Ragged Sky Poets Reading Tonight at Library’s U.S. 1 Poets Series

Linda Arntzenius

Ellen Foos has a passion of poetry and for publishing. A production editor for Princeton University Press by day, she moonlights as a small press publisher. To date, her Ragged Sky Press, founded in 1992, has published fiction, nonfiction, and several poetry books, including a set of five by members of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative.

Ms. Foos will join with the four other Ragged Sky Press poets — Elizabeth (Mimi) Danson, Carlos Hernández Peña, Elizabeth Anne Socolow, and Arlene Weiner — in a reading of work at the Princeton Public Library tonight, Wednesday, November 7, at 7:30 p.m. as part of the U.S. 1 Poets Invite series.

Past readers in the monthly series, which was founded by Ms. Foos, include Gerald Stern and Paul Muldoon. Admission is free and an open mic session will follow the featured readings.

The poets will read from their books: Little Knitted Sister by Ms. Foos, The Luxury of Obstacles by Ms. Danson, Moonmilk and Other Poems by Mr. Hernández Peña, Between Silence and Praise by Ms. Socolow, and Escape Velocity by Ms. Weiner.

The collaborative publishing venture came about as the natural result of a small critiquing group the five poets formed as an offshoot of US 1 Poets’ Cooperative. The poets had been meeting for several months when the idea of a set of books formed. “We all were due to have the kind of recognition that a book brings to one’s work,” said Ms. Foos, who brought her expertise as a production editor to the process.

The poets edited each other’s manuscripts and the five-book set format streamlined the design and production work. The Ragged Sky Poetry Series was launched in February 2006, with covers designed by the publisher’s sister, Jean Foos, a professional graphic designer.

“It is a tried and true marketing technique to come out with a new series; it gives coherence and a nice handle for publicity,” commented Ms. Foos, who had produced the

U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative journal U.S. 1 Worksheets and organized poetry slams for The Arts Council of Princeton.

“Besides sharing links of mutual friendship and appreciation for each other’s writing, the five authors all have a streak of the romantic and lyrical with a touch of humor.”

But there are clearly different influences and styles.

The Poets

Born and raised in Mexico City, Mr. Hernández Peña brings the sounds, sights, and mythologies of his native land and Spanish language to his English language poems. The otherness of his English allows him to write, “from another side of the world,” he said. Ms. Socolow, a founding member of U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative and a native of New York City, has taught in many venues, most recently at Rutgers University. She won the Barnard Poetry Prize in 1987 for her first book, Laughing at Gravity: Conversations with Isaac Newton. She is poetry editor of the Newsletter of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts. She won the journal Isotope’s Editors’ Prize in poetry for 2006.

Now resident in Pittsburgh, Ms. Weiner grew up in Inwood, near Manhattan’s northern tip, and has lived in Massachusetts, California, and Princeton. Her poems have appeared in The Louisville Review; Pleiades, a Journal of New Writing; Poet Lore; U.S. 1 Weekly; and U.S. 1 Worksheets. Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac, chose her poem “1959,” to read on his Saturday, July 8, 2006 show. It can be heard on the Writer’s Almanac archive for the week of July 3, 2006.

Elizabeth (Mimi) Danson was born in India, spent her early childhood in China, and ultimately was educated in England. Her writing has been featured in U.S. 1 Worksheets, The New Review, Fourth Genre, Anon One, and other publications.

Poetry by Ms. Foos has appeared in U.S. 1 Worksheets, The Kelsey Review, Edison Literary Review, and Sensations Magazine.

She began her career in the field of small press publishing when she was asked by Fred Mertz, a parish priest in St. Paul, Minnesota, to help him publish his memoir, The Ore and the Dross. Ms. Foos was working for Graywolf Press at the time. “His book came out in 1992 and since then I also helped a few others publish their books as a service to them more than as a business venture for myself,” she said.

According to the poet/publisher, the Ragged Sky name came to her “out of the blue. Only later did she find two references that may have been subliminal influences: the line: “A-plowing through the ragged sky and up a cloudy draw” from “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” a song by Stan Jones, and the Yeats poem “The Ragged Wood.” “To me the name Ragged Sky connotes the exhilarating forces associated with both nature and literature,” said the poet, whose enjoyment of the form began early, perhaps as result of her mother reading aloud from a favorite collection of American Poetry.

After moving to New Jersey, she lived in Hopewell for three years working for Ecco Press before moving to Princeton eleven years ago.

She attended the MacDowell Colony in the fall of 2006. “MacDowell gave me a boost in terms of recognition. I had a beautiful studio to work in, great colleagues, and a concentrated period to write. Being a poet can be a vague existence so it is good to have a few milestones along the way.”

In addition to the five poet set Ragged Sky has published three new books of poety: Anca Vlasopoulos’ Penguins in a Warming World, Michael Brown’s The Confidence Man, and Valerie Lawson’s Dog Watch.

The choice of work reflects: “the confluence of my being open to solid writers who have yet to make their mark and the writers being willing to collaborate with me,” she said. “After that, anything goes.”

The press is funded by readers purchases with printing costs being borne by the individual authors. Ms. Foos donates her time and expertise.

Most Ragged Sky Press books can be bought on the Internet via Powell’s Books, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon Books. The cover price for the books in the poetry series is $10 each.

The latest offerings from Ragged Sky Press are: Dog Watch by Valerie Lawson, long-time co-host of the Boston Poetry Slam, Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the Spoken Word and Best Narrative Poem at the Cambridge Poetry Awards; Penguins in a Warming World, by Rumanian-born poet and novelist Anca Vlasopolos; and The Confidence Man by Michael R. Brown, whose Susquehanna was published by Ragged Sky Press in 2003.

Looking toward the future, Ms. Foos is drawn to the idea of an anthology of poetry, but she doesn’t have a five-year plan.

One thing she is sure of though, is the value of readings such as the US1 Poets’ Invite Series. “One’s poetry moves from a small private circle into the greater community and takes on a new identity,” she said.

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