Poets of the Limberlost Press Return to Ken Sanders Rare Books

Ken Sanders Rare Books is pleased to announce a reading and book signing featuring poets of the Limberlost (Press, that is) Nancy Takacs, author of Juniper, and Gino Sky, author of Wild Dog Days, on Friday, April 22nd at 7:00 p.m. at our downtown bookstore (268 S 200 E) . Copies of both Juniper and Wild Dog Days ($25.00 paperback) will be available for purchase and signing at the event. This event is free and open to the public.

Juniper, Takacs’ third collection of poetry, is infused with sage and juniper, images of the Great Basin, a horizon edged by mountains, where every word is measured and matters. Here is a poet whose lines grip the page like desert plants, windblown and enduring, whose quiet stories of family and wildlife and gardens are as if from a friend who logs the arrival of birds and shares coffee in a kitchen on a winter afternoon.

A former wilderness studies instructor and creative writing professor at the College of Eastern Utah, Nancy Takacs lives in Wellington, Utah, and is the author of Pale Blue Wings (Limberlost Press, 2001), which was a finalist for the Utah Book Award and sold out quickly. She’s also the author of Preserves (City Art Press, 2004) and Wild Animals (Outlaw Artists Press, 2008). She’s the recipient of several awards from the Utah Arts Council, as well as The Nation/Discovery Award. She’s held residencies at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming and Vermont Studios. Her work has appeared recently in Diner, Red Rock Review, Cutthroat, Plainsongs, Adirondack Review, The SpoonRiver Poetry Review, and Weber Studies. She’s done workshops in prisons and schools for the past decade. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa.

In Wild Dog Days, published in honor of the poet’s 75th year, the indefatigable Gino Sky, author of the novel Appaloosa Rising: The Legend of the Cowboy Buddha (Doubleday, 1980), reflects on history, memory, and the power of poetry in bringing an end to the Vietnam War. Publishing a Sixties underground literary magazine called Wild Dog that the FBI took notice of, Sky tells a story of all that swirled around the magazine during an eruptive time in America. First published by the poet Ed Dorn in Pocatello in 1963, Sky moved Wild Dog to Salt Lake City and then to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbery district right at the moment of the countercultural revolution. In Wild Dog Days, Sky exuberantly chronicles the time, the place, and the peacemovement with hallucinogenic clarity. Illustrated with photos of some of the poets who helped hand-crank the pulse of a small press movement, Wild Dog Days is dedicated to “every man, every woman, every kid, every dog who marched for peace and stopped the war.”

Gino Sky has published two novels, a collection of stories, and a dozen books of poetry (including Hallelujah 2 Groundhogs & 16 Valentines, also available from Limberlost Press). His novel Coyote Silk (North Atlantic Books, 1987) has been translated and published in Korea. He and his wife Barb Jensen live in Salt Lake City.

Devoted to finely printed books of poetry by nationally recognized and regionally significant writers, Limberlost Press is one of the finest presses in the intermountain west. Established in 1976 by Rick and Rosemary Ardinger, Limberlost began as a small press literary magazine and later became a publisher of finely printed works by such nationally known poets as Sherman Alexie, Gary Snyder, Edward Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and fine regional writers such as Ken Brewer, Gino Sky, Greg Keeler, William Studebaker, Margaret Ago, Nancy Takacs, Gerald Grimmett and many others.

Rick and Rosemary Ardinger, from their home base in Idaho, have continued in the tradition of fine press printers such as Sam Hammil's Copper Canyon Press in Washington and John Marin's Black Sparrow Press in California.