Introducing: Maverick Duck Press

Somehow I totally missed an email from Maverick Duck publisher Kendall A. Bell in the madness before the new feed was installed. (Thanks for the friendly reminder!) Let me make it up to you all by telling you about this press, which has now been added to the sidebar.

The most recent release is Chariots of Flame by J. Michael Wahlgren.

J. Michael Wahlgren's Chariots of Flame is like a ripe berry: there's a lot of juice packed into such a small package. The variety of poems in the chapbook is astonishing. Wahlgren is equally adept at the short poem, as in "Notes," and the longer lines of "Arms." Read in one sitting the collection ebbs and flows smoothly, but you could be forgiven for stopping and chewing some of the meatier poems. "Is it safe to say I lost my way" begins one of those, entitled "August Deluge." But Wahlgren doesn't lose his way. His small collection moves like a speed-drunk road trip. And when he reaches the end with the powerful "Contradiction" you understand that the journey has been a spiritual quest, like all speed-drunk trips. "I write/as a way to behave," Wahlgren says, and I can't remember a more succinct reason for the quest.

--Corey Mesler, author of Some Identity Problems

Also coming soon...Lauren Reynolds' Worshipfully and other poems (March 2008), and an as-yet untitled chap by Caitlin Crowley (April 2008).

Bell also edits the companion online journal Chantarelle's Notebook.