Emile Zola: "If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud."
ALL OF ME can be purchased through Lea's publisher, Booksmyth Press, found on the web at www.gingercatpress.com or by sending a check or money order for $12.00, plus $2.00 for shipping and handling, to Lea Banks, 58 Mechanic Street, Shelburne Falls MA 01370. This amazing chapbook is a 6x9, hand crafted, hand sewn edition with a limited run of 350 copies only. Cover art by the incredible collagist, Lillianna Pereira.
Please consider purchasing this book before it goes to a paperback edition and we get gobbled up by a mean turtlebacked quotidian conglomerate gelatinous alluvial anecdotal corporation. Not that there's anything wrong with that. . .yea, there is really, but it won't be available in tradebook form for a good long time. Coming soon to a bookstore near you.
A recent Valley Poetry review by Allegra Mira (on MassLive.com) featured Shelburne Falls Poet, Lea Banks
"Last week I attended Lea Banks' reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Lea read with three New Jersey poets: Joe Weil, Danny Shot and the late Jack Wiler.
Standing on stage in in a black skirt, red pumps and a red tee-shirt that she designed quoting lusty R&B soul singer Denise Lasalle, Lea seemed like royal cowgirl from the school of life, touring us through a world where physical pain and physical beauty serve to compliment and define each other. In the darkened audience, I felt myself become hooked by her wordflow, and dragged along through a current of private moments, all of them somehow familiar."
"This book is a five-star must have. Lea does not hold back. She has a fresh, honest and brave heart and is willing to risk herself for love. This is the voice of an adventurous spirit. The limited art edition is truly a work of art. You won't be able to put it down and you will find yourself returning to Lea's poems many times." Sandra Azmitia, author of the memoir, Do It Differently! Do It Differently!
Two of Lea's poems, "All of Me" and "Hallelujah" from her book ALL OF ME, were nominated for the 2009 pushcart prize. She was also finalist for the Pavel Strut Fellowship in Prague.
"It's the burned life we had, firewalkers.
Flame orange frames the lunar eclipse." -- from "All of Me"
