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H. L. Hix’s Rain Inscription gives vivid testimony to the paradox that human making is both lasting and fleeting. Each of its three sections (a sonnet-sequence Q&A with contemporary cultural studies, a renewal of the sayings of Herakleitos and Jesus, and a group of dialogues with contemporary artists) extends an already capacious dialogue beyond its prior limits. -
For this book collection, the author has selected about 150 poems from eight previous books, and concludes with a new collection of 46 poems. In the face of such obscenity that stains our 20th century, how is it possible that we might stay sane, might honor the innocent victims of unspeakable horror, might remember, and might even dare to attempt to compose poetry despite Theodor Adorno’s injunction that after Auschwitz only a barbarian would write it. The author comments about this collection: “I suppose that The Candle is the record of my attempt to come to grips with Elie Wiesel’s reminder: ‘If you have not grasped it until now, it is time you did: Auschwitz signifies death — total, absolute death — of man and of mankind, of reason and of the heart, of language and of the senses. Auschwitz is the death of time, the end of creation; its mystery is doomed to stay whole, inviolate.’” -
With a wandering spirit and an inquisitive mind, Stephen Benz ventures around town, across country, and overseas in search of forgotten, overlooked, or misunderstood stories. From rock concerts and courthouses to farm towns, battlegrounds, historical sites, and quirky museums, these “itinerant essays” revel in discovering “new wonders every mile.” -
Mr. Either/Or: All the Rage is high-thrills poetry; set in a funhouse Manhattan apocalypse; a mixture of pregnancy, sleep-training and violence. A sequel to Mr. Either/Or (Etruscan Press, 2017), this verse-novel features “you” the reader as a secret agent in Manhattan in which poetic rhythms cue and accompany action-scenes. “You” and your girlfriend Li-ling Levine save the world from villains fighting for anarchy and the end of the human race. -
The Fugitive Self: New and Selected Poems by John Wheatcroft is a tribute to a distinguished career spanning fifty years in American letters. At once meditative, whimsical, and hard-hitting, it illuminates the spiritual cost of American expansion. ". . . With 'more shapes than water' and 'more selves than the Trinity,' these poems explore the music of love and the weight of grief, while always being mindful of 'history in the making—brutal, bloody, bootless.' Here is a lifetime of poetry, a treasure house of what art can aspire to. With consummate skill, Wheatcroft probes the world for what won’t be sentimentalized, falsified, and is willing to embrace nothing, if that’s the final truth—but 'nothing' has never been so alive, moving, passionate, and compelling.”—Betsy Sholl -
Aurally rich, structurally varied and inventive, sensually textured, these are poems at once passionate and analytical, descriptive and meditative, lyrical and complex—poems that keep one eye on the moon while leveling their gaze at the self and its immediate world. With an alert nuanced intelligence, a sinuous flexible line, Moldaw’s poems turn swiftly and sharply, surprising us in their range and ease, their visionary core. While, in the quoted words of the painter Agnes Martin, “the mind knows what the eye has not seen,” Moldaw’s exact and sometimes challenging language bring eye and mind together, with revelatory transparency. A wild fire brings into focus her daughter’s unknown birth mother; a columbary outside the hospital window becomes a columbarium as she comes to terms with a friend’s dying of AIDS; tossing the I Ching coins affords the occasion for a long meditative sequence built on distilled moments; overheard piano music catalyzes a reverie of longing; Walter de Maria’s sculpture Lightning Field inspires a layered, penetrating rumination on art and life’s “multi-angled interrelationships.” Out of acutely observed, deeply felt particulars, Moldaw constructs poetry of imaginative daring that illuminates and transforms the life within us all, repeatedly achieving, to quote from The New Yorker, “lyric junctures of shivering beauty.” -
The poems in Synergos smack of Whitman and Martí, two of Roberto Manzano’s most important influences; they outsoar anything pedestrian, even in celebrating the here and now and the close-to-hand. Translated by Steven Reese, the collection covers Manzano’s poetry from his earliest to his most recent work, which won the 2005 Nicolás Guillén Prize, one of Cuba’s highest awards. The text includes a substantial amount of interview material that clarifies Manzano’s poetics and places it within the traditions of recent Cuban poetry. Manzano’s writing offers a window into contemporary Cuban life in its attention to the local landscape and environment, an attention that won Manzano the 2007 Samuel Feijóo Prize for Poetry and the Environment. But its greatest achievement lies in making, from the local and everyday, a poetry that is unmistakably universal. “Manzano’s poems go beyond the traditionally circumscribed lyric, beyond the often humble and household range of so many contemporary poems. Translating those poems, and talking with Manzano about his work, was to experience that energy and ambition at close range, too close indeed to avoid being affected by it permanently Manzano offers one of the great gifts of translation—to be changed oneself in the process of that other, impossible change: moving a poem out of one language into another.”—Steven Reese, translator of Synergos -
In the midst of Idi Amin’s dictatorship, Fordham and her family moved to Uganda as Seventh-day Adventist missionaries. In lush and observant prose, Fordham describes the country she loves, the dangers her family faces, her parents’ conflict, and the insular, peculiar faith that shaped her. 2021 Sarton Book Award Finalist
Honorable Mention for General Nonfiction from the 2021 Los Angeles Book Festival -
What does it mean to want to become a mother as children around the world die of treatable diseases, are killed by bomb or bullet, are held in cages? In Bestiality of the Involved, Spring Ulmer lives this question out loud, refusing any easy answer. -
In her first collection, The Book of Orgasms, Nin Andrews introduced the orgasm as an ethereal presence, a character, a muse who begins a dialogue with her human counterparts. In The Last Orgasm, the author imagines a conclusion to the dialogue. -
Crave is a coming-of-age memoir that chronicles a young girl’s journey through abuse and impoverishment. The effusive narration descends into the depths of personal and sexual degradation, perpetual hunger for food, safety and survival. While moving through gritty exposés of poverty, abuse, and starvation, Crave renders a continuing search for sustenance that simply will not die. Laurie Jean Cannady is most recognizable through her voice. Lyrical and august, yet strangely intimate, her lucid memory for the texture of daily existence weaves the reader into the fabric of the story. We discover that the most slender threads bind the strongest. It is no surprise this memoir is a narrative about a victim who becomes a survivor. Cannady is assertive, motivational, and unafraid to reach her target audience: women, African-Americans, high-school students, college students, survivors of physical and sexual abuse, veterans, people raised by single parents, and folks who are living in or have lived through impoverishment.Awards
2015 Finalist – Foreword Review Book of the Year Award -
More than an expressive book of poems, American Anger is an evidentiary reflection of civility and self-correction. Just as a documentary assembles documents, American Anger assembles evidences: found poems, testimonies, narratives, statistics, translations of short topical excerpts from classical literature, all of which bring American anger to light. Born from the poet’s own philosophical research, these poems present current sociocultural circumstances and employ arguments of dissonance between the statements and actions of the United States government, creating an engaging social and cultural movement focused on how anger is part of everyday American life. American Anger stimulates discussion important to any concerned citizen. Within the work, a fully developed author biography is present in its own right, affording the reader a chance to learn more about the poet through philosophy and lyricism. The interior of the book has a unique design, which is expertly typeset to create essentially a manuscript within a manuscript. A ribbon of text runs in boustrophedon, an ancient Greek writing form, like a watermark behind the poetry. -
In September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, more than 125 fiction writers, poets, and essayists offer a revelation of our collective psyche during a perilous time through searing memoirs, letters, poems, brief fictions, essays, a memorial service, and contributions beyond classification. Over time this anthology will surely remain one of our most crucial, challenging, and important. Included are Pulitzer Prize winning authors W. S. Merwin, Henry Taylor, and John Updike, National Book Award winners Ai and Lucille Clifton, former Poets Laureate Richard Wilbur and Robert Pinsky, and winners of others of our most distinguished awards who represent the spectrum of backgrounds, approaches, and attitudes that comprise the American literary landscape: Tess Gallagher, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Denis Johnson, Erika Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ishmael Reed, Scott Russell Sanders, Joanna Scott, Ruth Stone, John A. Williams, Terry Tempest Williams, and more than one hundred others. Most of the work in September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond appears here for the first time. -
Bon Courage is an exhilarating journey through a layered intellectual landscape textured with a range of political and personal enthusiasms, and emboldened by a passionate defense of the disregarded. Wide ranging and inclusive in the essay mode, deep and revealing as a memoir, with the dynamics and layering of great fiction. As if that’s not enough, it sings. Ru Freeman participates intimately while bringing global perspectives to subjects as diverse as Bowie and Dylan, Palestine, 9/11, hairstyles, personal and cultural identity, motherhood, and #MeToo. A resplendent and compendious exploration of great empathy, insight, and bon courage indeed. Th is is a book that is going to make a difference. -
From the white horse appearing like an apparition, to the massive skeleton of a whale on the coast, Diane Thiel’s The White Horse: A Colombian Journey takes us on a magically real journey into the Pacific Coast rain forest of Colombia. Equal parts travel narrative, ecological essay, history, and memoir, this book allows us to experience a reality stranger than fiction. Thiel’s writing beckons us deeper into the heart of the forest, reawakens our consciousness about the natural world, and evokes the spirit of adventure. “What a beautiful book. I knew it was going to be poetic, but I was knocked over twice by its compelling narrative drive and quiet sense of humor.”—Sherman Alexie
