village in Thailand, where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk, fulfilling familial obligations. Jaed has worked as a boxer, sea kayak guide, and a lobsterman. He is currently writing his second book, about his boxing career in Alaska, and lives here in Brunswick.

Our anniversary sale will take place from Feb. 25 to March 1, with all books in stock 29% off.

At the end of the week, Saturday, March 1, at 3 PM, we will have our annual birthday party with refreshments, door prizes (gift certificates to Gulf of Maine) and presentations by two Maine authors: a presentation on heirloom Maine apples by John Bunker, author of the new book "Not far from the tree - A Brief history of the apples and the orchards of Palermo Maine 1804-2004." , and David Cook speaking about his book "Above the gravel bar - The Native canoe routes of maine."
All events are free and open to the public.
For more information please call the bookstore 729-5083

Katha Pollitt at Gulf of Maine Books

2007-12-29T18:56:00.001-08:00

We are very pleased to invite you to an afternoon event with Katha Pollitt at Gulf of Maine Books on Saturday, January 12, at 230 PM.

Katha Pollitt is a poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation. Her latest book is Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories. Previous books include Virginity or Death and Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, and Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics and Culture.

Her book of poems Antarctic Traveller seems to be out of print (and why, Random House?) but she does have a new collection of poems, The Mind-Body Problem and Other Poems, due out in March, and perhaps she will read us some new poems.

We hope that you will attend this free event, and enjoy this special afternoon with Katha Pollitt.

For more information please call the bookstore at 729-5083.

Read Katha Pollitt's blog at http://kathapollitt.blogspot.com/

Denis Johnson: Viet Nam poem

2007-10-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading Denis Johnson's new novel Tree of Smoke, set in the CIA world of early American involvement in Viet Nam. I won't try to review it, but this poem, from one of the characters in the book, will tell you what you need to know:

Viet Nam

I bought a pair of Ray Bans from the Devil
and a lighter said Tu Do Bar 69
Cold Beer Hot Girl Sorry About That Chief
Man that Zippo got it all across

Man when I'm in my grave don't wanna go to Heaven
Just wanna lie there looking up at Heaven
All I gotta do is see the motherfucker
You don't need to put me in it

Turn the gas on in my cage
I drink the poison
Send me an assassin
I drink the poison
Dead demons in my guts
I drink the poison

I drink the poison
I drink the poison
And I'm still laughin

Denis Johnson, from the novel Tree of Smoke

Sept/Oct events at Gulf of Maine Books

2007-09-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

We will be hosting three book publishing parties in September and October.

On September 30, at 5 PM we will host a publishing party for About Now - Collected Poems of Joanne Kyger, published in Orono by the National Poetry Foundation, 800 pages. Joanne Kyger is one of our very favorite poets, and it is a great pleasure to have her return to Gulf of

Maine to celebrate this wonderful and important collection.

Joanne will give 4 readings in Maine to celebrate the book: University of Maine Orono, thurs. sept 27, 430 at Soderberg Center Auditorium, Jenness Hall; Gulf of maine - Brunswick Sunday sept 30, 500 PM; Bates College lewiston tuesday oct 2, 415 PM - Benjamin Mays Center, 95 russell street, and USM portland thursday oct. 4, 7 PM, usm glickman library, 7th floor.

On Thursday, Oct. 11, 7 PM, we will have a reading by Paul Pines, from two new works: My Brother's Madness (a prose memoir) and Taxidancing -a collection of poems with collage work by Maine's Wayne Atherton. (Wayne will be showing collage work at the bookstore the night of the reading.) Paul Pines has published several collections of poetry as well as a novel( Tin Angel, about his experiences as the owner of The Tin Palace, a 1970s jazz club in New York City.)

On Saturday, October 20,4 PM, we will host a publishing party for NOW - works on paper 1976 - 2006 - Poetry and Antipoetry by Tom Fallon. For decades Tom has been aon the leading edge of poetry in Maine (and anywhere) and his work has certainly not been widely available. The back of this welcome new book states that Tom " began to create in the Seventies with free verse and moved on to explore literary form with concrete poetry, prose poetry, antipoetry and other forms." His work connects to jazz and classical music, to modern painting, to linguistic explorations, and to his life at the mill in Rumford, Maine, among many influences.

A rare treat. Come listen!

Later this fall we will have more readings (after we spend two weeks in Italy) including Candice Stover (from her new book Poems from the Pond, from Deerbrook Editions), April Ossmann (her new book Anxious Music, from Four Way Books) and Russell Libby (his new book Balance - A Late Pastoral, from Blackberry Books).Poet, author and Nation columnist Katha Pollit will read here in January. We look forward to all of these events.

Gulf of Maine Books - 134 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine 04011 729-5083

another bookstore review

2007-08-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

Lisa Romeo, a participant in the Stonecoast writing program, has just given us a nice mention on her blog http://lisaromeo.blogspot.com
"Last month I discovered Gulf of Maine, which gets my award for cramming in the largest number of really good books and aggressively supporting the local writing community and publishing economy"

Our new poet laureate

2007-08-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

Charles Simic has become the new poet laureate for the United States.
Here is a poem of his from a recent issue of the New Yorker:

Driving Home

Minister of our coming doom, preaching
on the car radio, how right
your hell and damnation sound to me
as I travel these small, bleak roads
thinking of the mailman's son
the Army sent back in a sealed coffin.

His house is around the next turn.
A forlorn mutt sits in the yard
waiting for someone to come home.
I can see the tv is on in the living room,
canned laughter in the empty house
like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

Paul Pines Reading at Gulf of Maine

2007-07-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of our recent trip to New York City was the chance to hear Paul Pines being interviewed as part of a 3 evening Tribeca celebration of his 1970s jazz club, the Tin Palace. He wrote a novel, Tin Angels, about his experiences owning the club. He has a new collection of poems, Taxidancing, with artwork by Maine poet/artist/editor(Cafe Review) Wayne Atherton, and Curbstone Press has just published a memoir called My Brother's Madness. Paul will be reading at the bookstore on Thursday, Oct 11, 7 PM, accompanied by artwork by Wayne Atherton.
Here is what the recent Publisher's Weekly had to say about My Brother's Madness:
In this gracefully written memoir, poet and novelist (and practicing psychotherapist) Pines narrates his and his younger brother's lives through the matrix of his brother's mental illness. A bright and sensitive child, Claude Pines was damaged by his parents' divorce, an unstable mother, and relentless persecution at the hands of his father's monstrous second wife. The story alternates between scenes from the Pines brothers' childhood and Claude's descent into paranoid schizophrenia, an illness that began to assert itself when Claude was a promising medical student and which inexorably drove him into a marginal life. The author deftly handles the complex structure, and the writing compels with rich characters, black humor, and clear evocations of locales ranging from an upper-class Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1950s to the drug blighted Alphabet City of Manhattan's Lower East Side of the 1960s. Paul Pines resists making easy diagnoses and illustrates the complicated relationship between environmental and hereditary causes for a disease like Claude's. While the narrative loses some of its intensity over its last third as Claude slowly remakes himself as a spokesperson for his fellow sufferers and Paul settles into a solid middle-class life, it remains engaging throughout. Never descending into easy sentimentality, Pines portrays the family tragedy of mental illness and the bare possibility of redemption we have in this life.

two new summer booklists

2007-07-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

two new summer booklists from Gulf of Maine readers:

from Kerry Lyons:
Electroboy - Andy Behrman
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
My Dream of You - Nuala O'Faolain
Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn

and from Pete Thayer:
Demon Box - Ken Kesey
Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
Different Seasons - Stephen King
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Papillon - Henri Charriere

joanne kyger collected poems

2007-06-24T17:41:00.001-07:00

We are very happy to announce the publication of Joanne Kyger's Collected (so far) Poems.

We are also very happy that they are being published here in Maine, by the National Poetry Foundation.

Again, we are even happier that Joanne will come to Maine and give us several chances to hear her read from these poems.

As listed above, the book is 800+ pages, collected from many smaller publications over the years.

Here are the Kyger books we still have in stock:

As Ever (selected poems, from Penguin), Again: Poems, The Distressed Look (from Coyote), Some Life, Patzcuaro, and Strange Big Moon (Japan and India journals)

We hope to get more copies of:

All This Every Day, God Never Dies, and Phenomenological.

Joanne's tour of Maine, as it stands today:

Sept 27, Univ. Maine Orono

Sept. 30, Gulf of Maine Books, Brunswick

Oct. 4 - Bates College, Lewiston

Oct. 6 - Univ of Southern Maine, Portland

poetry podcasts

2007-06-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Shoemaker and Hoard publishers have made available three poetry podcasts, poems and interviews with Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, and Wendell Berry. To hear them, click on:
www.shoemakerhoard.com/poetry.html

internet review of Gulf of Maine

2007-06-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

Today, while searching for an address on the internet, i came across the insiderpages site (www.insiderpages.com ) and saw that Gulf of Maine was listed, with two reviews. I went to our listing and found the following, which has been up on the site since 5/30/2005:

Slanted, specialty store with negative propaganda
by Paula E.

The Gulf of Maine is in a prime location on Maine Street in Brunswick. The store is lovely, well laid out, and cozy; but the content leaves much to be desired. Unless one is an angry homosexual or feminist, most of the books in Gulf of maine will not appeal to him or her. It saddens me that in the middle of a tourist area, such a political statement exists; it would be wonderful if the store offerred primarily books on the area and the state.
Pros: Lovely store, prime location
Cons: Politically slanted content only.

Cafe Review/Petroff poem

2007-05-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

The new issue of Cafe Review (Spring, 2007) has just arrived. For this issue, instead of the usual wide range of poets, the editors have selected good hefty chunks of work by five poets:Tom Absher, Coleman Barks, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Stephen Petroff, and Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Stephen Petroff is a painter and poet who also works here at Gulf of Maine Books, so we are especially happy to see his 12 page piece, called The Sleep Positions of Beasts, and illustrated with drawings made with ink inherited from Carlo Pittore.

Rendez Vous

2007-04-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

Michel Marchildon performing at Gulf of Maine Books. We had an afternoon "Rendez-Vous" with song, poetry and prose, all in French. One of the poets later described the event as being like "a City Lights happening."

kenji, akutagawa, zanzotto

2007-04-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

We have just received, on the same day, new collections by three of my favorite writers:Selections - Miyazawa Kenji - edited by Hiroaki Sato ( in the Univ. of California Poets For the Millenium series, which also includes titles - in stock here - by Andre Breton, Maria Sabina, Paul Celan, and Jose Lezama Lima), Mandarins - stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa - translated from the Japanese by Charles De Wolf and published by Archipelago Books, and The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto, a bilingual edition, edited and translated from the Italian by Patrick Barron (we also carry his anthology of Italian Environmental Literature) and published by the University of Chicago Press.

I first read Miyazawa Kenji in the early 1970s, translated by Gary Snyder, and then at Snyder's house heard the Japanes poet Nanao Sakaki read the Kenji poem that all Japanese people know:

November 3rd

neither yielding to rain
nor yielding to wind
yielding neither to
snow nor to summer heat
with a stout body
like that
without greed
never getting angry
always smiling quiet-
ly
eating one and a half pints of brown rice
and bean paste and a bit of
vegetables a day
in everything
not taking oneself
into account
looking listening understanding well
and not forgetting
living in the shadow of pine trees in a field
in a small
hut thatched with miscanthus
if in the east there's a
sick child
going and nursing
him
if in the west there's a tired mother
going and carrying
for her
bundles of rice
if in the south
there's someone
dying
going
and saying
you don't have to be
afraid
if in the north
there's a quarrel
or a lawsuit
saying it's not worth it
stop it
in a drought
shedding tears
in a cold summer
pacing back and forth lost
called
a good-for-nothing
by everyone
neither praised
nor thought a pain
someone
like that
is what I want
to be.

Miyazawa Kenji only lived to be 37. Here is his last poem, written just before his death:

Because of an illness, crumbling,
this life -
if I could give it for the dharma
how glad I would be

I have been a fan of Ryunosuke Akutagawa since the early 1970s, when I read his story Hell Screen in Donald Keene's Modern Japanese Literature, and later his famous Rashomon. His new collection, Mandarins, translated by Charles de Wolf, has 13 stories, two of them appearing in English for the first time. He was called the "father of the Japanese short story" and wrote some wild poems as well. He died at the age of 35, from an overdose of barbituates.

Andrea Zanzotto has spent most of his life in northern Italy, in Pieve di Soligo. Patrick Barron, his editor/translator says that his poetry creates "something of an impossible yet highly focused map, lacking fixed itineraries but providing an intense understanding of the vibrating, interwoven, and concentrated vitalities that stretch, tension-filled, from lauded/abused woodland, to rareified alpine heights, to thoroughly humanized countryside." Zanzotto himself says " My village is like a garden, here and there devastated, map and palimpsest, gestures fixed in an eternal instant, a blinking of eyes, a sudden opening of narrow streets that are always here and yet curving elsewhere."

There's no telling how much green
is buried under this green
nor how much rain under this rain
many are the infinities
that here converge
that from here wander off
oblivious, stupefied
There's-no-telling This is the relict
of that rainy relict
the green in which the extreme of the green
is weaving
Perhaps there's-no-telling for a
deaf movement of light distilling
itself in an ephemeral sound, and knowing
Perhaps allowing blooming, extending
combining
member to member, rejoining.

Andrea Zanzotto, from Meteo
translated by Patrick Barron

Fadhil al Azzawi

2007-04-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

A quote from Iraqi poet Fadhil al Azzawi. (We carry his collection of poems Miracle Maker - his selected poems from BOA editions)
"Here is where I see the exceptional role of poetry: to confront the numerous lies and forgeries and to pull the masks off of the delusion-sellers' faces by affirming the truth that is buried under piles of commercialized and repetitive language, and to delve to the bottom of the deepest oceans to capture the jewels of speech."

Celebration for Afghan Women's Literacy Campaign

2007-03-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

A night in celebration of women's literacy - to benefit RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) Monday, March 26, 730 PM at the Frontier Cafe, Cinema and Gallery, Fort Andross, Maine Street, Brunswick.
An evening of poetry (readers include Karin Spitfire, Marilyn Reizbaum, Willie Oppenheim, and Gary Lawless), Afghan food, film and music to celebrate the power of the written word in the hands of empowered women, and to support women's literacy efforts in Afghanistan. All money raised will go to the RAWA literacy program, teaching Afghan women and girls to read, through their program of hiring women teachers, for $65 per month, to teach a class of up to 25 new readers.
"If you are illiterate, it is as if you are blind." - Soraya, Afghan widow enrolled in a RAWA literacy course.

Gulf of Maine Books will do book support for the event, and suggests the following book list:

Poetry:
Songs of Love and War - Afghan Women's Poetry

RAWA related:
With All Our Strength - RAWA - Anne Brodsky
Meena - Heroine of Afghanistan - The Martyr who founded RAWA - Melody Chavis
Veiled Courage - Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance - Cheryl Benard
Veiled Threat - Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan - Sally Armstrong
Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban - Rosemarie Skaine
Sewing Circles of Herat - Christina Lamb
My Forbidden Face - Growing Up under the Taliban - Latifa

Other Related Non fiction
Storyteller's daughter - One woman's return to her lost homeland - Saira Shah
Kabul in Winter - Ann Jones
West of Kabul, East of New York - An Afghan American Story - Tamim Ansary
Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad
An Unexpected Light - Travels in Afghanistan - Jason Elliot
The Places in Between - Rory Stewart
Ghost Wars - The Secret History of the Cia, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 11 - Steve Coll

Related Fiction:
Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra
The Kite Runner - Hosseini
Winter in Kandahar - Steve Wilson

Chechnya reading list

2007-03-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

We will be having a reading for Chechnya at the bookstore Sat., March 31, 3 PM.

Here is a small reading list of books about Chechnya. We especially recommend the work of Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered after publishing two books about Chechnya and another about Putin's Russia.

In stock at the store:
A Small Corner of Hell - Dispatches from Chechnya - Anna Politkovskaya
The Oath - A Surgeon Under Fire (also published as Grief of my heart - Memories of a Chechyn surgeon) Khassan Baiev
Chechnya - To the Heart of A Conflict - Andrew Meier
Chechnya: The Case for Independence - Tony Wood

Harder to find:
The Dirty War - Anna Politkovskaya
Cechnya Diary - A war correspondent's story of surviving the war in Chechnya - Thomas Goltz
Chienne de Guerre - a woman reporter behind the lines of the war in Chechnya - Anna Nival
Allah's Mountains - The Battle for Chechnya - Sebastian Smith

Tell the world,
which is sacrificing Chechnya,
that for the world,
Chechnya is burning.

Apti Bisultanov, Chechen poet

poem for Cuba week

2007-03-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

poem for Cuba week,
by Cuban poet Nancy Morejon

This is how it is.
and this is how we sweat
while we're building the world, day by day.
One of these days we'll make ourselves a life!

Nancy Morejon, from
With Eyes and Soul - Images of Cuba
Poems by Nancy Morejon, images by Milton Rogovin
White Pine Press

chechnya reading

2007-03-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

Book Lists

2007-03-02T09:22:00.000-08:00

David Thodal writes from Montana, his daughter Ellie about to turn 16, sharing books he liked to read to her when she was small:
Miss Rumphius - Barbara Cooney
Annie and the Wild Animals - Jan Brett
Imogen's Antlers - David Small
Cross Country Cat - Mary Calhoun
Night in the Country - Cynthia Rylant
Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig - Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury
Coyote Stories for Children - Susan Strauss

and Genie Wheelwright shares:
"One of my favorites of past years is Any Bitter Thing, by Monica Wood. It is meaty, enchanting, compelling and deals with a number of basic human moral issues we can all relate to. Ms. Wood is from Portland, and the novel takes place in Maine, which adds another wonderful element. I gave this book to many different people from out of state for Christmas, and they have universally loved it. One Seattleite opined it would surely win a national award if it just got the publicity attention it deserved."
We agree, and would also recommend her wonderful Ernie's Ark, as well as her Pocket Muse, guaranteed to help kick-start your own writing projects.

Michelle Morgan's reading list

2007-02-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

Maine poet/editor Michelle Morgan sends this reading list:

Question of Power - Bessie Head
Unbearable lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Bone People - Keri Hulme
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin Marion Meade
Maps - Nuruddin Farah
A Small Corner of Hell - Dispatches from Chechnya - Anna Politkovskaya
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

winter/spring events

2007-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

This year we enter our 28th year in business. Please join us to celebrate our 28 years (we need a surge of customers to fight the insurgent chain bookstores). From February 19 to Feb. 24 all books in stock will be sold at a 28% discount. On Feb. 24, 3 PM, we will have our annual birthday party, with food and drink, door prizes, 28% discounts, and poetry readings by Joyce Pye, Russell Libby, Jonathan Skinner, and Terry Grasse. Please join us for the fun!

Upcoming Gulf of Maine related events:

Feb. 27, 7 PM, Unitarian Universalist Church, Pleasant Street, Brunswick
Gary MCs a community reading and birthday party for Longfellow. An open reading, with birthday cake!

March 6, Little Dog Coffee House, Maine Street, Brunswick, 4 PM
Gary reads poems from Cuba as a part of Cuba Week.

March 21, 7 PM, Gulf of Maine Books, author/translator Bill Porter/Red Pine
His published translations include Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Platform Sutra. Lotus Sutra, Heart Sutra,Zen teachings of Bodhidharma, Poems of the Masters, Tao Te Ching, Zen Works of Stone House, as well as his travel account - The Road to Heaven - Encounters with Chinese Hermits

March 26, 730 PM, Frontier Cafe, Fort Andross, Maine Street,Brunswick
A night in celebration of womens literature to benefit the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women, with Afghan food, music and video, readings by Karin Spitfire, Gary Lawless, Willie Oppenheim, and Bowdoin professor Marilyn Reizbaum. Donations will go to the RAWA literacy campaign to teach Afghan women and girls to read and write. ($65 will pay a teacher to teach up to 25 women and girls for one month).

March 31, 3 PM, Gulf of Maine Books - A Reading for Chechnya with Kenneth Rosen, Michelle Morgan, Jim Mello, Karin Spitfire, Otto Emmersleben, and Gary Lawless. We are asking for donations of books of poetry to send to the University library in Grozny, Chechnya, for the poets and readers there, as well as cash donations to help pay mailing costs.

April 2, 3 PM Gulf of Maine Books - Internationally acclaimed poets Jean Morisset (Quebec) and Michel Marchildon (Saskatchewan) will read and discuss their poetry, along with author Philip Marchand (Ontario) who will read from his new book about French explorer Rene-Robert LaSalle. Part of the 3 day Rendez-Vous de Franco-Amerique, sponsored by the University of Maine, Lewiston-Auburn.

April 12, 7 PM, Gulf of Maine Books Charles Hardy reading and discussing his new book Cowboy in Caracas - A Personal Account of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution. Mr. Hardy spent eight years as a Catholic priest living in a cardboard shack in a Caracas barrio, and will offer a personal account of the people who support Hugo Chavez, and why.

May 5, 3 PM, Gulf of Maine Books - Elizabeth Hand reading from her new novel Generation Loss, a great read, set on an island off the Maine Coast -

For updates and more details check out our blog - gulfofmainebooks.blogspot.com

Book Lists

2007-02-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

If you look back through our archives, you will see that a number of people have sent us book lists. We ask that you send us a list of five recommended books, on any topic you wish. (send to chimfarm@gwi.net ).
Here is a list of five novels that I recommend most often at the bookstore:

Ceremony - Leslie Silko
Continental Drift - Russell Banks
Solar Storms - Linda Hogan
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
Spoonhandle - Ruth Moore

nanao sakaki

2007-01-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Our friend and mentor Nanao Sakaki, the wandering Japanese poet, is now in his eighties, and has some serious health concerns. We are part of a support network raising money to fund his care. If you would like to help out, please send a donation of any size to: Committee on Poetry Inc., PO Box 582, Stuyvesant Station, New York City, NY 10009, with a note saying Nanao Sakaki fund. Please include your complete name and address, as all donations to the fund are tax deductible.
If you are interested in Nanao's work, we publish two collections of his poems: Break the Mirror ($9.95) and Let's Eat Stars ($10.95).
We also publish a book about Nanao, written by his friends, called: Nanao or Never ($16)

Bill Porter/Red Pine

2007-01-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

On March 21, at 7 PM, Gulf of Maine Books will host author/translator/traveller Bill Porter/Red Pine. Over the years we have carried many of his books, including his translations: Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Han Shan), the Diamond Sutra, The Platform Sutra, the Heart Sutra, Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, Zen Works of Stone House, Poems of Big Shield and Pick Up, Poems of the Masters, Lao Tsu's Tao te Ching, Guide to Capturing A Plum Blossom ,The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, and his travel account of searching for Chinese hermits - The Road To Heaven - Encounters with Chinese Hermits. He will also be speaking at Bates College and College of the Atlantic.

Pat LaMarche booksigning

2006-12-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

Pat LaMarche will be signing copies of her new book at Gulf of maine Books, Saturday, Dec. 16, 4 PM.
I worked for two years as "poet in residence" at the Preble Street Resource Center in Portland, where Julie Johnson and I facilitated a weekly 3 hour poetry workshop for homeless and low income writers for two years. We didn't see many politicians there, and if we did it was usually either election time, or one of the holidays like christmas or thanksgiving, when they would come and serve a meal. You didn't really get the sense that they were there to listen, learn and make changes.
Pat LaMarche, Maine broadcaster, journalist, and Green Party gubernatorial candidate ran, in 2004, for vice-president of the United States as the Green Party candidate. As part of this campaign she wanted to focus on real issues, economics, health care, and homelessness. She set up a two week tour across america, sleeping in homeless shelters or on the street, carrying her life in a bag. Some shelter operators were wary of politicians using them for photo ops, other cities, like New York, threatened to have her arrested if she tried to stay in one of their shelters. Along the way she met many Americans who are suffering, who have no safety net, who are out on the street for a variety of reasons (mental illness, disability, domestic abuse, financial troubles...) Instead of using them for photo ops, Pat listened to their stories, listened with her heart, and thought about ways in which this unnecessary suffering might be made a thing of the past. This new book recounts that trip, and allows the people she met on the way to speak in their own voices, or through Pat's heart. This is a book from the heart of America, with important messages, messages we need not only to listen to, but act upon.
Pat LaMarche has a big heart, and she listens. I am sorry that she is not the governor. I am sorry that she is not the vice president. I am very glad to have this book.

literature for Chechnya

2006-12-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

Tell the world,
which is sacrificing Chechnya,
that for the world
Chechnya is burning.

"The world is revealed in Chechnya. We learn the truth about the Russians' attitude to the Chechens, the Russians' attitude to each other, and the Chechens' attitude to each other. What's more, the rest of the world reveals its true colours in its silence about the war."

Apti Bisultanov, Chechen poet

I have been reading The Oath - A Surgeon Under Fire, the autobiography of Chechen surgeon Khassan Baiev, and the incredible story of his medical work in Chechnya during the wars there. Professor Barry Rodrigue and the American Chechen Solidarity group have made connections in Grozny, Chechnya, through the university there, and are collecting warm clothing and blankets, but also the university is asking for books for the library. The poets there would like poetry in English, so I am trying to collect poetry to send over. If you would like to donate books, please drop them off at Gulf of maine or mail them to us (Gulf of Maine Books, 134 Maine Street, Brunswick, Me. 04011)
Please remember that we are also collecting poetry and books for children in Spanish, to send to our sister city library, in Trinidad, Cuba.

Tariq Ali

2006-11-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

I have recently read the four novels in Tariq Ali's Islam Quartet, set in southern Spain, Sicily, Istanbul and Jerusalem. (The Stone Woman, The Book of Saladin, A Sultan in Palermo, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree)
Here is Tariq Ali, interviewed in the recent issue of Adbusters, giving his advice to young people: "Follow your instincts. When your instincts tell you there is something corrupt and disgusting about the way the political establishment operates, you're 100% right. But don't just say that. Try and do something about it: in the realm of culture, in the realm of protests, in the realm of literature, in the realm of theatre. Do alternative things, and don't be too scared that if you do that, you won't be able to find a job. It's so much easier, with the development of technology today, to produce a magazine or a cracking ten minute documentary. We couldn't do that in the '60's. It's a totally different world, and there are enormous, enormous opportunities which should be used."

new Sandor Katz book on food

2006-11-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

Some of you know Sandor Katz from his earlier book, Wild Fermentation, and some of you may know him from a kim chee or sauerkraut workshop at Common Ground Fair or some other venue. His new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, should be read by anyone who eats food.
Sandor says in the preface "All the crises of our postagrarian, postindustrial, postmodern time converge in the food we eat...Activists around the world are devoting themselves to the creation of better food choices. The chapters of this book explore ten different themes of food-related issues and activist projects. Far from comprehensive, this book aims to inspire you to become a food activist yourself, and in that process to become more connected to the sources of your food and water."
Howard Zinn says of this book "it points us not only to eating in a new way, but thinking in a new way. Here we see food with all its social and economic ramifications, to say nothing of its consequences for our health."

Sandor points out that "Some people have the idea that food marketed as organic or locally grown is inherently elitist. We must acknowledge that to be in the position to be selective about the food we eat is to hold a privileged position." He then quotes author Lisa Heldke, who says "The question we must ask is not "How can we avoid privilege?" but "How can we work to undermine the structures that give me privilege in the first place?"

I learned that I live in Clambake Nation, next to Maple Syrup Nation, that to eat organic produce trucked and flown or otherwise moved great distances might not be as good an idea, for the health of the planet, and that I really want to eat a paw paw.
well, that and much more, in a political climate where "eating well has become an act of civil disobedience", we need to become better-informed citizens of our own regions, and of the world.
This book is a wonderful step on that journey.

Holiday Reading Series

2006-11-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

For this holiday season we are suggesting that you not only support local businesses, but local writers and publishers.
Here is our reading series for the season:

Nov. 11, Saturday, 4 PM
Annie Farnsworth - Angel of the Heavenly Tailgate (poetry), Moon Pie Press, Westbrook
Robert Chute - Reading Nature (poems) Just Write Books, Topsham
Virginia Chute - Remembrances of Marietta Lufford (Historical fiction) Jay Street
Publishers, New York

Nov. 18, Saturday, 4 PM
Baron Wormser - The Road Washes Out in Spring - A Poet's Memoir of Living Off The
Grid, University of New England Press, Hanover, N H

Dec. 1, friday, 7 PM
Phil Hoose - Perfect, Once Removed - When Baseball was all the world to me (memoir)
Walker & Co., New York

Dec. 2, Saturday, 4 PM
Linda Buckmaster - Heartsongs and Other Legacies - (poems) Illuminated Sea Press
Belfast, Maine
Bruce Spang - The Knot (poems) Snow Drift Press, Bristol
Sally Woolf - Wade - Nightsong (poems) Goose River Press, Waldoboro

Dec. 8, Friday, 7 PM
author Franklin Burroughs and photographer Heather Perry - Confluence -
Merrymeeting Bay, Tilbury House, Gardiner Maine

Dec. 16, Saturday, 4 PM
Pat LaMarche Left Out in America - The State of Homelessness in the United States
Upala Press, Portland, Maine

All events are free and open to the public.
For more information please call 729-5083

Petroff opening

2006-09-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

Baron Wormser

2006-08-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, August 30, former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser was in the bookstore. I asked him when his new prose memoir of life off the grid in the Maine woods would be out. He told me that it would be early October. An hour later a case of copies of the book arrived from his publisher, University of New England Press. Perhaps we shouldn't sell them until October, but we can't wait.

linda buckmaster

2006-08-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

I am originally from Belfast (Maine) and it pleases me to see Belfast taking a real interest in poetry. Of course, in the late 1960s we had Bern Porter as local bard, but now there is a yearly Belfast Poetry Festival, and every year the Mr. Paperback in Belfast hosts a Waldo County Youth Poet Laureate event, and more things are happening around town. Three of the current Belfast poets I particularly like are Karin Spitfire, Elizabeth Garber, and Linda Buckmaster. All three of them have new collections of poems coming out this fall. Here is a poem by Linda Buckmaster, called Nine Ways To get To Bangor. (When I was a kid, Bangor was where you went to get books, records, clothes, to go to Freeses, MacDonalds,Viners,the Bangor Fair, the Paul Bunyan Statue...)

Nine Ways To Get To Bangor

One watershed. Penobscot Bay gathering,
funneling every rill and stream, from its namesake
running past the hospital to the waters at the end
of my street. Carry on - Marsh Stream, Goose River,
Meadow Brook, Kenduskeag, Westcott Stream, Hurds Pond,
Mendall Marsh, Passagassawakeag, Burnt Swamp,
Belfast Harbor.

Three surgeries. Biopsy, lymph node, lumpectomy, Route 1,
1A, 141, 139, 69, Dahlia Farm Road, City Point,
Head of the Tide, Oak Hill, Nealey's Corner,
Exit 49.

Four Hospitals: Waldo County, Pen Bay, St. Joe's, Eastern
Maine, osprey, porcupine, scrub jay, roadkill, pothole,
lesser newt.

One diagnosis: Prospect, Frankfort, Waldo, Stockton Springs,
Belfast, CancerCare, Winterport, Searsport, Monroe, Hampden,
bald eagle.

Seven weeks of radiation: Exxon, Mobil, Coke for the good
things in life, two hot dogs for a dollar, Dino's Pizza, general store,
road work, free zucchini, real estate real estate real estate,
blind drive.

Five years of follow-up: Gowned waiting.

Twenty seasons on the Penobscot:
Freeze up,
ice out,
spring flood, carry on.
Skunk cabbage, fiddlehead, shad bush, trillium, skullcap,
fireweed, goldenrod, swampberry, hackmatack,
fir.

Twenty thousand years ago: Ice pack weighing
heavy on earth's crust. Glacier thaw receding, lifting,
leaving behind rock
rubble, limestone drift,
granite ledge and groundwater
moving unseen below, squeezing
between cracks, through soil to
run and rise and fall again.

One watershed:
Carry on,
Carry on.

Linda Buckmaster

coyote books

2006-08-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Jim Koller has re-energized his Coyote Books publishing with a wonderful new series of pamphlets, including work by Philip Whalen (above), Joanne Kyger, Giuseppe Moretti, Duncan Macnaughton, Tom Rawoth, Koller himself, and a number of others. Check out the full list of Coyote publications on the new website:
www.coyotesjournal.com

little dog booksigning

2006-08-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

Little Dog at the Little Dog

Please join us for a publishing party for Little Dog, a new book for children by Brunswick native Lisa Jahn-Clough, co sponsored by the Little Dog Coffee Shop and Gulf of Maine Books, at the Little Dog Coffee Shop (87 Maine Street, Brunswick)Saturday, August 26, at 4 PM.
Lisa Jahn-Clough will be on hand to sign Little Dog, as well as a selection of her previous books. Little Dogs are welcome!

John Tagliabue

2006-07-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a poem by our wonderful friend, poet/teacher John Tagliabue, who passed away recently, written about a place we love very much:

All in the village of Gubbio have
dreamt of this before Christmas 2002

The wolf of Gubbio
was purring as if it were a cat,
it was hiding in the dark as if it were a bat,
its heart was beating like yours and like that
of St. Francis. The delicate drumming was heard
all over. I can tell by the way you read this
that you heard it and I hear your heart
beating very very close to mine.

The lamb dreamt near the wolf.

poem for america, july 4

2006-07-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

from Saadi Youssef: America,America
translated by Khaled Mattawa

I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island
and John Silver's parrot and the balconies of New Orleans.
I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and
Abraham Lincoln's dogs.
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia
tobacco.
But I am not American.
Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the
Stone Age?
I need neither oil nor America herself, neither the elephant
nor the donkey.
Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and
this wooden bridge.
I need neither your golden gate nor your skyscrapers.
I need the village, not New York.
Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier
armed to the teeth?
Why did you come all the way to distant Basra, where fish
used to swim by our doorsteps?
I only have these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water
lilies.
Leave me alone, soldier.
Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.
Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.
Take your roaring iron birds and your Tomahawk missles, I
am not your foe.
I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.
Leave me to my curse.
I do not need your day of doom.

Thomas Buckley list

2006-07-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

In January, 2004, jerks burned down my wife's and my house for the fun of it (the first of ten fires they started - they're doing 10-12 in federal prison now) We'd lived there 20 years and somewhere between two and three thousand books were burnt up. They were mostly mine because Jorunn, my wife, had most of hers in her Bowdoin College office. I had some other stashes, and good friends sent books, sometimes cartons ( special thanks to John Balaban, Peter Nabokov and the extraordinarily generous Will Devlin) and I started buying books with the insurance money. The big question has been: should I replace lost favorites or build a new library of new books? I've replaced a few essentials (Sailing Alone Around the World, Larousse Dictionairre Compact, The Platform Sutra) but have mostly bought new things that I had never read.
Today I looked around and chose five, one (sic.) from each of five categories. This means leaving some important categories out - maritime history, religious texts, art books, reference. Here's what I've ended up with - books I think are essential, relatively new reading:

Poetry: Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996) - the only replacement copy on the list (Maybe the first and so far only North American Buddhist Sutra)
Fiction: A tie (who says 5 is always 5?): William Kotzwinkle, The Bear Went Over the Mountain (1996) (har de har) and Chang rae Lee, A Gesture Life (1999) (oh boo hoo)
General non-fiction: E P Thompson, Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (1993) (Discover your inner Muggletonian)
Cultural anthropology ( my field) : Carol Delaney , Abraham on Trial: The social legacy of Biblical Myth (I always suspected Freud didn't get Oedipus quite right)
American Indian Studies (my specialty) Daniel K Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2006) Nothing entirely new here, but a fine synthesis)

There you have it. Read these books, drink plenty of water, get enough sleep, be astonished once in awhile, and you'll probably reach enlightenment as soon as anyone else.

Tim Buckley

store bumpersticker

2006-06-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

Anticipating the opening of a Borders Books here in Brunswick later this year, we have printed a bumpersticker advertising our new organization. Blue ink on white, the sticker reads "Booksellers Without Borders". If you would like a sticker, come by the store, or drop us a line and we will mail you one. (we do ask a $2 donation for mail orders)
What next? A Gulf of Maine Borders Patrol? Green cards for loyal customers?
Throw off your chains, and shop independent!
Ignore all Borders!

Iraqi Poetry Today

2006-05-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

Poet and Iraq war veteran Brian Turner read from his remarkable book, Here, Bullet, poems from his experience of war, at Bowdoin College this spring. I asked him if he had read any contemporary Iraqi poets, and he recommended Iraqi Poetry Today, which we now have in stock. Here are a few pieces:

from section 10 of Every Morning the War gets Up from Sleep
by Fadhil al Azzawi

This is war then: All is well.
The missiles bomb the cities and the airplanes bid the clouds farewell.
It is nothing but a corpse which grows and stretches
Between Kirkuk and Isfahan
Between Baghdad and Qum,
Between Irbil and Tehran,
Between time and time,
Between blood and blood.
All is well.
Except for this spring approaching from afar.
Except for those birds flying between one front and another,
Except for those who wait their death in silence,
Except for this mother whose cries I can hear from afar.
Ah! I saw eyes glowing amidst the branches,
A monster running on a sea-coast
Gliding down from my heart.

Peace to you, O Iraq!
Peace to springtime, coming forth from the fissures of the earth!
Peace to Baghdad, redeemer and redeemed!
Beace to Basra, to its burnt palm-trees!
Peace to Kirkuk, to its red sky!
Peace to Amara, to its marshes mined with dynamite!
Peace to the fourteen provinces!
Thus does the war get up from sleep.
A man takes it to a hillock
and leaves it in History.
Then he wipes away his tears with a rose
Which he hurls at a hazel bird,
Which rises up from its ashes
And soars far away.

and fromJigerkhwen (Sheikh Mus Hasan Muhamad)

I am the Voice

I am the voice of the mountainside
I am the hammer in the laborer's hand
I am the sickle in the peasant's hand
I am the enemy of reactionaries
I am the vanguard of progressives
I am the colleague of the oppressed, whomever or wherever
I am the opponent of the opressor, whether near or far
I am the comrade of the peshmerge, and of revolution
I am the voice of the workers, whether in London or Paris
I am the sympathizer of the students, whether in Istanbul or Tabriz
I am the hand of the martyr
I am the voice of the Kurdish people
I am a Kurdish revolutionary
I refuse to yield to the likes of Al-Jamail, Shimon and Hitler
I refuse to bow to arms merchants and warmongers
I am a fighter like Che Guevara
I am a comrade of Ho Chi Minh
I am a supporter of the Tudeh, whether in Awaz or Tehran
I am a patriot and militiaman, like Salvador Allende
I am a protector of my people lie Gandhi or Nehru of India
In the Congo, I am the voice of Lumumba
In Chile I am Neruda
I am Castro in Cuba
I am the voice of Kebuchi in Jerusalem
I am the voice of Makarios in Cyprus
I am the voice of Newab and Gorki
I am the voice of Martin Luther King among American Negroes
I am the voice of Jegerkhwen, Mahmoud Darwish, and Lorca

and from Sadiq al-Saygh

Sanctions

On the street today, I sold
A bag heavy with gods
out of sheer hunger.

Iraqi Poetry Today, 288 pages, 40 poets.
We also have individual books by three poets in this anthology: S'adi Yusuf, Dunya Mikhail, and Fadhil al-Azzawi.

two poets, from the mountains, Henry Braun and Wang Wei

2006-05-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

This week we received two new books of poems from mountain hermitages: Loyalty - New and Selected poems by Henry Braun, from Off the Grid Press, and The selected Poems of Wang Wei, translated by David Hinton, from New Directions Press.

Here's Henry Braun:

A Certain Presence

Names of places decay.
Letters drop as if tongues were
a mountain range they tire of climbing.
Ranges of mountains, and the words
for whole countries soften
or harden, showing bone.
We try a new name for the inlet
where the huge rock holds its position
and the old tide turns.
Who we are is blurred.
Only our presence is certain
over the ground and water we keep
naming.

and Wang Wei:

Rain On and On at My Wheel-Rim River Farm

Rain on and on in these empty forests - smoldering cookfires
steam goosefoot and simmer millet for farmers in eastern fields.

A snowy egret takes flight across flooded farmland vast and silent.
Yellow orioles sing deep among summer trees thick with shadow.

Perfecting mountain tranquility, I watch flaring blossoms fade,
and my fast pure beneath pines, pick dew-graced mallow greens.

Done struggling for a place in that human realm,I'm just this
old- timer of the wilds. So why are these seagulls still suspicious?

new Jaime de Angulo books

2006-05-14T06:42:00.001-07:00

Stefan Hyner, German poet/translator/editor, has just put together a "collected poems" of Jaime de Angulo, published by La Alameda Press in paperback. Last year saw the publication of Rolling in the Ditches with Shamans: Jaime de Angulo and the Professionalization of American Anthropology, from the University of Wisconsin Press. For many of us, the first Jaime book was Indian Tales, now back in print from Heyday Books. Also, two from City Lights: Indians in Overalls, and Jaime in Taos, and from Bob Callahan's Turtle Island Press- The Jaime de Angulo Reader. Peter Garland published The Music of the Indians of Northern California, and Jaime's daughter Gui Mayo de Angulo wrote and published The Old Coyote of Big Sur: The Life of Jaime de Angulo.

Steve Dickison booklist

2006-05-12T18:09:00.001-07:00

Steve Dickison, Director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives, San Francisco State University, sent a list of "four books I'm waiting for".

Every Goodbye Ain't Gone (60's - 70's innovative Black poets anthology) edited by Aldon Nielsen and Lauri Raney, University of Alabama Press

Steve Lacy Conversations, edited by Jason Weiss, Duke Univ. Press (Sept. 06)

Amiri Baraka's next book of music writings, announced years ago

Homer's Secret Iliad The Epic of the Night Skies Decoded, Florence and Kenneth Wood (o.p. - John Murray U.K. - an affordable US edition would be nice)

Reading The World

2006-05-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

Again this year, Gulf of Maine Books is one of 125 bookstores across the country participating in the Reading The World month, highlighting international literature and the publishing of translations here in the United States. You can learn more about this program, and about the chosen books, at www.readingtheworld.org .
The books we have chosen to feature are:
Gate of the Sun Elias Khoury Lebanon
The Mountain Poems Meng Hao-jan China
Things in the Night Mati Unt Estonia
Europeana Patrik Ourednik Czech Republic
Selected Poems Czeslaw Milosz Poland
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Spain
Gimpel the Fool Isaac Bashevis Singer Poland
The Nimrod Flipout Etgar Keret Israel
Monologue of A Dog Wislawa Szymborske Poland
A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz Israel
Thebes At War Naguib Mahfouz Egypt
Borkman's Point Hakan Nesser Sweden
Massacre River Rene Philoctete Haiti
Midnight's Gate Bei Dao China
Memed, My Hawk Yashar Kemal Turkey
Dirty Snow Georges Simenon Belgium
Three Horses Erri De Luca Italy
Stalemate Icchokas Meras Lithuania
Voices from Chernobyl Svetlana Alexievich Ukraine
The Noodle Maker Ma Jian China

new Doug Peacock - The Essential Grizzly

2006-04-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

We have just received The Essential Grizzly, by Doug and Andrea Peacock. Also this week we received Grizzlies and Grizzled Old Men - A Tribute to those who fought to save The Great Bear - by Mike Lapinski (and why is the title in the past tense?) This book has a chapter on Doug Peacock, as well as chapters on the Craighead brothers, Chuck Jonkel and a number of others. We do also have Doug Peacock's earlier books The Grizzly Years and Walking It Off.

maggie brown - hunting and eating list

2006-04-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Maggie Brown sent this booklist on "hunting and eating, meat and life, death and food":

Gary Snyder Practice of the Wild "Everyone who ever lived took the lives of other animals, pulled plants, plucked fruit, and ate. Primary people have had their own ways of trying to understand the precept of nonharming. They knew that taking life required gratitude and care. There is no death that is not somebody's food, no life that is not somebody's death...We too will be offerings - we are all edible."

Jose Ortega y Gassett Meditations on Hunting
"Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscience when faced with the death he is about to inflict on the enchanting animal. He does not have the final and firm conviction that his conduct is correct. But neither, it should be understood, is he certain of the opposite."

Paul Shepard Traces of an Omnivore
"...there is no escape from the reality that life feeds by death-dealing (and its lesson in death-receiving). The way "out" of the dilemma is into it,...You cannot sit out the game, but must personally play or hide from it."

David Peterson Heartsblood. Hunting, Spirituality and Wilderness in America
"While hunting's critics often deride the activity as a barbaric anachronism - a filthy red remnant from our distant savage past - human ecology counters that since we evolved via hunting, and remain physically, mentally, and emotionally (genetically) exactly as we were then, to hunt is to be human."

Sandor Katz Wild Fermentation
"Wild fermentation is a way of incorporating the wild into your body, becoming one with the natural world. Wild foods, microbial cultures included, possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. The microorganisms are everywhere, and the techniques for fermenting them are simple and flexible."

booklist from Jeffrey Cramer, of the Thoreau Institute

2006-04-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Cramer, curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, sends this booklist:
As a Thoreauvian and editor of Thoreau's works I must put Walden at the top of my list. There is no book like it and its relevence to the world we live in today is uncanny. and the solutions it offers to our way of life are as correct as they were 150 years ago, if we only had the ability to listen.
No one is writing better prose today than Wendell Berry, so I must put his A Place On Earth on the list, although I have an urge to cheat and list all of the titles in his Port William cycle.
Melville's Moby Dick is still the ultimate novel for me, adventurous both in story and in style, and a book to which I must return every few years.
Whitman's Leaves of Grass because it is Whitman and is Leaves of Grass.
And finally Edward Abbey's Down the River because we need to be able to laugh about ourselves.

nanao sakaki and tetsuo nagasawa

2006-04-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

John Suiter, author of Poets On The Peaks - Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades, is in Japan, researching his next book, a biography of Gary Snyder. He has heard poetry readings by Nanao Sakaki and Tetsuo Nagasawa, both of whom have spent long periods of time on Suwanose Island, an island community visited by gary Snyder in the 1960s. Tetsuo still lives there, working as a commercial fisherman.
Tetsuo has a new book out, Stumbling Earth, from Flying Books. The poems are in Japanese, with some English translations, and an introduction by Gary Snyder, and we have just sent for copies. (let us know if you want to reserve a copy)
Here is a sample:
The tree eats the mist.
It eats the moon and the faint wind
It eats of course the lunatic storm and the peaceful cloud
It eats a spoonful of soil that a snail sits down on
And the soft death of the ocean on the table
And the tree, leaning on the sky,
Falls asleep for the moment.

John asked Nanao when he would have a new book, and Nanao said " First I have to write a poem. Not so easy! Toooo lazy!"

book list from martin murie

2006-04-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

Martin Murie sent this list of "some good books":

Michael Robinson Predatory Bureaucracy, The Extermination of Wolves and the transformation of the West
where animals, bureaucrats , naturalists, ranchers, varmentalists together make history. stories linked to stories. seriously researched. Four stars.

Eric Foner and Joshua Brown Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction

Michael Pyle Walking the High Ridge - Life as a Field Trip
includes a very short excerpt of his "novel in perpetual progress" Maddalena Mountain, where the lead is played by a butterfly. Pyle is an entomologist focusing on Lepidoptera, and many other critters.

Jack Turner The Abstract Wild Opens with this epigraph from Robinson Jeffers " A little too abstract, a little too wise/ it is time for us to kiss the Earth again"

Jozef Keulartz The Struggle for Nature
Keulartz writes about the recovery of "nature" in Holland. Amusing tales of cock-eyed programs.

poem by Aharon Shabtai

2006-04-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

Easter today, and a poem by Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, from his collection J'Accuse:

Rosh Hashanah

Even after the murder
of the child Muhammad on Rosh HaShana
the paper didn't go black.
In the same water in which the snipers
wash their uniforms
I prepare my pasta,
and over it pour
olive oil in which I've browned
pine nuts,
which I cooked for two minutes with dried tomatoes,
crushed garlic, and a tablespoon of basil.
As I eat, the learned minister of foreign afairs
and public security
appears on the screen,
and when he's done
I write this poem.
For that's how it's always been -
the murderers murder,
the intellectuals make it palatable,
and the poet sings.

translation by Peter Cole, from the Hebrew