Of Small Things

This anthology is the second of the archival chapbook collections in Alternating Current Press' Violet Ray series. One of the missions of Alternating Current Press is to keep alive the pre-digital words of authors from the turn of the new millennium, the post-Beat and avant-garde poets of the 1970s through early 2000s who may have had their heydays before the Internet was a widespread thing. This anthology comprises 4 chapbooks + outtakes, including never-before-published poems. / / Taxi Cab Poet Confessions: A Small-Press Tribute to Dave Church (1947-2008) by 22 Authors and Artists, including Dave Church: On Thanksgiving Day, 2008, the small-press world lost one of its own - the gruff, moody, sobering voice of poet Dave Church. On these pages, writers, artists, and family members recount the memories, anecdotes, inspiration, and passion of this small-press legend through poetry, tributes, photos, artwork, interviews, collaborative efforts with Church, and archives of old poems and letters dug up by friends and admirers over the decades. / / Billy and Cindy by Stephanie Hiteshew and Dave Church: A story of desperation, crime, beauty, kindness, anger, and love played out in a series of letters between two troubled fictional characters, Billy and Cindy, held expertly in the hands of Dave Church and Stephanie Hiteshew, with eerily similar reflections of their own lives and struggles on multiple metaphorical levels. The two come together here to bring to life the last work of the late Church. / / Under a Bridge by Stephanie Hiteshew: World-weary and street-savvy, Stephanie Hiteshew comes face to face with drug addiction, poverty, bullying, and making her way through a dismal past to find a better future in poems that will strike you in the heart. / / The Poet by B. Z. Niditch: We follow B. Z. Niditch on a journey from place to place, beaches and towns, tributes and memoirs, realities scrawled out as dedications to loved ones and dead ones, past ones and present ones. With a continuous sense of movement, of laying down your suitcase just long enough to take out a pen and jot down the name of someone you loved while passing by, you will feel a circular momentum, only moving fast enough to stay ahead of yourself.