Tales from the Eternal Cafe, author Janet Hamill's debut short story collection, offers a thrilling, unwinding trail of tales that excite and mystify; drift then deliver a powerful punch that readers will devour. Like Karen Russell, George Saunders, Jose Luis Borges and Isabel Allende, Janet Hamill's writing lures readers willingly into a labyrinth of surprise and suspense, with humor lurking just on the other side of pathos; a tear just moments away from bright, well-deserved laughter. The seventeen crisp stories included in Tales from the Eternal Cafe offer a plethora of fascinating characters and scenarios: a brief memoir from Baudelaire's publisher; a letter from a writer who knows he is going mad; an exasperated Italian film director unable to inspire Europe's most famous actor during the shooting of a brothel scene. The book includes an introduction by the author's lifelong friend, singer-songwriter-poet-author Patti Smith, whose book Just Kids, received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010.

With mercurial wands, Baals angels, decks with wild Jacks of oracle bones, tempest Serpens, Lord Byron on the Bridge of Sighs, stallions mottled grey, a dark blue stronger than the Flemish blue of hummingbirds, and poesis lying in the ashes of a dress, Janet Hamill turns her wizard poets eye on an immense body of alchemical empathies. This book is a romantic, surreal, lyrical Voyage. It twists and turns with the playful tide of poetic vision, enhanced by the delicate measures of Patti Smiths photography. Kudos all around.
Anne Waldman
Reading Janet Hamill now, as I have over the last thirty years, Im amazed again at the particulars of the world her poetry makesa night world, as I read it, peopled with bright creatures and splashes of color, beautiful and terrifying by turns. With this there is a mix, too, of pop forms and strains, and of catholic and pagan names and imagesangels and saints and hermitsas in the vision of her sleeping gypsy: firebird sweets / a morsel a taste of carrion / . . . as in a dream. With this and much more, she has become indispensable.
Jerome Rothenberg
With its unbridled surrealistic, hypnotic imagery, Janet Hamills alchemy of language gives us back communion with our souls. With a magicians grace she reminds us of the enchantment of our being. Hers is a music both modern and magik.
Maureen Owen
. . . Janet Hamill has sought transcendence in language on the page or sung . . . Hamills mastery of form and feeling comes together to create a poem that delicately examines celebrity, gallantry, silence, talent, and beauty. Only a poet could do that. Or maybe only Janet Hamill.
Patricia Spears Jones