Los Nietos Press is pleased to announce the publication of
Star Chasing, the latest poetry collection from Long Beach poet Thomas R. Thomas.
Brendan Constantine (Dementia, My Darling ) writes “Thomas R. Thomas’ new collection Star Chasing is like a telescope that brings its own sky. These passionate and formally innovative poems chart new constellations, celebrating childhood, marriage, death, and the gods of America. Thomas’ rare eye brings this zodiac into breathtaking focus. This is a book to take on the road. These are poems to get you home.”
“Thomas R. Thomas’s Star Chasing is a chronicle of dreams, disappointments, and tragedies, boyhood to manhood, in tract-house Southern California. The deaths of JFK and RFK in childhood, the booms and busts of tech-economy and personal losses in adulthood tell the poignant story of a man’s life. One of my favorite poems “in my dreams,” captures the wistful spirit of this book. The last two stanzas: living again/the days of/my youth//when running/was like flying.”
—Donna Hilbert, author of Gravity: New & Selected Poems
In addition to his writing, Thomas is the publisher of Arroyo Seco Press and its latest Anthology, Redhift. One of the goals of Arroyo Seco Press is to publish poets who do not yet have a collection published.
Clifton Snider, faculty emeritus at Cal State University Long Beach, is the internationally celebrated author of ten books of poetry. A career retrospective of his work, Moonman: New and Selected Poems, was published to great acclaim by World Parade Books in 2012. He has published four novels, including his first historical novel, The Plymouth Papers (Spout Hill Press, 2014). A Jungian/Queer literary critic, his book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On, was published in 1991, and he has published hundreds of poems, short stories, reviews, and articles internationally. He pioneered LGBT literary studies at CSULB. His work has been translated into Arabic, French, Spanish, and Russian.
This second collection of poetry continues Trista Dominqu’s tour through the blue-collar working class Southern California that moves beneath the glitz of Hollywood, the money Santa Monica and the Chrome skyline of Downtown. In poems such as “So Cali”, “Working Class Blue” and “45 minutes of Spanglish” she explores the world of steel-toed shoes, tattooed forearms, skate parks and mills South East of the city epicenter.
Dominqu’s first book, “The Beauty of Muttliness,” debuted in 2013 at Poetry Matters. She has also performed at such venues as the La Puente art walk, Poetry Palooza and the Green Salon. Her work has appeared in Full of Crow and Cadence Collective online poetry magazines, and multiple anthologies by Cadence Collective, Lummox Press and Lucid Moose Lit.
