Hosho McCreesh is one of the gems of the small press, with words dripping with honesty and integrity, hundreds of slaps in the face and equally as many enjoyable recollections of happiness. McCreesh is a storyteller, focusing on the tiniest of details in aching perfection and necessity, unraveling simple thoughts and teetering on the edge of complexity with just the right amount of coherence and authority. An observer, a thinker, a deep philosopher, a quiet lover -- Hosho's stories are of people's struggles in the everyday, the legacies we pass on to children, the lies in which we allow ourselves to reside, the passage of time and all it carries with it. His words choke to find something beautiful in the mundane, to spring up like dandelions in the dark recesses of anonymity, to find familiarity in the cold stares of strangers, to become at ease with just the thought of being human in the concrete age of technology and silence. For those in search of a fresh voice among the blogs and dime-a-dozen poets of today, McCreesh is the poet we recommend for that breath of fresh air, that look in the mirror, the feeling that we can still connect in an isolated age and find beauty in all the simple imperfections of a world bulging at the seams to hold us all.
Copies can now be purchased online; or through the mail for $10 (plus $3 US shipping; $6 out-of-US shipping) via cash, check, or money order made out to Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge MA 02139 USA; or via PayPal with the email address alt.current@gmail.com. All authors on our press receive royalties for each copy sold, and each purchase comes with several free random books from the archives while we clean house.
- Poetry chapbook: An Adamant, Unmitigated Hope Even Amidst The Doom...
- Poetry chapbook: 4th Street Vagaries [Pocket Protector 16]
- Magnet, one of a series of 26 designs
- Poetry broadside: That We Each Fill The World With A Brutal Ugliness One Passed Off As Life...
An Adamant, Unmitigated Hope
Even Amidst The Doom... includes:
Even Amidst The Doom... includes:
Cover design by Sean Lynch of 10pt. Design
- Santa Monica Pier, Early Summer, 1998
- Virga
- 3 to 5...
- At the Hands of/Madmen & Drunks,/Fools & Fathers...
- Something That/Begs Back The Spirit,/The Flame...
- Call It A Battle Cry, Call It Guttural,/Call It A Harbinger, A Prophecy, A Vision,/Call It Begging, Pleading, Call It Last Ditch,/Call It The Knelling Of/The Rusted Bells Of Damnation,/Call It Whatever The Hell/You Need To Call It/To Get Them To Listen...
- An Adamant, Unmitigated Hope/Even Amidst The Doom...
- I Think Of A Murder Of Crows/Startled From The Cornstalks,/Wings Spattered By van Gogh's Blood...
- Gutted By All That Ever Is...
- It's Gotta Be The Austrians,/The Germans, The Russians,/Czechs, & Poles--
- The Only Choice/Is No Choice At All:
- Rapt With Fear, With Insecurity,/This Is How We Stumble Through Centuries,/Through Oceans Of Humanity,/Yet, Somehow,/Remain/Unaffected...
- You Will Die, I Will Die, & Everything/We've Ever Known & Loved Will Be Bulldozed,/Wreckingballed, Changed, & Will Disappear/Eventually...
- After Years of Fruitless Theory,/Years of Exhaustive, Inconclusive Research,/The New Prevailing Hypothesis/As to Why Stradivarius Violins/Sound So Desperately, Achingly Beautiful/Have the Experts Debating/Wood & Varnish & Climate & Craft...
- Sunlight,/Yellow As Dead Cornstalks,/Bleeding Down...
Silence Blisters The Night/While The Dustmites Reign/In Their Filthy Corners/& These Are, Indeed,/Strange Days We/Inhabit...- & The Laughter,/The Fire, The Cackle,/& The Goddamned Life Itself...
- Kidnapping The Sun &/Holding It Hostage While All That/Relies On Photosynthesis/Suffocates...
- There Is a Way to Do It...
- We Teeter, We Totter,/On the Edge of a/Lushfire Doom...
- It's a Bolt, a Shot, a Tremor Within--/Dead Glaze of Dead Eyes/Startled Back to Sparkle & Life,/When We Finally Realize...
- Why We Stare, Unflinchingly,/At All The Dead Blue Gods,//Why So Many Things, &/So Many People Fail,//& Why We Know So Much Struggle/As Our Weary Hearts Fade...
- Following Centuries Of Bloodshed, Centuries Of War/We're No Closer To Solutions & It's Only The/Pyracantha Clawing At The Windows, The/Wind & Sky Punishing Us All For Our/Many & Varied Transgressions...
- As The Weight Of An/Insentient World/Smothers Us,/As The Call Of Our/Strangled Spirits/Begs Redemption...
- On What We've Been/Charged With,What We've Been/Beckoned By The Seething Cosmos To/Get Done, Right Here, & Right Now/While It Is Ours & Before We/Lose It/For/Good...
- The Dead Know Only This...
- One For The Poets/Who Know Exactly How Many/Publications/They've Appeared In...
- To Truly Be/What You Want To Be,/What You Are/Maybe Even Meant To Be...
- The Oaks, The Cedars, & The Pines/Would Scream At Us All To Stop & Listen/If Only We'd Hear Them...
- Grab Hold The Scorching Sunflower,/Know It, Embrace It/Even As We/Blister...
4th Street Vagaries includes:
Cover design by Sean Lynch of 10pt. Design
Poems and photographs by Hosho McCreesh:
[54 untitled poems]
[35 photographs]
The broadside includes: Glued, folded cardstock and laid paper; handmade, signed, and lettered by Hosho McCreesh:
That We Each Fill The World With A Brutal Ugliness One Passed Off As Life...
The magnet includes: Laser-printed full-color reproduction of original watercolor by Hosho McCreesh, Winter on 4th Street. Set of 26 designs, each unique and featuring a different poem from 4th Street Vagaries.
Sample poem:
After Years of Fruitless Theory,
Years of Exhaustive, Inconclusive Research,
The New Prevailing Hypothesis
As to Why Stradivarius Violins
Sound So Desperately, Achingly Beautiful
Have the Experts Debating
Wood & Varnish & Climate & Craft...
Spruce & maple
dragged from the northern slopes
of Tarvisio Forest,
dark ages wood, with
meat so dense, veins so small
it could survive the
brutal temperatures
of that minor ice age,
yes, the wood,
the age of it;
or some magical recipe of
sandarac and madder root
some concoction
impossible to
decode or repeat;
the immeasurable quality
of the workmanship, the craft,
the carving, shaping, polishing,
the love & the mastery;
300 years of kings & princes,
of wars & slaughters & betrayals,
of bombs & heists & double-crosses,
of resting in the hands of the
finest musicians the world has made
year after year after year after year,
the tremble of fierce, haunting chords,
all that energy added
to the atomic vibration;
Yes, yes, yes, beyond even these
notions & best guesses,
yes, as is with most things,
it's the sruggle
that makes them
beautiful.
please send all responses to alt.current@gmail.com
