Body of a Dancer by Renee E. D’Aoust

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  Toucans in the Arctic by Scott Coffel

  Toucans in the Arctic is an inspired truant from any number of poetical schools. In this lyric case study of tumult and tranquility, the poet, tour pamphlet in hand, wanders through the national park of the psyche, noting surfeits of beauty and ruin as he scrambles across the eerie landscapes of identity and marriage.

  “In this long-awaited first collection, Toucans in the Arctic, Scott Coffel writes, ‘When I see a woman at the Cottage Bakery/immersed in Ulysses or The Brothers Karamzov/my desires align themselves in neat rows/for the march into liberated Paris…’ Of wide reference and deep thought, of language taut and somehow new, these are 21st Century poems of joy, rage, erudition, wry humor, monumental tenderness. You will remember the day you discovered this book.”—Suzanne Cleary

  Awards

  2010 —Poetry Society  The Norma Farber First Book Award

• ADDED

  American Fugue by Alexis Stamatis

  American Fugue (Amerikaniki Fouga) is Stamatis’s first book published in America and available to U.S. readers. The book, which was translated by Etruscan author Diane Thiel and by Constantine Hadjilambrinos, follows a Greek protagonist who visits America, travels across the country, and has a strange and compelling adventure. American Fugue examines the basic themes that are persistent in all of Stamatis’s works of fiction: an all-consuming past, the flight to escape one’s personal demons, and, most importantly, the search for personal identity that is ultimately revealed only through what is unknown to the self. The treatment of these themes is also characteristic of the author’s other novels—travel narrative on the surface, mystery or thriller with an existential dimension at another level, but ultimately a quest for self-discovery and personal redemption.

  “One of the most gifted writers of his generation.” —Francoise Noiville, journalist at Le Monde
  
  “Alexis Stamatis always starts his books smoothly, seductively so, but one chapter in you find yourself rushing the pages, intrigued, amazed, surprised. . . ”—Nicholas Papandreou, author of A Crowded Heart

  Award

  2007 Winner – NEA 1st International Translation Award

• ADDED

  Chromatic by H. L. Hix

  Chromatic bears as its epigraph the philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s assertion that “Desire is the very nature or essence of every single individual.” The three sequences of poems in Chromatic test that claim. Each borrows its title: “Remarks on Color” from Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Eighteen Maniacs” from Duke Ellington, and “The Well-Tempered Clavier” from J. S. Bach. Exploiting those predecessors, the poems in Chromatic explore the full range of effects caused by human desire, from ecstasy to despair.

  “Among the new writers who interest me most at the moment. . . . Hix is cerebral, ingeniously inventive, and often scary. He is an experimental poet whose experiments usually succeed—a rare event in contemporary letters.”—Dana Gioia, Turnrow

  Award

  2006 Finalist — National Book Award in Poetry

• ADDED

  American Amnesiac by Diane Raptosh

  Following the manic journey of a man stripped of memory, American Amnesiac confronts the complexities of being American in an age of corruption, corporations, and global conflict.

  “Straddling confession and prophesy, history and myth, intimacy and anonymity, American Amnesiac offers a riveting meditation on a distinctly American condition. We are lost and at home in its world, a world in which past and present collide and identities fold and collapse. Following the hypnotic voice of the amnesiac speaker, the stranded reader stumbles along in a landscape marked by its own odd, jarring, incoherent signposts — shreds of a past as recognizable as it is impenetrable (the relentless refrain is, after all, “My name is John Doe”) and scraps of a world reduced to a collection of headlines, names, titles, symbols, letters — familiar and cryptic at once. With her consummate craft, Diane Raptosh has given us a collection of stunning, timely, and unforgettable poems.” —Edvige Giunta, author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors
  

  The self is a thousand localities

  like a small nation—assembly required: borders and roads,armies, farms, small and large pieces of parchment. I stand by

  all the territories I have ever been, even as I can’t

  remember them. I am a locum—ear to the emperor penguin, a banner ad
  blinking to the hoi polloi. Since I’ve become John Doe, I swear

  I can feel most objects with sixty digits
  instead of five. This makes me think

  of Lisette. Makes me miss her left collar bone. Her hips’ wingtips.
  A train moans from a far hummock.

  Which reminds me that everyone I’ll have to live without
  I must help to find a place within. Which is an act

  of granite will. A strain. A ditty.
  An exercise in utmost beautility.

  From American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press 2013) by Diane Raptosh

  Awards

  2013 – National Book Award Longlist, Poetry

  2014 Finalist – Housatonic Book Award for Poetry