I was washing an eggplant at the end of the world on February 4 2020 when I heard from Vincent. It was Mozart's birthday, a momentous event that the melophiliac Vincent Katz would never have let pass without a celebratory panegyric. There it was in the email, beginning "It's Mozart's birthday. He's only 264." Mozart died young but kept on living. Vincent and I were older already than Mozart was when he died, but if we had any chance at living as long as he did we had better get to work. We are poets but our immortality is far from ensured. Our contributions to the archive of the aptly named The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder Colorado are so far our only bid for a mozartian afterlife.

Not enough. Beginning with Mozart we began our search for the aqua vita of the long poem that would be sung by the melomanes of the future. Covid was our last chance to make embodied poetry that would keep living in the future, as long as we washed our vegetables, masked our faces, disinfected the doorknobs, stayed six feet away from all human beings -- and wrote to each other via the as-yet uncontaminated internet. And if we kept celebrating our immortal predecessors while noting the daily routines to preserve our bodies, we might make it into that future via our (regularly disinfected) keyboards.

Our common bonds at that curious time of the planet- engulfing Plague were various: we were friends, we were poets, we took poetry seriously enough to believe in its superpowers, but above all, we both had mothers who at ages past Ninety needed the care and attention that we could provide them. Our exchanges quickly became an ongoing epic of care. It became also a store of reminiscences, activities and ideas that paid homage to the women we cared for, communiques and confessions that we would have liked them to appreciate. Happily, at least for me, my mother was past appreciating our fabulous antics though she smiled, sometimes appropriately, when I hit Send. She passed away on September 20, 2022, and is now in my room, listening without recourse. Happily, Vincent's mother is, as of this date, still listening in her body to this epic of care.

Also available: One of 26 hardbound/lettered/signed copies, only 16 available for sale.   $95.00

Valvular Ash pulls out all the stops, both hinges & unhinges, floats & burrows, clasps & heaves, -- an unfettered blitzkrieg juggling infinities across incandescent Vastnesses.

This latest Heller exfoliation shimmers forth ‘Oscillation,’ probes deep into the ‘Abyss,’ features ‘Gardening at the End of the World,’ ‘You,’ an extended treatment on ‘Tree,’ a meditation on Van Gogh’s Cypresses, further development of the ‘Crossfall’ module, plus hinges to the artist Helen Frankenthaler among others.

With each additional Heller emanation, our world becomes more complex, more curious, more alluring... ith each additional Heller emanation, our world becomes more complex, more curious, more alluring. This is a continuation of Levinson's further exploration of Hinge Theory linguistic based poetics.

Heller Levinson's Hinge Theory has shaken the foundation of what literature is/can/will become. I've anticipated each of his books ever since I was turned onto his brilliant Hinge Theory. Heller Levinson is one of the few contemporary poets whose work will be spoken of long after we have shuffled off this mortal coil. I consider Heller Levinson to be, without a doubt, one the best poets of his generation and a poet whose work will be looked upon as one of the major chapters in American literature."
-- Heath Brougher, author, editor, reviewer.

A pile of sand accreted round a bend in the Mississippi. Eons of too-rich silt in a concave too unstable to farm. A jungle shunned by all but the worst species. A Spanish wreck the French refused to admit couldn’t be saved. A monument to man’s inhumanity, its streets named to honor music and the Muses and a slave exchange. End of the line for the almost-rans. If  you can’t make it here…stay anyway.

Set in New Orleans during the 1990s, the books function as an accidental time capsule after a 2005 levee breach demolished the city. Since their release, readers have commented on the odd continuity between the books and how they seemingly map out a lost corridor through the city’s secret past. 

Sometimes called “The 90s Trilogy” or “The Stay Out Trilogy”, the first three P. Curran books lay at the intersection of brutal crime & supernatural occult fiction, detailing the grind of living in a place celebrated for its culture and hospitality while maintaining a reputation for being, at various times, the world’s murder capital. This sequel, another sly web of genre-defying tales, weaves characters and places from those earlier books into the treacherous new flora that sprung up in the flood’s wake.

P. Curran is a strange storyteller. As one of the pen names of Peter Orr,  P. Curran has found their work in the hands of readers via merch table, guitar case, record shop, table at the French Market, & beyond. Originally from New York, Peter has barely scraped by or lived high on the hog in New Orleans since the early 90s. Oh and sure he's been to the university and edited magazines and what have ye. He used to edit magazines, then for twenty-five years played music in New Orleans nightclub.

A fragmented group of friends stumble through the aftermath of…what? A shared hallucination? A transpersonal breakdown? Some event they desperately don't want to discuss and no one else can understand. Did it happen? If they imagined the whole thing, why are they all losing their minds?

In movies an otherworldly event always explains itself-the ghost tells where the gold is hid or why the castle's haunted, the curse unveils some sin that birthed it. The story resolves. Pieces fit.

In life when something weird happens, you don't get answers. Instead you face an endless chain of paralyzing questions.

Until you don’t.

P. Curran is a strange storyteller. As one of the pen names of Peter Orr,  P. Curran has found their work in the hands of readers via merch table, guitar case, record shop, table at the French Market, & beyond. Originally from New York, Peter has barely scraped by or lived high on the hog in New Orleans since the early 90s. Oh and sure he's been to the university and edited magazines and what have ye. He used to edit magazines, then for twenty-five years played music in New Orleans nightclubs.He is the author of the now recognized cult classic: Stay Out of New Orleans. He lives in New Orleans.