Alternating Current’s: Current Titles.

Alternating Current’s: Current Titles.

The local “Alternating Current´ press has two new poetry titles out by two well-known small press poets Timothy Gager and B.Z. Niditch.

Gager, the cofounder of the Somerville News Writers Festival, and the author of a number of poetry and fiction titles, has a new poetry collection released “ These Poems Are Not Pink Clouds.” Gager’s poetry has a signature mixture of humor, irony, and angst, tinged with a healthy dose of Bukowski-like fatalism. In his poem “Harvard Square” Gager pays homage to the bohemian square of the past, as opposed to the less romantic realities of the present day. Here Gager uses a peasant dress an old girlfriend wears to evoke a time and a place when his world was unjaded and fresh:

“ but when
I was sixteen
the used clothing store
existed right there
and a beaded dress
made you more
beautiful than
a haunted gypsy,
made me kiss you
when you exited
the changing room
deciding whether
I should either
live or die forever”

In B.Z. Niditch’s “Portraits” Niditch presents a series of short poems that capture, with an economy of words, a wide variety of writers and artists. “Bukowski” captures the down-at-the-heels, gone-to-seed; milieu the writer Charles Bukowski thrived and wrote in:

“ Wild wordsmith
in your great spaces
of L.A horror’s beauty
will always come back
in a drinking mirror…

effacing barracks of chaos—
along peppered rail yards
tearing up your
daybreak flesh.”

Both books are mini-digest sized, with compelling front cover artwork. These titles are welcome additions and editions to the growing Alternating Current list of publications.

To order these and other books go to:

http://alt-current.com

Alternating Current
PO BOX 398058
Cambridge, Ma.
02139