Books for Sale

Two books are currently available featuring the High Coo (short form prose and poetry) of Benjamin Dean. They are Coffee Stains and Documenting the Obvious, both print-on-demand at lulu.com. These are high quality paperback books and feature 98 poems each. For a preview and/or to purchase a copy, click the images below.

“Beautiful Unknown” Benjamin's poetry is like a door to a beautiful unknown. It reminds me of why I liked poetry in the first place. —Dennis Reffner, Student of Zen “Sticks With You” One of these books that make time go by fast and one you just can't put down. I am a foreigner, which put me at a slight disadvantage with this poetry. Some poems are immediately understood, while others I had to let sink in and wonder what the author meant, realizing he was just paying attention to events most of us won't. Benjamin is able to turn observation and thoughts into poetry which reads easy, yet is incredibly well done and sticks with you beyond the last page. I very much enjoyed reading this book. —Olaf Saul-Behrend “Have Quite A Few Favorites” What a great book! Love the name. Once I started reading it I didn't want to stop— and didn't. I have quite a few favorites. “POP” is the best. I think everyone will find themselves in quite a few of these. The everyday events that are pictured made me stop and remember times long ago...when I was younger. —Terri Howard “Observational Wonder” The only way to properly describe Benjamin's poetry is an observational wonder— the way he layers his thoughts is like the way you put together a huge puzzle. It's beautiful. It's humorous. I believe even non-poetry-readers will dig it. It's wonderful. Right on with the way he sees deeply into human experience. I loved the one with the Mom buying coffee with her kids. This is some of the best stuff I've read in a long time. —Ryan Riley, Barista “Makes Me Laugh...Think Inwardly” Hey this guy is something else. He has such a flare with ideas, thoughts, and words. His poetry makes me laugh, makes me really think inwardly and gives me funny visualizations! Have you seen his art? He has some of his poetry on canvases that have a kind of asian flair, they hang on bamboo sticks and are not your stereo typical fine art, and they are very creative too just like his poetry. Soooo be looking for not only his great Coffee Stains book but his art as well. —Donna Cruz, Literature Lover “Draws Out A Wakefulness” Opening up a copy of Coffee Stains last night, I read these lines: ...this gives me a faith in our species that should be good for several lifetimes... I wanted to read more. The following is an attempt to relate my experience of reading this book of poems. Benjamin's poetry hovers invitingly on the page. Often short, these textual bodies surrounded by the open space of empty paper speak in a music that enters the mind cleanly. They speak quickly at first, there is an immediacy of insight and observations I feel as if I am witnessing an event, a person, a sensation, an awareness myself. Sometimes I feel I am experiencing these things through Benjamin's eyes....what an amazing communication poetry can be! Other times, it is as if I myself am witnessing these sensations and contemplations triggered by a deeper awareness, or simply a communion with, the happenings of the everyday. So that, while immediate in one sense, these poems speak on another level as well, a voice that sticks with you, a perspective that gets inside a moment and draws out a wakefulness, a consciousness of something underlying the apparent. I think it's really the simplicity of that awareness that makes these poems say something to me as a reader. These poems capture something that can be really hard to put into words. It's the feeling of witnessing something in your everyday life that, on the surface, can seem insignificant or trivial but that, for whatever reason, suddenly and intimately means so much. These poems look like the moments they convey. They feel like these moments. They feel like these effortless understandings that bridge an individual and experience. I wanted to write about these poems, to try to put into words why they work for me, why they communicate something meaningful to me. It's a hard thing to do I don't want to write some bs expository praise that is supposed to mean something but is really nothing more than saying what is always said about art. So, I will end this by saying simply that I have been reading Benjamin's poetry because it communicates with me. In the end, this is all I can say about poetry that is meaningful to me, outside of being significant in the context of individual expression. Some of these poems stick with me I can think of one poem in particular that influenced a particular decision in my life. On the surface, this was a small decision but one that embodied very important ideas in my life and that I will continue to remember when faced with similar decisions. Here is that poem: Let It Out! it's not self-expression unless it's being heard unless it's being seen unless it's making choices for others either easier or more difficult —Matt Lawrence, Activist