Reimagine America

Reimagine America

  3:53 PM    Vagabond

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Now Available!

Vagabond is pleased to announce the launch of

  

  

REIMAGINE AMERICA

(an anthology for the future)

 America is at a crossroads. The people have spoken and have rejected overt fascism, yet there is no going back to normal, to a world of failed policies that has pushed us to the very brink, one that continues to struggle through a global pandemic, with widespread poverty and an ever looming climate emergency. There is no time to wait to reshape our future and reimagine what America and this world around us can be.

 

Watch our Author Reveal video here:

 

 

ORDER your copy Today!

 

 

Only $25

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Rusty Gallows

Rusty Gallows

  11:53 AM    Vagabond

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 Now Available! 

Vagabond is proud to present, Rusty Gallows, by Dee Allen.

 RUSTY GALLOWS

Passages Against Hate

 

There’s an old iron bridge in the town of Shubuta, Mississippi that’s more than just a bridge for cars and trucks to cross. It’s a scene of past hate crimes – and it still stands today as a symbol of hate, albeit in a corroded, crumbling state. Oakland performance poet Dee Allen. guides us through racism, White supremacy and the unforeseen Coronavirus Pandemic that simultaneously brought people apart and together in his sixth volume of poetry – and his first for Vagabond – Rusty Gallows.

 

Available Nationally on February 1, 2022 

 “With Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate, Dee Allen. continues his work as an alert witness to our times. Rooted in a common history and collective grievous past, Allen evokes the radical Dr. King and fuses the dream to contemporary headlines while offering an appreciation for every waking day. An alive, time transcendent collection for anyone seeking truth and a world where people prevail over profit, where racism and war are not the answer, and a room of one’s own is a human right instead of a luxury, Allen’s words point the direction home.”

 ~ Denise Sullivan, San Francisco Examiner

 

Dee Allen’s “Rusty Gallows: Passage Against Hate” is a history-filled primer for how to live in a post-white supremacist world. His masterful flow of words etch deep grooves of oppression, genocide, lynchings, but also humor and inclusiveness.  It’s a multi-cultural examination of the horrors of white-on-top, including lynchings of Italians, scenes from the Native American genocide, and murders in churches, mosques and synagogues. Yet, he implores us to come together with song lyrics that are suitable for the next set of rallies. This voice is vital in a time of widening polarity. “Rusty Gallows” cries for a multi-cultural community of solutions. It will be re-read for its important lessons.

~ Doug Stuber, edits Poems from the Heron Clan [ Magazine ]

 

"Being Black shouldn't be a death sentence." Dee Allen.

“Dee Allen. is a fiery voice thundering against oppression in his latest book Rusty Gallows. The poet bears witness to the ongoing pandemic, racism, and fascism with powerful poems of solidarity. Each poem reaches straight for the heart, illuminating injustices both past and present, daring the reader to join him in the struggle for a better world. Allen. lyrically declares, “This disease won’t stop us from showing love,” and indeed, the poet’s love for humanity shines upon every page.”

 

~ D.L. Lang

Vallejo (CA) Poet Laureate (2017-2019)

 

 

“Dee Allen. brings a ripe, necessary fruit of literature in a time of doubt and hopelessness with his sixth collection, Rusty Gallows. A growth spurt in this Oakland bard's attention to his now and ancestral history is captured throughout this collection. There's terror, truth, and history wrapped up in a pandemic. Lockdown with this book, you won't regret it.”

 

~ Edward Vidaurre, author of  Pandemia & other poems,

and publisher of FlowerSong Press

 

 

Order your copy today!

only $15 

 

 

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Dear City Council

Dear City Council

  11:21 PM    Vagabond

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 Now Available! 

Vagabond is pleased to announce the launch of Dear City Council, by Mark Lipman.

 

Do you need to dream bigger; open your eyes wider; let your imagination soar and think outside the box? Then Dear City Council is for you. In a combination of public comments, selected poems and essays, Mark Lipman weaves the story and challenges facing a modern day Mayberry, Culver City, California, as it tries to come to grip with its racist past and looming corporate future, where the land speculator is king, and Jeff Bezos rules.

 

At the center of this modern day dystopian nightmare, reporting in real time, the poet, Mark Lipman, calls to account in words of powerful truth, the options and alternatives this community still has before it’s too late and Culver City has just become another column in some accountant’s book.

  

Will Culver City find its way to reimagining public safety that puts the well being of all ahead of the status quo of policing every social woe? Will they put justice in the budget and solve homelessness, as they easily could, or will they continue to kick the can down the road? Will they up-zone to the sky and become a mini-Manhattan, or will they follow the path of true social and racial equity with a Homes Guarantee and a Green New Deal? Will the Heart of Screenland finally find its heart, or will it be lost forever?

 

All this and more we explore in Dear City Council, but if you want to know how the story ends... well, that’s literally up to you.  

AVAILABLE NATIONALLY

 

August 1st, 2021

 

PRE-ORDER your copy today

 

at a special discount of

 

ONLY $15  

(U.S. shipping included)

 

 

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Forbidden Psalms

Forbidden Psalms

  12:21 PM    Vagabond

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NOW AVAILABLE!

Vagabond is pleased to announce the launch of Forbidden Psalms, by David Volpendesta, for our 2021 collection.

You can order Forbidden Psalms here:

“It’s late in the game.  A pall has settled over the crowd. Then, fresh from the bullpen of dreams, David Volpendesta strides in, a barnstormer in motley pinstripes, sporting a dozen ball caps, a halo, and a propeller.  Look!  He’s pitching with both hands at once!  Throwing beach balls and silver coins!  Outwitting reason and outrunning rhyme!  Now he’s autographing copies of Forbidden Psalms as mesmerized fans cheer wildly!”

 ~ Michael Koch

 

“David Volpendesta’s poems are like biting into a ripe apple. They are perfectly wet and heavy but not so weighty that you couldn’t carry one with you in a pocket.  The writing is beautiful, and also challenges the reader to engage with the life and death issues.  If poetry holds some of the answers, they may be in this book.”

~ Kim Shuck

7^th Poet Laureate of San Francisco

 

“These psalms are more than just forbidden, they spill over into the poetic, the profane, the political, and the profound. With a diverse range of subjects, often personalities he knew, like Harold Norse and Claribel Alegría, or those who influenced his own trajectory, like Pablo Neruda and Roque Dalton, or even a psalm to a great baseball player, Ron Santo, or to a little-known Latin American poet like Alfonsina Storni. The writing is evocative, straightforward and deeply moving. A major work by a long-time poet, David Volpendesta reaches his zenith in these intense, marvelous poems turned to psalms.”

~ Alejandro Murguía

6^th Poet Laureate of San Francisco

Order Forbidden Psalms today - ONLY $15

 

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Asylum

Asylum

  9:42 AM    Vagabond

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NOW AVAILABLE

Vagabond is pleased to announce the launch of ASYLUM, by Elizabeth Marino.

“You had me on ‘Contents’ – the Contents alone – I had to read it! It was an emotional ride; I felt sad, I laughed, I blushed and it hit home. I felt very  powerful – uplifting and women empowering. I loved it!”

~ Eneida Martino,

Brooklyn writer/actor, author of the novel Fashion Knitwits.

“Intensely dramatic is its imagery wording where interval haikus appear from nowhere, gasping for quick breath in the middle of all the corners of the American world, including Independence Day and the Vietnam War. Her narration is so vividly aloft that it needs down-to-earth short narrative memoirs so as to end on a high note. A must read for international readers.”

~ ĐẶNG THÂN,

Vietnamese poet/writer, author of OM.

“Endurance can be the knife under the skirt. With this one sentence, Elizabeth Marino's Asylum warns and seduces you. To say the writing is fierce, reflective, tender, only begins to scratch the surface. She is PRESENT. She endures, she cuts to the core of oppression without rhetoric, just resonance. Asylum reveals a writer at the her personal best. In a culture built on silence and erasure, Elizabeth's work is a talisman of survival.”

~ Lisa Alvarado,

poet, author of Raw Silk Suture,

Hispanic Author of the Year, 2009/IL

"This book Asylum by Elizabeth Marino is great poetry – the kind the twenty-first century needs. I was pleasantly shocked by its incisiveness and saddened by its insights into depths... It is clear that she has learned mastery of her imagery, metaphors, metonyms, symbols; all go to make this collection a packed masterpiece that makes you gasp at its beauty and cry at its depth into the human condition in its nuances and not in its generalizations. It "irrupts" into you and refuses to leave you. My hope is that it gets many awards and is prescribed for study in universities, colleges and schools... I feel humbled to have known such a great poet."

~ Dr. Koshy AV

Assistant Professor English Department

University of Jazan, Saudi Arabia

Order now only $15.00

 

 

 

ISBN13: 978-1-936293-45-2     $16.95     72 pages      

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