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Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1999 Anthology	Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1998 Anthology	Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1997 Anthology	Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1996 Anthology
The Day I Wore The Red Coat by featured reader Alicia Vogl Sáenz	Call The Sun Down by featured readers Robert Arroyo Jr., and Robert Wynne	A Closeness of Vision by featured reader Jan Wesley	Coheesion by featured readers Marcia and Pat Cohee
The Way of Breath by featured reader Howard Gardner	The Landscape From Behind by featured readers Jim Natal & Jamie O'Halloran	Drink Me by featured readers Amélie Frank and Matthew Niblock	You'll Wonder How You Ever Got Along Without It marathon reading anthology
The Poets Behind An anthology of Orange County Poets.

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Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1999 Anthology
Valley Contemporary Press 1999
paperback, 72 pages
isbn 0-9670715-3-4
$10.00

The is the anthology of poets who read for our series in 1999, edited by Jamie O'Halloran, with a stunning cover design by Brendan Constantine, and featuring the work of some of Los Angeles' greatest poets including David St. John, James Cushing, Cathy Colman, Dorothy Barresi, Deborah Landau, Christopher Buckley, Richard Beban, Jan Wesley, Valentina Gnup, Bill Mohr, Chungmi Kim, Derrick Brown, Eloise Klein Healy, Jerry Quickley, Holly Prado, Carol Lewis, Wayne Liebman, Howard Gardner, Florence Weinberger, Laurel Ann Bogen, Karen Holden, Cecelia Woloch, Marcia Cohee, and Carol Cullar.

Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1996 Anthology
Sacred Beverage Press 1997
paperback, 86 pages
isbn 0-9652048-4-7
$10.00

This anthology of work from the 1996 reading series features work from David Oliveira, Eloise Klein healy, Suzanne Lummis, Ken Kuta, Laurel Ann Bogen, Ryan J. pumphrey, Kathleen Zeisler Goldman, Gerald M. Quickley, Joe Harris, jackson Wheeler, David Del Bourgo, Arash Saedinia, Jack graps, Christine Jordan, Nicole Muraoka, Beverly Lafontaine, Caron Andregg, Rick Lupert, Pleasant Gehman, Yasmin Golan, Gerald Locklin, Willie Sims, Doug Knott, Robert Arroyo Junior, Brendan Constantine, Nicole Harvey, Genaro Ky Ly Smith, and Robert Wynne.

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Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1997 Anthology
Sacred Beverage Press 1998
paperback, 92 pages
isbn 0-9652048-8-X
$10.00

This anthology of work from the 1997 reading series features work from Dorothy Barresi, Steve Kowit, Ron Koertge, Nels Christianson, Lee McCarthy, B. Lynne Zika, Marsha de la O, Jamie O'Halloran, Hope Alvarado, Jim Natal, Charles Ardinger, Jeff McDaniel, Hayley R. Mitchell, Marcia Cohee, Nancy Agabian, Jaimes Palacio, Michelle Ben-Hur, Julie Ritter, Beth McIlvaine, Marc Olmstead, John Gardiner, Scott Charles, Hope Alvarado, R.G. Cantalupo, Amy Uyematsu, Jim Natal, Michael C. Ford, Iris Berry, and Charles Ardinger.

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Beyond The Valley of the Contemporary Poets 1998 Anthology
VC Press in conjunction with Sacred Beverage Press 1999
paperback, 102 pages
isbn 1-892-68702-X
$10.00

This anthology of work from the 1998 reading series features work from Charles H. Webb, Bruce Williams. Elliot Fried, Tim Seibles, Sarah Maclay, Paul Willis, Joe Harris, Michel Englebert, Wayne Liebman, Greg Potter, Daniel McGinn, Jeanette Clough, S.A. Griffin, Stephanie Hager, Erica Erdman, Scott Wannberg, Ellyn Maybe, Terry Stevenson, and Kathleen Hietala.

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Drink Me
Poems by Amélie Frank and Matthew Niblock
Valley Contemporary Press 1997
chapbook, 40 pages
$5.00

Amélie Frank and Matthew Niblock co-founded the Sacred beverage Press in 1994. Together they edit and publish the bienniel magazine Blue Satellite. They have also edited and published books by the Carma Bums, FrancEyE, Nelson Gary, Richard Osborn Hood, Ellyn Maybe, and Erica Erdman.

Amélie is a third generation typesetter and the host of a reading series in North Hollywood, CA. Her work has appeared in Caffeine, Dance of the Iguana, Red Dancefloor, Sabado Gigante and other magazines.

Matthew spends much of his time working with his band, Clear. Over the past few years he has also found time to win the first annual Allen J. Freedman Memorial Poetry Contest and release 3 books and three audio cassettes of his poetry. His work has appeared in The L.A. Times, Flipside, Caffeine, Sheila-Na-Gig, Faxploitation, Fetish and numerous other magazines.

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The Day I Wore The Red Coat
Poems by Alicia Vogl Sáenz
Valley Contemporary Press, April 2000
chapbook, 32 pages
isbn 0-9670715-4-2
$5.00

The cha cha cha, "three steps forward one/step back", is the music behind not only the poet's given name but the evolutionary scope of these poems which explore, among other things, the poet and her mother as daughters. Cuttings of vines and hair, birth and death, are glittery and green tendrils that tie poem to poem, daughter to mother. Los Angeles' Grand Central Market is colored with Andean fruit. Blossoms open like opera glasses into flowers, into the wounds of Santa Lucia eyes.

Vogl Sáenz explores the terrain of mother and other loves from different angles with different forms. Her poems turn beautifully on shared subjects, imagery and language and her choice of the brief lyric and the repeating sestina are apropos. She does so deftly with fresh language and an eye for color and ear for music.

It is our great pleasure and honor to present this collection of Alicia Vogl Sáenz's poems, as we believe it will be yours to read it.

(from the introduction by Jamie O'Halloran)

Call the Sun Down
Poems by Robert Arroyo, Jr., and Robert Wynne
Valley Contemporary Press, November 1999
chapbook, 32 pages
isbn 0-9670715-4-2
$5.00

The Valley Contemporary Poets are proud and pleased to present this small collection of work by two of our former directors whose energy and commitment to poetry in community and on the page graced our readings and publications for four years.

Robert Arroyo, Jr. and Robert Wynne look at lives: theirs, and ours in the greater sense. Theirs is a poetry of unforgetting. They remember our poetic and cultural forbears, enchiladas and runaway cars. Arroyo’s frame of history is interleaved with Wynne’s delicious present moments. The result is a recognition of daily miracle in narrative, lyric and ruminant meditation.

Unmemorable poetry--the poetry that doesn’t lodge in Frost’s place where it can’t be gotten ridden of--forgets that we, both poet and reader, are human. These poems remind us, blessedly, that we are.

(from the introduction by Jamie O'Halloran)

A Closeness of Vision
Poems by Jan Wesley
Valley Contemporary Press, September 1999
chapbook, 28 pages
isbn 0-9670715-2-6
$5.00

As the energy in these poems show, Jan Wesley is a tireless poet. Her editor's eye never ceases to pull out from a crowded scene details ('lipsticks named sanguine and bisque') that captivate and work. Her narratives are driven with a ready, set, go that leave no room for hesitation. Jan is also a vital force in the Los Angeles poetry community.

As one of the HyperPoets she runs the laudable weekly readings at Venice's Rose Cafe, and her poems delight editors and readers of many of Southern California journals such as Blue Satellite and Spillway.

Years at the edit bay and diving out of planes infuse Jan Wesley's poetry with quick cuts and gravity, catalogs that ambush, rushing the reader closer into relationships and convictions that she braids securely as her chute. All informed by the will to fall freely.

(from the introduction by Jamie O'Halloran)

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Coheesion
Poems by Marcia and Pat Cohee
Valley Contemporary Press 1999
chapbook, 24 pages
isbn 0-9670715-1-8
$5.00

The title was a natural.

Two Cohees. Two poets who hold the Orange County poetry community together.

Marcia and Pat Cohee have been the force behind the Laguna Poets Series for 10 years. Their Inevitable Press has published more than140 chapbooks for poets from all over Southern California.

Marcia writes with so fierce a light we are drawn to the heat, the tired strawberries gone back to green. The force of her seemingly delicate imagery can take furniture apart. With his wildly-ranging imagination and musical language play, Pat is more Puck than Pan.

Cock your ear.

(from the introduction by Jamie O'Halloran)

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The Way of Breath
Poems by Howard Gardner
Valley Contemporary Press 1999
chapbook, 24 pages
isbn 0-9670715-0-X
$5.00

How does one stand the pain of life, where loss is the inevitable consequence of love, where we see too clearly how we have failed each other or ourselves? These questions, the acknowledgment of this pain and the acceptance of it are at the heart of Gardner's work.

Gardner's poetic voice is idiosyncratic - he bends the language, at times turning jive on its ear, at times coaxing you into a false sense of security with humor and narrative -- and he has been active in the Los Angeles poetry community since the 1980's. He flexed his editorial muscles at Element magazine and his curatorial ones as director of the poetry series at Gorky's - the 24-hour downtown art cafe. Now
students at Van Nuys High School are lucky to have Howard Gardner, the gifted teacher. He has incorporated poetry into every aspect of his life - he has made poetry videos, he has performed it with jazz and he has perfected his craft.

(from the introduction by Laurel Ann Bogen)

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The Landscape From Behind
Poems by Jim Natal & Jamie O'Halloran edited by Robert Arroyo Jr.
Valley Contemporary Press 1997
chapbook, 36 pages
$5.00

Chicago native Jim Natal came to Los Angeles via Santa Fe. His poetry recently has appeared or is forthcoming in Spillway, Rattle, Saturday Afternoon Journal, Squaw Valley Review, Blue Satellite, 51%, 1998 California Poetry Calendar, and the anthologies Roadside Distractions and Beyond the Valley of The Contemporary Poets 1997. Natal's first chapbook, Explaining Water With Water, was published in May 1997, by Inevitable Press as part of the Laguna Poets Series. Natal, with Central Coast poet Carla Martinez, was the winner of the 1997 Walt Whitman Call and Response Poetry Contest. He is a co-host of the HyperPoets weekly reading series at the Rose Cafe in Venice, CA.

Jamie O'Halloran was born on Long Island, New York and was raised there, in New Orleans and in Seattle. She holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She was the 1993 winner of the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and her poems have been published on paper in The Cream City Review, The Southern California Anthology, The Seattle Review, permafrost, Sheila-Na-Gig, Blue Satellite, Vol. No., Red Dancefloor, and other magazines and are forthcoming in Yankee and Prairie Schooner; they have also appeared in the e-zines Snakeskin, Southern Ocean Review and The Free Cuisenart. Her work is included in the anthologies Grand Passion: Poets from Los Angeles and Beyond, Woodlands and Waterways: Poems from a Reading, and most recently in her Inevitable Press chapbook Sweet to the Grit. O'Halloran works as a writer and editor for a social service agency and lives in Los Angeles, California.

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You'll Wonder How You Ever Got Along Without It
Companion Chapbook to the VCP Series edited by Nicole Harvey.
Valley Contemporary Press 1996
Chapbook, 18 pages
$2.00

Chapbook anthology of the infamous first marathon reading of Los Angeles poets featuring work from Joe Harris, Caron Andregg, Rick Lupert, Nicole Muraoka, Jerry Quickley, Yasmin Golan, and Arash Saedinia.

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The Poets Behind
An Anthology of Orange County Poets edited by Robert Wynne.
Valley Contemporary Press 1997
Chapbook, 44 pages
$3.00

Chapbook anthology of the marathon reading of Orange County poets featuring work from Hope Alvarado, Charles Ardinger, Michelle Ben-Hur, Marcia Cohee, John Gardiner, Victor D. Infante, Beth McIlVaine, Elmo Martin, Doc Monk, Sean Morrison, Mindy Nettifee, and Jaimes Palacio.