Epic Rites Press: “because all our fingers are middle ones.” ™

“Epic Rites Press is a revolutionary gamble. These are the days when everyone hides under the nearest rock and gets out of the way of the line of fire. Epic Rites Press is right in the middle of the line of fire and I love that!”

– Todd Moore, 14 November 1937 - 12 March 2010

Tree Killer Ink presents:

Available now from Epic Rites Press:

Click on book covers for more information and ordering.

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Mark Walton
Featuring illustrations by Elizabeth A. Soroka
103 pages
$17.50 plus shipping
ISBN 978-1-926860-00-8

Epic Rites Press, November 2011

“I found Frostbitten lucid, harrowing and compelling. It’s a cogent and passionate first collection shot through with hard-won self-knowledge.”

– Paul Magrs

“These words pulse. The poems in Frostbitten radiate with an urgency that forces the reader’s eye into devouring page after page, skipping from the flushes of love through to heartache and fear.”

– Andrew Taylor

Exterior by Pablo Vision

An Age of Monsters
Stories by William Taylor Jr.
Featuring photography by Julie Michelle
182 pages
$17.50 plus shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-08-4

Epic Rites Press, November 2011

“What would you do if you were trapped in a cage? Hiss at the monsters outside, stained in your own piss and stink? And what would you dream about, should you get out? Maybe plot revenge on a lover. Maybe kill a man over $400 and a stupid insult. And what about all those other people on the outside: drunken clowns and murderous four year olds; wannabe artists and crazies in trains? Maybe, just maybe, when someone finally did open that door to let you out, you would just sniff the air, shake, then cower back into the farthest corner of your cell, listening to all the other prisoners, wailing and crying in theirs.”

– R LRaymond

“In his short story collection An Age of Monsters, William Taylor Jr. writes about life on the fringe in San Francisco with extraordinary clarity and with great humour and humanity. He is a clever, natural born story teller who loves to describe people and relationships, especially when things fuck up.”

– George Anderson

“William Taylor Jr. writes with guts and honesty, taking us into the minds of characters that are scary and oddly lovable at the same time. Taylor shows a side of San Francisco from a unique local perspective. An Age of Monsters is an armchair travel guide to the feel of the people and communities where even some San Franciscans dare not venture.”

– Tony DuShane

Exterior art by Elizabeth A. Soroka

A play by Rob Plath
40 pages, 8.5” x 11”
$10 + shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-07-7

Epic Rites Press, August 2011

“Rob Plath exudes divine madness. He is Quasimodo and the Phantom of the Opera slamming the same keyboard.”

– Dan Fante

“Plath’s play leaves the gate at warp speed and never once looks back. This look at the seamy underside of life is a revelation.”

– John Yamrus

“Bumps, drunks, egoists, racists, creationists, darwinists – they all live under one roof... and they’re loud.

Don’t talk politics with your crazy family.
Don’t push people’s buttons.
Don’t fall asleep with a smoke in yer drunk yap.
Oh, and don’t misread a book.

‘Cuz if you do, you’ll have a gang of one-dimensional freaks screaming at you – a gang at home with Beckett, Tarantino and the boys from A Clockwork Orange. And they’ll let you know, in no uncertain terms, amid a flurry of shattered ashtrays, broken angels and mind-numbing f-bombs, that they’re no butchers. And in the end, you’ll find out who’s entitled to what, be it religion or meatballs... or maybe a little cheese on the pasta.”

– R L Raymond

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Jack Henry
113 pages
$17.50 plus shipping
ISBN 978-1-926860-01-5

Epic Rites Press, June 2011

“I’ve been reading through Crunked, and I’m really, really impressed. You know, I think that you may be the poet laureate of meth culture. I’m not being funny – I think you really captured the surreal and extreme nature of the way of the speed freak, and that the poems veer between being heartbreakingly sad and really, blackly funny. It’s really good stuff, very powerful.”

– Tony O’Neill

“Jack manages to totally avoid the drug fancier’s dreadful tendency to whine like a bitch about drugs, to blame them for a personal weakness, to develop self-righteousness and self-pity to an unbearable extent. He is innocent of this, and the strength of the poetry is that there is very little attribution of blame. This is just the way things are.”

– David McLean

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by John Yamrus
136 pages
$17.50 + shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-06-0

Epic Rites Press, March 2011

“Terse profundity would be the phrase I would use were someone to pin me down and force me to describe this work by John Yamrus... This is poetry of short lines and simple wisdom, there is a touch of the Far East about the structure and minimalist philosophy that underpins them; there is no surreal baroque parade of language, these are sticks arranged subtly against a white wall.”

– Zack Wilson

“I read John’s newest book to the end in one sitting, then began rereading. His words get in your head... you can’t stop with one poem, that simply won't do. It’s like a bag of your favorite flavor of potato chips or that first beer on Friday night after a damn hard week. You sink in to this book and devour it, you savor it. You sit back and wonder... why haven’t I written that before?”

– Diana Rose

“Two major qualities prevail in Yamrus' recent work: economy and punch. No word is unnecessary or out of place; the timing is impeccable; and, most difficult of all, the endings hit just the right balance of summation, revelation, and surprise.”

– Gerald Locklin

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Stories by Karl Koweski
202 pages
$17.50 + shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-03-9

Epic Rites Press, January 2011

“Koweski once again shows his breadth as a writer in this witty and engaging collection.”

– Rebecca Schumejda

‎‎“Karl Koweski has written a gritty collection of stories rooted in the long tradition of American realism with just enough weirdness and humor to keep readers unbalanced.”

– Nate Graziano

“Karl Koweski’s writing makes me laugh out loud and cringe at the same time. It takes talent and endurance to pull that off and Koweski is a master at both.”

– Tony DuShane

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Rob Plath
179 pages
$15.50 +shipping
ISBN: 9781926860022

Epic Rites Press, October 2010

“Read Rob Plath at your own risk. His words will stick behind your eyes. His heart may even expose a shadow you’ve kept hidden from yourself.”

– Dan Fante

“In the war over the heart and soul of modern poetry, Rob Plath will be the last man standing.”

– John Yamrus

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Rob Plath
302 pages
$25 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184418

Epic Rites Press, July 2009

“Plath is a merciless poet. He is not afraid of drawing blood, even his own. He will blow psychic holes in your being. He will leave you wounded.”

– Todd Moore

“With a body bag full of bloody memories, broken dreams and tormented visions of the future, American poet Rob Plath trudges through the darkened alleyways of your moral high-ground. His ‘a bellyful of anarchy’ is a tour de force dissection of a world gone rotten.”

– RD Armstrong

“Plath has taken skin from man... given it back to God... and made cosmic provolone of us all... one stinking pink wheel of cheese.”
– Frankie Metro

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Jason Hardung
90 pages
$15 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184449

Epic Rites Press, November 2009

“The Broken and the Damned by Jason Hardung is very powerful. Vivid imagery combined with abundant candor make this collection sing. Travels on the vulnerable landscape of the psyche, memorable, beautiful, painful, human.”

– Ellyn Maybe

“Jason Hardung's heart is the room in which you come to after being among the dead, dying, missing in action for too long. It’s the water your soul needs to keep dancing. Jason Hardung is a song. Play this album of words and feel your world learn rhythm.”

– Scott Wannberg

“Hardung’s The Broken And The Damned is a powerhouse presentation of the shattered American dream. It takes a special kind of author to make a book like this work, where the personal experiences of the author transcend his life and speak for an entire generation. This book has been described by S. A. Griffin as “a love poem for schools of lost children” and by Todd Moore as “a raw, wounded version of A Season In Hell.” I agree with both Griffin and Moore but would add that Hardung’s The Broken And The Damned is much, much more than that – such comparisons only scratch the surface of this phenomenal book.”

– Wolfgang Carstens

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by David McLean
98 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184456

Epic Rites Press, March 2010

“Like the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, David McLean cajoles and celebrates death realizing that the two are happily married. He is one of the most consistently brilliant poets I have ever had the pleasure to read. His poems are sap and bullshit free. They should be carved on tombstones.”

– Misti Rainwater-Lites

“If Laughing At Funerals does nothing else it provides us all with a text to read on the eve of the apocalypse. It is a series of frenzies meant to be performed against the frenzy. A rage before the serenity of nothing.”

– Todd Moore

“The thing that really strikes me about these mostly very short poems is the economy of language McLean employs. He gets it. He understands it. He knows that it doesn’t take a very long knife to kill... just a sharp one.”

– John Yamrus

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Todd Moore
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184470

Epic Rites Press, March 2010

“Todd Moore was many things to many people... a fighter, a friend, a family man, a myth made from flesh and bones and bullets and heart. He was a poet at the peak of his creative power and “Dead Reckoning” was his top 40 love song for the ghosts that danced in his dreams. If you listen to his words, you can hear them dancing still. They will miss him forever –we all will.”

– John Dorsey

“The words in the poems in Dead Reckoning by Todd Moore are not just written words, they are also like primal relics unearthed from an archaeological dig. Every word, every line, every poem is stitched together perfectly, seamlessly with not a single thread out of place. These poems go much deeper than bone, they speak to the blood in us.”

– Wolfgang Carstens

“Todd Moore’s writing works at the nerve endings like a beast not yet named. Dead Reckoning exposes a corrupt and fetishistic America that habitually reinvents its own endgame. Each poem is a scattergun butt to the head; a perfectly worded organism that pulsates with the rhythms of life but also reveals the darkened mayhem of the soul.”

– John Macker

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by Wolfgang Carstens
98 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184463

Epic Rites Press, March 2010

“Crudely Mistaken For Life is stunningly evocative. Be careful when you pick up this book, you might not be able to put it down.”

– Tony Moffeit

“This book grows on you. Enters your blood. This is compassionate, carefully crafted poetry fascinating to read and worthy of detailed study.”

– George Anderson

“Straight talk, boiled down from experience, with the fat of fancy skimmed off the top. That’s what we’ve got here. Carstens gets it – he doesn’t waste time with the flowers; he digs in the dirt, about six feet down, to the root of it all.”

– R L Raymond

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry by John Yamrus
124 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184487

Epic Rites Press, March 2010

“The poetry of John Yamrus demands more attention. There is real blood in this man’s work.”

– Todd Moore

“John Yamrus, as a poet, is like an expert skeet shooter that hits the clay pigeon no matter what the speed, angle or trajectory; in poem after poem, his sharp mind nails its target every time.”

– Rob Plath

“John Yamrus remains one of my favorite authors because I can sit down and read one of his books start to finish – and along the way, laugh at his jokes, marvel at his wit, and every now and then a golden brick of enlightenment drops on my head.”

– Wolfgang Carstens

Exterior by Pablo Vision

Poetry and Prose by various contributors.
Edited by Wolfgang Carstens
146 pages
$15.50 + shipping
ISBN: 9780981184494

Epic Rites Press, April 2010

“This new journal from Epic Rites Press is an ax whacking away at the hollow, slanted trees in the wilderness of impotent literature, which includes both small and large presses that exist today. Working as a literary team, each writer’s words help hack a path through the tiresome, under-stimulating dead woods, leaving it for kindling while the ax in a clearing of its own making leans gleaming w/its head planted firmly in the earth, ready to keep forging ahead. This is a not just a journal, this is a weapon against miles and miles of rotting woods of so-called modern writing.”

– Rob Plath

“Are your veins screaming for a dose of unsurpassed poetry and prose so hard-boiled it’ll take your teeth out? Feel the need to read rants where the frequency is unscrambled and the furrows are always lonely? Are your fingers frozen into gestures of deference, do you dare submit to the man who owns the satellites? You need a cure. Find it here. Epic Rites Print Journal, Issue One. Get it now.”

– Zack Wilson

“The first issue of The Epic Rites Journal is absolute dynamite! It features new poetry by Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Gerald Locklin, Todd Moore, John Dorsey, Tony Moffeit, Jason Hardung, Wolfgang Carstens, Ben Smith, Casey Quinn, Jack Henry, Erek Smith, Mathias Nelson, Mike Meraz and Zach King-Smith; new prose by William Taylor Jr, Zack Wilson, Pablo Vision, Karl Koweski, Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Todd Moore, Tony Moffeit and Mark Cobb. The centerfold is a massive, no-holds barred forty page interview with the late, great Todd Moore.

Forget about ‘small’ press journals that are nothing more than poorly edited, photocopied, crudely constructed pamphlets held together by rusty staples, dental floss and bubble gum. The Epic Rites Journal is a 138-page, perfect bound, professionally printed and assembled book!

The Epic Rites Journal is dedicated to Todd Moore. These sticks of dynamite are for you!”

– Wolfgang Carstens