The Colored Seaons, stunning new poetry from Leopold Figaro, plays at the intersection of Vodou and the arts

Today, we've got something amazing. B&B is proud to announce the publication of Léopold Figaro's The Colored Seasons. With this striking debut collection, Figaro shows himself to be a vibrant new voice in American and Haitian-American poetry.

By turns lushly beautiful, startlingly erotic, genuinely wise, and frankly terrifying, these pieces combine a masterful control of image and line with a lyrical love of language. In them, Figaro somehow manages to interlace his Afro-Caribbean and Haitian-American heritage with a conception of the universe that is, at heart, profoundly optimistic and therefore very American.

Today a resident of Boston, Figaro grew up in the historic Haitian art city of Jacmel, which has been called the Greenwich Village or Left Bank of the nation. "It is my intention," he notes, "to include the Jacmelian flavor in everything I write." And in particular, he says, he wants to explain the Haitian and Haitian-American experience to readers who are unfamiliar with those cultures. "People think of Haiti as simply one vast cesspool of corruption and suffering. I want to show the world that there is also a Haiti that is rich in art, in poetry, and in intellectual experimentation."

Thus his poetry is redolent with references to Haitian spiritual life. "Call it 'Vodou,' if you like," he notes. "But people forget there is more to Vodou than religion…more than spirits and witchcraft. It is a complete culture, with art, stories, legends, songs, and more. That is the kind of Vodou I try to invoke in my work."

While Figaro has been extensively published in Haiti and in French, this is first English-language book length publication in the USA.

The Colored Seasons is now available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Colored-Seasons-Leopold-Figaro/dp/0692433910, and in ebook form at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WJAR64C.

Re.Doubt3! And it's FREE for five days!!!

Okay, Re.Doubt3 has just gone live!

What's that you say? Well, we answer, Re.Doubt is Belfort & Bastion's little literary magazine. And we've just done issue number three.

This time around we've got poetry from Carol Fulton and W.L. Kaserpek, fiction from Robert Folkner and Victor Storiguard, non-fiction from Peter H. Salus, and terrific nature photography by DeWayne Fisher.

AND best of all, it will be free to download from Amazon from 24 Sep to 28 Sep, 2014!

So check it out while it's on special! Just click on the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NOATZ40http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NOATZ40

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NOATZ40

Our freebie e-book blowout continues

We're stilling giving away tons of free e-books!

On Wednesday,  July 16, and for one day only, Jerry McMurry's fascinating collection of prose sketches, Ice Cream Counter, will be FREE for the download from Amazon. It is a fun, insightful, and humane work that everyone will enjoy. Do be sure to download it.

It is here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JSCR6NA

Also, on going until July 18, Robert Folkner's reworking of the Faust tale, Something For Everything, is FREE on Amazon. So give this one a look. It is a highly inventive and disturbing exploration of human nature.

It is here: http://www.amazon.com/Something-For-Everything-ebook/dp/B00BC0JKEO

Plus, don't forget, W.L. Kasperek's debut collection of poetry, Lucky Pennies, will be FREE from July 18 until July 22. Well worth the read.

It is here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7HNCYI

And, finally, if you are a day trader, you'll want this one. Richard Arms book on his new technique of charting, Arms Candlevolume, will be FREE on July 19 and July 20. This one could be important to the Wall Street pro.

It is here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFX2JTM

And what's free this week—Lucky Pennies!

And we've got more free for you this week. For a start, there's Lucky Pennies, the poetry of W. L. Kasperek.

Ms. Kasperek's works a welcome relief from the rather depressing poetry that is the norm these days. She brings us poems that are by turns vivid, intense, funny, sad, profound and enormously compassionate. She masterfully explores the human condition in the strange new age of our lives today.

So check out this remarkable little collection. It will FREE from July 18 to July 22, 2014. Just head over to Amazon and download from here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7HNCYI

Our first venture into books of poetry! Lucky Pennies!

Lucky Pennies & A new and luminous voice in American Poetry!



Belfort and Bastion is proud to introduce W. L. Kasperek's debut collection of poetry in e-book form, Lucky Pennies. In this remarkable work, Kasperek proves herself to be among the best of the new voices of what has been called the post-postmodern age. Her works firmly reject the cheap cynicism and cheaper irony that have been all too often the hallmarks of recent poetry. In their place she offers an unblinking realism but a realism firmly tied to a strong moral conception of what the world could be and should be

"Kasperek's work shows that reports of the 'death of the aesthetic' are greatly exaggerated," notes Victor Storiguard (author of Singular Encounters and Hydra). "Her poetry proves beyond question that there is still a place for beauty, morality, sentiment, and justice in the world of the artist."

Lucky Pennies includes some of the best of Kasperek's recent work. The poems here range from the haiku-like evocations of the natural world (for example, "The Lake Is A Mirror,") to wonderfully comic meditations on the passing scene ("Please Save Our Drive-Inns"), to the deeply personal and touching ("A True Hero").

Lucky Pennies is available as an e-book on Amazon now at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7HNCYIhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7HNCYI.


About W. L. Kasperek

Kasperek was born and raised in southern California. She then launched into a career that includes military service, music, and motherhood.

As for her poetry, she notes, "creating poems is a healing process for me …As I move on in life I will continue to share what I see in this world of mine, good and bad and right or wrong…"

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E7HNCYI

Re.Doubt1 is A Go

Belfort and Bastion is pleased to announce that it has just published the first issue of Re.Doubt, a collection of the new works from writers, poets, photographers, and other artists.

There will be several of Re.Doubts before all is done and said. This, the first, includes works by Elgador, Tristan Gans, Michael Jay Tucker, Robert Folkner, Jeff Russell, Jadee, Martha Trudeau Tucker, DeWayne Fisher, and Victor Storiguard.

So, check it out at Amazon.

In the meantime, here's the introductory chapter:


Welcome...to Re.Doubt issue one.

What is it?

Briefly, Re.Doubt is a series of books, eachcontaining a number of short, evocative pieces. These may be short stories, essays, poems, photographs, drawings, paintings?

And why is it being published?

Re.Doubt is meant to be a place young artists, new artists, older artists who may wish to tread the line of transgression, and others can go to see their work in (electronic) print. We mean to offer such people a platform from which to disclaim.

Even if, particularly if, their message may have been before ignored.

And what is the significance of the name?

Partly, we are simply being silly. A redoubt is a stronghold, a fortification. And that fits with our name, Belfort and Bastion, which just happens to sound a bit similar._

And, too, we like to thing our contributors are "redoubtable" souls.

And that's all?

No. One more thing. We call it Re.Doubt because the goal of these books is to cast doubt on the official versions, the accepted wisdom, the comfortably familiar if false. We want to offer alternatives, either to prevalent interpretations of events or to the status quo of artistic expression.

But the "Re" in front of "Doubt."

Because, ironically, in this revisionist world of ours, it is the duty of the innovator to cast doubt upon doubt itself.

Come again?

Sometimes it is important, good, and moral to cast doubt upon what governments and media tell us or on what societies believe. To say that, for example, the war in Vietnam was not good, in spite of what Washington told us, was one of the great achievements of America in the 1960s.

But there are times and places where casting doubt becomes itself destructive. To deny the Holocaust, to oppose vaccines (and thus endanger the lives of not only your own children but those of others), to say that a President was born in Kenya in spite of all evidence to the contrary, to claim that the horrific murders of children in mass shootings never happened?

In those places, the iconoclast is evil.

Thus, we doubt doubt itself. We re-doubt.

And is it time to begin?

We think so.

Then hush. And we shall turn the page.

Hello, hello!

Welcome to the editorial blog of Belfort and Bastion, publishers for this millennium.

Here, we will introduce our titles. We'll introduce our editors. We'll try to explain our motives and goals. And, most importantly of all, we'll ask for your input, your thoughts, and your ideas.

So, stay a while. Read. Comment. Tell us about yourselves and what you want us to publish for you.

We look forward to the beginning of a beautiful, if (now and then) complicated friendship.

~ The Editors
Belfort And Bastion

Welcome...

...to the editor's blog of Belfort and Bastion, publishers for this millennium.