This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!

I am thrilled, ecstatic, and over the moon to announce
the official publication of my new book -
Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981 - 2016 by Crisis Chronicles Press!

I recently turned 61 years old, and I've found it to be a time of reflection, gratitude, and anticipation. I am extremely grateful to, and humbled by, the many journals, anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and chapbook publishers that have given homes to my poems, lyrics, and haiku over the years. The poems chosen for inclusion in this collection are a good representation of my body of work the past 35 years, while offering glimpses into the life, mind, and crazy times of this former flowerchild and current redhead.

Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 is exactly that, a 150-page collection of my most popular and enduring poems, including

Lovechild (make incense from the flowers, dance naked in the light...)
Incontinence (Oh my god, you're leaking! Can you tell?...)
Fortune Cookie (Fortune, smile upon this blue-eyed, tie-dyed, cloudy skied wild child...)
One Peachy Day (smear the white juice of crushed sunlight over my breasts...)
These Places (- sound like some astronomer's wet dream: labia majora, clitoris...)
Serious Flannel (It's ten degrees outside, and though warmer inside, she's breaking out...)
Cupid (Cupid at long last is dead/I shot that bastard in the head...)
Few Dollar Man (My Cleveland, I don't mind him being a blue collar, few dollar man...)
Pink Hell (the other day, I read where someone had written that hell was not black and hot, after all...but pink, and wet)
Making Scents (the smell of you, the coming closer tell of you...)
Going Braless (she's spent too many decades defined by edges, now she's taking...)
HardDrive/SoftWear (sit you down on my laptop, baby, make love to my motherboard...)
Pools of- (evening's window/setting sun bleeds...)
and
Got Soul? -"The City Poem" (Cities have souls too, you know, some...)

Also included in this collection are the poems I wrote as BeatStreet Cleveland and Snoetry invocations, the poem for which NightBallet was named, the poem I wrote for Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin if we ever find ourselves alone together in an elevator (lol), eulogy poems for when Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Arthur Lee, and David Bowie died, the poem that's permanently housed in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, 2 poems co-written with John Burroughs, and 7 never-before published poems, one of which is my only experimental concrete poem, plus 2 that are new for this year of 2016.

Please visit Crisis Chronicles Press - check out the official announcement and the entirety of their impressive catalog, slow down and smell the poetic roses that grow there, and support Burroughs' fine press. Deep gratitude to John Burroughs of CCP for his tireless work and deft touch on this collection - it means a lot to me.

You may also preorder (the book is currently at the printer) Age of Aquarius here, now, through PayPal, and I'll get it in the mail to you the moment the books are in my hands! At CreateSpace, it lists for $15 plus postage, but you can get it from either CCP or me for only $12 (plus $3) postage. And thank you, my dear friends, for giving audience to my poems. I appreciate you.

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The Public Persona

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio, Cleveland-area, poetry scene and regional reading circuit, and travels to perform her poetry throughout the Midwest. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and the Haiku Society of America. In 2011, she founded NightBallet Press (where she is M.F.W.I.C.), and has since published over 120 titles for poets across the U.S. In September 2015, she produced BeatStreet Cleveland as part of the National Beat Poetry Festival. In 2023, her book Raga for What Comes Next was studied as part of the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry course at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. Borsenik spent a day at MU to discuss the book with the students and did a featured reading from her new collection of poems, Flight of Honey. Flight of Honey was published by Luchador Press in May, 2023. Her poetry has been published in hundreds of journals, magazines, anthologies, and more, including Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, The Offbeat, Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, bottle rockets, Voices of Cleveland, Poems-For-All, Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, and The Magnetic Poetry® Book of Poetry. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous galleries and projects, including Cleveland Heights Arts Gallery's "Ekphrastacy," the Wick Poetry Center's "Speak Peace - American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children's Paintings," the 2019, 2020, and 2022 Edith Chase Symposiums, Amy Mothersbaugh's Studio 2091, & S. A. Griffin's cross-country project "The Poetry Bomb." A copy of her haiku chapbook Blue Graffiti (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2011) is in the Decatur Haiku Collection at Millikin University. In 2016, Crisis Chronicles Press published her first full-length collection of poetry, Age of Aquarius, and in January, 2019, Stubborn Mule Press published her second full-length collection, Raga for What Comes Next, which was released at the "We're No Angels" event at the acclaimed cocktail bar Speak of the Devil in Lorain, Ohio. In September of 2019, Stubborn Mule Press published a four-woman anthology, Heaven We Haven't Yet Dreamed, containing 23 pages of new poetry by Borsenik. She has also performed her poetry with 2 Chefs and a Beat - "Poetic Justice Edition" - at Porco Lounge and Tiki Room in Cleveland, Ohio. Actor Jonathan Frid (Barnabas on television's Dark Shadows) used three of her poems in his one-man touring show Genesis of Evil. Her poem "Let's Get It On" (from her chapbook Thunderclap Amen) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2013 and again in 2014, she won first place in the Best Cleveland Poem Competition. She has taught poetry at Southview Middle School (Lorain, OH), given workshops at Lit Youngstown's Literary Festival, and serves annually as a juror in the Cleveland Institute of Art's Scholastic Writing Awards. In Summer 2015, her poem "Disco" was selected by the Youngstown Summer Festival of the Arts to appear on its reusable tote bags, and Lit Youngstown printed the poem on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. She believes in the musicality of language and the originality of expression in poetry, and continues to seek publication in journals, magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies. She is willing to travel for readings, to present workshops pertaining to small press publishing, to serve on panels about editing and publishing, and to participate with her press at independent literary festivals. Contact Dianne at dborsenik@gmail.com.

The Personal Shizzle

Dianne Borsenik was born Dianne Lynn Keith on Wednesday, February 2 (yes, Groundhog's Day), 1955 in Oberlin, Ohio, during a waxing gibbous moon. She is the Zodiac sign Aquarius and the Chinese Zodiac sign the Sheep. In 1959 her parents moved to Elyria, Ohio, about thirty minutes west of Cleveland, along with daughters Dianne and her younger sister. Dianne grew up roaming Cascade Park: a jewel of green trees, Black River, and East and West Falls in the heart of Elyria, and bookstores, wherever she could find them. In 1977 she met James Borsenik, and in 1979, married him. Their honeymoon was made especially exciting by Hurricane David hitting Florida while their car was sitting disabled in a Kissimmee parking lot. She kept her maiden name and added (unhyphenated) Borsenik. People the world over know her by the initials DLKB. Sadly, Dianne's beloved husband James died July 1, 2023. She misses him profoundly. James and Dianne were blessed with several dog-children over the years: Nickolas Wonder, Bahloo, and Dory Kiss Me Quick; she is still grieving her much-beloved Bodhisattva and little Michel-Angelo. In 2020, Speak of the Devil in Lorain, Ohio, created a tasty cocktail and named it "Borsenik's Law" -- ("That which is poured must be consumed.") She is inordinately pleased to have a listing in the IMDb for photographs she took at the Lix & Kix Poetry Extravaganza, which appeared in the documentary "Twisted Sisters." Favorite Dianne things include Toronto, the Black Hills, Led Zeppelin (emphasis on Robert Plant), steak, lobster, shrimp cocktail, asparagus, Star Trek (emphasis on Leonard Nimoy/Spock), the Monkees (emphasis on Peter Tork), apocalyptic and disaster movies, the Weather Channel, the English Royals, reading (especially biographies, nonfiction), sleeping with the windows open, going barefoot, carnations, honeysuckle, rap music (Snooooooop), riding in a convertible yeah, we're rolling with the top down, strong coffee, sweet tea, Blackstrap Rum, spicy Bloody Marys, Old Fashions made with Old Overholt Rye, the internet, getting her hands dirty growing herbs and flowers, floating in the pool, Tennessee Williams, travel, thunderstorms, Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Nine Inch Nails-the Closer album, Andrea Bocelli, Devo, Ravi Shankar, the Beatles, the Doors, Pink Floyd, and of course, poetry.