Ourselves or Nothing

In keeping with Maurice Girodas' tradition that the Olympia Press also published works of fine literary value, the New Traveller's Companion Series presents the infamously iconoclastic Michael Hemmingson's first full-length collection of poetry, bringing together twenty years of previously published and new works that span time and consciousness, moving across Europe, America, and the fifth dimension, dealing with sex, death, hope, despair, love, hate, imagination, reality, jumping from the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01, the 2010 quake in Haiti, to a racial lynching in the 1950s. The dead speak through the living and the living remember long drives into remote areas like Jacumba and Borrego Springs in California in this fascinating assembly of poems long and short. Michael Hemmingson has carved a name for himself in contemporary literature with his novels, short stories, and essays, and now proves he can tackle the poetic from with significance and ardent necessity. To say these poems could save your life is not hyperbole.