NEW POETRY
Only Other Gods by Joshua Alan Sturgill
How We Lost Our Tails: I would say that the truth is that we are, somehow, the sons of God. This truth primitive man apprehended; but to make it intelligible to himself he had to put it in the form of a picture story. His symbols are not our symbols, but it is doubtful whether the highest truth can be communicated to man or apprehended by him save through symbols of some kind.
Explore Spirit Lake, the new novel by Ben Dolan.
Arthur Machen on MIDSUMMER
No Cattle Shows: At one show I was discussing bacon with a man from Cheshire, whose face was as round and red and jocund as a harvest moon. The round man wishes me to understand exactly what he meant; and in an instant he had twirled me round and cut me up—theoretically, with his forefinger—into “sides” and “back” and “belly” in the admiration of a learned audience.
Demand has outpaced our on-hand stock of Ben Dolan’s new novel, Spirit Lake! Thank you to all those who have purchased copies. Orders are still being accepted – please allow two weeks for delivery.
NEW POETRY
Omnia Lux by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Wasted Van Power: Economy is the word of the moment—economy in food, economy in dress, economy in coal and lighting, economy in everything, to feed the guns and husband labour. Why not, therefore, economy in traffic?
Darkly Bright Press is pleased to present Ben Dolan’s debut novel, SPIRIT LAKE, an elegiac confrontation between a man and his tragic past. In this complex character study, the author explores the borderlands which superficially divide poetry, technology and mysticism. Stone is a hunted man on the run to the scorched mountainsides of the Southwest where the veil between this world and the next is ghostly thin.
AVAILABLE JUNE 9th
Darkly Bright Press is pleased to present Ben Dolan’s debut novel, SPIRIT LAKE, an elegiac confrontation between a man and his tragic past. In this complex character study, the author explores the borderlands which superficially divide poetry, technology and mysticism. Stone is a hunted man on the run to the scorched mountainsides of the Southwest where the veil between this world and the next is ghostly thin.
POETRY NEWS
Linda Lobmeyer, the author of When I Forget the Words, has published new work at Trampoline.
Ifs And Suggestions by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Democracy of Poets: He came home; but his home was amid the stars, not by the English lanes and meadows. But here in this book is the true democracy—if we must call it by that name.
Congratulations to Jesse Keith Butler, author of The Living Law, who received a two-month writer’s residency from the Writer’s Trust of Canada.
NEW POETRY
The True Mountain by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Little Men and Little Pleasures: To-day that evening’s treat would cost Kit something like twenty-five shillings—and a sermon on the Evils of Drink. Is the little man of little means ever going to be able to take his little pleasures again?
Available June 9, 2025
JP Stone is a has-been “bot-poet” and a disgruntled academic coasting into a rather bleak retirement in his secluded quarters in an Albuquerque high rise. He was in love once, briefly. He was married once, much later and regrettably less briefly. Now he wages silent, psychological warfare against the concierge of his rather ridiculous, drone-friendly apartment building. He remains oddly alert to the comings and goings of his Hungarian neighbors. He has a strained relationship with his self-driving car, though self-driving cars made what little success he saw in his academic career. His magnum opus, Bot-Poetics, certainly did not. Even Daniel Glidden, his department head, once collaborator, and former friend, has given up trying to coax JP out of his silent fortress.
But then a stranger comes to town. She asks to meet him, but he knows what she really desires: she wants to ask a difficult question. But she needn’t meet him to know the answer. The answer is no. He has proof. Spirit Lake is his proof, his rude greeting, his disavowal, and his strange goodbye.
Darkly Bright Press is pleased to present Ben Dolan’s debut novel, an elegiac confrontation between a man and his tragic past. In this complex character study, the author explores the borderlands which superficially divide poetry, technology and mysticism. Stone is a hunted man on the run to the scorched mountainsides of the Southwest where the veil between this world and the next is ghostly thin.
NEW POETRY
Atrophy by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Anything Good Enough!: That is what our “good, plain, old-fashioned English cookery” has come to. We eat this rubbish and pay pretty heavily for it, and, worse still, even boast that “we don’t care much what we eat; anything is good enough for us.”
Orthodox Arts Festival
The semi-annual event was held recently in Carrollton, TX at Ss. Constantine and Helen Orthodox Church.
Richard Rohlin (now Deacon Seraphim) spoke on “Writing Fiction as an Orthodox Christian” and Joshua Alan Sturgill, the author of Now A Major Motion Picture, spoke on “The Art of Imitating Heaven” (why Moderns must return to stargazing). The featured speaker was Jonathan Pageau, discussing the importance of making beautiful art from and for a transcendent perspective. The festival featured food vendors, iconographers, local merchants and of course, Eighth Day Books. Saturday evening, the speakers gathered to answer attendees’ questions about art, spiritual life, recommended reading, music and living metaphysically in American culture.
Books from Darkly Bright Press were front and center at the Eighth Day table, right next to Tolkien and Lewis – including the newest publication, At a Man’s Table by Arthur Machen. The bookstore still has a few copies left of Rohlin’s Akboritha.
NEW POETRY
Definition Drift by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Francisco Goya, The Colossus by Benjamin Rozonoyer
Sacred Turnip: In the Hebrew story man eats the forbidden fruit and loses Paradise; in the Welsh story the heroes open the door that looks on Cornwall and are bereft of the magic joys that the Venerable Head has given them.
NEW POETRY
Nelumbo by Joshua Alan Sturgill
The Domestic Hun: In “Martin Schuler” they eat duck and green peas with a sauce made of oysters, apricots, and Moselle. From that dish to the assassination of whole communities the descent is slight and easy.
At A Man’s Table can be ordered here.
NEW POETRY
The Measurement Problem by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Quicker Than Thought: Admirers of Machen’s horror classic, The Great God Pan, will find this dispatch particularly interesting.
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