Unnameable Books: 2021

Used Book Buying Policy

Our buying hours are 12pm-5pm on weekdays, and 1pm-6pm on weekends. We do not accept donations, anything you bring in that we do not want will have to go back with you. Please call ahead of time if you have more than two tote bags of books you wish to sell. Do not email us photos of books. If for any reason we are not buying our usual hours, we will post on Instagram to let people know. Please check there before coming in to make sure we are buying. If there is no post, we are buying our normal hours. Thank you!

Remotely Personal Greetings

Remotely Personal Greetings is hosting its First remote event of the Fall / Winter 2021 season. And what better way to kick it off than to hark to the land of the Bengals, the infamous radio station with the ersatz deejays riding the swayback Seventies into the ungainly neo-cnservatve-rectionary still getting some Eighties...that;s right we going to the land of WKRP for a current peak at the prospering poetry & music scene with 3 writers and a scientist / musician to help us cast the soundtrack for the evening of Thursday, Dec 2nd at 8:00 PM EST ( 7:00 CST, 6:00 MST, 5:00 PST, 4:00AST, 3:00 HST)

Cathy Wagner - is among the many poets who know the city absolutely has sex with everything. The Nervous devices we attach to ourselves don’t have to reside permanently. Something about the constant balm of a place like Miami can take the nervousness right out of you, or put it back in, depending on how your new job is going. It’s true that Cathy’s pomes are not targeted for mother’s only – they are unconditionally open to any eyes, ears or finger tips. Her pomes are not imitations of others but like a leaf to another leaf, each is subtly different, as if God were shopping in an automat, choosing sandwiches at random from the well lit displays and then, shoosh out of the pneumatic slot comes a pome. Um, God mumbles as it crunches down upon the pome, “tasty.”

Mark Mendoza- 's poetry is suggestive of the great struggle for dignity. The canvas of place is active in his work. He spreads a score of words across the page like history unfolding in great & small waves as we wade through the various stories & perspectives that create the narrative we often see as time but could just as easily be cycle, cyclic, the return to where we have been, so in his pomes there are leaps to clear those landings just as Mark has cleared the space left by his doppelganger, Mark “the Animal” Mendoza who dictated heavy bass thump to Dee’s Twisted Sister now transferred to the Actual Fuck so that time does warp the possession of now, chasing the public like a stray pug into the net of the dog catcher who lights the neon highway with his electric vox.

Brett Price - Use to live on Hart Street in Bedstuy, right around the corner from the community pool, a neighborhood some will tell you is the heart of Brooklyn, so it's wonderful to know Brett has brought his heart with him to Cincinnati where he puts his heart & hands to the gorgeous utilitarian work of refurbishing the old with just the right amount of TLC to make it shine & send out beams of hidden light once again. So to do his pomes attach themselves & channel the ordinary dissonance of our times into chiseled lines.

Dana Ward - Is currently retired from the world of Phasebook & Instadram branding where private tea companies charging exorbitant prices for shipping are now safe from the critical lash of this former comestibles diatribist, before that Dana was the president of the Barefoot Science & Wild Speech Club a well-known group of typists & couriers who have made it a point to bring the science of the Native earth-lover in all of us rise to the occasion of our goodnight voice so that future droughts both creative and water-based can best be avoided. He is a scientist who actually gives a fuck.

As last Season an email detailing the Zoom log-in info will be sent to guests an hour or two beforehand. Once you log-on there will be a short wait while your email is verified. The "live" event will begin at 8:30 EST with a brief meet n' greet, followed by the convocation, leading us to the 1st reader of the evening.

Feel free to forward any questions our way.

Looking forward to seeing ya'll,

X's to your O's

Jeffrey Joe Nelson

Jed Shahar

Dear Cherry Blossoms:

Remotely Personal Greetings is hosting its fourth remote event of the Spring 2021 season. Time to pick ourselves of that carpet of cheery blossoms fallen from budding branches & walk right into our nearest councilperson's storefront & demand they do something about police brutality, racial profiling, gun licenses, intellectual property of vaccines, racist & discriminatory practices, just to name a few alarms. Thus what better time to stretch your arms and legs and let your senses imbibe the scents of new life everywhere. So after a wondrous day of voicing your protests against continuing political reactionism, vibe to the drum of mother nature reawakening, we invite ya'll to tune in to these 4 writers listening to the world through their words on Thursday, May 6th at 8:30 PM EST ( 7:30 CST, 6:30 MST, 5:30PST, 4:30AST, 3:30 HST)

DeJuan Carter-Woodard- Realizes the collective will to change often needs a catalyst to set the wheels of social & cultural evolution in motion. While bleeding between the bars or being tasered to death at the border has moved many of us to call for action in dismantling a system of injustice & incarceration that has increasingly become one of profit & less of rehabilitation (if it ever was that) we must create a language seeking to deconstruct preconceived notions of who is placed behind bars, why & what happens once they’re embedded within the penal system.

Andrew Joron- Understands that antonyms abound & where we have antonyms we have multiple levels of meaning, a discourse wherein the layered black squares of George Braque can be reconfigured by Reverdy’s roll of the dice & the formations of new word patterns leading to new world views can lead us to questions without easy answers, all the more worth pursuing.

Adrienne Oliver knows the finished line is never truly, truly finished. The pome grows along with us, it’s line stretching out as our limbs experience more of the world & not just the trauma of living but the tresses of womanhood & the truth that untangling hair can bring to the littlest rock in the circle of being or the biggest wave on the wide ocean's stage

Seema Reza Is fully aware We Are Not Done Yet – for the work of the pome & the poet, the work of the human to build community thru works of art is ever afoot. As a teaching artist she knows that when the world breaks open we must place all our constellations of half-lives to work, not just to illuminate the ever encroaching night but to reveal the beauty within darkness

Feel free to forward any questions our way.

Looking forward to seeing ya'll,

X's to your O's

Jeffrey Joe Nelson

Jed Shahar

Dear All Seekers Of Happiness:

Remotely Personal Greetings is hosting its second remote event of the Spring 2021 season. After any winter or extended period spent indoors it's natural to want to feel sunshine upon your limbs, even if like Bataille you feel the sun is a cosmic anus, it makes sense to seek happiness and getting some glorious sunshine on the face certainly helps to feel like Spring is finally here. So if you've got the time & the notion split an atom, parse a sentence, question the Truth & imbibe the neighborhood by tuning into these 3 West Coast sun-soaked voices as we move out of the Draconian past and into feeling the many possible futures Thursday, April 8th at 8:30 PM EST ( 7:30 CST, 6:30 MST, 5:30PST, 4:30AST, 3:30 HST)

Josiah Alderete- takes the seeds he found in mother’s kitchen, these seeds of our art keep us grounded in this world of shifting reality sandwiches as our words and thoughts drift to & fro from the land of our Abuelas to the pathways we currently walk, mixing language of ancestor's tongue with languages swirling ahora like salamanders traveling from water to terra to vines of poetry wine

Garrett Caples - Is in the who’s who of special who’s the city shines a light on when the who who makes other poet's who’s more possible . Who is that you ask glancing casually askance at a highschool yearbook from 1938. O the vibrations shaking the hills! O ectomorphic delight! A rapturous erotic ekstasis narcotica is sure to follow so listen closely for the pop smoke of Arcana

Mimi Tempestt -- Knows in her bones it is true as surely as Discovery's universe of Gerorgio and Burnham that black women are gods and not the mules of colonized worlds so take care of the queens that drag, take care of the que of ears, celebrate queer dears, the stags that make our hidden talents shine not hidden no more, but bidden into the light upon a stage from foot to medicinal herbs healing words and song galore

And please don't forget to support UNNAMEABLE BOOKS the amazing book store who is our live host! You can find them here at 600 Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn's Burgeoning Prospect Heights 11-7 ... 2 customers at a time or go to https://unnameablebooks.square.site to purchase the latest, greatest & past books from these fantastic poets...I was just there yesterday with Jed and my oh my was it soooooo nice to be in a real bookstore looking at real books not just sugar coated confection

Feel free to forward any questions our way.

Looking forward to seeing ya'll,

X's to your O's

Jeffrey Joe Nelson

Jed Shahar

Dear Buds of New Life:

Remotely Personal Greetings is hosting its season opener for its first remote event of the Spring 2021 season. We've been living in the new year now for 3 months and after a 4-year long Winter it feels like Spring is finally here. So if you've got the time & the notion split a rock, explore the margins, dig the truth & drink in some kulture by tuning into these 3 fresh voices as we move out of the claustrophobic past and into the feeling free fuuuture Thursday, March 25th at 8:30 PM EST ( 7:30 CST, 6:30 MST, 5:30PST, 4:30AST, 3:30 HST)

Purvi Shah- Is a charter member of the sunshine brigade who’s messages personal & professional often sing across the screen as if a songbird inhabited the space between reading & knowing, between hearing & understanding, creating a genre of empathic poetry & movement law weaving its way between ideas bigger than the mayor but like a small foldable box with the residue of pecan pie when properly assembled can take you on a trip beyond the here & now, even while revealing the here & now as something other than you thought it was, providing new facets for the sun to reflect.

Joshua Beckman - Has been known to wear nice hats while he goes Salamun fishing along the many streams of knowing this world has to offer in between interpreting the changing rules of Poker and preaching the gospel of New Haven non-reality, he has come to understand that eventually all our time has come, whether viewed from a worm on the inside of an apple or the stylus of a multiphonic system after the morning oxidizes his pomes, a blue paradise may be visible like the story of your last afternoon on earth

Sophia Dahlin -- Is a bard with a hand in the bay leading out to the sea and a heal in the sweep of land flowing back eastwards to banana bread caves over Iowa fields and down the Delaware river sowing pomes & seeds of sumptuous knowing as she goes. Sophia’s pomes like her muse's heart are fearlessly wet & helplessly compelled to move us asunder as we slide into the cool mountain views of rivers & lakes & the bodies of another & another & another.

Feel free to forward any questions our way.

Looking forward to seeing ya'll,

X's to your O's

Jeffrey Joe Nelson

Jed Shahar