The Bookstore --> Laurel Ann Bogen
Laurel Ann Bogen's latest chapbook is Washing a Language, about which Pat Cohee said:
The real Laurel Ann Bogen is to be found right here between these pages, in the words and images of her writing. She is seamstress, prisoner, chair, city, and "the girl" who takes "it all down..." She is a master poet and performance artist who could burn the whole goddam place to smoke and ashes, laughing in the conflagration, fertilizing a profusion of fragrant flowers with the holy incandescence of her sensuous syllables. She really lets it all hang out: to the very last dangling participle from the dark side of the moon.
Washing a Language is available for $5 from The Inevitable Press, P.O. Box 249, Laguana Beach, CA 92652. You can give them a call at 949.494.6649.
Laurel Ann Bogen is the author of Fission, a fine press limited-edition art book. This book is one long poem with prints by Richard Bruland, availible in a hand-bound, hand-painted signed numbered edition of 200. It is published by Red Dancefloor Press, at P.O. Box 4974, Lancaster, CA 93539. It's $25 plus $2 shipping and handling. Sales tax is applicable for California residents.
Laurel Ann's most famous book is The Burning, an extensive collection of poems. The Burning was made a textbook at CSU at Long Beach. It received the following review by Robin Schyman of Tsunami:
Laurel Ann Bogen's new book, The Burning, is an important volume for readers of contemporary poetry and especially Los Angeles Poetry. This poet has an extraordinary imagination and a lush vocabulary with which to express it. Any discussion of her work would be incomplete without mentioning her reading style. To see Laurel Ann Bogen read is a real treat. Her poems become even more exotic when she performs thim. The poem you may have read becomes a different poem as her reading amplifies it. "Havana" is one such poem. Strange and mysterious on the page, the city described becomes a character when she reads it. She transforms verbs and adjectives where she feels they will work. In "Havana," she writes, "Havana, you lick into corners." It works.
Some of the poems in this collection are very serious. "Pygmy Headhunters and Killer Apes, My Lover and Me" is one such poem. Like many of her poems, this poem penetrates the reader at a deep level where it is felt or intuited rather than literally understood. The images are arresting, and her repetition of them has the effect of a hammer. The last line, "Pygmy headhunters dance while killer apes forget about you forget about you forget about you," is one you won't forget.
This poet is not afraid to write personal poems. In several poems the speaker is self-depreciating, in others she celebrates herself. In the poem, "Spankings I've Known," Bogen writes about a time when she was told to get the brush she would be spanked with. It is a short, unsettling poem...
In poems like "Doppleganger," "Psychosis in the Produce Department," and "I Eat Lunch with a Schizophrenic," the poet writes, sometimes with humor, of the fine line that the most gifted of us walk between sanity and madness. The poems suggest that the madness is always there, waiting for its moments.
You can order The Burning at the Barnes and Noble bookstore.
Speaking of Havana, Laurel Ann Bogen has two audiocassettes availible: Havana, a single shot, and The Rat City Variations,, a collection. Rat City Variations was reviewed by Lawrence Schulz, in the August '95 issue of NEXT Magazine:
Some of Laurel Ann Bogen's stuff is so cool it hurts. In particular is "I Eat Lunch with a Schizophrenic" which is quirky/funny. Among the other great cuts are "Gene Wilder Save My Life (Woman Tells All)" and "The Mobius Strip."
The top gun of the tape is "Mosquito Control, Part 17 -- A Tale of Eternal Torment." This cut should belong in the Hall of Fame of Performance Poetry because it shows great intensive writing and delivery. It is funny and dead-on realistic. Ms. Bogen's performance takes it over the top, into your ears and zap! -- into your brain. summer nights with those dreaded little suckers will never be the same.
The number one problem with most performance poetry tapes -- the drone of one voice to 45 minutes -- is avoided here, thanks to strong writing and showmanship by Ms. Bogen.
You can order Havana (for $5) and Rat City Variations (for $12) directly from the author. Write her at labogen@mindspring.com or at 836 No La Cienega Blvd. #217, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Also availible directly from the author is The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies, which was published by Red Wind Books in 1996. Ellen Krout-Hasegawa of L.A. Weekly said this about it:
In her latest collection, The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies, poet/teacher Laurel Ann Bogen flits between the rational and irrational with dizzying abandon, startling the reader with pithy images salvaged from a life wracked by mental illness. Bogen knows these treacherous waters, having once navigated them herself, as does her family, which suffers from a history of mental disorder. Her book of prose, The Projects (1987), written in the "bebop" speak of the schizophrenics in her poetry classes, gave a chilling rendition of insanity as seen from the surface. This time, in Last Girl, she breaks the surface, plunging into a tempest-tossed unconscious, and find whimsy and even jubilation.
The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies is can be purchased from Laurel Ann for $10. Write her at labogen@mindspring.com or at 836 No La Cienega Blvd. #217, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Sadly, a number of Laurel Ann's books are now out of print. Her first book, The Disappearing Act, was published in 1978 by BioGraphics Press. The Night Grows Teeth and Other Observations, also from BioGraphics, followed in 1980. In 1981, illuminati, a literary press based in Los Angeles, published Orgami: The Unfolding Heart. This was followed by four more of Laurel's books: the best-selling Do Iguanas Dance Under the Moonlight? in 1984, which was a textbook in the creative writing program at California State University at Long Beach; The Great Orange Leonard Scandal, published in 1987; an experimental book of prose-poetry performance pieces, The Projects, also published in 1987; and Rag-Tag We Kiss, published in 1989. If you're looking for any of these books, we recommend Bookfinder.com, an out-of-print book service.