Books of interest

Our friend and frequent contributor, Greg Clary, recently published a book of photography & poetry - The Vandalia In Me. You can order it here: Local bookstores in western PA and Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target.

Greg is professor emeritus of rehabilitation and human Services at Clarion University. He was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia, and now resides in the northwestern Pennsylvania Wilds.

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And The Poet Said..., Hole In The Head Review's Associate Editor, Michael Hettich, interviews 14 contemporary poets. Hettich, himself a poet and teacher, speaks with poets about their writing and process, about their favorite poets, forms of poetry, "schools" of poetry, and about themselves and their lives.From the Foreword by Bill Burtis, "We think it's a little bit like being invited to be at home with the poets, listening from the kitchen, as they chat in the dining room about the inner workings of their poetry lives. Isn't that what we'd all, secretly, like to do?"The poets interviewed are:

Mildred Barya

Cyrus Cassells

Jim Crenner

Jeff Davis

Denise Duhamel

Merrill Gilfillan

Marie Harris

Elizabeth Jacobson

Peter Johnson

Stephen Kuusisto

Sebastian Matthews

Eric Nelson

Joe Paddock

J.D. Whitney

Available here https://www.holeintheheadreview.com/product-page/and-the-poet-said

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Poet-Said-Michael-Hettich/dp/B0DDQGWMKD

We support independent bookstores. So if you're favorite bookstore doesn't already carry it, they can contact editor@holeintheheadreview.com

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Richard Foerster

Anxiety Dream: And/Or

. . . in which I’m in a cargo van

careering with its wind-

shield cracked and crazed,

fueled by volatile vapors

that some memory or yearning

has sparked into motion

toward a destination already

lost sight of or as yet unknown,

or back to a mythic place

where forebears still shoulder

the weighty luggage of foreign

tongues in shame or pride,

the heft of their words, like Putsch

and Shtetl or Tonton Macoute,

stuffed among yellowed linens,

which they discard, littering

every roadway traveled, or hang

to bleach on clotheslines

in towns that offer refuge

or disdain, and so they resign

themselves to the fires of their fury,

or again to prayer, and crowd inside

this van I’m in with all they own.

Oh America, where must we go?

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Richard Foerster’s most recent book, With Little Light and Sometimes None at All (Littoral Books, 2023), was named a Finalist for this year’s Maine Literary Award for Poetry.

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Ed Valfre

Prado Waiter

Walking Angel

Museum Guard

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From Ed Valre's book, Tales From Dreamland, available February 2025: A cup of coffee with a swirl of cream. Clouds reflected on a tabletop. A shopping cart abandoned on the sidewalk. Photographer Ed Valfre captures these little moments of everyday life in his pictures and subsequently imagines the extraordinary universes, striking feelings, and unexpected narratives each moment might contain.

By turns surreal, humorous, and profound, Valfre reveals the magic to be discovered in the everyday with this collection of photographs and accompanying short stories.

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