Bottom Dog Press, Inc.          

Inside the Flow

Poems

Nancy Dunham

Nancy Dunham's descriptions are often breathtaking: “I see a bird above me, / wings spread wide and holding on to air / like swimmers in the lake might hold on to water.” Dunham’s Ohio landscape includes jazz clubs and nuclear power plants; fruit trees and train tracks; the ever-present, enduring lake;  and at least one mirrored bar room where “everything about the room is an illusion, / and everything about the room is real.” ~Paula J. Lambert, author of How to See the World: Poems

In Nancy Dunham’s poetry, there is a sense of awe and an understanding of both the immediacy, distance, and power of nature. The poet herself is an outgrowth of that feeling. Every line sings with a heartbeat rhythm that is uniquely her. ~Joel D. Rudinger, author of Lost and Found in Alaska: Memoirs



Nancy Dunham

Lost and Found

in Alaska

Memoirs

by Joel D. Rudinger

A vivid and exciting memoir of the 1960s in Alaska, when times were tough and life was revealing itself to a young man at the University of Alaska.

Lost and Found in Alaska is packed as full as a camp duffel bag on a forty-day hunting trek through the Alaskan Range, as challenging, yet satisfying, as a graduate instructor’s first day of class. The real-life characters in this tale could have sprung from the imagination of Jack London: Fairbanks Annie, Hal (who wept when he heard “Danny Boy”), the beautiful half–native Bobbi, who stole this young man’s heart, or the odd women who would lock a fellow in their basement. Even an appearance by a ghostly canine.And what North wilderness saga would be complete without hot apple pie and coffee, disorienting twenty-four-hour nights, minus eighty-degree winds, gigantic mosquitoes attacking hardy gandy dancers, and a disastrous earthquake? Like most of life’s difficult times, however, the author learns that even the most mundane acts, such as sorting mail or shoveling manure at a dairy farm can present a worthwhile lecture. If a college degree takes four years, Joel Rudinger’s four years in Alaska advanced his education exponentially in hard-knock lessons and moments of spirituality: “What was that brilliant micro-second visible flicker of light? I was never religious, but I felt that this was a profound spiritual moment. I now and forever would be a part of this wild land.” ~Christina Lovin, author of Echo: Poems

[Signed copies]

 [Signed copies]

Hear Larry reading three of the poems here.

 Trophy Kill 

 by

R. J. Norgard

Sidney Reed was Alaska’s top P.I. until the tragic death of his wife Molly. After nine months living in self-imposed retirement, he meets a beautiful woman who offers him a handsome reward to follow her fiancé late at night. Is this his chance to put the broken pieces of his life back together or will he learn that nothing in Alaska or life is ever simple? Sidney plunges into a two-year-old mystery of a big-game hunt in the wilds of western Alaska that went terribly wrong. Trophy Kill is the first in a bold new series of Alaskan mysteries featuring Anchorage P.I. Sidney Reed.
 

"Alaska's rugged unforgiving terrain, covered early and late with 'termination dust' (snow) and populated with hard-drinking men and ladies whose dresses are always inching up their thighs keeps the reader turning pages in R. J. Norgard's psychological thriller Trophy Kill. But it’s detective Sidney Reed’s coming to grips with his own trauma that makes this more than a detective’s who-done-it and how book. Norgard’s subtle and lightly-placed clues are the kind a reader long remembers when the puzzle pieces finally fit." ~Joseph G. Anthony, author of A Wounded Snake.

 R. J. Norgard

Symphonia Judaica: Jewish Symphony and Other Poems
by Joel Rudinger

Joel Rudinger’s poems are intimate, capturing life’s adventures and everyday details that give meaning to him and to us....He brings full breadth and depth of his life into these pages. He has pushed himself into experiences that cut away all comfort, physical and psychological. We should rejoice that he has returned from these journeys to share what he has seen and heard and learned. In these poems we witness an old soul made anew. ~Kurt Landefeld, author of Jack's Memoirs

Symphonia Judaica is crafted from poems that are dense with rich language, yet these are not fragile verses. These are poems of weft—skillfully woven to bear the heft of the worlds they contain. Here is the epic of God’s chosen people, from creation to the single flame of a mother’s memorial candle (“Symphonia Judaica”), in juxtaposition with ars poetica and poems of old loves, of remembered places and abject placelessness, where “…everything, you recognize, is something else.”     ~ Christina Lovin, author of A Stirring in the Dark

978-1-93396498-0    $15.00

Heart Murmurs: Poems

by John Vanek

  “With humor, sympathy, and an eye for what makes us most human, John Vanek offers us a far-ranging view of life that feels hard-earned and complete.”  —Elton Glaser, author of Here and Hereafter.

 “John Vanek’s poetry displays an admirable range of subject matter and style.  He charms the reader with imagery and wry humor. Heart Murmurs is a very welcome collection from a confident, compelling poet."  —Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables.   

 “What I like most about the poems in John Vanek’s first collection is his commitment to the poetics of clarity.  Things are said straight in these poems, with careful attention to illuminating what the poet calls ‘a shelter for my shifting life,’ by which he means our lives as well.”  —Bruce Weigl, author of Song of Napalm

978-1933964-27-0   124 pgs.  $15.00

Words Walk

Poems

by Ronald M. Ruble

"In Ronald Ruble’s new book, Words Walk, we travel with the author through a life of caring: for family and friendships, for Nature and others, and especially for the art of writing. He is a mature writer who shares the tender and the humorous, those things that pass away and those that last. These poems have earned a place in your mind and heart."
—Larry Smith, author of Each Moment All: Poems

“Ron Ruble’s poetry reverberates with echoes of the playwright whose characters are suspended between word and deed.”
—Rob Smith, author of Two Hundred Fifty-six Zones of Gray

168 pgs.  $15

The Wonderful Stupid Man

Stories

by Allen Frost

Allen Frost's sixth book.

"You will identify so completely and on such a personal level with Allen Frost that you may resent any characterization of the work as a fiction as it walks you through, sentence after glorious unexplained sentence, often to places that are left hanging in air, implying their trust in you to complete them.
Frost is indeed traveling here in the company of kings you may or may not recognize in the interactive sessions of a logic that derives as sweetly from a concept of unified physics as it does from the image of a woman ultimately liberated by snails she endeavors to teach."  —Tom Kryss, author of The Search for the Reason Why:
New and Selected Poems

A Poetic Journey: Poems

by Robert A. Reynolds



9781933964478  86 pgs.  18 Illustrations by the author

The Mermaid Translation

                         Bird Dog Publishing Series 

   140 pages  $16.00

Dogs and Other Poems

Paul S. Piper

These are fine poems of Nature, place, and community. Paul S. Piper is an intuitive poet with a Zen sense of language and wonder.
 
"In Paul Piper?s newest collection of poems, Dog, like a bodhisattva, leads the narrator and reader to a place that glistens with wonder and humor.
-Charles Luckmann
"Powerful poetry here by Paul Piper?mystical and whimsical. These dog poems are fun yet meaty?definitely intellectual bones to gnaw on."
-Tim Pilgrim

                                               978-1-93396445-4 80 pages  $15.00

Home Recordings

Allen Frost

Allen Frost is a master wizard of making the commonplace extraordinary.
These tales and poems of wonder by Allen Frost
connect us with the world, our feelings, our families,
and our private selves.

This is his fourth book.
His OHIO TRIO: FICTIONS appeared in 2001 
followed by BOWL OF WATER written between 1989-2002, & ANOTHER LIFE: COLLECTED POEMS 2007

Frost is much admired by fellow writers for his sheer imaginative whimsy
his original and resonant imagery. He provides the 16 drawings in the book.
Allen collects old recordings.

ISBN- 9781933964249   124 pgs. : $14.00


 Lake Effect: Poems
 
Laura Treacy Bentley

"Everywhere I look these days no poetry is being written. There is a lot of pretend poetry, but nothing really this fine. With this book it makes it very easy for me to say: Laura Bentley, I dub thee poet supreme.”       - Ray Bradbury

Laura’s love of the people and landscapes of West Virginia, western Maryland, and Ireland is evident in her work. From earth to sky, this collection merges a lake effect of meditations that creates its own weather.

"Laura Bentley's eye is drawn to what others often overlook or refuse to examine, the detritus and back rooms and alleyways of a frightening and frightened world. Here are portraits of the broken and the maimed; here are narratives of hopelessness and redemption; here are strong lyric engagements with landscape; and here is the solace of geological time. This book charts a pilgrim's journey in language with growing assurance and control. It is a journey already rich with achievement."    - Paula Meehan

                 978-1-933964-05-7   108 pgs. $14.00

Two Hundred Fifty-six
Zones of Gray

by Rob Smith

Inspired by nature in his thoughtful and plain-spoken poems, Rob Smith reminisces and reflects on life, death, and the passage of time in 256 Zones of Gray. He takes us "Along the Shore," and we see barren trees through his eyes when the sky threaded/a blue ribbon between the trunks and a postcard moment in "Pittsburgh" when colors sliding back into the rivers/define the Point. Smith’s words often give us hope, a lighted window on the edge of color.”      - Laura Treacy Bentley, author of Lake Effect: Poems

978-1933964-16-4 100 pgs. $14.00

Second Story Woman
A Memoir of Second Chances

by Carole Calladine

 “In Second Story Woman Carole Calladine takes the reader along on her journey of self-discovery. Her authentic voice comes through as she comes to terms with the balance between her professional responsibilities and her need for a creative life. This strong memoir will speak to anyone charting life past 50.” – Doris Larson, founder of “A Writing Retreat: In the Company of Women”

 “Likeable and candid, Calladine writes a lively account of her quest for second chances—while she becomes a 'second—story woman.'” —Akron Beacon Journal.

A remarkable book of dealing with life's turnings as the author confronts her mid-life passage and diagnosis for Type 2 diabetes at the same time.

978-1-933964-12-6    232 pages  $15.00

 

Paul Laurence Dunbar Series                       

Dunbar: Sons andDaughters

Epicurus’ Dominion

Deborah EllenStokes

&

Galileo’s Suns

Herbert Woodward Martin

Escape to the Promised Land: Poems

Herbert Woodward Martin

On the Flyleaf: Poems

Herbert Woodward Martin

An Unmistakable Shade of Red

& The Obama Chronicles

Mary E. Weems

I Reckon: Haiku and Haibun.

Francis Wesley Alexander

Francis "Wes" Alexander

the warm apartment

a thick layer of snow

on the mailbox

 *     *     *

Veteran’s Home

stopping for a family of geese

to cross the road



On the Flyleaf
Poems

Herbert Woodward Martin

The ingenious conversational mode of On the Flyleaf  yields many variations of style and mood, yet Herb Martin’s wit and wonder shine through them all. Martin is as generous as any poet I know, and this book is exacting, troubling, and exhilarating in its tracings of the human predicaments that force us to “believe in the catastrophe of love.”   ~Jeff  Gundy author of  Spoken Among the Trees

 It isn't easy to write with a gentle voice that's also     stiletto sharp, but Herb Martin has done it here.  He is a national treasure.  On the Flyleaf is filled with gems, ones you'll want to share with loved ones.  ~Ralph Keyes, author of The Courage to Write

 "Martin once again shows his virtuosity as a poet with a wonderfully tuned ear and a command of the rhythmic line....The poems throughout show the spirit of a poet at work with his losses and loves, and the result is a book of deeply human and poetical power." ~Len Roberts

"If poetry has a physical shape on the page, then it has a spiritual body as well. It is from this place Herb Martin writes, in his intricate, narrative, and lyrical way like no one else showing our hard humanity held up against the weather of heaven." ~Grace Cavalieri




An Unmistakable Shade of Red 

& The Obama Chronicles

An Unmistakable Shade of Red is the bomb. I found so many moments, so many moods, so many insights. Yours is the voice of compassion, of elegant rage. It is country but urban-wise. -Lamont B. Steptoe

Here is a voice of America singing, Mary E. Weems is a poet laureate of Cleveland Heights, but also of Ohio, the Midwest, and America. Her relentless journeys into the truth of experience make her a spokesperson for us all. As Patricia smith says, "In this deftly crafted collection--defiantly rooted in the real world--Mary Weems' stanzas manage to be both tight and explosive, concise and wildly lyrical. She brings an enviable experience to the page, an experience fueled by unerring focus and a knowledge of just what it takes to jolt a reader out of complacency."