New From Spartan Press

Jazzy and haiku-like — here’s a cat who gets it.
~ Kevin Rabas, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019, All That Jazz

Spare, jazz-inflected, observations revealing a world of lost grocery lists, blaring amusement parks, discarded furniture, and the rare precious communication on a post-it note.
~ Lisa B, God in Her Ruffled Dress

Harkens back to the Beats and the syncopating heartbeat and breath that belongs to music.
~ Valerie Johns, Psychotherapist, Storyteller, Poet & Author, Ashes in the Milk and Night Flights, Dream Poems

Innovative and buzzing with improvisational imagery, much like jazz itself — a delight from start to finish.
~ Elena Stephenson, Author of Pink Door Series

Erasure poetry only works when you choose the right text to draw from. Though Justin Hamm’s O Death takes its roots from the work of several different authors, it all comes together as one voice, Hamm’s. What remains is heart, is struggle, is joy, is lament and a true sense of the modern cultural landscape. While the original authors may well have planted the seeds, Hamm has tended the garden and these poems, now solely his, have become a rare thing of beauty.”
~ John Dorsey, Pocatello Wildflower

Through masterful erasure, Justin Hamm whittles works by literary and Delta Blues luminaries into spare bones scaffolds upon which he hangs portraits of his inner world alongside tableaus of his beloved Midwest. Hear the slide guitar accompanying Hamm's plea in "Prayer to the Absent Father." In "Communion," feel the laughter passed around like bottles of beer to counter despair. Hamm’s poems sing the possibilities of songs we need right now.
~ Amy Baskin, Night Hag and SKULL

With undeniable intelligence, wit, and plenty of dark humor, Justin Hamm wrestles with mortality, eschewing easy answers. This collection is a brief testament to one man’s pursuit of self-knowledge through “the cobwebby dark underneath” where the wish for returning with “fists full of everything that was taken,” is acknowledged to be futile, but nevertheless, worth the fight.
~ Frank Paino, Pieta and Obscura

Victor Clevenger is a writer whose work I genuinely get excited to read. His unique voice seamlessly reinvents time and time again, yet always remains Clevenger. Every Angel in Heaven is a Hopscotch Champion is collection of over 300 selected poems from out-of-print releases spanning 2016 - 2020. Buy this book.”
~ Tohm Bakelas, editor of Between Shadows Press

This collection is Clevenger at his most thoughtful, his most personal. Opening this book is like opening your mind to the possibilities you thought were behind you, drawing the curtains, and letting a little sunshine wash over your heart. The words between these pages speak to the staying power of childhood nostalgia and the growing pains we all go through. Reading Every Angel I was forced to re-examine what I thought I knew about his work.
~ John Dorsey, Pocatello Wildflower

Reading Bill Gainer is like finding a note full of familiar sounding tales left on a barstool. The story is there - change the names, and it could be yours.
~ Pat Grizzell, Sacramento Poetry Center

Gainer opens up the body of American life to lay out the guts of our behaviors, the heart of who we are. We become vulnerable observers of our own life. What didn’t seem important to us in living our lives suddenly becomes what shaped us in a crazy world of forgotten truths and morality.
~ Chris Olander, Poetic voice of Northen California