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New Alternating Current release: The Dance Around The Fire by Pete M. Wyer

The Dance Around The Fire

Pete M. Wyer

Poetry

$6

This chapbook of poems reads like a year in the life of a poet, with vignettes and snippets of life, gleaming from balconies of big cities, from picture frames, from deserted railway stations. It's a story of motion, of existentialism, forays into politics and the heads of composition teachers and passengers awaiting departure. It's a story that sings songs of the dead and relishes the living, showcasing nature, the little things, the moments that make us all human.

Poems:

Out Of Luck
Religious Amnesia
New Era
Out On The Plain
Fairy-Tale Ending
Existential Erratum
Fragments
Radio
A Glimpse Of The Afterlife
Neanderthal. A Short Stage Play
Last Night In Paris
Waking At Cousin Kathleen's
Simultaneity
Crass Jingles
Politics, Then War
Imprint
Awaiting Departure
Anniversary
The Sea And The Land
The End Of The Conversation
Chapman Studio
The Truth About The Wildebeest
Under Snow In Chelsea
The Marina Café
Trying On Hats
Downtown Quartets
Rome
Low Tide
A Last Miracle
London Bridge, 4:27 a.m.
Warsaw At The Millennium
Shapes Masquerading As Objects
A New Earth
Mirror
The Composition Lesson
The Chemistry Lesson
Balcony Scene
This Dust
The Dance Around The Fire
Princess Ozoku

Sample:

Low Tide

We were used to the rhythm of tides
We'd sat by calm water,
Been ruffled by restless winds.
We didn't suspect
The rotted wrecks
Caught among the jagging rocks
That steered the course of the river,
Starkly revealed by this day.

He closes his eyes.
We, his friends,
Sit in silence.

~~BUY HERE~~

Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love blurbed in Sheboygan Press

Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love by Charles P. Ries was blurbed in the Sheboygan Press, first in a mention about the book:

Ries’ poetry book available locally, online

Charles P. Ries, a Milwaukee resident who grew up in Sheboygan, has completed a book of poems, Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love.

The book, published by Alternating Current, is available through the book’s publisher, Amazon.com, and Z-Spot Espresso & Coffee, 1024 Indiana Ave., Sheboygan.

And second, in a mention about Ries reading excerpts from the book at Z-Spot:

Z-Spot announces event lineup

[ ... ]

And Sheboygan native Charles P. Ries will do a short reading and sign copies of his recently published collection of poetry, titled Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Ries, a 1971 graduate of Sheboygan South High School, is on the board of the John Michael Kohler Art Center. He is also a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest freshwater surfing club on the Great Lakes.

Search tag: Girl Friend and Other Mysteries of Love by Charles P. Ries

Onderdonkey blurbed by Jeff Fleming

Jeff Fleming — former editor of nibble, Cranial Tempest, and CannedPhlegm, and author of The Bones of Saints Under Glass and Shades of Green — wrote a blurb about the Alternating Current release, Onderdonkey by CEE:

“Onderdonkey is a Texas- (or should we say Tejas-) sized boot up your ass, an unblinking look at the world we live in and the world we humans have lived through. This is not a mirror held up to society to show our flaws, but a big damn magnifying glass held up to the sun in a desperate attempt to burn those imperfections away. This book may be the definition of no holds barred.”

Search tags: Onderdonkey by CEE, Battle of the Alamo, Siege of the Alamo, war poems, Texas Revolution

Onderdonkey blurbed by Zack Kopp

Zack Kopp — editor of Doggerel and author of Sorehead and Fire Diner — wrote a blurb about the Alternating Current release, Onderdonkey by CEE:

“The pieces in Onderdonkey are full of deep-lived societal insight from Mexico City to the digital landscape behind the screen you’re looking at. CEE’s poems love the dead with sidelong humor, just as all the best writers must learn to, in our multiple death-defying time.”

Search tags: Onderdonkey by CEE, Battle of the Alamo, Siege of the Alamo, war poems, Texas Revolution

Onderdonkey blurbed by John Berbrich

John Berbrich — editor of Dwarf Planet and Barbaric Yawp, publisher at BoneWorld Publishing and MuscleHead Press, and author of The Big Whole Thing and Mullet — wrote a blurb about the Alternating Current release, Onderdonkey by CEE:

“The prose and poetry of CEE is studded with nails, knives, teeth, and claws. In his latest, Onderdonkey, the poetry juxtaposes scenes from the Alamo with scenes from more modern times, while politicians bleat and war machines clank in the background. As always, CEE’s overriding plea is for humans to step forward and to think as individuals in what appears to be an endless struggle against the grinding gears of the faceless, ubiquitous, sociopolitical machine.”

Search tags: Onderdonkey by CEE, Battle of the Alamo, Siege of the Alamo, war poems, Texas Revolution

Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love reviewed in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love by Charles P. Ries was reviewed by Jim Higgins in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the Tap books and entertainment section.

Review:
Ries explores complexities, humor of love through poems

In Girl Friend & Other Mysteries of Love: New and Selected Poems (Alternating Current, $11.99), Charles Ries speaks, frequently with humor, as a representative of “the elegantly simpler gender,” also known as “clueless,” or male.

Ries will read from his poems at 2 p.m. March 16, 2013, at Boswell Book Co., 2559 N. Downer Ave., Milwaukee.

In “Hearing Perfectly,” the audiologist tells Ries’ poetic persona “You’re missing all the high-pitched, soft-consonant / sounds,” to which he responds, “You mean women’s voices?” and later muses, “Isn’t it odd, how men suffer this deafness?”.

The protagonist of “You Never Left” takes the urn of his beloved’s ashes everywhere, but is far from morbid about it, even talking naughtily to her cremains: “Would you mind if I shake you, baby... .” Love, loss, and death in the same breezy poem: well played, Mr. Ries.

In the delightful “Sex for Liver,” his partner has sought for years the combo of medication that will alleviate her depression but not ruin her desire to make love. She finally settles on a medication that allows the “pleasures of intimacy” and leads to a surprising pregame meal.

Not all of Ries’ “Mysteries of Love” are about paramours.

In “First Blood,” when a 10½-year-old daughter has her first period, Dad scrambles mentally for what to say and do, lamenting the early onset of menstruation for a girl “when she still wants to be a boy, / Runs faster than any boy.”

Poet B. J. Best will join Ries at the March 16 reading. Best’s new But Our Princess Is In Another Castle (Rose Metal Press, $14.95) is a collection of prose poems that use imagery and other elements from classic video games, such as Mario, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders.

Best, who teaches at Carroll University in Waukesha, also wrote the collection Birds of Wisconsin.

Search tag: Girl Friend and Other Mysteries of Love by Charles P. Ries