Seeds Of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other USA

Psalm for Distribution

Lord,
On 8th Street
Between 6th Avenue and Broadway
In Greenwich Village
There are enough shoe stores
With enough shoes
To make me wonder
Where there are shoeless people
On the earth.
Lord,
You have to fire the Angel
in charge of distribution.

Seeds of Fire brings together the work of over fifty poets from the other USA - including Adrienne Rich, Fred Voss, Grace Paley, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and Martín Espada.

Lyrical, satirical, raging and prophetic, they bear witness against the forces of imperial slaughter, environmental catastrophe and social disintegration. They seek solidarity with the impoverished and war-torn working classes around the world, from Palestine and Iraq, Vietnam and Chile to the beggars on the streets of Washington.

These poets sow their seeds of fire in the hope that the real globalisation project is the building of international unity among all those - including the ghosts of John Coltrane, Emmett Till, Tom McGrath, Rachel Corrie, Woody Guthrie, Emma Goldman, Tom Paine and the Blue Cat — who believe that a better world is still possible.

"If you have been feeling as helpless and frustrated and angry with global and national politics as I have, check it out."— Rain Taxi

''Keep this wonderful volume in the car, or buy an extra copy for the waiting room of your favourite doctor''— Pete Seeger

Jon Andersen lives in New England with his wife, the poet Denise Abercrombie, and their two sons. He has worked as a farmhand, a warehouse worker, a gardener and in a lumberyard. He is presently a high school teacher. He is a recipient of The People Before Profits Poetry Prize and Partisan Press''s Working People''s Poetry Award.

Curbstone Press published his first full-length collection, Stomp and Sing, in 2005.

Psalm for Distribution

Lord,
On 8th Street
Between 6th Avenue and Broadway
In Greenwich Village
There are enough shoe stores
With enough shoes
To make me wonder
Where there are shoeless people
On the earth.
Lord,
You have to fire the Angel
in charge of distribution.

Seeds of Fire brings together the work of over fifty poets from the other USA - including Adrienne Rich, Fred Voss, Grace Paley, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and Martín Espada.

Lyrical, satirical, raging and prophetic, they bear witness against the forces of imperial slaughter, environmental catastrophe and social disintegration. They seek solidarity with the impoverished and war-torn working classes around the world, from Palestine and Iraq, Vietnam and Chile to the beggars on the streets of Washington.

These poets sow their seeds of fire in the hope that the real globalisation project is the building of international unity among all those - including the ghosts of John Coltrane, Emmett Till, Tom McGrath, Rachel Corrie, Woody Guthrie, Emma Goldman, Tom Paine and the Blue Cat — who believe that a better world is still possible.

"If you have been feeling as helpless and frustrated and angry with global and national politics as I have, check it out."— Rain Taxi

''Keep this wonderful volume in the car, or buy an extra copy for the waiting room of your favourite doctor''— Pete Seeger

Jon Andersen lives in New England with his wife, the poet Denise Abercrombie, and their two sons. He has worked as a farmhand, a warehouse worker, a gardener and in a lumberyard. He is presently a high school teacher. He is a recipient of The People Before Profits Poetry Prize and Partisan Press''s Working People''s Poetry Award.

Curbstone Press published his first full-length collection, Stomp and Sing, in 2005.