Modern and contemporary poetry

Book SynopsisThrough the recurrence of memory, myth, and grief, 回 / Return captures the elusory language of sorrow and solitude that binds Taiwanese diasporic experience.Rooted in the classical tradition of the Chinese “reversible” poem, 回 / Return is engaged in the act of looking back—toward an imagined homeland and a childhood of suburban longing, through migratory passages, departures, and etymologies, and into the various holes and voids that appear in the telling and retelling of history. The poems ask: What is feeling? What is melancholy? Can language translate either?Trade Review“Luan’s poetic reconstructions of the past vibrate with grace and lucidity. . . Her lyric transparency reminds us of the porousness of language, how our reception is what gives the poem signification, how necessary we are to making it live.”—Angie Sijun Lou, American Poetry Review"Luan’s meditative debut explores the Taiwanese diasporic experience through poems rich with vivid imagery, imagination, and candor that draw from the classical tradition of the Chinese 'reversible' poem."—Publishers Weekly"A book of both startling intimacy and formal excitement, neither compromising the other, 回 / Return is an assured and moving debut that navigates the murk (and heft) of the past. . . Throughout, 回 / Return takes up the Chinese “reversible poem” as a central conceit, using it to explore the limits of narrative desire, racial melancholia, and nostalgia itself."—Wendy Xu, BOMB"There are an infinite number of things to say about Emily Lee Luan’s virtuosic 回 / Return. . . [the poems] are informed, inherently, by separation and distance; by missing, mourning, melancholy; by migration, exile; by the desire to return; by the impossibility of returning; by the disappearance of the past in the simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal force of the present."—Brandon Shimoda, Poetry Society of America"In the style of palindromic poems built by Chinese characters, much of 回 / Return is dazzlingly multidirectional, challenging the eye to travel across areas of text in 'reversible poems' that can be read down the page, first to last line, as well as up, last to first, each reading offering new meanings." —Cindy Juyoung Okay, Harriet Books“Luan experiments with language and poetic form, blending the lyric, narrative, and visual to create poems that resist translation. This collection insists on fragmentation and altered realities; the self is muddled and intertwined within a greater ancestral history.”—Sophia Chong, Adroit"In 回 / Return, Emily Lee Luan’s stunning reflections on sorrow haunt the sensorium. This sorrow—or 'an anger rooted in sadness'—is untranslatable, rooted in the violence of colonization, displacement, and deracination. And yet Luan’s poems, which alloy Chinese and English into feats of formal ingenuity and beauty, translate the unspeakable. Read it once, then read it again slowly to perceive the spectrum of emotions Luan unseams with dexterity. 回 / Return heralds a potent new voice in poetry."—Cathy Park Hong"Luan’s voice is almost shocking in its intimacy—reading this book is like suddenly being able to see emotions at the cellular level, across seas, through generations, between languages. Luan's poetry pierces the surface of consciousness and swims powerfully into her own and our depths. Gorgeous, wondrous, genius."—Brenda Shaughnessy"Emily Lee Luan’s 回 / Return probes the haunted layers of racial melancholia, engaging familial tendrils of sorrow with a circularity that ultimately points to the stinging ache of no return. With gorgeous poems that breach and bridge the linguistic abyss, Luan guides us through a troubled-water poetics—'I heard the world as if through the belligerence of water'—in this sharp, prismatic and wonderfully radiant book."—Sawako Nakayasu"The gift of 回 / Return is the poet’s ability to simultaneously plunge into the ache of diaspora and personal loss and invite the reader to consider the possibility and impossibility of wholeness. Emily Lee Luan, in a luminous debut, refuses to forget, knowing 'my Sorrow was unafraid and it gave me back my bravery and anger.' And, rather than cede, invites and innovates through form, tongue, tenderness, and image. These poems are sigils carved from heartmemory to confront and restore."—Anthony Cody

Read more less

Book SynopsisA book of prismatic, lyrical poems that enhance and disrupt the pastoral tradition to consider organic and mineral worlds, queer desire and experience, the mathematical and the spiritual; struggle and resistance.Pink Noise orbits in spaces of memory, longing, violence, solidarity, the ecological, and the mystical. Experimental in its forms and lexicon, in poems ranging widely in style and scale, it moves through layers of musical intensity as it reworks the visual space of the page to generate sensations of presence and revelation. Simultaneously lucid and syntactically disjunctive, these poems are queer and radical not only in their content, but in their grammar.Trade Review"Pink Noise is delightfully attuned to the living complexity of language, an experience that Holden renders as both conceptual and tactile."—Michael Martin Shea, Colorado Review"In Pink Noise, sometimes like a crackling icicle you see a glimmer of diamond dust, pink by nature. Here, in this book of poems. The lines are electric, conveying a new kind of sensuality, all quick and zapped. An on-coming fusion of poetic thinking with the sciences. Exciting! What we’ve been waiting for."—Fanny Howe"These poems are flecked with quartz and risk, love and dejection, pink and blood-red ecstatic brooding. Kevin’s line redirects consciousness to the magic of forgotten minutia and overlooked associative deliverance 'from cypress to pine before / fierce queen on a blank stage.' His language sets that stage for a tenderness that is in no way meek, for a sense of divinity found where life is. His is one of the voices that sets the bar for what poetry can do in this world."—Harmony Holiday"A queer lyric—like a queer body—holds within itself culture’s dueling impulses. In Kevin Holden’s singular poetics, libido’s lavish disordering resists rationality’s drive toward 'the war and reality / of our clear / civilization.' What results is a “rose tone row,” a nonce musical system he calls Pink Noise. Here queer experience sings alongside angular, abstract phrases sampled from math and science. Beautifully resisting conventional beauty, Holden makes atonal music whose fine phrasing 'glints, glitters, shines, shimmers, glows.'"—Brian Teare"This book is like a vardøger. I felt it before it arrived—'a former ghost.' Holden’s formations come together, crystalline and spinning, into consummate shape. Geometry, mathematics, gay sex, earth, cosmos, mysticism, and skepticism are held together in these pages as in a polyhedron, semi-transparent, where each facet is visible at a certain angle but from another angle disappears to show a facet on the shape’s opposite side. Beautiful and distinct, this work is filled with discrete infinities."—Edgar Garcia

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism, an eclectic avant-garde movement unique to the Yugoslav region that existed 1921–1927. Zenithism’s founder Ljubomir Micić envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, driven by what he called the “barbarogenius.” A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Ljubomir Micić’s ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski’s lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID’s lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. The zenithists promoted their ideas through their journal Zenit and press Biblioteka Zenit. Reaching American readers for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism ideal for the general and academic reader alike. Trade Review“The editors and translators of this volume—barbarogeniuses every one—bring to life the zany revolutionary spirit and exuberance of Zenithism. The anthology is a feast of energy and creativity.”– Ellen Elias-Bursać, Literary Translator and Independent Scholar“Bošković’s and Teref’s expertly edited and well-translated anthology will contribute to the creation of a fuller picture of the European avant-garde. By demonstrating how original movements were flourishing outside of the main European languages, this anthology invites us to re-map an important period in literary history.”–Zoran Milutinović, Professor of South Slav Literature and Modern Literary Theory, University College London“The publication of Zenithism (1921–1927)—A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology adds an important piece to the complex picture of interwar avant-garde in Europe. For a long time, zenithism was a missing piece in this history. Centered on the journal Zenit, this movement was the most prominent and internationally active avant-garde formation in Yugoslavia between World Wars. Aleksandar Bošković’s and Steven Teref’s excellent selection and expert translation of texts published in Zenit offer a vivid portrayal of the literary and visual production of this group. Their critical framing of the whole zenithist enterprise is essential. It situates this group within the European avant-garde at its peak, and places it within the dynamic social, cultural, and economic processes in the interwar Yugoslavia. As a result, we finally have a comprehensive, well-researched, and documented portrayal of zenithism in English. This volume will be indispensable for future research of the avant-garde currents in Central Europe, across the continent, and beyond.”– Branislav Jakovljević, Sara Hart Kimball Professor of the Humanities, Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University“This is the first English translation of almost the entire opus of zenithism (1921–1927), the original Yugoslav contribution to high modernist movements.The zenithist concept of the ‘barbarogenius’ and barbarism challenged the notions of cultural value that, as the collection’s editors state, 'has been created, reproduced, and re-capitalized as a cultural means for colonial oppression and economic domination.'Through carefully done translations and exhaustive introductions, the anthology spans a variety of texts—from poetry to the short novel, to flyers, to critical reviews, constructing a narrative about zenithism as an authentically Balkan utopian cultural project, as well as a socially oriented art. It contextualizes zenithism in a novel way that has not been done in previous studies of this movement, by emphasizing not only the zenithists’ practices of textual hybridity and their relations to film and radio, but also their so-called cultural banditry and conceptual writing, as well as by creating a connection with Yugoslav neo-avant-garde literary and artistic practices from the second half of the twentieth century. This is a definitive collection that should become an essential text for anybody interested in modernism.”– Tatjana Aleksić, Associate Professor of South Slavic and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann ArborTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of TranslatorsList of IllustrationsPronunciation GuideIntroduction: You Have to Be a ZenithistThe Barbarians are Coming, or a Savage RhythmIntroductionMan and Art (February 1921), Ljubomir MicićThe Manifesto of Zenithism (June 1921), Ljubomir Micić, Yvan Goll, and Boško TokinThe Spirit of Zenithism (September 1921), Ljubomir MicićThe Barbarogenius, the Balkanization of Europe, and Cultural NihilismIntroductionZenith Manifesto 1922 (February 1922), Ljubomir MicićZenithism as the Balkan Totalizer of New Life and New Art (February 1923), Ljubomir MicićEffect on Defect (1923), Marijan Mikacin the name of zenithism [foreword], Ljubomir Micićhere360 ÷ 180 = 0joyous lamentzenith—spectera riot of atomsrush up the ropea poem for the twentieth doga prayer of the blessed cursea fanatic’s nights of lovebachelor taxagainst gossipsman’s tango with a fleathe guard on the rhine predictseffect on defectfrom Archipenko: New Plastics (September 1923)Toward Opticoplastics, Ljubomir MicićNemo propheta in patria (February 1924), Various anonymousZenithosophy: or the Energetics of Creative Zenithism (October 1924), Ljubomir MicićAntisocial Art Needs to be Destroyed (December 1924), Ljubomir MicićThe New Art (December 1924), Ljubomir Micićfrom The Monkey Phenomenon (1925)The New Zenithist Art, Marijan MikacAirplane without an Engine (1925), Ljubomir MicićBarbarism as Culture (November–December 1925), Risto RatkovićAnti-Europe (1926), Ljubomir MicićBeyond-Sense and Anti-Europethe barbarogeniusbarbarian omelethey slavssyphon—soda—bloodradio in the balkansbim bam boommade in englandavala, a tomb in the skyoh, balkan cavavanslender snakes blossomTypogram (April 1926), Ljubomir MicićZenithism through the Prism of Marxism (December 1926), Dr. M. Rasinov (Ljubomir Micić)The First Road of the Barbarogenius: Cinépoetry and the Radio-FilmIntroductionCinema Poems (October 1920), Boško TokinParis Burns (October 1921), Yvan GollFilm and the Future of Humanity (December 1921), Branko Ve PoljanskiShimmy at the Latin Quarter Graveyard (March 1922), Ljubomir MicićDamn Your Hundred Gods (Rescue Car) (October 1922), Ljubomir MicićPrologue by a Madman Before a Legion of Exceptionally Wise FliesCategorical Imperative of the Zenithist School of PoetryZenithism: Second Attack of the BarbariansZenithist Barbarogenics in 30 Actsfrom Radio-Film and the Zenithist Vertical of the Spirit (April 1923), Ljubomir MicićThe Second Road of the Barbarogenius: The Hybrid Novel, Prose Poetry, and the SerpentinellaIntroductionHere I Am! (January 1921), Branko Ve Poljanski (as Virgil Poljanski)Under the Sign of the Circle (February 1921), Branko Ve PoljanskiA Lasso around the Holy Mother’s Neck (March 1922), Branko Ve PoljanskiThe Beauty of a Horse and the Face of Queen Zita (March 1922), Branko Ve PoljanskiDada Causal Dada (May 1922), Branko Ve PoljanskiCodes of the Dada-Jok State (May 1922), Branko Ve Poljanski33 Seconds (May 1922), Branko Ve Poljanski2 ÷ 2 = 1 (July–August 1922), Branko Ve PoljanskiRadiograms (1922), Branko Ve Poljanski77 Suicides (1923), Branko Ve PoljanskiPanic under the Sun (1924), Branko Ve PoljanskiNo!C’mon, Now! [foreword], Ljubomir MicićManifestoAlarmOn Train TracksLongingAt the Hair SalonGraveyard ExpressPoem #13Trip to BrazilTick-Tock like a Crab in a TailcoatBlind Man Number 52AriseTBSing Sing We Ride the HimalayasYou, Belgrade, YouGod BeefsteakJoyous PoemTopsy-Turvy (1926), Branko Ve PoljanskiS.O.S.ManifestoContraidioticonEros300,000 Punches per SecondThe Panopticon Passes through a MirrorThe Laughter of RiflesA Steamboat in the AppendixNihilonWhistling FaceMariner’s BellYou Have Beautiful Eyes, LuciaDuskPoem About HimThe Third Road of the Barbarogenius: Conceptual WritingIntroductionThe Sexual Equilibrium of Money (1925), MIDThe Metaphysics of Nothing (1926), MIDForm Devours the Spirit [I] (April 1926), MIDForm Devours the Spirit [II] (May 1926), MIDA Tobacconist in Literature (November 15, 1925), AnonymousReview of The Sexual Equilibrium of Money (April 1926), AnonymousReview of The Metaphysics of Nothing (May 1926), AnonymousThe Barbarogenius at the Gates: Zenithist Theater, Soirées, and Public InterventionsIntroductionZenithist Theater (Zagreb, December 16, 1922), AnonymousThe First Zenithist Soirée (Belgrade, January 3, 1923), AnonymousThe Second Zenithist Soirée (Zagreb, January 31, 1923), AnonymousA Zenithist Soirée by Marijan Mikac (Petrinja, August 18, 1923), AnonymousA Zenithist Evening of Sensation (April 1925), Branko Ve PoljanskiThe Marinetti and Poljanski Dialogue (November–December 1925), Branko Ve PoljanskiRabindranath Tagore and the Zenithist Protests (December 1926), AnonymousOpen Letter to Rabindranath Tagore (December 1926), Ljubomir Micić, and Branko Ve PoljanskiThe Nadir of ZenithismIntroductionThe Red Rooster (1927), Branko Ve PoljanskiDogs Bark and Poets Sing123456789101112Afterword: The Zenithist LegacyBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisA Narco-Acid Western told in a series of interlinked poems, Soto’s striking debut collection follows the converging paths of two protagonists through El Sumidero, a fictional US/Mexico border town where an ongoing drug war is raging. The surreal verse of Soto’s poems portrays a bleak political climate as it coincides with the rituals of love & loss, culture & spirituality, & the quest for a better life at all costs. Following the narrative arc of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s classic cult film, El Topo, A Grave is Given Supper builds a world saturated with a mystical aura that describes the finite tensions & complicated desires of lives taking place in the borderland.Trade ReviewAdapted into an original literary-theatric performance by Teatro Dallas directed by Claudia Acosta and starring Elena Hurst LONGLISTED for Reading the West Book Award “The landscape in A Grave is Given a Supper recalls the tones of Frank Stanford, steeped with our phantasmagoric Texan borderlands. Soto offers up each poem like a votive candle, wreath of roses, or weapon, to lay on the altar of the outlaw Jesus Malverde, announcing the arrival of a new literary voice.” —Fernando A. Flores, author of Pig Latin and Stuck on a Razor “Soto describes insects, femicide and the border wall in mystical terms.” —Jaime Dunaway, Advocate Mag “A surreal exploration of the Mexican drug war written in free verse… While many poems traverse…dreamlike terrain, they’re also sometimes grounded in reality. This is where the book is most gripping and provocative.” —Tim Diovanni, Dallas Morning News On Dallas Spleen and previous work: “Soto drives a relentless narrative from poem to poem… a narrative composed of equal parts joy and rage.” —The Literary Review “Soto eases into discomfort and renders it stunning.” —Katy Dycus, The Wild Detectives “There is a deep, inescapable sadness in many of Mike Soto’s poems but it is a sadness for the world and never himself. It’s wrong to stereotype poets, even positively, but I think Soto’s Mexican literary heritage is deep in his bone marrow. It’s a rich, earthly, mystical tradition in which to have one’s taproots. These poems of light and life are compressed, but never crushed.”—Thomas Lux "Feeling distant, far from family and the place that has given me the deepest sense of home, I resolved to write about individuals on a journey of self-actualization despite living in such a climate of violence, but I wanted to take that further—there were already enough portrayals of economic empowerment and ego empowerment—and make it a quest for a kind of enlightenment." —Mike Soto on his work in A Grave is Given SupperLit Hub's “Combines neoclassicism’s equal temperament, the incisive excesses of the metaphysical poets, and Jamie Sabines-like political sensibilities.”—Joe Milazzo, ENTROPY “It’s been wonderful workshopping with Mike and adapting his words for the stage. A lot of our team are first-or second-generation people who have experienced some of the things touched on in the show: migration, drug wars, a journey from Mexico to the U.S.”Teatro Dallas "Across the book, poems spastically display the weight of both people and landscape in heartbreak and obituary...Holding the book together is the poet’s consistency of tone; Soto’s poems never falter at being both maturely concise and emotionally staggering." — Greg Bem, Rain Taxi

Read more less

Book SynopsisA moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as race and the detritus of colonialism.With The River in the Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of European languages. Through his invention of the “solitude”—a short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical u-turns—the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises Central Africa’s great river, the world’s second largest by discharge volume.Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African diasporic writer in Europe longing for home.Fans of Tram 83 will discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila’s English-language debut.Trade Review"In this raucous, electrifying what-is-it?—memoir, broken novel, poem series? or is it mainly a protest against the way that dreams can vanish like migrating birds?—Fiston Mwanza Mujila opens every stopcock that holds back his lust for life. His words rush forward in punctuated swells— like the Congo River he so often mentions. International in his imagination, wary of spells cast by sorcerer-crocodiles and waitresses, Mwanza Mujila masters a visceral, multilingual, song-spiked account of human experience that no one will forget." –Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Be With "This is, at its source, an expat author's declaration of identity, and just as the river has formed Mr. Mujila, he has laid a claim to its legacy." —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal "Composed of 101 numbered 'solitudes,' Mwanza Mujila's collection is equal parts hallucination, augury, and crônica, with fragments that appear out of order and are often enigmatically brief, grotesque, and surreally humorous." —Jay G Ying, Harriet Books "Tram 83, the first of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s works to appear in the United States, made for a thrilling read. Now he’s returned with a new collection inspired by the Congo River, giving readers an even greater sense of the range of his work." —Vol. 1 Brooklyn “After all the riches that have been torn from his country by foreigners, asks this remarkable poet, ‘will they also find a way to haul away the Congo River and use it as room freshener?’ Mwanza Mujila’s raw and passionate work is an authentic voice from a long-suffering land whose story we are too often accustomed to hearing only from outsiders.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa “Those already familiar with Tram 83 will recognize some of its precursor features in The River in the Belly, first published in 2013. The collection is full of cryptic images of sorrow and lamentation drawn from the African landscape but also fully augmented with others from a consciousness shaped by exile. The beauty of Mwanza Mujila’s poetry comes from the telescoping of pain and despair into a language of unexpected juxtapositions. The resemblance with Dambudzo Marechera is not accidental, for they both attempt to hurl language into the abyss and to decipher the vague and mangled echoes that return to them in that act. A new and provocative contribution to African Literature.” —Ato Quayson, Stanford University “The poems show the Congo River running through Mwanza Mujila’s veins as he contemplates mortality, (in)voluntary exile, the resource curse and the physical grandeur of the river itself…. These translations are a must-read.” —Johannesburg Review of Books, Efemia Chela “Translation is the ultimate tribute, a tributary to the river of beauty and this is so present in The River in the Belly. This is an urgent book that will outlive us all, but we can excavate it now. There is anguish. But for each wound Mwanza Mujila opens and tenderly kneads, he also sutures with a deep love. We must listen!” —Mukoma Wa Ngugi, author of Logotherapy and Black Star Nairobi "This book … is a masterpiece of poetic imagination and excellence. It is a melancholic meditation on the Congo River and the huge country named after it, while also expressing from the poet’s new home in Austria his homesickness, solitude, and nostalgia for the good things he remembers from his country of origin such as the family home in Lubumbashi, food, beer, local brews, football (soccer) and music, particularly Congolese rumba. Using the mighty river as a metaphor for his own connection to the DRC, known during his first sixteen years as Zaire, Mwanza Mujila depicts a bleak picture of the regimes of Laurent and Joseph Kabila.” —Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History “More subtle, mischievous poetics from Fiston Mwanza Mujila, this time mediated by the big river, unexpected materialities and anguish, mediated by solitude with some prose segments and a very fine translation. A book urgently wondering about deprivation, desire, violence, animal–human relations, exile, music, madness, and the diverse pulses of Congolese urbanities. Exquisite and profound, and eminently teachable too.” —Nancy Rose Hunt, author of A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo “Fiston Mwanza Mujila... thinks back not only to his native river, but also to the almost constant multi-agent civil war that has eviscerated the Congo over the past decades: it is both the bloodiest conflict of our time and one of the least noticed. Maney very capably conveys the intonations and registers of the original in this faithful and beautiful rendering.” —Eugene Ostashevsky, judge for The 2019 Asymptote Close Approximations International Translation Contest “A travelogue featuring dyspeptic saints, sophic beasts and, above all, an all-consuming river. Wonderfully subversive.” —Jason Stearns, author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa Praise for Tram 83: Winner of the Etisalat Prize for Debut African Fiction 2015 Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2016 Winner of a French Voices Award “An exuberantly dark first novel . . . Evoking everyone from Brueghel to Henry Miller to Celine, Fiston plunges us into a world so anarchic it would leave even Ted Cruz begging for more government.” —John Powers, NPR’s Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross “A high-velocity debut . . . The writing has the pulsing, staccato rhythms of Beat poetry and Roland Glasser has exuberantly harnessed that energy in his translation from the French.” —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal “At once a grim account of neocolonialism and a comic tale of late-night urban mayhem, this vigorous, hip and brilliant work takes a while to warm up but ends up gripping like a vice.” —James Smart, The Guardian “In this visceral, fast-paced debut novel, acclaimed Congolese poet Mujila examines life in a central African state plagued by instability... Rapid and poetic, Mujila depicts a province where 'every day is a pitched battle'... The central characters fight to change the paths laid before them, desperate to rebel against a fate imposed by life in a consumptive environment. Mujila succeeds in exploring themes of globalization and exploitation in a kinetic, engaging work.” —Publishers Weekly

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this debut collection of poetry, the obscure and mundane collide, a fricassee of movement, the cosmopolitan, and intimacy. A Boy in the City uses poems as pillars to interrupt and excavate an interiority that unfolds and interrogates grim thoughts and intimacy. Yarberry weaves a sexy, glitzy journey through their city, where the speaker can “pose” and “compose” in a “trans way, of course.” Clever in its playful allusions to Greek myths, William Blake, and other literary figures, A Boy in the City is a distinct work of joy and liberation that reckons with the language of gender and desire.Trade Review"'I want a stupendous smugness, and the self,' this debut poetry collection by S. Yarberry declares, 'to dispense its terrible truth.' Terrible, as in terrific and terrifying, is one body meeting another, knowledge bending toward doubt, and that which we fear being exactly what we want . . . Yarberry changes the world—streetlights are city-tulips, the soul is a slippery fish—to create a new world, to ask, 'How do you see me anyways?' In these poems, where gender, desire, love, and the struggle to say what can’t be said converge, this inquiry offers us a seductive new mind at work. 'I can become anything,' this collection proclaims. 'I did.' And Yarberry’s gift to us is that we can become anything, too." —Paul Tran, author of All the Flowers Kneeling"'Trans is Latin for across,' states the title of the final poem in S. Yarberry’s A Boy in the City, a book in which Yarberry builds poems from a heady mix of eros, violence, tenderness, and the Blakean ecstatic, poems that seek to bring connection between parts, to give wholeness to the fragmentation that, for Yarberry, can come to define trans life: 'It’s as if/only/when in pieces/I find/myself again.' A Boy in the City argues for a way across and through, past the 'festoonery' of gender and easy binaries, toward a hard-won understanding that 'it is nothing special'—should in fact be a given—'to not want to be hurt.' Yarberry’s is a defiant new voice." —Carl Phillips, author of Pale Colors in a Tall Field"A Boy in the City is a remarkable collection of poems—incisive, erotic, artfully antiromantic. The poems act as a transcript of a brilliant mind reasoning with itself. Remembered scenes get reenacted against changing backdrops inside a stage-lit braincase—street, bedroom, seashore (“I watched the ocean rise up on its miraculous haunches”). Over time, it becomes clear: the issue is not self-discovery, or so-called "becoming.” We are born knowing who we are—“The world flexed, and I was flown— / my body aching, / for the anatomy of boyhood.” After the flight, all that is left is the work of achieving the wishes we were given." —Mary Jo Bang, author of A Doll for Throwing

Read more less

Book SynopsisFreedom House is a poetry collection that explores internal, interpersonal, and systemic freedom. In this debut full-length collection, KB Brookins’ formally diverse, music-influenced poetry explores transness, politics of the body, gentrification, sexual violence, climate change, masculinity, and afrofuturism while chronicling their transition and walking readers through different “rooms”. The speaker isn’t afraid to call themselves out while also bending time, displaying the terror of being Black/queer/trans in Texas, and more — all while using humor and craft. What does freedom look like? What can we learn from nature and our past? How do you reintroduce yourself in a world that refuses queerness? How can we use poetry as a tool in the toolbox that helps build freedom? This collection explores those questions, and manifests a world where Black, queer, and trans people get to live.Trade Review"Brookins’s debut full-length collection explores what it really means to be free in America, particularly as a Black, queer, trans writer living in Texas; their writing style is urgent and timely while still holding space for the possibility of a life lived on one’s own terms." —Emma Specter, Vogue "KB Brookins’s Freedom House is an unapologetic, forward-dreaming manifesto for a better, shared future." —Chaney Hill, Southern Review of Books

Read more less

Book SynopsisLosing your mother is a transformational event at any age, and yet the number of books on the subject of adult children grieving a mother’s death is meager. In this moving collection of poems and letters, Donna Stoneham chronicles the healing power of love between an adult daughter and her elderly mother—across the boundaries of this world and the next, and over the course of four years—and how that connection teaches her to love more deeply, to fully forgive, and to grow into her authentic self.An embracing solace for anyone recovering from the loss of a loved one, Catch Me When I Fall reveals how our grief journeys can be a powerful transformative force and offers readers a courageous, healing path to the other side of sorrow’s dark passage. Through the conversations between mother and daughter that take place in these lyrical pieces, readers are provided with the opportunity to explore a beautiful notion: as long as we keep our hearts open to the mystery and transformational power of transcendent, eternal love, it will always be possible to heal and continue our most pivotal relationships—even after death.Trade Review“Poet and prophet, traveler in the realms between the worlds—the here and the greater there—Donna Stoneham is our guide to the landscapes and the inscapes of grief, loss, and the quickening of the human heart. Through this potent telling, she mentors and helps us renew and recover the connection with the love and spirit that never dies.”—Jean Houston, PhD, co-founder of the Human Potential Movement and best-selling author of The Possible Human, The Search for the Beloved, and A Passion for the Possible“The other day I ran into a friend who told me, in a halting voice, that she’d just lost her beloved mother. The first thought I had was that I wanted to give her a copy of Donna Stoneham’s beautiful book. Catch Me When I Fall is a balm for the grieving heart, a reminder that love never leaves—it just shifts dimensions.”—Julie Barton, New York Times best-selling author of Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself“Whether or not you are religious, spiritual, or believe in life after death, Donna Stoneham’s beautiful poems about loss and her letters to her dead mother will reach into your own grieving heart and guide you towards healing. Although Catch Me When I Fall is Donna’s personal story, anyone who’s had and lost a mother will relate to the connection and pain and will be uplifted—because Donna shows us that although death may end a physical life, it does not end a relationship.”—Virginia A. Simpson, PhD, Bereavement Care Specialist, and award-winning author of The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life“Navigating grief is both an individual and collective experience, fraught with the vagaries of family history and unique personal struggles. This universal theme is turned over and over again in Donna's effective and honest writing. It is an intimate recollection and fearless accounting of the uncharted paths of grief, but it is also a metamorphosis, as she, and I believe her mother, discover the tenuous connection they thought they had with each other was not tenuous at all, but one of strongly wrought love.”—Cindy Eastman, author of Flip-Flops After 50: And Other Thoughts On Aging I Remembered To Write Down“One suggestion, given my own tears, before you even crack open Stoneham’s collection of poems—maybe don’t start reading in a public space. I say that because even though we have our whole lives to prepare for the moment we become motherless, are we ever really prepared for, as Stoneham describes, ‘the slack tide’ of our ragged hearts? But persevere, and you will begin to understand what we call the restorative power of grief. How it moves with you, guides you, and then loosens its grip.”—Nina Gaby, editor of Dumped: Women’s Stories of Women Unfriending Women“This very personal story of mother-daughter love captures the longing that never leaves us. The umbilical cord of mother-daughter love is twisted by conflicting values and individuation, but unwinds again at the end of life, when mind gives way, and reason steps aside to let love and longing be fulfilled. Written as a dialogue that extends even beyond death, Stoneham’s masterful weave of prose and poetry is a primer on moving through sadness toward understanding and peace.”—Mary E. Plouffe, author of I Know It in My Heart: Walking through Grief with a Child“I began reading Donna Stoneham’s Catch Me When I Fall shortly before the one-year anniversary of my beloved mother’s death. As I walked beside Donna through her own grief journey, I rode the too-familiar waves of sadness and overwhelm, of love and transcendence. With her powerful poetry and prose, Donna reminded me to look to the Universe for signs from my mom, to trust in the ultimate plan, and to honor our lost loved ones by spreading joy and positivity. I will forever be grateful for the healing power of this book.”—Katrina Anne Willis, author of Parting Gifts“The primal wound of losing a mother is something most of us will be asked to endure in our lifetimes. Donna Stoneham has given us the gift of letting us move with her over the rough ground of her own profound loss. Her poetry, poignant letters to, and communications from her mother invite us to descend into the darkness, let our hearts break wide open to love and walk the hard and holy path of grief and loss as a portal to our own becoming.”—Suzanne Anderson, author of You Make Your Path by Walking: A Transformational Field Guide Through Trauma and Loss and co-author of The Way of the Mysterial Woman: Upgrading How You Live, Love and Lead“Amid the severance of earthly ties, walk with Donna Stoneham as she tenderly stitches and dresses the wound. This is difficult heart work which we will all have to do; here is a gracious reminder we do not have to do it alone.”—Lt. Brian Bort, chaplain in the US Navy and author of The Strange Fish and Gigantic Brittle“Donna Stoneham’s poignant collection of poetry and prose, Catch Me When I Fall, reminds us all—whatever our faith, whatever notions we may have about the afterlife—that our deepest relationships don’t have to end when a dear one passes from this life. Comforting, uplifting, and deeply moving, this book shows us that love’s form may change with death, but the conversations with those we hold most dear can continue, if only we keep our hearts open.”—Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, marriage/family therapist and author of Filling Her Shoes“In Catch Me When I Fall, Donna Stoneham provides us with not only a roadmap to the wild country of grief, but also an intimate travelogue. In poetry and letters, she documents every step of her journey, from the depths of bereft despair to the heights of transcendent communion. This book is a testament of a mighty love too strong for death to conquer.”—Rev. John R. Mabry, PhD, author of Growing into God: A Beginner’s Guide to Christian Mysticism and coauthor of Soul Journeys: Christian Spirituality and Shamanism as Pathways for Wholeness and Understanding“This collection of poems brings to mind Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold. The Japanese believe that by embracing and lovingly repairing what is broken, a deeper beauty is revealed. Stoneham has spun gold in these words to repair her fractured heart. Anyone who has had a complicated mother daughter relationship, or is searching for closure after mother loss, will find comfort and truth in her words.”—Hollye Dexter, author of Fire Season and The Shift“Life comes with tangles. For many, the tangle that occurs in the mother-daughter relationship is painful and ongoing—but sometimes it can loosen, allowing a new avenue for love. Donna Stoneham taps into the deep longing that comes when her mother is trapped in her own collage of expectations and fear. Donna poignantly expresses the unfolding ability to see her mother, and I love that the transformation for Donna and her mom continues beyond her mom’s time on earth.”—Gail Warner, author of Weaving Myself Awake: Voicing the Sacred Through Poetry“Catch Me When I Fall is a love story and a tale of metamorphosis that offers inspiration to all who suffer with wounds from our most primal relationship—with our mother. Interspersed with Stoneham’s lovely poetry, this touching, beautiful memoir takes us through the storm of grief to a peaceful resolution with the awareness that a relationship can thrive beyond physical death. The relationship between Stoneham and her mother continues to transform, giving us a message of hope and healing that is eternal.”—Cheryl Krauter, MFT, author of Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go

Read more less

Book SynopsisThrough poems of witness, species and habitat extinction, war, pandemic, technology, history, and race, Mark Irwin's elegant collection of poetry explores the collision between metropolis and wilderness, and engages with forms of spirit that cannot be bound. With the incursion of electronic communication, our connections with one another have been radically distorted. Irwin's poems confront what it means to be human, and how conflict, along with the interface between technology and humanity, can cause us to become orphaned in many different ways. But it is our decision to be joyful. Excerpt from "Letter"Times when we touch hope like the hem of a cloudjust as when we touch a body or door, or think of the dead come back, romancing us through the warp of memory, lighting a wayby luring . . .Trade Review"Joyful Orphan is skilled, masterful work."—Sherwin Bitsui, Navajo writer and poet, author of Flood Song"This collection is a deft and elegant lyric address, beautifully inclusive, to all the issues now of greatest concern."—Donald Revell, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of The English Boat"Joyful Orphan a beautiful book of poems that, while quiet and often domestic, have a long, larger view."—Sasha Steensen, professor of English, Colorado State University, and author of House of Deer"Joyful Orphan raises the question of belonging, and chooses the position of the orphan, who in Mark Irwin's ecstatic poems, finds home everywhere. Who goes farther than that?"—Claudia Keelan, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, editor of Interim, and author of eight collections of poetry, including We Step into the SeaTable of Contents Contents I. Go Goes Vertigo Balloon The Dead Light Letter Alive Couple Blue, Red Notre-Dame of Paris, 2019 Story Livestream Tree, River Hover The Life II. Home Was into Space Holiday Edges Joyful Orphan Ash The smaller house Arrival How long? Library of Water 3D Family Why— We Faces Hungry Radiance Wilderness Bright in June Sun III. Wild Nike of Samothrace Legend All the tiny arrows Just once Gift Livestream English Plaster of Paris Spring, 2020 Nearer Variation on a Phrase by Dickinson Trailer for a Movie not yet Made 1937 Indian Head Nickel La liberté libre Thirst Pinprick Three Panels Yet Refrain Notes Acknowledgments About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisHome to extraordinary writers such as William Styron, Tom Wolfe, and Ellen Glasgow, the state of Virginia’s literary past is among the most prolific in the nation. Indeed, this state, with its beautiful and varied ecosystems—Appalachia, Chesapeake Bay, the Shenandoah Valley, and Virginia’s beautiful beaches, just to name a few—seem to serve as the landscapes from which equally varied and nutritive writers spring, from the lyrical, often ecstatic meditations of Charles Wright to the poignant, dynamic narratives and lyrics of Ellen Bryant Voigt, from the moving narratives of Rita Dove to the formal mastery and wit of R. T. Smith. Series Editor William Wright, along with Volume Editors J. Bruce Fuller, Jesse Graves, and Amy Wright, have collaborated to bring readers a wide-ranging survey in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IX: Virginia. This volume seeks to emphasize the uniqueness of the poetic voices of Virginia. In doing so, the editors have acknowledged and included many celebrated writers from the recent past as well as relatively new, diverse voices that reiterate the literary fecundity of one of the most beautiful, revered, and complicated states in the American South.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSarah Audsley’s debut poetry collection, Landlock X, joins a growing body of adoptee poetics. By examining the consequences of the international transracial adoptee experience—her own—Audsley’s collection finds more questions than solid answers. Employing a variety of poetic forms, co-opting the pastoral tradition to argue for belonging to the rural landscape—despite the inheritance of displacement and removal from a country of origin—Landlock X tries to solve for all of the (adoptee’s) variables and knows it is an impossible task that the “I”, “you”, and “we” of the poems only approximate. ...From “The Black Cows in the Foreground” it is unknown where the bones of your mother turned to fragments none in the painting of the black cows so where to grieve her body no parcel of land to plant sorrow in furrowed rows the black cows grazeTable of Contents [ untranslated ] ix I. F I E L D In the X Pastoral 1 Crown of Yellow 2 Greenhousing 4 Case Number: K83-5XX 5 Primary Color 6 On Creating False Memory 7 Swarm 8 Letter to the Woman on the Plane 10 Moonface Phases 11 Origins & Forms: Eight Sijos 12 While in Miryang, Searching 14 Still Life with Watermelon Seeds, Mannequin, Dead Mouse 16 [ translation/1 ] 17 II. D R E S S Confessional 20 On Not Fitting In 21 It Was a Yellow Light 22 Lament for Some Other Saigon 23 Letter To My Adoptee Diaspora 25 Broken Palette :: a retrospective in panels 26 On Meeting My Biological Father 33 Korea Doll Box 34 [American] Sampler 35 Dear Connie Chung 36 Beauty Being Beauty 37 Continuum 38 Field Dress Portal 39 [ translation/2 ] 40 III. P O R T A L Six Persimmons 44 Anti-Pastoral 45 Initial Gestures 46 “Now, where are you from?” 49 Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2018 50 We (or in the Blue House) 51 Planet Nine, a primordial black hole, new research suggests— 52 The Black Cows in the Foreground 53 The Half-Sister, Unmet 55 Fishheads (or Fuckheads) 56 Caspian Lake 57 Notes on Garnets 61 [ translation/3 ] 62 When My Mother Returns as X 63 Waiting Children 64 Notes 66 Acknowledgments 68 With Gratitude 69

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere. They are largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his apartment in uptown Manhattan."Proposition" When we’re old lovers, sitting in separate chairs Silently, will you think our love has faded Though we smile richly and are still unaided By doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs? Though talk has frozen in geologic layers Of long alignment of the loved and hated And even our sexuality is jaded And we have settled all our private cares Including death, listen to me, adored, Words cannot fail us ever, no matter how The fates brighten their implements to prove That even gods and geniuses get bored With marriage, fucking and poetic love, Because, beloved, we call each other thou.Table of Contents Foreword by Robert Phillips vii LOVE POEMS The Dinner Party 1 Waiting for Takeoff 2 Moving In 3 Homework 5 Interior 6 German 7 Sea Dance 8 Letter-Poem 9 A Kind of Gift 11 A Thank-You 13 Poems Like Flowers 14 The Meaning 15 "I'll Get Back to You" 16 Spate 17 An Exorcism 18 Archaeology 19 God 20 Proposition 21 Lost and Found 22 The Bestower 23 Total Immersion 24 Torso 25 Torso Fetish 26 The Legs 28 The Walk-Through 29 Talisman 30 No Doubt 31 The Spear 32 Rights 33 ROSE POEMS Late Bloomer 37 Hothouse Flower 38 Harvest 39 Prepositions 40 Vase of Dead Roses 41 VARIOUS POEMS The Day That Painting Died 45 The Camera 46 Ballpoint Pens 47 The Sacred Blue 48 Landscape 49 I Declare Peace 50 The Soldier 51 After the Surrender 52 Trajectory 53 Feminist Poem 54 Proverbs 55 The Tenses 56 Second Opinion 57 An Apology to a Bulldog 58 Karl Shapiro 59 Bar Mitzvah 60 The Jewish Problem 62 Again, for Sophie 64 About the Author 67

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn questioning the boundaries between the world and oneself, Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers unflinchingly explores the dark eddies of coming of age and coming out. Kelly McQuain’s poems are far roaming in setting and far ranging in style, depicting the richness of a rural West Virginia upbringing as well as contemporary adulthood in the big city and abroad. Glints of humor and glimpses of pathos abound in the imaginative leaps these poems take as they tackle such subjects as LGBTQ sexuality, homophobia, domestic abuse, and racism. Unafraid to push the limits of contemporary sonics, McQuain’s work is rich in music and varied in form, with new riffs on the sonnet, the villanelle, and the persona poem. Accessible and lyrical, this debut collection deftly explores the homes we come from and the homes we create—all the while shining with wonder and resolve. Several of the poems won contests including the Bloom chapbook prize, the Glitter Bomb Award, Best New Poets 2000. ...From “No Trespassing”It’s me who worries about her mini-strokes and falls, the knot on her head from where she stumbled picking blackberries on the bank. She watches the bees come, stippling themselves with pollen, flowers bending in the breeze. This world is hers, for now—all she covets. Tonight it is a black bear and three cubs up against her window, spilling seeds from a bird feeder hung against the house. My mother stands in the dark by that window, her thin hand, the chill of ghostly glass.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the 2019 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside the woman a lake of funeralsThis layering of bird, woman, place, technology, and ceremony, which begins this first full-length collection by Zaina Alsous, mirrors the layering of insights that marks the collection as a whole. The poems in A Theory of Birds draw on inherited memory, historical record, critical theory, alternative geographies, and sharp observation. In them, birds-particularly extinct species-become metaphor for the violences perpetrated on othered bodies under the colonial gaze.Putting ecological preservation in conversation with Arab racial formation, state vernacular with the chatter of birds, Alsous explores how categorization can be a tool for detachment, domination, and erasure. Stretching their wings toward de-erasure, these poems-their subjects and their logics-refuse to stay put within a single category. This is poetry in support of a decolonized mind.Trade Review"A Theory of Birds opens with phrases stitched with commas that are both light and startling: a grammar-flux that produces the effect of something falling out of or off the page. Zaina Alsous: ‘I entered through the empty cage, hips first.’ Zaina Alsous: ‘Can the map eat?’ The questions that follow invert their cardinal nouns, reverting to zero each time the next one is asked. I became curious about the nothing-everything of the book itself, the logic of voids and flight. A book that proposes a ‘collaboration with the dead’ but also a paradise of solar pathways and outcomes (intense joy). Alsous offers the reader a ‘previously’ as much as an ‘almost.’ A jar in France, a blonde hair in Fez: foreignness composes fragments in the shape of an ibis, a harp, a broken lantern, pinning them on a sky-red space: the page, which also shakes—shakes so hard that letters lose their place. And what would it be to write anyway? To love anyway? Zaina Alsous: ‘When I say home, I mean origin as a transitive verb. / When I say love, I mean these miracles are work.’"—Bhanu Kapil "Gabriel García Márquez wrote that Christopher Columbus’s Diario, ‘a book that speaks of fabulous plants and mythological lands,’ was the first example of magical literature in the Caribbean. This ‘magic’ is the colonizer’s ability to falsify a history, to rename what has already been discovered, to create taxonomies and eradicate the epistemologies of entire peoples. Zaina Alsous’s A Theory of Birds makes another kind of magic. Alsous writes, ‘While invading the New World, Columbus writes of sirens in / his notebooks, evoking the half-women, half-birds of Jason’s / Argonauts. Every time I look for women, I become more bird.’ Here is the magic of decolonization, the way it reconnects us past the romanticized past of the noble savage, past the Orientalist hybrids of an unimaginative colonial fiction, all the way to a poetics born of solidarity, of struggle, and pushing through the fissures that will eventually break apart empire. ‘Listen, next time, the flowers are naming themselves.’" —Raquel Salas Rivera

Read more less

Book SynopsisA Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of natural imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances surrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, these poems are presented to the post-bee reader as "artifacts." These are poems in hindsight.Playing with Bees positions poetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry's "natural" inclinations towards building alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether in a line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same way if bees—and the relations they make possible—suddenly disappeared. Like any natural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile. Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylum of phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-name feelings. What changes about our imaginations after a peg in the environment is removed? What could disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, if nature is no longer a mirror?Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems are the residue of a dead species—but they are also the offshoots of a playful, abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playingwith Bees covets what's left. At the bottom of everything, we find the fragments an ecologically intact dream; an apocalypse in reverse.Trade ReviewIn the introduction to this new collection of poems, A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees, RK Fauth tells us that the subsequent verses are 'artifacts' of a fictional world. The book itself is more of an assemblage of testimonies that support the imagined environment—a group of artifacts (poems) uncovered in the same archeological (fabled) context. In the aftermath of this chimerical calamity, the writer finds a space of infinite reflection wherein the intrinsic values of these precious creatures are examined in hindsight. The poetry doesn’t follow the literal echoes of such a loss as much as the infinitude of metaphorical and cultural ripples, growing the more they spread through our dreams, our language, and our identities. In Fauth’s brilliant collection of unearthed, lyrical artifacts, the poetry is volcanic and mesmerizing as it exposes the truth about our language—that it needs to be expressed to and for someone who can act, and that it exists in that space between and among things, in the relations between us. Fauth’s poems guide us through the work needed to be done to reach out simply by looking in."—Mikal Wix, West Trade Review (January 2024)

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe poet William Waring Cuney (1906-1976) hails from an illustrious Afro-Texan family whose members include the charismatic politician Norris Wright Cuney (1846-1898) and his daughter, Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936),the concert pianist and writer. Waring Cuney's maternal line, after whom he was named, was equally eminent.Cuney was born and raised in Washington D.C., just a few blocks from Howard University where three generations of his family studied. Despite his privileged upbringing among the city's Black elite, Cuney embraced his family's passionate commitment to racial uplift and civil rights; in exploring the relationship between African Americans and their environment, he was thus able to transmute into two books of poetry a broad cross section of African American life; his poems and songs explore the lives of jazz musicians, athletes, domestic and railway workers, women and children, blues singers, prisoners, sharecroppers, and soldiers. In addition, Cuney published in all the major Harlem Renaissance journals and anthologies alongside the luminaries of the period, many of whom were good friends.Through 100 of his best poems, many never collected or published, and a detailed biographical monograph, Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney introduces readers to a newly recovered Harlem Renaissance poet, and to the history of a remarkable American family.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.Trade Review“When politics invades lives in the most brutal of ways, what can be fashioned from the aftermath? In these found poems Shanee Stepakoff has taken the testimonies of those upon whom the violence was committed and turned them into a work of witness, Nadine Gordimer’s ‘inward testimony’ that it is the task of artists to deliver. Outwardly the poems in this collection stand as monument to remembrance and commemoration, a stay against oblivion for the people of Sierra Leone whose lives were marked by the civil conflict of 1991-2002. They are a significant contribution to the literature of that country and of conflict.” -- Aminatta Forna * author of Happiness *“Of the many forms of human suffering, ethical loneliness—the experience of enduring atrocity only to be confronted with the annihilating cruelty and injustice of remaining unheard—sheds a radiant, hurt light on the very nature and power of language itself. In stark, beautifully calibrated lines, Shanee Stepakoff reaches into that silence to serve and bring forth these necessary voices. Here, the plainest words—‘I saw,’ ‘I heard,’ ‘I walked,’—take on an almost shocking and devastating dignity. As the survivors recount their stories, it is as if each syllable, each word, is a bone stripped bare. ‘He was burning,’ ‘I used to be,’ ‘I was born,’ ‘he was cutting the child.’ At once unsparing and informed by a deep tenderness and care, this darkly luminous work implicitly interrogates the nature of authorship and poetic form, and like all seminal works, helps to question, expand, and re-define their boundaries.” -- Laurie Sheck * Pulitzer Prize nominated author of The Willow Grove *“These ‘found poems’ are unquestionably harrowing to read and painful to absorb. Eight survivors of the murderous cruelty and atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone tell their own stories, and in their own words. Every one of these words is drawn from transcripts of the war crimes tribunals that came with the end of that war. Shanee Stepakoff—a psychologist who has long worked with survivors of torture—brings to these transcript accounts her poet’s sense of lineation, stanzaic structure, pauses, refrains, and repetitions. Thus, she creates a ceremonial space in which we as readers might begin to hear and bear witness to the unbearable degree of violence, suffering, and loss that these women and men endured." -- Fred Marchant * author of Said Not Said: Poems *“With this collection, Shanee Stepakoff finally breaks the veil of silence that surrounds the unspeakable horrors of Sierra Leone’s long civil war. She has recomposed the official accounts to offer us both the intimacy and eternality of survivor stories.” -- Remi Raji * author of A Harvest of Laughers * “The incredible horrors painfully recited herein, including the mutilation of children, mass rapes and torture by rival revolutionary groups makes us wonder whether humans are really human. Shanee Stepakoff’s documented testimonies illustrate the continuing crying need for effective international controls and binding laws to deter such atrocities everywhere.” -- Benjamin Ferencz * investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials *"At once astonishing and devastating, these poems attest to poetry’s ability to bear witness to atrocity, while the poignant cover image by Liberian American artist and war refugee Papay Solomon reminds us of those whose voices have been silenced for too long." * Poetry Foundation *“When politics invades lives in the most brutal of ways, what can be fashioned from the aftermath? In these found poems Shanee Stepakoff has taken the testimonies of those upon whom the violence was committed and turned them into a work of witness, Nadine Gordimer’s ‘inward testimony’ that it is the task of artists to deliver. Outwardly the poems in this collection stand as monument to remembrance and commemoration, a stay against oblivion for the people of Sierra Leone whose lives were marked by the civil conflict of 1991-2002. They are a significant contribution to the literature of that country and of conflict.” -- Aminatta Forna * author of Happiness *“Of the many forms of human suffering, ethical loneliness—the experience of enduring atrocity only to be confronted with the annihilating cruelty and injustice of remaining unheard—sheds a radiant, hurt light on the very nature and power of language itself. In stark, beautifully calibrated lines, Shanee Stepakoff reaches into that silence to serve and bring forth these necessary voices. Here, the plainest words—‘I saw,’ ‘I heard,’ ‘I walked,’—take on an almost shocking and devastating dignity. As the survivors recount their stories, it is as if each syllable, each word, is a bone stripped bare. ‘He was burning,’ ‘I used to be,’ ‘I was born,’ ‘he was cutting the child.’ At once unsparing and informed by a deep tenderness and care, this darkly luminous work implicitly interrogates the nature of authorship and poetic form, and like all seminal works, helps to question, expand, and re-define their boundaries.” -- Laurie Sheck * Pulitzer Prize nominated author of The Willow Grove *“These ‘found poems’ are unquestionably harrowing to read and painful to absorb. Eight survivors of the murderous cruelty and atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone tell their own stories, and in their own words. Every one of these words is drawn from transcripts of the war crimes tribunals that came with the end of that war. Shanee Stepakoff—a psychologist who has long worked with survivors of torture—brings to these transcript accounts her poet’s sense of lineation, stanzaic structure, pauses, refrains, and repetitions. Thus, she creates a ceremonial space in which we as readers might begin to hear and bear witness to the unbearable degree of violence, suffering, and loss that these women and men endured." -- Fred Marchant * author of Said Not Said: Poems *“With this collection, Shanee Stepakoff finally breaks the veil of silence that surrounds the unspeakable horrors of Sierra Leone’s long civil war. She has recomposed the official accounts to offer us both the intimacy and eternality of survivor stories.” -- Remi Raji * author of A Harvest of Laughers * “The incredible horrors painfully recited herein, including the mutilation of children, mass rapes and torture by rival revolutionary groups makes us wonder whether humans are really human. Shanee Stepakoff’s documented testimonies illustrate the continuing crying need for effective international controls and binding laws to deter such atrocities everywhere.” -- Benjamin Ferencz * investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the last surviving prosecutor at the Nurember *"At once astonishing and devastating, these poems attest to poetry’s ability to bear witness to atrocity, while the poignant cover image by Liberian American artist and war refugee Papay Solomon reminds us of those whose voices have been silenced for too long." * Poetry Foundation *Table of ContentsForeword by Ernest D. Cole Notes on the Text Introduction: Silence, Language, and the Making of Art The Amputee’s Mother The Child Soldier The Grieving Father The Rape Survivor The Blinded Farmer The Widower The Gravedigger The Beggar The Victim of War Further Resources Acknowledgments About the Cover Artist About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisIBPA Benjamin Franklin Award™ gold winner, poetry category Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war barely caught the attention of Western media, but it raged on for over a decade, bringing misery to millions of people in West Africa from 1991 to 2002. The atrocities committed in this war and the accounts of its survivors were duly recorded by international organizations, but they run the risk of being consigned to dusty historical archives. Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.Trade Review“When politics invades lives in the most brutal of ways, what can be fashioned from the aftermath? In these found poems Shanee Stepakoff has taken the testimonies of those upon whom the violence was committed and turned them into a work of witness, Nadine Gordimer’s ‘inward testimony’ that it is the task of artists to deliver. Outwardly the poems in this collection stand as monument to remembrance and commemoration, a stay against oblivion for the people of Sierra Leone whose lives were marked by the civil conflict of 1991-2002. They are a significant contribution to the literature of that country and of conflict.” -- Aminatta Forna * author of Happiness *“Of the many forms of human suffering, ethical loneliness—the experience of enduring atrocity only to be confronted with the annihilating cruelty and injustice of remaining unheard—sheds a radiant, hurt light on the very nature and power of language itself. In stark, beautifully calibrated lines, Shanee Stepakoff reaches into that silence to serve and bring forth these necessary voices. Here, the plainest words—‘I saw,’ ‘I heard,’ ‘I walked,’—take on an almost shocking and devastating dignity. As the survivors recount their stories, it is as if each syllable, each word, is a bone stripped bare. ‘He was burning,’ ‘I used to be,’ ‘I was born,’ ‘he was cutting the child.’ At once unsparing and informed by a deep tenderness and care, this darkly luminous work implicitly interrogates the nature of authorship and poetic form, and like all seminal works, helps to question, expand, and re-define their boundaries.” -- Laurie Sheck * Pulitzer Prize nominated author of The Willow Grove *“These ‘found poems’ are unquestionably harrowing to read and painful to absorb. Eight survivors of the murderous cruelty and atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone tell their own stories, and in their own words. Every one of these words is drawn from transcripts of the war crimes tribunals that came with the end of that war. Shanee Stepakoff—a psychologist who has long worked with survivors of torture—brings to these transcript accounts her poet’s sense of lineation, stanzaic structure, pauses, refrains, and repetitions. Thus, she creates a ceremonial space in which we as readers might begin to hear and bear witness to the unbearable degree of violence, suffering, and loss that these women and men endured." -- Fred Marchant * author of Said Not Said: Poems *“With this collection, Shanee Stepakoff finally breaks the veil of silence that surrounds the unspeakable horrors of Sierra Leone’s long civil war. She has recomposed the official accounts to offer us both the intimacy and eternality of survivor stories.” -- Remi Raji * author of A Harvest of Laughers * “The incredible horrors painfully recited herein, including the mutilation of children, mass rapes and torture by rival revolutionary groups makes us wonder whether humans are really human. Shanee Stepakoff’s documented testimonies illustrate the continuing crying need for effective international controls and binding laws to deter such atrocities everywhere.” -- Benjamin Ferencz * investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials *"At once astonishing and devastating, these poems attest to poetry’s ability to bear witness to atrocity, while the poignant cover image by Liberian American artist and war refugee Papay Solomon reminds us of those whose voices have been silenced for too long." * Poetry Foundation *“When politics invades lives in the most brutal of ways, what can be fashioned from the aftermath? In these found poems Shanee Stepakoff has taken the testimonies of those upon whom the violence was committed and turned them into a work of witness, Nadine Gordimer’s ‘inward testimony’ that it is the task of artists to deliver. Outwardly the poems in this collection stand as monument to remembrance and commemoration, a stay against oblivion for the people of Sierra Leone whose lives were marked by the civil conflict of 1991-2002. They are a significant contribution to the literature of that country and of conflict.” -- Aminatta Forna * author of Happiness *“Of the many forms of human suffering, ethical loneliness—the experience of enduring atrocity only to be confronted with the annihilating cruelty and injustice of remaining unheard—sheds a radiant, hurt light on the very nature and power of language itself. In stark, beautifully calibrated lines, Shanee Stepakoff reaches into that silence to serve and bring forth these necessary voices. Here, the plainest words—‘I saw,’ ‘I heard,’ ‘I walked,’—take on an almost shocking and devastating dignity. As the survivors recount their stories, it is as if each syllable, each word, is a bone stripped bare. ‘He was burning,’ ‘I used to be,’ ‘I was born,’ ‘he was cutting the child.’ At once unsparing and informed by a deep tenderness and care, this darkly luminous work implicitly interrogates the nature of authorship and poetic form, and like all seminal works, helps to question, expand, and re-define their boundaries.” -- Laurie Sheck * Pulitzer Prize nominated author of The Willow Grove *“These ‘found poems’ are unquestionably harrowing to read and painful to absorb. Eight survivors of the murderous cruelty and atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone tell their own stories, and in their own words. Every one of these words is drawn from transcripts of the war crimes tribunals that came with the end of that war. Shanee Stepakoff—a psychologist who has long worked with survivors of torture—brings to these transcript accounts her poet’s sense of lineation, stanzaic structure, pauses, refrains, and repetitions. Thus, she creates a ceremonial space in which we as readers might begin to hear and bear witness to the unbearable degree of violence, suffering, and loss that these women and men endured." -- Fred Marchant * author of Said Not Said: Poems *“With this collection, Shanee Stepakoff finally breaks the veil of silence that surrounds the unspeakable horrors of Sierra Leone’s long civil war. She has recomposed the official accounts to offer us both the intimacy and eternality of survivor stories.” -- Remi Raji * author of A Harvest of Laughers * “The incredible horrors painfully recited herein, including the mutilation of children, mass rapes and torture by rival revolutionary groups makes us wonder whether humans are really human. Shanee Stepakoff’s documented testimonies illustrate the continuing crying need for effective international controls and binding laws to deter such atrocities everywhere.” -- Benjamin Ferencz * investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the last surviving prosecutor at the Nurember *"At once astonishing and devastating, these poems attest to poetry’s ability to bear witness to atrocity, while the poignant cover image by Liberian American artist and war refugee Papay Solomon reminds us of those whose voices have been silenced for too long." * Poetry Foundation *Table of ContentsForeword by Ernest D. Cole Notes on the Text Introduction: Silence, Language, and the Making of Art The Amputee’s Mother The Child Soldier The Grieving Father The Rape Survivor The Blinded Farmer The Widower The Gravedigger The Beggar The Victim of War Further Resources Acknowledgments About the Cover Artist About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisDonetsk, the black gem of Ukraine—Eden and Sodom in one, a stew steaming with coal fever, Manifest Destiny of Europe’s east: Svetlana Lavochkina sends readers on a double odyssey with two adventurers, the fiery blacksmith Alexander and the elusive linguist Lisa, whose paths are destined to cross on the cusp of the war in the Donbas. Only one of them fathoms that their encounter goes far beyond its face-value purpose. A thriller, a romance, a CV, a rose of historical winds, a song of crafts, an ontology of Eastern-Ukrainian mind in one, Carbon is told in polyphonic verse—a prayer for the beloved, anguished city.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRimming the Event Horizon gyrates a mutinous poetics of revenge, purposing contingency as a major mechanism of racialisation but also as a source of resistance and refusal, of material and imaginative possibility. It is not really a punitive poetics but rather, 'a constant, experimental exercise of antagonism,' a brutally disruptive 'xenogenerosity' (Harney & Moten). This is a collection of many rotations, revolutions and revolts, from the lick of the cyclone to the whirl of a dervish; the flick of a dragon's tail to the ultra-slow swirl of galaxies or precarious life circling the drain. Traversing metastable topologies of gender and race as complicitly mattered but also 'out of control,' Rimming the Event Horizon intra-venes in a universe(s) that must simultaneously avenge, and take revenge on itself. Looping the line between life and death, it dangles us over the edge headfirst, tongues out... "Sabeen Chaudhry's Rimming the Event Horizon is an index of "oracular horrors," both "asymptomatic" and "vicious animal". This is a work of devastation in the present but also "one of many aftermaths." Chaudhry invites a reading of the poem as "bruised verticality." A livid ghost shares space with wrecked daughters at the rim of a well. Is this the portal? "LICK CYCLONE" is the instruction. In this way, a reader's opacity weakens. There's nowhere not to look." -- Bhanu Kapil For Fans Of: Momtaza Mehri, Jen Calleja, Lola Olufemi.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIncludes all the poems from Henry's collections Strikingly Invisible, The Beauty Within Shadow and The Distance Between Clouds, and features many of the poems from his award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, 'A Normal...'.Trade Review“The master of balancing laugh-out funny with acute poignancy.” - The i / “Shove up National Treasures. We need to make room for Henry Normal.” - Radio Times / “Succinct, heartrending and peppered with gentle punchlines.” - The Guardian / “Henry Normal’s observational poems are always a delight.” - Write Out Loud / “He loves the little things in life because he knows that really they are the big things.” - The i / “Warm, accessible, and never wantonly oblique, but deep beyond measure.” - Northern Soul / “Witty and uncannily accurate with his observations.” - The Stage / “The Alan Bennett of poetry.” - The Scotsman / “The funniest man you’ve never heard of.” - The Telegraph

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe late Les Murray described Jamie Grant’s work as “poems of scrupulous craftsmanship and unlinking intelligence, poems which pay acute attention to the contours of experience.” This new collection, which is divided into five discrete sections, focuses that attention on the twenty-first century world, its office buildings and hospitals, motorways and wind farms, while also looking back to characters and events from earlier times. There are also observations of Australia’s natural environment, its forests, farms, birds and animals. The last of the five sections is a series of versified thumbnail sketches of historical figures whose achievements helped to shape the present age. And there is even an elegy for Les Murray among the other verses.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat can it look like for poetry to bear witness? What might it feel like for a poem to keep company? A Different Species of Breathing: The Poetry of Sue Goyetteoffers an introduction to the work of a poet whose writing attends to these large and connected questions.Goyette’s poetry experiments with (and pushes at the edges of) lyric poetry to explore webs of connection. Whether considering the ways in which systems of care fail children, the devastating reach of Big Pharma, the reciprocal relationship between oceans and humans, or the possibilities that rest in rewriting one’s own story, Goyette’s poetry is rooted in the work of witnessing and being in company with others.A Different Species of Breathing opens with an introduction by scholar, editor, and poet Bart Vautour, which offers readers context for Goyette’s lyric innovations as well as her key poetic concerns. A selection chosen from across Goyette’s published work then presents readers with poems that appear in chronological order to ground readers in the poet’s trajectories of thinking. The volume closes with a new and previously unpublished interview between Goyette and scholar and writer Erin Wunker. For scholars, poetry aficionados, students, and those interested in questions of care, connection, and ecosystems.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith compassion, humour and sharp-eyed irreverence, Ronna Bloom's work has made a significant impact on Canadian poetry. A Possible Trust is selected from her work to date.Bloom writes concisely of the precarious, the ephemeral, the epic, and of the fragility and determination of people in daily life and extraordinary health crises. Throughout her six collections, she is attentive to suffering, as well as to spontaneous connections and gestures of love.Her poetry has been used by teachers, architects, spiritual leaders, and in hospitals across Canada. This is poetry engaged with spontaneity, presence, work, and health care. There is a tenderness here where living matters, as does dying, a valuing of the incident, the encounter, the unexpected, the sorrow and the bowl-me-over delight.Bloom speaks to us about how vulnerability, suffering, and the release into joy, can combine as an ongoing, never-ending life practice. She mines her own experience while looking out into the world with awareness, empathy and the willingness to risk being wide open. These poems stand firm with readers.Editor and poet Phil Hall's Introduction "To Lead by Crying" argues for a poetics of empathy, and is an enthusiastic retrospective of Bloom's work. In the Afterword, Ronna Bloom traces the relevance of photography, psychotherapy, and meditation in her work. Defiant, comical, revealing, impolite yet respectful, A Possible Trust is a retrospective and celebration.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGriffin Poetry Prize finalist Sandra Ridley offers a breathtaking, harrowing immersion in cruelty behind different veils: the medieval hunt, ecological collapse, and intimate partner violence. Sparked by a haunting chance encounter with a fox, and told in six chapters of varying form, Vixen is as visceral as it is mysterious, sensuous as it is terrifying. "Thicket" introduces us to stalking being akin to hunting; the similar threat of terror and—too often—a violent end. "Twitchcraft" locates the hunt in the home, the wild in the domestic, while "Season of the Haunt" explores the unrelenting nature of hunting. "Stricken" asks common questions that often implicitly justify such violence: Is the harassment 'bad enough' to allow us to label it criminal? Has all control been taken? Is the fear reasonable? Vixen propels us to examine the nature of empathy, what it means to be a compassionate witness —and what happens when brutality is so ever-present that we become numb. This is a beautiful, difficult, wild tapestry of defiance and survival.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn A Strangely Wrapped Gift, you will find journeys from mental illness to recovery, from heartbreak to heart growth, from hopelessness to empowerment, and from the ocean to the stars. Juniper takes heavy, emotional raw material and weaves it into stunning, relatable poetry you'll long to share with friends and loved ones.This collection is a reminder that broken pieces make the most beautiful mosaics, and that all of us possess the power to bloom even after a harsh winter.

Read more less

Book SynopsisI had to fight for my existence before I was even out of my mother’s womb. If I didn’t stop fighting then, why would I stop now? What Will People Say follows a South Asian woman’s journey through being a daughter, and later a daughter-in-law, within the strict confines of her patriarchal family. Readers watch as the narrator navigates life, trying to find a safe place for herself, until she finally becomes her own hero. Grappling with the subjects of sexual and psychological trauma, as well as mental health, this collection of poetry carves a path beyond the guilt of wondering: “What will people say?”

Read more less

Book Synopsis“Where does all the grief go when it’s not tugging at your wrist?” Enyegue’s debut collection is an ode to girlhood, to Blackness, to generational trauma, sexual assault, and mental health. This collection does not aim to heal anyone who reads it, but instead help them confront their own healing. Rather than sugar-coated bullets that enter you lightly, these poems are designed to hurt. They are for the girls with difficult names, the boys with softness at their core, and the people with neither. They are meant for the people who are Black, and the people who are not—because we are all tethered together by the heaviness of the human experience.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Vanishing Act (& The Miracle After) is an existential meditation on grief, the kind which pins you down and minimizes you. The first half of the collection, The Vanishing Act, captures the ruminations of a mind which feels limited physically and spiritually. The imagery in this section intermingles magic and violence as the speaker confronts systemic issues as a middle-class woman, a person of colour, and a survivor of abuse.The second section, (& The Miracle After), offers a fresh perspective on recovery. In this section, the speaker revisits images of bodily harm. Objects previously used for violence are brought back to a state of benign normalcy. As spring arrives, the speaker contemplates renewal and the paradoxical nature of taking agency of her life, while knowing the act of survival is made possible only because of miraculous intervention.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith less content in my life I am infinitely more content Against the backdrop of a sibling’s death, an eating disorder, and a few very dismal dating relationships, Villa Negativa looks for laughter behind darkness: the intruder who politely removes her shoes, the fabricator whose closest relationship is with fibreglass, the anorexic who sends the Diet Coke back because it tastes too good. Meditative and mischievous, confessional and philosophical, sincere and sly by turns, Sharon McCartney’s seventh collection articulates an essential truth of self-knowledge—that “to perceive something, we have to be able / to stand away from it.”Trade ReviewPraise for Sharon McCartney “Part satire, part self-examination, and far more layered than it first appears. Working largely in free verse… moving between levity and sincerity in a short span… The collection is brilliant: short, sharp, and eminently readable. Although it is a quick read, it is a deeply satisfying one.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “So much is revealed in so few words … It’s a book that feels light, but its delivery is heavy, and worthy of contemplation … McCartney is merciless in exposing vulnerability, but also builds an intimacy integral to Metanoia‘s achievement.”—Quill & Quire (starred review) “McCartney has written exceedingly rhythmical poems … and this is one of the reasons she holds a place of high esteem in the Canadian poetry scene for me … There’s a ton to empathize over, rage against, or even pshaw in disdain towards, usually in the face of some sad sack male character … “Agonal and Preterminal,” the third piece, perfectly sketches a painful portrait of an era of institutionalization, medicalese and the hush of shame.”—Marrow Reviews"The poems are satirical as the speaker examines herself, her life and her relationships ... the presentation is raw and empowered with many emotions like fear, sadness and, yes, even anger. Yet, within the words and emotions, the speaker delves into many of the deeper meanings of life, and death."—Arc Poetry Magazine “You don’t read these poems, you feel them: Hammer in the head, shod foot on the throat, stiletto in the heart. It’s those combos of wild, piercing insights (or unusual but poignant images); yep, that’s what makes it good for you–or kills you, laughing.”—George Elliott Clarke

Read more less

Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2023 J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award • Winner of the 2021 Confederation Poets Prize • One of The Times' Best Poetry Books of 2022 • A CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022 • Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award for Poetry"...a trans-mystical work of love and change..."—Ali Blythe, author of HymnswitchThe mystics who coined the phrase ‘the way of affirmation’ understood the apocalyptic nature of the word yes, the way it can lead out of one life and into another. Moving among the languages of Christian conversion, Classical metamorphosis, seasonal transformation, and gender transition, Luke Hathaway tells the story of the love that rewired his being, asking each of us to experience the transfiguration that can follow upon saying yes—with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, with all one’s strength ... and with all one’s body, too.Trade ReviewPraise for The Affirmations"Mainstream poetry counts as nonconformist compared with popular culture, but it nevertheless develops its own conformities. For something completely different, look to publishing beyond these shores. Luke Hathaway, a Canadian trans poet, offers just such a point of difference. Influenced by John Donne and George Herbert, and above all by TS Eliot's Four Quartets, Hathaway constructs small marvels of what one poem here calls 'loving jugglery': a feast of transformations."—The Times"These are masterful, musical poems about faith and transformation, by one of our best contemporary poets."—Jason Guriel, for the Globe and Mail"There is a feeling of it being out of time [...] he has always been a master of the formal [...] anyone who likes deep poetry that is alluding to other things in previous literatures is going to love this book."—CBC The Next Chapter"The depth of references offers opportunities for entry and distance alike. Ranging freely across centuries of works, sacred and secular, Hathaway’s book, published last week, is as deftly conversant with John Donne as with Auden, as expert in its command of music, metrical and lexical as the maritime landscape. [...] The object [...] of The Affirmations, is not simply reifying what has come before, but challenging, re-imagining, and reclaiming what has been made into a tool of oppression."—Ploughshares"Hathaway’s poetry collection arrives at just the right time. The Affirmations’ silvery, dew-laced spiderweb of intricacy and intimacy connect us simultaneously to myth, futurism and matters of the heart."—The Tyee"Luke Hathaway has captured how we survive and thrive by chance, by lucky accident. These spare lines take the reader on a profound journey with the speaker."—Brecken Hancock, 2021 Confederation Poets Prize judge"This is a book that will be read and reread by those attuned to its pleasures. For myself, I can only say it could have gone on forever; once I entered the mental world created by The Affirmations, I never wanted to leave it."—Able Muse"This time around, Hathaway delivers the story of 'the love that rewired his being' through lyrical poems that lean into the possibilities presented by small-f faith and transformation."—The Coast"Hathaway seems to explore the boundaries of poetic form as it relates to an operatic storytelling, pushing at the edges of older forms with a new hand, and a new eye, and seeing what just might be possible."—rob mclennan"The Affirmations evocatively asks us to examine this imperfect world in a way that leaves us vulnerable with each other and the earth, alongside Luke."—Shalan Joudry, author of Elapultiek‘Like his biblical namesake, [Luke Hathaway] offers his own accounting, and so heralds a trans-mystical work of love and change. Driven equally by philia, eros and agape, his poetry pushes for more: more darkness, so you’ll attend your light; more light, so you’ll attend your darkness."—Ali Blythe, author of HymnswitchPraise for Years, Months, and Days “[Years, Months, and Days] is carried by Jernigan’s obvious respect for her sponsoring material and by her superb ear.”—New York Times “Exquisite ... deeply resonant ... There’s often a metaphysical cast to her forthright observations, which makes them both evocative and poignant.”—Toronto Star “[This] small and beautiful book should be on your bedside table even if it is as heaped as mine. Just 4” by 5” and fewer than 70 pages, the book consists of untitled, spare, and simply-worded poems which evoke the cycles of life, the seasons, and human longing for meaning and connection. The poems expand in your head, opening your mind to matters beyond the day-to-day.”—Arc Poetry Magazine

Read more less

Book SynopsisWorking within a postmodern style, this rhythmic and melodious collection of poems originally written in Slovenian by Cvetka Lipuš and translated here by Tom Priestly, blends the real with the surreal, dull urban lives with dreams. Lipuš, known for the lexical beauty of her work, dwells on topics of time and space which she handles in an almost revolving, irreverent manner. Priestly captures the maze-like characteristic of her verse and carefully reconstructs the sonoric beauty of the work in its original language.

Read more less

Book SynopsisGospel Drunk follows a speaker’s journey to find clarity and identity as he contemplates his Catholic upbringing and struggles with loneliness and alcohol addiction. Sharp, intoxicating imagery and a minimalist aesthetic combine in these poems to explore some of our darkest and strongest belief systems, dismantling them with wit and wisdom. Poignant boyhood memories of hockey coaches as “dragons in suits” collide with critiques of “the broken bicycle of recovery.” A child’s fingers interlace to form a gun during mass and Hulk attends an AA meeting. Boldly honest, Gospel Drunk is for all who seek humanity in a world where the personal and the political are equally complicated. He drops a match on his wound to set fire to his blood. At a certain temperature even the Devil cools. -from “Drowning Man Sonnets”Trade Review# 10 on Edmonton Poetry Bestsellers list, October 10, 2021Table of ContentsI 2 Disciple 3 Galileo 4 Trust 5 Helmets and Gloves 6 Social Development 7 Ode to the Hockey Bro 8 Churches, Trucks and Shallow Pools 10 Driving Through Kitsilano 11 Suburban Lament 12 Two Lips 13 Fall of the Empire 14 Meditation on Enclosed Space 16 This Might Be the Warmest Parking Lot in Canada 17 Another Seasonal Poem 19 We Are Bioluminescent 20 Passage II 22 Struggling Protagonist 23 Indelible 24 Sizing Up 25 The Light Salesmen 26 Prayer in the Age of Unreason 27 Mary Too 29 Sacrificial Sons 31 Eternal Optimist 33 Land in the Name of Taking 34 Suffering as Spectacle 35 Holes 36 Hard Rain 37 Sonnet in Defence of Lust 38 Nothing Written Is Sacred III 40 Gun Journal 47 Safety Rules 48 The Strongman 49 The Activist 50 Eyes of the Assailant 51 Good Men 52 Colonial Chokehold 53 Fallen 54 Superhero AA 55 Epistle of the Inebriate 56 Empty 57 Ode to Ruin 58 Drowning Man Sonnets 73 Notes 75 Acknowledgements

Read more less