Evening Street Press is centered on Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1848 revision of the Declaration of Independence: "that all men -- and women -- are created equal," with equal rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It recognizes that all people are created equal and focuses on the realities of experience, personal and historical, from the most gritty to the most dreamlike, including awareness of the personal and social forces that block or develop the possibilities of a new culture.

Brooklyn by steven Deutsch

Steve Deutsch’s fourth collection of poems, Brooklyn, expands the classic bildungsroman into middle and older age. And aren’t we always coming of age and coming into our age? Deutsch’s narrators remember, mourn, marvel, pay heed. They pay heed to people like Benny, savvy high school bookie lost to Vietnam; Sam and Saul, twin musical prodigies sundered by childhood leukemia; Davy and Sarah, unabashed sweethearts for 50 years. To places like Brownsville, Canarsie Pier, Jamaica Bay landfill. To things: RC Cola caps; secret spice mix stored in a Hellman’s jar; “a wooden spoon/that had been in the family/since the time of King David.” Many of Deutsch’s mostly male characters are haunted by an outlaw brother and their poems are among the collection’s finest. In “Brothers,” a boy and his brother find brief common cause setting up a fish tank. But, soon, “the Bettas built bubble nests/and tore  each other to pieces,” the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution triggers full-fledged war, and the older brother disappears into the rain. In “Zippo,” a younger pair watch, terrified, as their apartment burns down, clenching their secret of a stolen zippo lighter. Deutsch writes wonderfully playful poems, too, as his rollicking riff on Frank O’Hara, “Why I Am Not A Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.” Sorrowful or celebratory, his poems are always thoughtful, discerning, and reward rereading. —Mary Rohrer-Dann, author of Taking the Long Way Home