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Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge Published May 14th, 2021
Physical Chapbook [5.5 x 8.5] 40 Pages
-Ghost City Press
Cante Jundo, or “Deep Song,” is what Garcia Lorca called poetry attached to the rhythms and waves of a continent, its people, its waters, its history. In Alan Chazaro’s Piñata Theory, those resonances echo across the field “between the countries of your body,” the shared stories of cousin-cultures stretching across manmade boundaries. “I’ve become a borderland of tongues,” writes Chazaro, “a mezcla of eyes.” Here is the piñata, unbroken, containing, holding together all the promise of youth and imagination. When it spills, it spills lavishly and generously its treasures.
—DA Powell
A collection of poems and illustrations dedicated to the legacy and mythos of one of the NBA’s most complicated sons, Shawn Kemp. Proceeds will go to organizations supporting the NBA staff workers currently living without paychecks b/c of the league’s suspension. The book is free to anyone who wants it, but donations will go a long way towards helping the people who keep the league running for us.
—Matt Mitchell, illustrator, author of YOU'RE MY FAVORITE GARÇON
Listen: This book is so good it makes me want to curse. Better still: it makes me want to go write. Alan Chazaro’s THIS IS NOT A FRANK OCEAN COVER ALBUM is full of neon imagery—a blunt passed around like “just-born stars,” an apartment full of men watching boxing as an armpit. Chazaro’s lyric is expansive; his music is tight. Nod your head & find yourself going back to each poem to trace its wisdom like a kid hitting rewind on a Walkman to hear their favorite punch line over and over. Chazaro’s poems explore masculinity & machismo with tenderness, they define & redefine ideas of home, and they shout out the Bay Area with love & precision.
—José Olivarez, author of 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Award Nominee CITIZEN ILLEGAL