New poetry collections by Isaac Pickell and Giulia Bencivenga

Today, I’m happy to share two new books with you: Isaac Pickell’s A thread in the thick rigging of night and Giulia Bencivenga’s Amassing Life. I've greatly enjoyed working on these collections, and I love the poems in them, so I'm very excited to share them with you all.

Also, unlike in times past, I’m skipping the pre-order period, and instead both are ready to go now, and I’ll be shipping them out within a week of each order. 

And check them out—they’re beautiful:

You can read more about both books below, and you can find those descriptions as well as author bios on the website. And be on the lookout in coming days and weeks for interviews with both writers, sample poems from both, and info about an online reading to be held in November.

Plus, don’t miss the Book Bundle Deal [Note 10.23.24: This deal is now over, as it was more popular than anticipated, and I had to pay to restock supplies.]. mentioned on the website: if you buy both Isaac’s and Giulia’s books together, you'll receive a free copy of my own Interrogation Days (complete edition), a full-length collection. You can find more about that release on the website too.

As always, half of the press’s income – or 25% of the total sale of each book – will be set aside for donation. However, I’ve not chosen a place to donate yet because so many things are volatile and fluid in the world right now, and I’d like the money to go where most effective at the time (later in November). All I know is I intend for it to go to recipients connected to Palestine or Lebanon. I’ll give more info later on. [UPDATE: On 10.22.24, I announced that donations would be going to Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity.]

AMASSING LIFE

by Giulia Bencivenga

30 pages / 5.5 x 8.5” booklet

Amassing Life is both vibrant and enigmatic. The poems disarm you with naturalness, candor, and insight, and yet their center of gravity also uproots you, pulling away toward something unknown. And there, life begins to fill with itself to a point of disorientation and dread—should you panic or fall in love? Vulgar hearts, seagull fractals, grim roses, the taste of money. You can hear a voice that folds itself inside out, pivoting abruptly, from the antic to the seer, shifting like clouds or shafts of light, knowing even the flowers have ideas. In other words, these are poems about living to die and dying to be alive. They reach from the hidden core of the soul out to the splayed nerve-endings and furthest reaches of the skin, and on outward into some indefinable zone of thinking and feeling. Read this and feel the blood flow.

A thread in the thick rigging of night

by Isaac Pickell

25 pages / 5.5 x 8.5’’ booklet

A thread in the thick rigging of night moves through moral and political labyrinths. It follows the thread of individual personhood into the vast tangle of its historical and material determinations, addressing labor, race, law, war, genocide, and individual survival. This collection moves us from “another quiet little Sunday” and mundane realities of wage work, to the facts of the Middle Passage & Manifest Destiny, to capitalist imperialism, and to US support for genocide in Palestine—and then back again to the individual who feels these realities shadowing his daily life. And yes, struggling under such weight can unmoor you, shredding all certainties. Still, these poems move with such guidance, clarity, and rigor, that they help create the first-person plural that they long for—and they welcome you in.

Thank you for reading! And thank you for supporting Dead Mall Press!

RM