Leba Wine
STITCHES IN TIME:
The Biography of a Quilt

First Edition.
ISBN 978-09773070-2-9
Historical Fiction, Memoir, Jewish Studies
book design by Kate Hitt
Library of Congress CIP data 2006029833
312 pp, 9" x 6", Paperback,
Many Names Press, 2006
Price: (U.S.) $20.00

I realized, in my middle years, says Leba Wine, that I was of the last generation to hear first-hand Jewish Eastern European immigrant history from the lips of those who had made the trip to America. My head was full of tales told to me by my grandmother. I had my mother's diaries full of stories. Best of all, I had the quilt made by my grandmother and great-grandmother, made in the late 1800s in Pennsylvania. The imagery sewn on it would come to represent the stories of hope and hardships that accompanied my ancestors to this land. I wanted my children to know the hearty stock they came from, and so I began by writing on three-by-five cards for them to read. After ten cards, I knew that my children would never curl up with them to while-away a rainy afternoon, so I decided to write a novel, a biography, of the quilt itself.

Stitches in Time:
The Biography of a Quilt

Leba Wine

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Barbara Leon
THE SONGBIRD CATCHER

First Edition.
ISBN 978-0-9773070-6-7
Poetry.
book design by Kate Hitt
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930518
128 pp 8.5" x 5.5", paperback.
Many Names Press, January, 2015
Price: (U.S.) $20.00

Barbara Leon came of age during the explosive sixties, and began a lifetime of participation in the struggles that changed her world view. The poems in The Songbird Catcher unites personal narratives with the tragic, and sometimes joyful, political events that surround and shape our lives. The poems that express our connection with nature provide a respite, as well as a metaphor for the world that could be.

The Songbird Catcher achieves its power through a brave heart, intelligence, and precise observations. These poems range widely through personal history, injustice and tragedy, and the wonder of the natural world. Barbara Leon takes on large political and social issues, bringing them to life through vivid details. Near the end of the volume, watching the humpback lift its great bulk and leap from the water, she writes, I believe I could break through to light. In these poems, she does just that. And brings us with her. Ellen Bass, poet, teacher, author of Like a Beggar

The Songbird Catcher, part litany, part love-song and part prayer, gathers together the memories, imagery and daily occurrences of a life lived with a careful attention to detail. Her gift of noticing, of taking the time to slow down an observed moment and meditate on it, gives direction and heart to this first collection of poems. Dorianne Laux, teacher in the MFA program at North Carolina State University and award-winning poet, whose fifth collection is The Book of Men

The Songbird Catcher is a book of memory, not just of memories, but of how memory mythically mulls experience. It tells tellingly of family, friends, cultural icons, and natural ones. The return at the end, to the mothers with which it began and the flashback to the sixties, gives this book the kind of spiral arc that Yeats envisioned as the gyres of history, turning to the future through memory and renewal. Rev. Dr. T. C. Marshall, Cabrillo College Instructor



Mahmud Al-Qayed, the Songbird Catcher

He was not the first songbird
catcher to fall, only the youngest.
His father fell to his knees, buried

his face in the nubby sweater, breathed in
the damp of his small son's blood.
In a grove where bird catchers and farmers

are banned, songbirds nest in olive trees,
the olives turn black, and fall,
shriveled, yesterday's hope in Gaza

where olive trees fall
by thousands, their tough bark
no match for settlers' saws

their boughs for bulldozers,
yet this ancient grove so far
survives.Three song sparrows

also survive, they hop about in wire
cages Mahmud carried to market
the first Friday of Ramadan

birds felled with net tied to string
the weapon he held. A suspicious character,
shot dead at the fence near kibbutz Nahal Oz

in uprooted Gaza, where birds and small boys find
no refuge in olive branches, soft bodies
beat wings against wire, trilling freedom songs.

Barbara Leon

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Louise Grassi Whitney
WET WELDED TOGETHER

ISBN 978-0-9773070-4-3
Poetry, memoir, family history.
Book design by Kate Hitt
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012948559
132 pp 8.5" x 5.5", paperback.
Many Names Press, October 2012
Price: (U.S.) $20.00

From time-to-time a poet, unattached to academia, explodes onto the scene fully-clothed in truth and authority. Once a single parent of three boys, now a grandmother, horsewoman, explorer in exotic lands, and a sage beekeeper, indomitable Louise Grassi Whitney writes with great wit in a distinctive style about her mute son's autism and his ability to cast spells, along with many other grand mysteries.

Jean Casalegno says Louise's poems: ...draw you in and keep you there, mesmerized, until they are done with you, and then you take a breath.

A remarkable collection of poems plumbing the passion, beauty, sorrow and joy of a remarkable life. I have never seen language used this way, the mark of a strong and original talent. Alex Shoumatoff, contributing editor, Vanity Fair, editor, DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com
Even when they speak of love these shining poems speak of horses, for Louise Whitney's life has been a wild, bold ride. From duck hunting as a girl in her party dress with her father, to grappling with an autistic son as a mother, she recounts in these poems the courage de luxe that she speaks of in her poem, Asylum: "Most of the time, I half expect to be killed in treacherous terrain, while galloping..." Victoria Shorr, contributor, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, Co-founder of the Archer School for Girls.



Optimism of Crows

Two black satin ladies perch on the bed
rustling like crows, wings low overhead.
The death watch is over. They've buried their dead.
They preen their black feathers preparing for sleep,
take off their earrings, then both of them reach
for the cold cream, to smooth their crow's feet.

Louise Grassi Whitney

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Hermie Medley
BEING HUMAN

ISBN 978-0-9773070-3-6
Poetry, memoir, family history.
Cover art by Samantha Green; book design by Kate Hitt.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007923141
92 pp 8.5" x 5.5", paperback.
Many Names Press, March 2007
Price: (U.S.) $20.00

Hermie was a delightful poet; I published her first book of poems, "Too Young to Be Wise" in 1998, when she was only 80 years old. Her joy in life, her cheery but not sappy style of writing, is crisp and wise. I saw she met with grief and family loss, both a long and a short time ago. But mostly I can see her at her typewriter, a wicked-sweet little grin upon her face. When she reads in public, she reminds me of a young spelling bee contestant -- I hold my breath for her simple response to a purplexing and complex word.


Generation Gap

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd never dreamt before. I dreamed
I took my parents
to an open mike poetry reading
at the Santa Cruz Public Library.
I was eighty-three, which made my father
113, my mother 112. They were visiting,
and I thought they might enjoy
the poetry of the twenty-first century.
After half an hour of poems
with no punctuation and no form,
some of which sounded like a grocery list,
my father raised a palsied hand.
"You call this poetry?" he demanded.
"Where's the rhythm? Where's
the rhyme? Where's the story?"
He pulled himself up unsteadily
and worked his way to the podium,
his hair unkempt as a haystack.
"T'was the 18th of April
in '75," he intoned. "Hardly a man
is now alive who remembers
that famous day and year."
He proceeded to recite the whole story
of how Paul Revere alerted his countrymen
that the British were coming. One
if by land and two if by sea
and all that malarkey. It had rhythm;
it had rhyme; it told a story. Everyone
was happy, I guess, though I'll never
know. Just as my father finished, I fell
out of bed and woke up in a heap on the floor.

Hermie Medley

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Margarite Tuchardt
WINDOW TO WESTFIR
AN OREGON SAWMILL TOWN

ISBN 0-9773070-0-X
Poetry, memoir, fine art, family history.
Illustrated with art & photos throughout by Margarite Tuchardt; book design by Kate Hitt.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005937883
112 pp 8.5" x 5,5", paperback.
Many Names Press, March 2006
Price: (U.S.) $20.00

Margarite Tuchardt, a native of Westfir, Oregon, lived with her pioneering family on the forested west slope of the Cascades, along the wild North Fork of the Willamette River during woolly times in a logging company town once booming with prosperity, now no more.


Comanche Court

Friend of my youth, you are wild forest, rushing river
Autumn leaves big enough to cover my head
Where did you go, strong legs and eagle eyes
That carried me roar of ice water, into my future
Friend of my youth, I see you in a child's face
Now when I need you most, you elude me
I think I lost you on a cul-de-sac in South San Jose


"One starlit night Joyce and I skate down the curved road into Westfir, past the sawmill dam, past the red hot sparking burner. I wonder now if she will remember skating on frozen snow, past the slough, past the covered bridge and into downtown. We arrive at the company office near the market and saloon giggling and wobbling. Everything is covered in magic and moonlight. I want the night to go on forever."

Margarite Tuchardt

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Maude Meehan
AS IF THE WORLD MADE SENSE

ISBN: 0-9652575-9-2
Poetry, Memoir.
Cover art, "A Question of Balance" by James Aschbacher
Book design by Kate Hitt
Library of Congress Control Number: 2003109946
198 pp 9" x 6", paperback with dust jacket
Many Names Press, October 2003
Price: (U.S.) $25.00

Reflective poems on grandchildren, aging, relatives and news by the octogenarian "geriatric diva" and much loved poet laureate of Santa Cruz, California. Maude died in her sleep August, 18, 2007.

By turns tender and tough, the poems in Maude Meehan's new collection are deeply etched in the acids of experience. Her poems celebrate the triumph of gratitude over sorrow, and vivifying memory over solitude. Meehan writes eloquently about the vicissitudes of age, but age has not slowed this poet, it has only made her more impatient with anyone who would waste a single second of our time on earth, where "everything is an emergency." Gary Young.


At a Conference for Women

Many years ago
the guest speaker, prim
in suburban matron drag,
blue-white coiffure,
knit suit and Gucci bag,
stepped to the podium.
Typecast, the perfect
corporation wife, who
with her opening sentence
changed my life.

I once had forty tits
and someone dragging
on each one.
I now have two,
they both belong to me,
and life is much more fun.

The rest of her remarks
remain a blur,
but I am down to three.
Blue-haired deceptive lady,
I'm almost running free.

Maude Meehan

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Bill Stipe
SAM HERGO, CIRCUS STRONGMAN

ISBN: 0-9652575-0-9
Illustrated children's fiction, fine art.
40 pp, 8.5" x 7" cardstock, wire-bound, title clearly visible on spine
Printed by Kate Hitt at Many Names Press, 1996 (after the original 1941 manuscript)
Price: Out of Print

This is the story of Sam Hergo, the gentle, kind-hearted strongman of the circus, named after SAMson, HERcules, and GOliath, the three strongest men in all history. Sam is the invention of Bill Stipe, American fine artist and art professor at Northwestern in Chicago who wrote and illustrated Sam Hergo, but World War II broke out and Bill was drafted. SAM HERGO re-emerged in 1995; was completely restored and offset printed in a limited edition of 370 copies by niece, Kate Hitt, at her press, Many Names Press.

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Andrea Rich
THE WOODCUTS OF ANDREA RICH

ISBN 0-9652575-2-5
Fine art, artist descriptions of plates.
96 pp., 10" x 13", Fine hand casebinding by Peggy Gotthold
36 color tipped-in plates, composition monotype from M&H (Arion Press, San Francisco) Typefoundry
Original woodcut print by the artist (suitable for framing)
Poem "The Deer" by Mary Oliver
Designed, letterpress printed, hand typeset by Kate Hitt at the press, Many Names Press, 1997
Price: (U.S.) $500.00 very limited edition, signed & numbered by the artist**.

The seed for this artistic collaboration between printer and artist sprouted some years ago when, impressed by the quality of Santa Cruz artist Andrea Rich's woodcuts, publisher Kate Hitt printed a colorful offset reproduction of a bird Andrea had carved. They agreed to produce a book showcasing 36 woodcut prints, and embarked on what would become the incredibly involved adventure of making a hand-made book.

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Amber Coverdale Sumrall
LITANY OF WINGS

ISBN:  0-9652575-3-3 Poetry.
Cover art by Elizabeth Williams
96 pp. 8.5" x 5.5", paperback w/dust jacket
Type design by Annie Browning, offset printed by Kate Hitt at Many Names Press, 1998

A poem was read on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac Aug.2, 2005 on NPR.

"Litany of Wings" is an amazing and complex book of poems. Amber Coverdale Sumrall has created a masterpiece: a book overflowing with sensual images of birds, plants, animals, people and life. It is a book devoid of superficiality, cycling through life and death, full of irony, humorous at times, serious and binding at others. She seems to test the true mettle of life's worth, making us feel human and full. Always true to the memories and testimonies of the living and dead, no one is forgotten.

These are beautiful poems. Grace Paley

Amber Coverdale Sumrall's poems are deeply felt and will touch many with their evocation of love and possibility and wings. Lucille Clifton

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Patrice Vecchione
TERRITORY OF WIND

ISBN: 0-9652575-4-1 Poetry.
Cover art by Nanda Currant
96 pp. 8.5"x5.5" paperback w/dust jacket
Type design by Annie Browning, offset printed by Kate Hitt at Many Names Press 1998

At the heart of the striking beauty of these poems, with their mindful surroundings, is writing at its most impeccable.

Patrice Vecchione's poems, like life itself, show and tell us-in astonishing ways how much we are, indeed, members of one another. She explores and celebrates the quivering, fragile web of relationships that thread together the many-sided meaning of love. Al Young

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In 1962, Cesar Chavez initiated a movement to empower farm workers with a labor union. Hundreds of middle-class supporters joined him as the workers struggled for social justice. On his staff was a mother of two, Susan Samuels Drake. The first memoir published by a woman who worked closely with Cesar Chavez, it offers a unique and poetic perspective of the Mexican-American visionary whose contagious determination bettered the quality of life for millions of people.

• OUT OF PRINT