Received and Briefly Noted


Legends from Camp: Poems, by Lawson Fusao Inada

$11.95, Trade paperback, ISBN: 1-56689-004-7, Coffee House Press

This collection won an American Book Award for 1994, and no wonder! Clean, hard lyrics by an elder poet, a Japanese-American ('Sansei") who grew up in Fresno, California, was incarcerated with his family in a detention camp during World War II, who has been writing and publishing for decades, while living and teaching in Oregon. This book not only documents some of the darker pages in American history and the very particular environment of a man of a minority culture; it is also a hip hymn to our multicultural era. Inada's poems on jazz and jazz players he has met, and his lyrics on the Oregon landscape, demonstrate an exquisite blending of Japanese eye and ear with American experience and inspiration.


Northern Frights 2, Edited by Don Hutchison Price

not marked, Trade paperback, ISBN: 0-88962-564-6, Mosaic Press

"Chilling tales" is a doubly-good description for a collection of dark fantasy by Canadian writers, told in north-county settings. The first volume in the series, featuring such luminaries as Charles de Lint, Robert Bloch, Nancy Kilpatrick, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award as Best Anthology of the Year. The second volume continues the fun, with repeat appearances by Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Edo Van Belkom, and Kilpatrick, with other young and old writers of the horror/fantasy genres. Highly recommended for readers who appreciate vampire and werewolf and murder mystery stories enhanced by cold winter snows and dim Toronto street scenes. We discovered this "dual citizenship" publisher at the 1994 ABA Convention. They are publishing 40 or 50 titles a year, it appears, in both fiction and non-fiction, and there are some exceptional books here-check them out.


A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane, by Barry Yourgrau

$10.00, Trade paperback, ISBN: O~517-58717-3, Clarkson Potter/Publishers

A writer friend sent a copy of this outrageous and well-designed book of fictions. From the back cover: A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane is a collection of flash fiction from Barry Yourgrau, a writer/performer whose twilit world lies somewhere between the surreal days of David Lynch and the moonlit nights of Maurice Sendak. In this world, a man comes home to find his wife in bed with a squirrel, "nuts strewn all over his wife's clothes on the floor." A walk through the woods reveals a man molesting a tree. Snowflakes dance around a living room where Dad has been turned into a snowman. Says Yourgrau, "Once you put your imagination into a dream state, anything you want to happen can happen."


Transformative Adventures, Vacations, and Retreats, edited by Jobn Benson

$14.95 ISBN: 0-9639211-O~x, New Millennium Publishing

This may be the only personal-growth-oriented vacation directory available. The adventures and vacations are described complete with programs, services, facilities, staffing rates, contact numbers and addresses-everything one would need to know to make a well-informed choice. There are over 3,000 programs worldwide given in the directory, with holistic health, yoga, Zen, fasting, diet, massage, American Indian, Sufi, Judaic, Healing, Movement, and on and on and on. The directory is very easy to use, with four indices: alphabetical, program type, special needs and interests, and spritual/religious orientation. There are also 18 maps pinpointing the sites. From my experience at some of these retreats, the descriptions seem quite accurate. The information is given without the sales pitch, that is, "just the facts."

-Janes Fritz


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