April 27, 2010
Take time out to slow down and appreciate love in various forms. From love of self to love of that special someone. “Sensual Sounds” will help you apppreciate the world around you. Available on amazon and barnesandnoble.com. Published by IUniverse.
Sensual Sounds: A Collection
by Marcie Eanes
Iuniverse
Available 01/20/10 in Paperback
Sensual Sounds is a thought-provoking poetry collection designed to inspire and encourage readers to cherish intimate relationships. Nationally featured writer, poet and motivational speaker Marcie Eanes draws for everyday experiences to create compelling poetic verse.
Sensual Sounds is separated into five sections. Each reflects Eanes’s skill and talent in encouraging readers to rediscover personal passions and mend strained relationships along with celebrating everyone’s bliss. Sensual Sounds contains something for everyone. Eanes’s upbeat poetry, which has been presented in a variety of settings, resonates with audiences everywhere. Among poetry’s varied landscape, Eanes’s unique voice is much needed nourishment for the soul. Sensual Sounds is a priceless addition to all avid poetry lovers’ collections.
April 24, 2010
Beacon Press
Available 02/01/10 in Hardcover
This new volume by the much-loved poet Sonia Sanchez, her first in over a decade, is music to the ears: a collection of haiku that celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism.
In her verses, we hear the sounds of Max Roach “exploding in the universe,” the “blue hallelujahs” of the Philadelphia Murals, and the voice of Odetta “thundering out of the earth.” Sanchez sings the praises of contemporaries whose poetic alchemy turns “words into gems”: Maya Angelou, Richard Long, and Toni Morrison. And she pays homage to peace workers and civil rights activists from Rosa Parks and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Brother Damu, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration. Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning. There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience. Sanchez is innovative, composing haiku in new forms, including a section of moving two-line poems that reflect on the long wake of 9/11.
In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for haiku as an art form. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez’s freshest, most poignant work.
February 21, 2010
Mahogney Ink Publications is a new publishing house established in 2009. Here is a list of our current 2010 releases.
Re-release A Diamond For A Diva coming 03/10/10!
Is a tale of four high maintenance DIVAS who have everything an average woman could want in life except for true love. These women are all one year away from turning the big 30 without a man in sight for miles so they rekindle an old college bet to see who will get married first.
Revenge Of The Cheating Mistress coming April 2010!
Putting your heart and soul into a relationship then finding out your man is cheating will cut you deep. The emotions will take your mind to a place that no woman should go. You immediately want to pull out a blade, stalk him, fight him, bust his windshield, cut his tires, scratch his paint job, bust a cap in his butt and beat up the mistress if she knows about you. Basically, the only thing that can give you peace is Sweet Revenge.
Through My Spectacles coming 06/15/2010!
I can be your left-handed intellect but my right hand is stronger
My ambidextrous talents should overwhelm your senses knowing that my mental is stronger than my hand’s caress.
Which hand do you want?
We are too young for my left, so grab the right for reassurance
Grab the left when you realize i’m the F*** Best
and when you need me to lead you to a place full of deafening harmonious sounds
grab both my hands
close your eyes, feel gravity’s release while we travel to cloud nine
as long as you hands are intertwined with mine….
Mahogney Ink Publications
“Bringing A New Twist To Urban Publishing”
www.mahogneyinkpublication.com
Author Mahogneyinkpublications
February 20, 2010
Clifton, honored poet from Buffalo, dies
By Jay Rey
Updated: February 14, 2010, 12:14 pm
Published: February 13, 2010, 5:11 pm
Lucille Clifton, born and raised in the Buffalo area before going on to achieve some of the literary world’s highest honors as a major American poet, died Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore at age 73, her sister told The Buffalo News.
Clifton, who lived in Columbia, Md., and was the former poet laureate of the state, was a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.
She won the National Book Award in 2001 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000,” and in 2007, she became the first African-American woman to be awarded one of the literary world’s highest honors — the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Foundation.
Clifton had published 11 poetry collections, autobiographical prose and 20 children’s books. Her poems have appeared in more than 100 anthologies. In 1987, she became the only author to have had two books nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year and was a finalist for the prestigious award.
For more, see The Buffalo News.
September 6, 2009
Available 12/05/08
The Great Invitation is a collection of poetry that will inspire your soul. Each poetic selection is filled and inspired by the Holy Scriptures. God has sent out the greatest invitation of them all through his son Jesus Christ. The question is will you accept this invitation to heaven. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”-John 3:16 Salvation is waiting, and God has shown us patience, accept his invitation.
June 11, 2009
My People by Langston Hughes and Charles R. Smith Jr.
Ginee Seo Books
Available 01/06/09
Langston Hughes’s spare yet eloquent tribue to his people has been cherished for generations. Now, acclaimed photographer Charles R. Smith Jr. interprets this beloved poem in vivid sepia photographs that capture the glory, the beauty, and the soul of being a black American today.
April 29, 2009
Cooling Board: A Long Playing Poem
by Mitchell L.H. Douglas
Red Hen Press
Available 02/15/09
In the tradition of the Langton Hughes classic Montage of a Dream Deferred, Mitchell L. H. Douglas uses persona poetry to explore the personal and professional struggles of soul legend Donny Hathaway in his debut collection Cooling Board: a Long-Playing Poem. Evoking the sense of listening to a concept album, Douglas presents a narrative in two sides: side one focusing on Hathaway’s development as a young musician and subsequent rise to fame and side two bearing witness to the adversity that plagued his later years. Readers will see Hathaway as true to his family, true to his faith, and uncompromising in his quest for musical innovation.
In a nod to Hathaway’s legacy as a musical trailblazer, Douglas implements a significant poetic innovation in the format of the book. By including alternate versions or “takes” of poems throughout Cooling Board, the reader hears an echo of ideas that can be likened to an album with previously unreleased versions of popular songs. When the poems are revisited in alternate takes, new information emerges, and the reader is forced to consider new interpretations. Along the way, poems resembling liner notes and pop charts enhance the experience, never letting the reader forget that the heart of this ride is the music.
Above all, Douglas’ depiction of Hathaway gives readers the human side of a man who has remained a mystery in the 30 years since his death. Not only does the poet speak in the voices of Hathaway and his long-time collaborator Roberta Flack, the reader also hears the voices of those closest to Hathaway whom we are less familiar with: his mother, Drusella Huntley, his grandmother, Martha Crumwell—Hathaway’s earliest music teacher—and his wife, Eulaulah.
As the book’s first “Liner Notes” poem recognizes, “Cooling Board is about life lessons, the difficult things you don’t always get on the first take.” With Douglas as a guide versed in the power of possessing many tongues, Cooling Board captures its reader like the best Hathaway song: passionately, honestly, and with an undeniable sense of purpose.
April 11, 2009
Title: The Spoken Word/Celebrating African American Poetry
Location: A C Bilbrew Library, Los Angeles
Click here
Description: In celebration of National Poetry Month, an eclectic and dynamic group of Los Angeles poets will read and perform some of their most treasured poems. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
Start Time: 1:00 pm
Date: 2009-04-18
March 31, 2009
Father and Son
by Denize Lauture (Author), Jonathan Green (Illustrator)
Available 03/19/09
Father and son
Hand in hand
Up on the road
In the sun
This profound poem, chronicling the special bond between a father and son, is perfectly complimented by the lush, exquisite illustrations of world-renowned Gullah painter Jonathan Green. With beautiful simplicity, Father and Son is just right for its new board book format — a perfect gift for any father or son.
March 31, 2009
Mother Poems
by Hope Anita Smith
Available 03/31/09
A young girl thinks of her mom as a superhero, a doctor, her North Star. She feels loved in her mother’s arms and capable of conquering the world. But when her beloved role model unexpectedly dies, she cannot even cry; sadness is too overwhelming. As she struggles with grief, she must learn how to carry on while keeping the memory of her mother very much alive inside her heart. In moving poems, Hope Anita Smith explores a personal yet emotionally universal subject: the death of a parent. Through the eyes of a child and then a young woman, these poignant poems, together with stunning folk-art images, powerfully capture the complicated feelings of someone who shows great hope, strength, and will to overcome.
