"Women were always present, even the most popular in salons, and while permitted to entertain and to fuck, they were not allowed to publish.

Women have existed in prominent and powerful roles at every moment throughout history. We can’t see them in the historical record because of (a lack of) “documentation” ... it’s absolutely about process and nothing to do with existence or excellence."

-- Katy Bohinc, Editor, TENDER OMNIBUS Preface

In 1989 American poet Lee Ann Brown founded the internationally-esteemed Tender Buttons Press. Named for Gertrude Stein's classic poem, the press publishes avant garde women writers. In 2013, Bohinc joined Tender Buttons to help promote this celebrated, landmark roster of women writers: six books are influential, foundational works of American poetry; four writers won Guggenheims; and one National Books Critics Circle finalist.

 

Please Add To This List is a guide for the poetry beginner as well as the aficionado. The book focuses on leading American experimental poet Bernadette Mayer's ars poetica, Experiments, a list of inventive ideas on how to write a poem. Responses to this wildly creative list by contemporary writers and poetry naifs alike are equal parts exciting and honorary. It's perfect for students of poetry (and taught widely throughout the United States) as well as historical collectors of American poetics and followers of Bernadette Mayer's.

Read Bohinc's Editor's Note here. Paperback edition available here.

 

TENDER OMNIBUS -- collected for the first time, the first twenty-five years of Tender Buttons Press, which includes internationally recognized poets such as Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, Harryette Mullen, Rosmarie Waldrop, Hannah Weiner, Dodie Bellamy and Laynie Browne. A proof why the independent poetry press truly matters. And why small projects of activism, like the simple feat of publishing women, can change the historical record.

Read Bohinc's Preface here. Paperback edition available here.