Books
Arrows may not center when in edit mode. Once site is published, the arrow will be centered on the tab
When the site is published, this border and note will not show up.
Drag & drop your tab 1 content here
|
An Advent Calendar: The Mockingbird TransformationsThis third incarnation of An Advent Calendar is a beautifully executed, free-standing wirebound tent, printed in four-color process. The cover is a reproduction of Arthur Singer's "The Mockingbirds." Singer was a member of the secret "Ghost Army" of World War II, a tactical deception unit known officially as The 23rd Headquarters– an eleven-hundred-man force of artists using inflatable tanks, airplanes, sound trucks, "spoof radio" transmissions and pretense to outwit Hitler's forces. Janik's clever mockingbird "voices" thirty-seven species. The book is illustrated with international avian stamps. [The 1977 version (illustrated by R.L.Simmons) won a chapbook competition published by The Grassfield Press, Chicago, and sponsored by the Illinois Arts Council.]
|
|
FuseAndrei Codrescu wrote of Fuse, "This is a magical work driven by the elemental geography of a continent still in the grips of geological, political, and psychological definition. Ms. Janik has invented a poetry of the American psyche here that is as chilling as it is intense and beautiful." One of five writers from the United States invited on a literary research trip to Cuba in 1984, Janik composed this collection upon her return. It juxtaposes the eroded and windswept terrain of the American Southwest with the bleak political landscape of U.S.-Cuba relations since 1959. Janik laments losses suffered by families on both sides, and focuses on the U.S.-Cuba wound: Sliver [we] cannot pull. That will not work itself out. Each poem corresponds to the image of a worked leather hide (tapiz) by Havana artist Frank Leon. In this edition, photographs of the tapices are printed facing the appropriate poem; all of Leon's pieces are from his 1985 exhibit "Encuentre entre Dos Mundos" ("Encounter Between Two Worlds"). Following the poems, Janik traces a history of the tapiz as an evolved artform.
|
|
Territorial Waters : the prison chronicleBased on an historical figure, convicted in 1720 Jamaica. Incarcerated, pregnant, sentenced to hang immediately upon giving birth: discovering herself in unconventional circumstances, the spectrum of emotions experienced by the speaker in Territorial Waters is indeed indicative of an unconventional woman: one who refuses to be defined by convention -or by anything at all. The collection's three Trimesters parallel the speaker's pregnancy, and reveal her balancing act as she remains wary and alert to her reality. Her attitude is established on the first page as she cites, in the dedication, an eyewitness to the devastating volcanic eruptions and tsunamis of Krakatoa: "The world is our relentless adversary, rarely outwitted, never tiring." "Blue Garden," the concluding poem, is dedicated to her daughter. It underscores the speaker's persistence, resilience, and defiance– despite her immanent passing: My Blue Girl Climber, grow in every possible direction. Give us amazing visions abandoning all lines like the West fence dead-ending. Surpass it, taking instead Jacob's Ladder aspiring to the 7 or 9 blue levels of Heaven.
|
|
Blue GardenThis is a limited letterpress edition (printed by Rohner Press, Chicago) of the final poem in Territorial Waters. It is executed on handcrafted, deckle-edge paper, and describes a timely succession of blooms. Beginning with a snowbound early Spring and advancing to the abundance of Summer, it shifts to an Autumnal surge of growth prior to inevitable Winter. The writer opens by celebrating her daughter: "Prize hybrid appearing from nowhere / in the mayhem of the Haarlem Tulip Wars," and closes with the garden's message to her, signaling our only valid life-giving path: My Blue Girl Climber, grow in every possible direction. Give us amazing visions abandoning all lines like the West fence dead-ending. Surpass it, taking instead Jacob's Ladder aspiring to the 7 or 9 blue levels of heaven.
|
|
Lucky Bean & The Secret Elephant SocietyThe Hindu deity Ganesh forms the core of this collection. In elephant-headed human form, he is recognized globally as the beneficent entity assisting our species through its myriad travails. Seventeen reproductions of the figure are interspersed throughout the fifty poems and narratives. The opening piece finds Ganesh in conversation with Vyasa, who is a scholar, writer, and one of the Immortals. Vyasa has just urged Ganesh to pause in his transcription of the world-narrative text known as the Mahabharata. Vyasa now requests that Ganesh fulfill a mission: the deity will manifest on Earth and redeem the stolen Su-Asti-ka. This sign, which has appeared all over the planet in a profusion of forms for the past fourteen thousand years, symbolizes, among other things, “Life and Consciousness to the Benefit of All Beings.” The sacredness of the term is evidenced in its three roots: su, meaning “well” or “good;” asti, indicating “being;” and ka, signifying “symbol.” To accomplish the task of redemption, Vyasa proposes that Ganesh take on the form of teeny elephants embedded inside minuscule red beans— red beans themselves being symbols of great luck and fortune—and distribute himself over the planet. Because the central definition of Su-Asti-Ka is synonymous with the inherent meaning of “Ganesh,” the deity will literally seed the globe with stories, joys, and exuberant adventures running the gamut of emotions and experiences. Thus, Vyasa asserts, Ganesh will succeed in restoring the original healing, transformative meaning to the stolen symbol. However, Ganesh discovers that humans are perplexed when confronted by the concept. “Elephants in beans!! Wonder what they’ve really got in there?!” —says one observer in a Delhi airport gift shop. "Twelve elephants? Fifty elephants? In a bean?!?" The responses to the elephants-in-a-bean proposition comprise the bemused reflections of each persnickety speaker— and, as one will discover, many speculative readers. Lucky Bean provides an often humorous glimpse of the sundry and simultaneous realities which humans inhabit. In one notable story, we learn that Walt Disney himself owned a "Lucky Bean," and his adventure with it is also revealed in these pages.
|
|
No Dancing / No Acts of DancingCalamity Jane riding the Wild West. Mama Leone smiling down from a poster on Boston's MTA ("When you can't eat anymore...DANCE!"). Women who wear The Red Shoes. This collection is filled with rebels who refuse to comply with the "NO!" dictates of the world. The author appropriated the book's title, in fact, from a red-crayoned, makeshift-piece-of-cardboard sign taped to the wall over a jukebox in the Greyhound Bus station in Paducah, Kentucky. Virtually spiraling and rising above all commands to the negative, the poet moves on. "When your legs fall asleep," her retort admonishes, "I will be dancing / on the heads of your pins and needles."
|
|
The Disaster ExpertIntroduced by a startling cover image of Iowa City's infamous "Black Angel," the collection extends the title's reference-- naming the spectrum of jobs from first responders to restoration specialists– to the occasions of our daily skirmishes, battles, and literal disasters. Although written in 1967-8 and published in 1971, many lines contain insights both ominous and prescient: "We are past the limits of the ice sheets, / down the last route of migrations." For Janik, however, her wary eye is balanced as the "body dances / through whatever songs / or hours or years it passes."
|
|
Red ShoesThe dedication reads "to dancers and travelers." Among those named are both Moira Shearer– ballerina and lead in the 1948 film "The Red Shoes," and St. Christopher– patron saint of trail blazers. Red Shoes celebrates exuberance in movement, addressing transformative occasions and the innumerable fabulous (from Janik's perspective) experiences the planet offers. The ordinary, in these poems, becomes extraordinary. And it never ends. "This," Janik asserts in closing the title poem, "is a continuing story."
|
Drag & drop your tab 2 content here
|
too much butter! peckish tales of food & romance (second edition) Originally chosen by Rosellen Brown for a fiction award sponsored and published by Sou'wester magazine (Southern Illinois University), too much butter! is a combo plate serving up several two-ingredient occasions: Food + Romance. "Food and Romance— what could go wrong?" a character asks. Praise from none other than Sally Lightfoot says it all: "Reading too much butter! is like experiencing your first grown-up grilled cheese!"
|
|
too much butter! peckish tales of food & romance (first edition) Originally chosen by Rosellen Brown for a fiction award sponsored and published by Sou'wester magazine (Southern Illinois University), too much butter! is a combo plate serving up several two-ingredient occasions: Food + Romance. "Food and Romance— what could go wrong?" a character asks. Praise from none other than Sally Lightfoot says it all: "Reading too much butter! is like experiencing your first grown-up grilled cheese!"
|
Drag & drop your tab 3 content here
|
Open Hearth : the morning notes of chicago steelworker phil janik2023 Publication Every morning before heading out to work in the Open Hearth at Wisconsin Steel– International Harvester's mill on the far Southeast side of Chicago– Phil Janik wrote a letter to his family: a wife and two daughters. Started in 1950, he continued writing what became known as "The Morning Notes" daily for forty years, until his passing in January of 1990. Open Hearth contains over a hundred front-and-flip-sides of the Morning Notes, photographed on the kitchen table where they were written. They contain Chicago and national news embedded with the reflections of a man who is going off to a job every day and is well aware that, given the dangers of the steelmaking process, he may not be returning at the end of his shift. The book is set within a matrix of Chicago and Southeast-side Chicago history during both the heyday and the tortuous demise of the nation's steel industry. A transcription of Phil Janik's interview with Studs Terkel on WFMT in November of 1979 is included, as are brief responses to the Morning Notes by both Studs Terkel and Kurt Vonnegut. Cover image: “80-Inch Hot Strip Mill” by photographer David Plowden |
Drag & drop your tab 4 content here
SHE CRAB SOUP Collection
|
SHE CRAB SOUP & other no-cook recipes for bellying up to your road rage - Volume 1: Rude Gestures & First Responders2023 Publication We at Rowan Tree Press are gleefully gathered under our umbrella logo, Third Aye Entertainments. With lighthearted aplomb, it is from this location that we introduce the first volume of She Crab Soup. This trail-blazing book contains cutting-edge recipes for meeting the traffic of our daily lives—and for, boldly, “Bellying Up to our Road Rage.” “Road” here points to “any path you’re on, even if you don’t know where you’re going.” Quelling the contemporary traveler’s rage is the author’s aim, and to that end, Sally Lightfoot offers her extensive series of “no-cook” and “minimally-cooked-en-route” concoctions. Further, she has included bits of culinary history, clever wisdom quips, and practical strategies for surviving hazardous travel over the hills and valleys of our lives. Volume 1, “Rude Gestures & First Responders,” opens with the first-ever—but heretofore unacknowledged—instance of road rage. After Sally Lightfoot relates several current examples, she shares a variety of succinct hand gestures used by harried travelers across the globe. Sally Lightfoot then reveals her revolutionary antidotes to our speeding-train road rage emotions. A groundbreaking first volume heralding a series unique in the history of food preparation, She Crab Soup takes the concept of “innovative recipes” to a completely new level. Included with purchase of the book:
|
|
SHE CRAB SOUP & other no-cook recipes for bellying up to your road rage - Volume 2 : The Holidays2023 Publication Whether it’s a traditional Winter Feast for the New Year commemorated on January 1st, or a quirky mid-August celebration of Red Shoes, this second volume in the She Crab Soup series brings its triple-threat approach to the Trail, the Daily Grind, and the mobile 21st-Century Kitchen. “The Holidays” offers a multitude of traditional dishes as well as fresh and revolutionary recipes for en-route meals. Sally Lightfoot has again cleverly included bits of culinary history, wisdom quips, and practical strategies—all helping us survive hazardous travel through the hills and valleys of our lives. Reprising her informative history of road rage, as well as her “travelers’ compendium of international hand gestures,” Sally Lightfoot once more shares her radical antidotes to our speeding-train road rage emotions. Included with purchase of the book:
|
|
Third Aye Entertainments® is our affirmative, umbrella logo: living la vida loca with stalwart awareness of the Divine Comedy. |
|
Drag & drop your tab 5 content here
|
Open Hearth : the morning notes of chicago steelworker phil janik2023 Publication Every morning before heading out to work in the Open Hearth at Wisconsin Steel– International Harvester's mill on the far Southeast side of Chicago– Phil Janik wrote a letter to his family: a wife and two daughters. Started in 1950, he continued writing what became known as "The Morning Notes" daily for forty years, until his passing in January of 1990. Open Hearth contains over a hundred front-and-flip-sides of the Morning Notes, photographed on the kitchen table where they were written. They contain Chicago and national news embedded with the reflections of a man who is going off to a job every day and is well aware that, given the dangers of the steelmaking process, he may not be returning at the end of his shift. The book is set within a matrix of Chicago and Southeast-side Chicago history during both the heyday and the tortuous demise of the nation's steel industry. A transcription of Phil Janik's interview with Studs Terkel on WFMT in November of 1979 is included, as are brief responses to the Morning Notes by both Studs Terkel and Kurt Vonnegut. Cover image: “80-Inch Hot Strip Mill” by photographer David Plowden |
Drag & drop your tab 6 content here
Families Collection
|
Constitution Quilt: FamiliesAuthor: Nana Chicago
Constitution Quilt: Families is a story of kindness, compassion, diversity, and inclusion for all People on our planet. It is one part of a series forming the Constitution Quilt Project, which envisions the ecologies and languages encompassed by the revolutionary, evolving Constitution itself. Translated into several languages, this brief text —together with its accompanying lovely images— demonstrates how families, comprised of all manner of humans, are elevated by “caring for each other.” With its gentle tone, Constitution Quilt: Families brings its audience to the realization that everyone can achieve the core aspiration of our defining document. All versions of Constitution Quilt: Families include a 11" x 17" poster, with each available translation represented visually as a square of the “National Quilt” in our Family of Languages and Cultures.
|
|
HOLY FAMILIESThe story of how Families become Holy. Ages 2 to adult.
Many people have heard of The Holy Family, and are familiar with the scene: a Mom, a Dad, the Baby, animals in a stable ---plus shepherds, angels, the Star and The Three Kings. But looking at the site, one little girl asks: "What is a Family? And how does it become Holy?" May The Baby's beautiful answer encourage you to join hands and sing along with those who have heard The Words.
Additional items in the Holy Families collection are available on the Gifts page Available in English-only and English-with-Spanish translation: |
Drag & drop content here