Lost Ceilings [Paperback]

Janet Hamill (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0916382354 | ISBN-13: 978-0916382353 | Publication Date: June 1, 1999

Prose. Janet Hamill is the author of three previous books of poems, Troublante, The Temple (Telephone Books, 1980), and Nostalgia of the Infinite (Ocean View Books, 1992). Her poems, fiction, and criticism have appeared in Poetry Flash, Kansas Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, New Leaves, the Hart Crane Newsletter, and in many other magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the author of broadsheets including The Enigma of Buster Keaton, The Pleiades, and Madam Bogart's Arts of Animal Ecstasy. This latest title, LOST CEILINGS, presents her short prose pieces. A brilliant collection of lyrical surreal visions where on familiar streets the curtain of reality shifts and the reader is drawn into haunting parallel interiors.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

The poet is an escape artist, shrouded in religious mystery, on a mission to capture the horror and beauty of the human experience. The romantic, the outsider, the magician writing purely for herself. The surrealist, the liberator of the submerged life, the world of dreams, from the prison of reason. The seer, distilling the universal from the personal. The musician, igniting language with incantatory power. The devoted adept, paying homage to the sacred work of the ancestors.

About the Author

Poet, painter, and performer Janet Hamill was born in Jersey City, NJ. For her first five years she gazed across the Hudson from Weahawken, NJ, before the family moved north to New Milford, in Bergen County. In the mid-sixties Janet attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University), in Glassboro, NJ, where she met life-long friend, singer/songwriter, Patti Smith. After graduating with a BA in English from Glassboro, Janet joined Patti in New York.

Using the city as a base, and bookstore jobs as a livelihood, Janet lived out her first love, travel, during her twenties and early thirties. Some of her journeys included cross-country trips in the USA and sojourns in Canada, Mexico, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Denmark, England, France, Spain, Italy, and Ireland.

Janet is the author of four books: Lost Ceilings, Nostalgia of the Infinite, The Temple, and Troublante. She has one forthcoming book, The Eternal Caf (a collection of short fiction, co-authored with Patti Smith, to be published by WW. Norton). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in anthologies such as Living With the Animals, Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, The Low-Tech Manual, The Unmade Bed, and Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women. Some of the magazines and journals that have published her work are Bomb, City Lights Review, Caf Review, Long Shot, Colorado North Review, Kansas Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Flash, and the Hart Crane Newsletter.

A strong advocate of the spoken word, Janet has read widely at well known poetry venues such as St. Marks Church and the Walt Whitman Cultural Center. Early in September of 1997, Janet was the featured poet at the first Liss Ard Festival, in Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland. The festival is held annually to raise world-wide environmental awareness.

In the summer of 1997 Janet began to perform her poetry with the music of Moving Star, a backing group of musicians named after one of her poems. They are Bob Torsello (bass), Jay LoRubbio (guitar) and Sean Healy (drums). In their short time together, Janet and Moving Star have performed at the Knitting Factory and CBGB's Gallery in New York City, as well as clubs in Orange and Ulster Counties. Recently, Janet and the band went into the studio with producer Lenny Kaye to record their first CD.

Janet now makes her home in New York State with her husband Joseph Csida.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Telephone Books (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0916382354
• ISBN-13: 978-0916382353
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,206,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)