Ornithopter Press

Philosophy I just want you to understand that if you took every jellyfish who had ever died in the sea, and not just the visible ones washed up ashore, no, even the ones who lived and perished in total obscurity, if you took all their gelatinous inertia rocked by the waves it's maybe the beginning of an approximation of how my heart has felt for fourteen years of looking at you. And of course that's like the most American thing I could possibly do, wrap mass death up in the matter of an individual heart, but like one tree alone at the height of a hill offering high noon's only shade for a quarter mile around I'm stuck with it, I'm carving secrets in the bark because I'm a dog for you, I'm backwards, yesterday I forgot my own name

Was reminded yesterday of the opening poem of @tomsnarsky.bsky.social’s RECLAIMED WATER (@ornithopterpress.bsky.social)—thanks for this @toddedillard.bsky.social!—so on Day 3 of National Poetry Month, here’s “Philosophy,” another poem I love from this brilliant collection! 💙

Todd, your prompt made me think of this poem, “Saddest Factory” by @tomsnarsky.bsky.social in RECLAIMED WATER (@ornithopterpress.bsky.social)!

Hi Eve, thank you, let's do this!

The making of this book took me through all kinds of difficult terrains—thanks so much to @ornithopterpress.bsky.social for their trust and patience with its long and winding creative process. It’s exciting to now get a chance to send it out to share and find its way into the world.

Against an orange background, this text: forthcoming from Ornithopter Press in 2025, poetry collections by Eve Luckring and Emma Winsor Wood

Forthcoming from Ornithopter Press in 2025, poetry collections by Emma Winsor Wood and Eve Luckring!

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five books, arranged on a wooden table: asterisk by Jenny George, twenty-four: short form poetry, edited by A.R. Williams, The Singing River by Benjamin Morris, Reclaimed Water by Tom Snarsky, and 32 poems - winter 2024 issue.

Going camping! Bringing some friends
@ornithopterpress.bsky.social @bellepointpress.bsky.social @bullcitypress.com @eastridgereview.bsky.social

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Cole Chaudhari : Close Reading of “Gardenback” by Tom Snarsky Gardenback Things pass from me To you. I am as naked & Without down as you were When you came into the World, vulnerable, Melan...

newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Cole Chaudhari : Close Reading of “Gardenback” by Tom Snarsky / @tomsnarsky.bsky.social @ornithopterpress.bsky.social ;
periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/02/cole...

Two Graves, One Terrible Date by Jonathan Everitt — BIRCH BARK EDITING Site of Disappearance b y Erin Malone Ornithopter Press 88 pages Even memories buried for decades are not dead—only sleeping.

I started writing #BookReviews of #poetry collections last year. Here's one volume I found especially striking:
"Site of Disappearance" by @erinmalonepoet.bsky.social, from @ornithopterpress.bsky.social.
www.birchbarkediting.com/microlit-alm...

Thank you, Jonathan

“Snediker’s Jones Very could serve as a proof-text for Lyn Hejinian’s observation that ‘The desire to tell within the conditions of a discontinuous consciousness seems to constitute the original situation of the poem.’ Its sentences accumulate the way David Markson’s sentences accumulate in Wittgenstein’s Mistress. I experience them according to the curious epigraph to the ‘Notes’ section of the book, attributed there to Hopkins: ‘I do not believe school is from schola viz. σχολή, but the Teuton word meaning assemblage, collection, as shoal, a school of whales shell (in a school of form).’ Just so do Snediker’s sentences school; just so do they school me.” —​H.L. Hix, "Urgency," International Times, November 23, 2024

Please read this review of Michael D. Snediker's JONES VERY written by the inimitable H. L. Hix:
internationaltimes.it/urgency/

Front cover of Michael D. Snediker's collection of poetry JONES VERY featuring cover art by Henry Chapman of a person from shoulders up delicately painted in washes on canvas, looking back at the viewer.

Introducing JONES VERY by Michael D. Snediker
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From what do we assemble ourselves, of what fervors is that scene of us comprised? Jones Very—named after Ralph Waldo Emerson’s haunted acolyte—is an ecology of oxymel and abacus....
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www.ornithopterpress.com/store/p24/JO...

Front cover of AN INCH THICK by Theo Ellin Ballew has a grid of green dancing flying figures against a reddish brown field.

Introducing AN INCH THICK by Theo Ellin Ballew
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AN INCH THICK is a future-mythic life story in lullaby, peopled by punkish attempts to bind and measure and hold still (attempts egged on by the memory of their impossibility).
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www.ornithopterpress.com/store/p23/AN...

Hey everybody, it's wonderful to be part of the creative community here. So many new friends, this is great. Ornithopter Press has published 2 fabulous books this fall. Preparing to share them with you now. New posts coming up.

Cutter Streeby on Instagram: "Publisher: @ornithopterpress Score: @eliotcardinaux Author: @tomsnarsky Full review from @dgkelly91 available on substack 🌌✨ Step into the ethereal world of “The Star... 11 likes, 0 comments - cutterstreeby on July 3, 2024: "Publisher: @ornithopterpress Score: @eliotcardinaux Author: @tomsnarsky Full review from @dgkelly91 available on substack 🌌✨ Step into the et...

if you’re over there on the instant gram, I’m happy to have a poem-video live there for “The Star-Field Paintings”, the opening poem from my first book Light-Up Swan (@ornithopterpress.bsky.social, 2021)! www.instagram.com/reel/C8-2C6h...

“The horses are writing their night philosophies” Tom Snarsky

Tom Snarsky with your poem and prompt today! From “Care Of,” which you can read in full here: moistpoetryjournal.com/2024/04/03/c...

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

part maggot part bone part prayer

borrowing these lines by Eve Luckring (@ornithopterpress.bsky.social) for an author bio

You disappear into a duration I wrote what I remembered of our meeting then placed my face inside notebook close to the lettering until words touched my cheek and all other sounds dimmed—strawsong, pulling Queries, red-wrapped A lovely cubicle we enter Appetites, compartments, rubbing against interruption, distraction Sorry, lorry and slurry, we come apart Message cures curvature Finally I’m convinced: pinpricks, lines, hooks You persevere into pulsation

from Intaglio Daughters, Laynie Browne's homage to Lyn Hejinian

Thanks Han, Laynie's book is a wonderful and deeply felt homage. So glad you're returning to it.

Reason what of flurry, what of fishes, of fury Where no words console, sustenance is the relentless search for your other—us, us! A heaven of silk fitting two words together, through pencil lines of hair, nests, puzzles of hands securing the page Once arrived at the pond I rejected an entire oeuvre of migraines, the skin of a frog, its toes brushed my lip then shoulder as it leapt and broke the surface I could no longer permit the presence in my body of fictions belonging elsewhere. I pitched my device then realized my crime against duckweed and all below I had disowned my own toxicity, poisoned a sanctuary A wish for telepathy, fallen for dubious shortcomings Seasons of worry, what of ditches, of jury

I could no longer permit the presence in my body / of fictions belonging elsewhere.

—Laynie Brown #poetry @ornithopterpress.bsky.social

Episode 43: Tom Snarsky (Of Minisons, Math, and More About Long Poems) Tom Snarsky, author of Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press, 2023) Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and streaming Read: Neutral Spaces, for more of Tom Snarsky's poetry Purchase: Reclaimed Water (Orni...

Of line breaks, of minisons, of experimental poetics, of Wallace Stevens and of Noelle Kocot, of small and large poems, of bagpipes and of the infinite variety of language and of ultimately: surprise.

Episode 43: Tom Snarsky (Of Minisons, Math, and More About Long Poems) is now available!

i believe in the necessity of poets, and even when dancers wake me up at ten sunday morning i believe in them. and when the car hauler full of junked heaps pulled up along bank street i thought oh my god a sculptor's moved next door, but i believe in them too. the culture depends on its artists -- whether we are out hunting for food, or trying to stop a war. and i sit in my room guilty, wishing everyone could live there, and yet i say damn it, i can, i'm entitled, as long as i do my work.

Love Poem with No Words This poem happens in an actual lake. There are no words in it, only things Burnt out of their ordering. Like a Bright yellow prism of sunlight, Or maybe a pearl. Things with no Human form. Things that say sorry When they don't have to. Like water, Or maybe a used airbag. The fore- Most criminal in my life is me and The foremost healer in my life is Indisputably you. We're in the lake Together and it's raining. The air- Bag full of pearls has sunk to the Bottom. The sun is almost here.

happy #smallpoemsunday! if you feel so inclined, you can share a small poem you’ve written and/or a small poem you love by somebody else :)

here’s a snippet by Joel Oppenheimer & one by me, from my chap Threshold @anothernewcalligraphy.com reprinted in Light-Up Swan @ornithopterpress.bsky.social

I keep meaning to say. I got a copy of @tomsnarsky.bsky.social 's Reclaimed Water, and I am enjoying it! It's on my new bookshelf in my bedroom and I'm not in bed to take pictures. But the longer "Rare Birds of Massachusetts" is really good!

These mornings she finds company with good wine and music on some weird timetable with success But lately, she lost the game she plays so well At some point, you have to grow up she resolves though her memories of how she imagined It Was Gonna Be were cushioned and the growing pains

Where Stars Make Dreams and Dreams Make Stars To write poetry you need to eat to a point where you feel kind of sick, pumpkin ice cream or looking at something you shouldn't for too long— I don't know, barking at the moon? Rachmaninoff in stereo? Come on Tom you must have a less white example. The fire we started with all those Catholic newspapers —it didn't burn hot or long enough to keep the birds / from stealing in

happy #smallpoemsunday! if you feel so inclined, you can share a small poem you’ve written &/or a small poem you love by somebody else :)

I’m a big fan of what Peter Reading once called “the thirteen-line sonnet for unlucky people”—here’s one by Michelle Parkerson & one by me :)

How far I’ve come into my own promise kept rather than shown all I’ve done so far from what I know.

Kate Colby

fascinating conversations like this one can happen after rob mclennan gets his hands on a book: robmclennan.blogspot.com/2022/09/12-o...