Modern and contemporary poetry
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Herbert Huncke Reader
Book SynopsisThis reader contains the full texts of Herbert Huncke's out-of-print works, Huncke's Journal and The Evening Sun Turned Crimson, and a wide selection from his other published and unpublished poems, stories, memoirs, letters and diaries.
£15.29
Running Press,U.S. Stark Raving Dad
Book Synopsis Finally! The pain of parenting . . . in poetic form! Stark Raving Dad is an illustrated collection of poems (no claims of being Walt Whitman here) that humorously captures fatherly angst in comedic verse and pairs it with talented art from the author''s own kids.Let''s be honest: Most gifts for Dad usually end up being a golf club or a tie. But what about the Dad in desperate need of a laugh? Give him reassurance he''s not the only father trying to figure it all out.Over the years Sanderson Dean has turned all his fatherly angst into poetry, accompanied by crudely drawn images by his children. But before your eyes glaze over at the word poetry, you should know it''s more hapless than highbrow. From surviving road trips to being puked on, and from plunging clogged toilets to finding Craisins in the couch cushions, Sanderson covers many of the rarely talked about adventures that make the journey of parenthood so very exciting.
£8.79
McGill-Queen's University Press The Night Chorus
Book SynopsisPoems that give voice and agency to marginal figures in rural places and cityscapes.Trade Review"'Intensify' is the Rilkean injunction that Harold Hoefle both declares and practises in this propulsive first collection of poems. I admire equally the energy of his lines and the range of his sympathies." Steven Heighton, 2016 Governor General's Poetry Award winner for The Waking Comes Late"The Night Chorus sings of a private world that spans from Lac La Pêche to the British Museum, from a rural ditch to the city bus. These poems access memories, intimate conversations, and seemingly ordinary moments that Harold Hoefle discerns with the bright precision of a jeweller. To read The Night Chorus is to drive along a road that, in Hoefle's words, "climbs, dips, arcs, cup[s] the world in a curve." Where you stop to rest is often where you will want to linger for a while longer." Gillian Sze, author of Panicle
£15.19
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press S O S Poems 19612013
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for S O S: Poems 1961-2013 A New York Times Editors' Choice "The most complete representation of over a half-century of revolutionary and breathtaking work." --Claudia Rankine, New York Times Book Review "S O S provides readers with rich, vital views of the African American experience and of Baraka's own evolution as a poet-activist... Baraka is as adept with spare, imagistic lines as with lyrical realism. Racist, provincial ideas earn his angry unmasking as he sings, shouts and shakes a fist at corruption and ignorance." --Washington Post "A big handsome book of Amiri Baraka's poetry [that gives] us word magic, wit, wild thoughts, discomfort, and pleasure." --William J. Harris, Boston Review "Amiri Baraka's S O S sparks a living flame. Bodacious and tenacious, he remains a realist rooted sometimes in the political, sometimes in the avant-garde. His voice is made in America; his poetry is an action. Baraka's poems live on and off the page and demand that we feel language as music and meaning. This poet and his work are always slipping the yoke, determined to be free--yes, aesthetic freedom lives within S O S. The collection wails out from recent history through a masterful signifier whose fierce certainty holds grace notes with a backbeat." --Yusef Komunyakaa "[S O S is] a signal of blunt urgency ... this is undeniably the work of the kind of poet we will not see again; Amiri Baraka was one of the last of the 20th century's literary lions. This momentous collection exhibits his abiding resistance to almost everything, but subversiveness." --Terrance Hayes, Publishers Weekly (boxed review) "One of those rarest of things: poetry that combines a rigorous intellect, high-voltage aesthetics, and a revolutionary's need to confront his subject... Those who believe, as Baraka did, that art could surpass simple beauty and act as a force for social change will cherish this remarkable volume... Highly recommended." --Library Journal (starred review) "In a climate of renewed outrage over injustice, the voice of the recently departed Amiri Baraka is more relevant than ever, his volatile lyric poems ringing as true today as they did fifty years ago. A career retrospective that captures not just a man, but a movement." --Barnes & Noble Review "What's best about Baraka's verse is that his historical sensibility and sense of historical dread bump elbows with anarchic comedy... S O S is the best overall selection we have thus far of Baraka's work." --Dwight Garner, New York Times "These poems cover the ebbs and flows of the modern African-American struggle for freedom and identity ... There may be no better time than now to experience the lyrical, funny, dynamic, and provocative poetry of Amiri Baraka ... S O S is the perfect place to hear the voice that influenced, if not defined, decades of black political struggle when few were listening--and even fewer were doing anything. Baraka did something. Man, he did plenty." --Shelf Awareness "Throughout his writing life, [Baraka] crafted some of the most potent, thoughtful, and even sublime lines of any poet of his generation and beyond." --Gawker
£15.19
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Plot
Book SynopsisIn her third collection of poems, Claudia Rankine creates a profoundly daring, ingeniously experimental examination of pregnancy, childbirth, and artistic expression. Liv, an expectant mother, and her husband, Erland, are at an impasse from her reluctance to bring new life into a bewildering world. The couple's journey is charted through conversations, dreams, memories, and meditations, expanding and exploding the emotive capabilities of language and form. A text like no other, it crosses genres, combining verse, prose, and dialogue to achieve an unparalleled understanding of creation and existence.Trade ReviewPraise for Plot: "Plot is inexhaustibly complex, varied, and difficult—and as fearlessly and even grimly inventive and searching as one can conceive any book of poems as being. It instantly joins the few contemporary works . . . whose gravity is synonymous with the passion and integrity of their intelligence." —Calvin Bedient, Verse"To read her work is to be drawn deep into a thought's unfolding, into the eerie landscape of a dream; the dislocation one feels is tempered by the assurance of the writing, the deftness of Rankine’s experiments with words and ideas." —Indiana Review"I am awestruck. Quite simply, I have never read anything like Plot. Its stupendous intelligence . . . marks it as a masterpiece." —Mary Gordon"Plot moves as in a picaresque novel, in which the body schemes and frightens, accompanied by Claudia Rankine’s instinct for poetic surprise." —Barbara Guest"A startling and eloquent exploration of states in, about, and around maternity. . . . This is an unsettling poetry of the body wrestling itself in the making of thought." —Charles Bernstein
£12.34
Ohio University Press Bread of the Moment
Book SynopsisDavid Sanders’s second book of poems mixes free and formal verse to search for wisdom in life’s quiet moments as well as in those jolting times when our fragility is most apparent.Trade Review“The poems in David Sanders’s beautifully balanced new collection, Bread of the Moment, reach as deeply as any I know, achieving the emotional clarity of poets like Robert Hayden, Robert Hass, and W. S. Merwin. This is wise, expertly crafted work, facing mortality with humor sufficient to the need and with reverent attention to memory, nature, and the poet’s art. I am profoundly moved and instructed by this lucid book.” -- Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore: Poems“David Sanders’s second collection of poems, Bread of the Moment, contains an astonishing breadth of emotional and physical landscapes in poems beautifully realized and forcefully felt. It is a book haunted by memory—understood as a ‘selective, mythic thing, a lie’—and alive with strikingly memorable images, like the French king’s hunting trophies, ‘sprouting enormous racks, / like dozens of arms, hands, / reaching out to me from the stone blocks, / frozen, locked in place.’ Bread of the Moment is an evocative book, a dynamic expression, and expansion, of Sanders’s art.” -- Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out“‘Every time/ is the last time. That’s what the world keeps teaching.’ Bread of the Moment’s truths are hard won, but its delights are palpable. It is night swimming in cold lake water full of stars.” -- Jason Gray, author of Radiation King“David Sanders peers into the psychology of a charged or puzzling moment, in most of these poems. Living through such moments can be painful and yet the pondering of them brings a kind of nourishment. In ‘So, I Tell Myself’ he contemplates an odd confluence of small misfortunes, and the poem enables him to escape from a paranoid interpretation of that confluence. ‘Matinée’ notices how a mood of inflated pride (as when you see yourself as Cary Grant or Gregory Peck) inevitably must come down to street level—though a poised account of this humbling descent allows for the more sustainable stardom of poetic insight.” -- Mark Halliday, author of Losers Dream OnTable of ContentsOne Politics (A Walk through the Woods) The Blue Danube Waiting to Happen Wedding Day (Bird Trapped in a Flue) Matinée Chatelaine The Break-In The Slide Exercise (Cul-de-sac) Abandoned Nests Exposed by Winter Meal of Dreams The House on Fire across the Street Self-Portrait as a Fly on the Wall of Modern History Morning Frost along the River The Luxury of Light Horses Another Poem Beginning with the Weather: An Elegy Art Lessons from the Past Particulates Self-Portrait with Antlers Banking and Turning Full Moon, Dow Lake, July Two Election-Day Raccoon The Two of Us After Learning of the Death of a Roommate I Hadn’t Seen in Forty Years Holiday Party with Roses Talking to Old People Emanation So, I Tell Myself Autumn and the End of Autumn In His Defense Wood Frogs Letter to the Editor Utility My Books What We Don’t Know Common Wisdom A Kind of Proof Dear Vulture Early March, with Horses Reasons Not to Leave To an Old Friend Whose Politics Have Changed [Enter ghost] Morning Sleet
£13.29
George Braziller Inc A Passing Bell
Book SynopsisA Passing Bell is the culmination of a life''s work. The poem skillfully takes the form of a series of classic Persian ghazals, a style perfected by poets such as Hafiz and Rumi, into a contemporary setting. The ghazal is a lyric poem often compared to the sonnet for its traditional invocation of love, longing and melancholy. Each line of a ghazal has two parts and resembles a couplet. The final line usually contains the poet''s name, but Kane has reworked this tradition, and included his wife''s name in the final line of each ghazal, making her absence ever more present. In 2013 the poet''s wife fell ill to the devastating motor neuron disease ALS, and in 2015 she returned home to Australia to die. A Passing Bell begins at this tragic ending, and traces the poet''s grief, from a time when he is so bewildered by loss he is ''shocked to be alive'', to his return home, to the house he built for his wife in Australia, to reflect on his life and loss, arriving aTrade ReviewI love the way that Paul Kane's deep and passionate sequence marks the passages of grief, its waves and recurrences. It's a genuine testament, a long love poem, a holding on and letting go, a brave and inconsolable book that is somehow consoling. I am deeply touched by it.--Edward Hirsch
£16.96
Northwestern University Press Ground Zero
Book SynopsisInception and implosion, Chicago's grit and grandiosity all come together in the finite poetic power of the original Slam igniter, renowned poet Marc Kelly Smith and his retrospect denotation, Ground Zero.Trade Review“Listen up: Marc Smith’s poems are performances, fast paced and quick talking, beep beepin' and zoom zoomin,’ urban and hard-charging, jazzy and impudent, utterly authentic, full Chicago. They are filled with life.” —Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel“What Marc Smith invented when he created the poetry slam was so deeply, intuitively perfect . . .” —Ira Glass, host of This American Life"Harriet Monroe birthed the Chicago poetry scene at the start of the 20th century. Then Marc Smith came along at the end and gave it new life: straddling its fading body, pressing the heels of both hands down, hard, on its chest and hissing, 'BREATHE, damn you!' His words squeal and crackle, squish and gasp, always reflecting the city of his birth, a city forever in decline, yet forever struggling to rise again. Read them with joy and sorrow." —Neil Steinberg, co-author Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to RecoveryTable of Contents Uptown Monologue No Exit Sunday Nobody’s Here Ground Zero Man on his Cell Phone Shouting Winter Café Face on the Floor The Sign Rattled Pyromaniac Ball Park Poem Conga Beat Bradley Cockren My Father’s Coat Corners Chips Breakfast Rush Street Shuffle Stuttering Light Rosie Moon Moan Impudence Arnold the Jazz Prophet Turning Ten Small Talk Ameritech Deep Dish Chicago IT the Problem IT the Solution Something
£17.95
Northwestern University Press The History of Intimacy
Book SynopsisOffers a tender, tangled account of the heady days in South Africa following Nelson Mandela's release from prison. This award-winning poetry collection portrays the innovative forms of music, kinship, and even self in ""the new, intricate country / we understood was impossible.Trade ReviewBaderoon’s poetry . . . uses a gentle eye to consider all that is intimate between us, and in doing so, renders these quiet and still moments as sacred. In The History of Intimacy, she has rendered our most painful histories through an unobtrusive lens. She has written them with care, and left space and silence around them, so they (and we) may have room to breathe. In the act of listening, we render them sacred, and might begin to heal." —Toni Giselle Stuart, The Johannesburg Review of Books". . . Baderoon’s poetry does not shy away from attempting to forge an understanding, on a broader political scale and in the intimacy of our souls." —Karina Magdalena Szczurek, LitNet"South African poet Gabeba Baderoon’s fourth collection of verse impresses with its concision of language and clarity of ideas. With subjects ranging from the hidden tableaus of her personal history to the meaning and value of poetry, Baderoon’s verses invite the reader to join her on an exploration of history, culture, and the universal qualities of the subjective experience." —World Literature TodayTable of Contents Poetry for Beginners Tell Me What You See A Prospect of Beauty Closer Surface Focal Length Axis and Revolution Rain fall on the abstract world Port Jackson, Cape Town The Port Cities The River Cities Everything We've Said Diving Concentration Promised land Koggelbaai The Blue of the Night before We Left Ghost Technologies Song of the Husband 2 The Flats Black Butterflies Green pincushion proteas Effective Immediately The Edges of Things Hangklip* The Word No Name Not You I saw you walk toward something The History of Intimacy Answering The Law of the Mother Cardinal Points Glossary
£13.56
Northwestern University Press The Shared World
Book SynopsisThe latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The Shared World imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black woman. The book delves into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother.Trade Review“Vievee Francis is, undoubtedly, one of the most compelling poets alive and writing today. In her fourth book, The Shared World, she charts a course of how entangled all of our lives are in today’s world. Who do we share the world with? Who do we ignore? What does it mean to live so closely in proximity to each other and to have such deeply complicated histories? At the heart of this book is this truth: what is the telling, and how do we go about the ways of doing so? With bravery, Francis peels back the layers, not leaving a simple understanding but instead, by the telling, examining the complications of what it means to tell.” —Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come for Us: Poems“When I say Vievee Francis is one of the finest living American writers, I say it without hyperbole. Each of her poems is a revelation. They embody Lorca’s idea that duende is about self-discovery, of excavation through image and the imaginary. Not for the self, but from the self. Few poets can write with her earned grace.” —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the WorldTable of Contents To Forget A Call to Arms Break Me and I’ll Sing Finding Myself in the Market of Accra Another Attempt at the Telling 1965 The Shared World Honey Given to Rust On the Piney Woods, Death, Bobby Frank Cherry and Me The Keening The Poets Who Are Our Enemies When Your Brother Dies You Want I’ve Worn It Three Days in a Row Ugly Fruit Everything is Berlin Dead or Alive, The Rats Ignore Us Juneteenth(#3) The Smell Accidental City Provincetown, MA You Prefer Us Dead Alright, I Am the One You Prefer Dead The Quiver Tree Marvin Gaye: Mercy I Have Been Witness and Victim Yes, Among Them I’ve Been Thinking About Love Again I Know That Music Birdsong Like a Child’s Marvin Gaye: Sugar Uncle Sonny Bless the Kindling World Brother of Skulls Room for One Omnivore The Fisherman Speaks Again of his Days The Lie And Upon That Pale Horse a Paler Woman Emmett, I said Wait The Marsh King Without End Reading Neruda at 2:00 AM The River Shivers as Much as I The Winter Kingdom Small Reprieve To Be Touched as Sophia The Sound Epiphany: Parable of the Tongue Cut by Strings That Cat Returns The Wheel of the Bus: A Fiction Relevance An Unkindness Of Landscape My Dolls Were Just That Meat Eater Goat Heart I Am the Only One I Know Who Can Cook Them Br’er Rabbit’s Hole What The Fat Man Taught Mother Tongue Why I Don’t Wait The Company of Wolves The Shore Nouvea Slim The Morning I Miss Such Devotion Everywhere and Here Too Canzone in Blue, Then Bluer Muleskinners The World Contracts Moan Soft Like You Wanted Somebody Terrible Cannibal In A Lesser Paradise Goat Fantastica Melancholia The Dead Horse The Cannibal Myth Ota Benga’s Case Dark Horse
£22.32
Northwestern University Press Panzer Herz
Book SynopsisThe keen and jagged blade that is Kyle Dargan’s eye is drawn in Panzer Herz: A Live Dissection, the final poetic compilation of a lived and inherited masculinity. Dargan targets the armored heart, or ‘panzer herz’ - a site where desire, violence, family, politics, blackness, and capitalism all intertwine with gender.Table of Contents CARDIAC Incision PericardiectomyDiastole Phase I King for a Day Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn When I Say I Want to Defund the Police BOOK OF RUTH Ronin “What More Could I, a Young Man, Want” Escapology Traditional Marriage Man of the Family II Mutant Dealing Factor Performance Studies: Gunslinger Undertaker Phase II Performance Studies: O.P.P. How I Became a Pleaser Remedial Heteronormativity Permutations Her Rhythm Inquiry Another Me Performance Studies: She Asks “The Erotic Is a Measure Between”Incision PericardiectomySystole Phase III For the Man Who Caught My Father I Scream My Throat Raw A Man with Nothing to Lose These Men Chris Christie Waits Alone at Newark Penn Station That Time I Was God Dendrology Since You and I Would Talk About Mars The Venus of Slap Boxing After People Stop Asking About Me Phase IV Rearview Freestyle The Rule of Two Mosaic Mary Minefields Glass, Once Shattered, Flutters Like Paper Internal Legislation Love Be a Slow-Moving Storm Turbulence Crews Rockafella Chain Another Way to Understand Our Fathers Across Space and Time Small Traveler Adamah / A.M.A.B.Suture Post-opAcknowledgementsNotes
£16.16
Northwestern University Press Loner Forensics
Book SynopsisThis sprawling collection comprises a series of interviews with denizens of the shifting city, each mediated through the lonely lens of the Detective, a character whose refractive investigation atomizes the scene.Trade Review“You’ll likely find Thea Brown’s collection Loner Forensics shelved under poetry, but this book is something all its own: lyric noir, speculative elegy, private procedural. A story told through story’s negation ('The city is not a story'), here we feel we might glimpse SchrÖdinger’s cat gone stray, living out one of its lives off alley scraps in the intimate estrangement of the metropolis. While the chorus of voices builds a litany of delightfully dubious testimony out of postmodern materials—fragments of the attention economy, consumer culture, and so on—place (as in any good Gothic) is a crucial character as well: dangerous, endangered, and indelible. Alongside Brown and her Detective, we search for truth in the trappings, asking the big questions, like, well, 'What was the question?'” —Dora Malech, author of FlourishTable of ContentsHEAD SOUTH, CATAFALQUE 6 THE ANNOTATOR 14 THE FORENSICS TEAM 15 THE MAYOR 16 THE PALM READER 18 THE AMATEURS 19 THE CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, PART 1 20 THE CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, PART 2 21 THE CURATOR 22 THE WEATHER 24 THE REGISTER 25 THE LUXURY CONSULTANT 26 THE FORENSICS TEAM 28 THE MUNICIPAL LANDSCAPER 29 THE FRAMER 31 THE INTERNIST 32 THE RIDER 33 THE CONCIERGE 34 THE CORRESPONDENT 35 THE RADIO PRODUCER 36 THE FLORIST 37 THE DIPLOMAT 38 THE JOURNALIST 39 THE FORENSICS TEAM 41 THE TWINS 42 THE STENOGRAPHER 44 THE INGENUE 45 THE CENTAUR 47 THE COLLECTOR 48 THE COPY EDITOR 49 THE RUNNER 50 THE ACTUARY 51 THE DANCER 52 THE MAKEUP COUNTER 53 THE BLOGGER 54 THE TALKING HEADS 55 THE HOUSEKEEPER 56 THE ADJUNCT 57 THE FORENSICS TEAM 59 THE PROVOST 60 THE DREAMBOAT 61 THE TELLER 63 THE SHOPPER 65 THE TEMP 66 THE TOUR GUIDE 67 THE NEOTRANSCENDENTALIST 68 THE FORENSICS TEAM 69 THE DESIGNER 70 THE NOSTALGIST 71 THE COPS 73 THE IMPALEMENT ARTIST 74 THE TRANSPLANT 75 THE POLLSTER 76 THE FORENSICS TEAM 78 THE INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECT 79 THE NARC 80 THE THIRD SHIFT 81 THE CARTOGRAPHER 83 THE BACKPACKER 84 THE FORENSICS TEAM 85 THE GROUNDSKEEPER 86 THE OPENING ACT 87 THE VISITOR IN THE HILLS 88 THE CRONE 89 THE MISANTHROPE 92 THE RINGMASTER 94 THE GARDENER 96 THE FORENSICS TEAM 97 THE DETECTIVE 98 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 101
£15.26
The University Press of Kentucky Back to the Light Poems
Book Synopsis
£17.10
The University Press of Kentucky Back to the Light
Book Synopsis
£25.65
The University Press of Kentucky Marrow
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsSHELBY COUNTY ALABAMA THE INVITATION ROSTRUM BOOKISH GIRL SWEEPS THE SANCTUARY THE BLACK BOOK A REVOLUTIONARY LOVE STORY WATER WILD CHILD JUBILEE THE PEOPLES TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT WISHING TREE FOR YONDER COMPOSTING MAKING SOAP DISAPPEARANCE THE RULES HOW TODAY WILL LOOK WHEN IT'S HISTORY I LEARN TO LOVE THE BODY SHE LOVES A TREE GETS IN THE WAY THE TWENTY-FIFTH CHRISTINE BUCKET BRIGADE HARVESTING HOW SLEEP FINDS US SOMETIMES MOLASSES GOVERNMENT NAME WHAT WE TALK ABOUT IN OUR COTTAGE WHEN SHANDA SAID NO THE SCENT OF HER GROOMING IN DEFENSE OF DEVOTION SPIT SHINE ALGEBRA MAKESHIFT DADDY FOR JUST PENNIES A GLASS [REDACTED] EARNS HIS WINGS IMAGINE, FIRST, A GIRL AS FOR DANCING AFTER THE GAME LOOKING THE CAMERA IN THE EYE WARREN FETUS HOUSE ON STILTS A MEDIC MISTAKES ME FOR DEAD SEPIA AFTER AN NBC INTERVIEW I MISSED YOU MORE MARROW OIL DRUM NOTES ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
£25.65
The University Press of Kentucky Marrow
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsSHELBY COUNTY ALABAMA THE INVITATION ROSTRUM BOOKISH GIRL SWEEPS THE SANCTUARY THE BLACK BOOK A REVOLUTIONARY LOVE STORY WATER WILD CHILD JUBILEE THE PEOPLES TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT WISHING TREE FOR YONDER COMPOSTING MAKING SOAP DISAPPEARANCE THE RULES HOW TODAY WILL LOOK WHEN IT'S HISTORY I LEARN TO LOVE THE BODY SHE LOVES A TREE GETS IN THE WAY THE TWENTY-FIFTH CHRISTINE BUCKET BRIGADE HARVESTING HOW SLEEP FINDS US SOMETIMES MOLASSES GOVERNMENT NAME WHAT WE TALK ABOUT IN OUR COTTAGE WHEN SHANDA SAID NO THE SCENT OF HER GROOMING IN DEFENSE OF DEVOTION SPIT SHINE ALGEBRA MAKESHIFT DADDY FOR JUST PENNIES A GLASS [REDACTED] EARNS HIS WINGS IMAGINE, FIRST, A GIRL AS FOR DANCING AFTER THE GAME LOOKING THE CAMERA IN THE EYE WARREN FETUS HOUSE ON STILTS A MEDIC MISTAKES ME FOR DEAD SEPIA AFTER AN NBC INTERVIEW I MISSED YOU MORE MARROW OIL DRUM NOTES ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
£17.10
The University Press of Kentucky Gay Poems for Red States
Book SynopsisThis poetry collection offers insight into life in Appalachia and hope for the members of the LGBTQ+ community that live there.Table of ContentsPreface Minnie Mouse Toy Supermodel (You Better Work) Goodbye First Crush Clean Room Found Kitten Biscuit Girl Self-Hating Preacher Creek Cornmeal and Water Pancakes Neckbones Embarrassing Thank You, Jerry Springer Library Hard to Take Seriously Clubhouse Character Food Stamp Holiday Song Waiting for God Gay Road Home Salt-Free Funeral Power of Ain't Josh A Guy Named Casey Who I Had Never Met I'm Sorry, Chris The Space Under the Pews Mountain Learning Charisma Scientist Promise Ramen Noodles Bluegrass Moon Trombone Cogitating Builder Someday Child Reassurance Family Dollar Orange Drink Product and Beef Jerky Take a Seat The Truth will Stand Acknowledgements
£25.65
The University Press of Kentucky Gay Poems for Red States
Book SynopsisThis poetry collection offers insight into life in Appalachia and hope for the members of the LGBTQ+ community that live there.Table of ContentsPreface Minnie Mouse Toy Supermodel (You Better Work) Goodbye First Crush Clean Room Found Kitten Biscuit Girl Self-Hating Preacher Creek Cornmeal and Water Pancakes Neckbones Embarrassing Thank You, Jerry Springer Library Hard to Take Seriously Clubhouse Character Food Stamp Holiday Song Waiting for God Gay Road Home Salt-Free Funeral Power of Ain't Josh A Guy Named Casey Who I Had Never Met I'm Sorry, Chris The Space Under the Pews Mountain Learning Charisma Scientist Promise Ramen Noodles Bluegrass Moon Trombone Cogitating Builder Someday Child Reassurance Family Dollar Orange Drink Product and Beef Jerky Take a Seat The Truth will Stand Acknowledgements
£17.10
The University Press of Kentucky Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House
Book SynopsisLaden with their belongings and informed by their experiences, these immigrants became citizens of a new diaspora searching for space to exist in their adopted home.In Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House, author Katerina Stoykova follows that which "calls / the roaming mind / looking for land" with the shell of her homeland at her back.Table of ContentsA. America, you are so big, I feel endless What is the difference Light without her body Stained Glass Butterflies America, do you remember So much depends upon America, what do you hide Sus-toss The Country Who no Longer Wanted Her Children America, I visited Visit Conversation The Way I Pray to St. Catherine America, you made me in your image He Catches a Magic Fish A Man and a Woman in a Bedroom Once America, you watched me change Honey, this is the scary truth To the Foreign Woman... in the Post Office Dear Numbness America, here is the answer Dear One There once was a woman who wanted to be a better mother America, there will be nothing left Shame is a private punishment I Shame, Therefore I Am Wasn't it easier with less awareness? America, I love doing stupid things At some point you stopped The entire day I loved someone It's a Great Day to Burn, the Man Said Some Catastrophes Approach Slowly America, It's complicated 8th Floor Balcony Ghazal So, You Miss Your Depression I don't know America, if your eyes are dry Better Darling Everybody needs a pen America, what you have You'll be given everything, twice By the end of your life You look for proof America, if there were a rule The Body, the Collateral and in the morning, we saw a moth America, now I know We Must Be Very Careful When Using the Word Home Black Stone Over White Stone America, I don't know The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone A Dream America, would you be a part of me Imagine a raw egg Creative Spurt As I'm writing this America, I dally Bo from the Choctaw Nation What Happens to the Prophet B. Theorem: America is the greatest country in the world. Proof Conclusion Alternate ending Alternate conclusion Acknowledgements and Notes Brief Bio
£25.65
University Press of Kentucky Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsA. America, you are so big, I feel endless What is the difference Light without her body Stained Glass Butterflies America, do you remember So much depends upon America, what do you hide Sus-toss The Country Who no Longer Wanted Her Children America, I visited Visit Conversation The Way I Pray to St. Catherine America, you made me in your image He Catches a Magic Fish A Man and a Woman in a Bedroom Once America, you watched me change Honey, this is the scary truth To the Foreign Woman... in the Post Office Dear Numbness America, here is the answer Dear One There once was a woman who wanted to be a better mother America, there will be nothing left Shame is a private punishment I Shame, Therefore I Am Wasn't it easier with less awareness? America, I love doing stupid things At some point you stopped The entire day I loved someone It's a Great Day to Burn, the Man Said Some Catastrophes Approach Slowly America, It's complicated 8th Floor Balcony Ghazal So, You Miss Your Depression I don't know America, if your eyes are dry Better Darling Everybody needs a pen America, what you have You'll be given everything, twice By the end of your life You look for proof America, if there were a rule The Body, the Collateral and in the morning, we saw a moth America, now I know We Must Be Very Careful When Using the Word Home Black Stone Over White Stone America, I don't know The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone A Dream America, would you be a part of me Imagine a raw egg Creative Spurt As I'm writing this America, I dally Bo from the Choctaw Nation What Happens to the Prophet B. Theorem: America is the greatest country in the world. Proof Conclusion Alternate ending Alternate conclusion Acknowledgements and Notes Brief Bio
£15.30
Wayne State University Press Words Like Thunder
Book SynopsisA collection of poetry by award-winning Ojibwe author Lois Beardslee. Much of the book centres around Native people of the Great Lakes but it has a universal relevance to modern indigenous people worldwide.
£16.16
Wayne State University Press Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West
Book SynopsisWith musical language and vivid imagery, Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West attunes us to the sheer wonder of being alive. Intimate reflections on family histories, hardship, and everyday life reveal the ways art and nature can lift us from grief and serve as lodestars in an increasingly uncertain world.
£16.16
Syracuse University Press The Less Said the Truer New and Selected Poems
Book SynopsisIn Hazo’s latest collection, The Less Said, the Truer, he brings together new poems as well as selections from three previous books. The author’s poignant reflections on life and death, love and loss, and age and memory allow the poems to be deeply personal while also connecting with the everyday experiences of readers.
£38.66
University of Minnesota Press The Collected Poems Of Édouard Glissant
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The magnificent work of one of the most important contemporary novelists, essayists, and poets in the field of what we in Europe and North America call postcolonial literature."—American Book Review"Reading or re-reading these texts, published over half a century, one is struck by the power of this poetry, the extraordinary persistence in its original inspiration and the manner in which it announces and then exemplifies the theories developed in Poetics of Relation or Caribbean Discourse."—Literature and Arts of the Americas
£17.09
Wesleyan University Press suddenly we
Book SynopsisEvie Shockley''s new poems invite us to dream - and work - toward a more capacious we In her new poetry collection, Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious we. How do we navigate between the urgency of our own becoming and the imperative insight that whoever we are, we are in relation to each other? Beginning with the visionary art of Black women like Alison Saar and Alma Thomas, Shockley''s poems draw and forge a widening constellation of connections that help make visible the interdependence of everyone and everything on Earth.perchedi am black, comely,a girl on the cusp of desire.my dangling toes take the restthe rest of my body refuses. spine upright,my pose proposes anticipation. i poisein copper-colored tension, intent onmanifesting my soul in the discouraging world.under the rough eyes of others, i stiffen.if i must be hard, it will be as a tree, alivewith change. inside
£11.95
Wesleyan University Press Frayed Light
Book SynopsisThis poetic collection is an honest and deeply reflective look at life overshadowed by disputed settlements and political upheaval in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
£13.38
Wesleyan University Press Xicancuicatl
Book Synopsis7/15/95 Paris Xicancuicatl collects the poetry of leading avant-garde Chicanx poet Alfred Arteaga (19502008), whom French philosopher Gilles Deleuze regarded as among those rare poets who are able to raise or shape a new language within their language.
£17.58
Ohio University Press Intrusive Beauty Poems
Book SynopsisIn this powerful debut, Capista traverses earth and ether to yield poems that elucidate the space between one’s life and one’s livelihood. While its landscapes range from back-alley Baltimore to the Bitterroot Valley, this book remains close to unbidden beauty and its capacity to sway one’s vision of the world.Trade Review“Both wry and ardent, Intrusive Beauty is an immensely accomplished book. Readers have all the pleasures of great poetry here—nuanced syntax, a musician’s harmonious ear, and a remarkably deft and varied handling of form.… Nothing is precious here—even the poems about fatherhood and nature, those baited traps, are leapt over by Capista’s nimble speaker.”“Capista’s choice to write about unglamorous aspects of his life is consistently surprising and offers multiple opportunities for readers to connect with his poems’ narratives and the philosophical predicaments he uses those narratives to explore…[t]he book is powerful in the humility it strikes as it bears witness to the often underwhelming and still splendid life of an artist. I see myself everywhere in its breath.” * Iron Horse Review *“Capista doesn’t shy away from the joys of rollicking through language’s innate richness of sound and meter. In his debut collection … little gems of insight and deep reflection [sparkle] throughout. [Capista] has the ability to see beauty in all places, and through his keen observations, he allows us to see this beauty, too." * Baltimore Magazine *“Capista has his hand on all aspects of this art. His craft is impeccable, often witty, and always refreshing…[t]he poet expresses essential goodness in daily acts, and takes on this art to prove it to us. This is a reward for the writer and the reader.” * Washington Independent Review of Books *"Contemporary poetry rarely has a melodic cadence, as rhythmic poetry is somehow considered unsophisticated. But Joseph J. Capista doesn’t shy away from the joys of rollicking through language’s innate richness of sound, as he weaves narratives about Baltimore, life as a husband and father, and the elegance of the natural world. The Towson University professor has the ability to see beauty in all places, and through his observations, he allows us to see it, too.“ * Baltimore Magazine *“(Intrusive Beauty demands a reader willing to talk back and engage with its sometimes troubling depictions of violence without setting the book down too long. Making that commitment to reading and rereading offers a significant reward. Some books you reread because you want to get another hit of dopamine. I reread Intrusive Beauty because I wanted a second round with it, to go back for a rematch. Which was, I have to say, more rewarding.” * Barrelhouse Reviews *
£13.29
University of Pittsburgh Press I New and Selected Poems
Book SynopsisShows the reader both the closeness of the enemy and the poet's inherent courage, inventiveness, and joy.
£15.50
University of Pittsburgh Press That Ship Has Sailed
Book SynopsisThat Ship Has Sailed synthesizes the serious and comic to address sex, love, loss, death, belief, the afterlife, and the past. Amplified by the poet’s work as a traditional Irish musician and composer, language is the adhesive that brings the work together across the avant-garde to traditional forms and meters.
£14.25
Fordham University Press Midden
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsForeword: Midden, When Glory Comes xiii I Walk My Road at Dusk 1 The Way Home 3 Dear ghosts, I pick the list 5 The Story of Fire 6 Their Objects 7 Shipwreck at New Meadows 8 Bas-Relief: Jake Marks 9 Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes 10 Interview with the Dead 11 Dear ghosts, because you tell me to, I begin again 16 So Many Things 17 The Tray of Spades 18 Dear ghosts, my neighbor catches you with her camera 21 The Schoolteacher Answers the Call 22 Sestina Fragments: Our Teacher Prays for Bread 25 Dear ghosts, I wake wishing my body 27 No Man’s Land 28 Annie in the Boat 30 Dear ghosts, how can we stop the sunlight spinning the story 31 John Eason Stops Preaching 32 This Is Our Home Now 33 Sucker Fish 35 What William Marks Knows, Age 3 36 Dear ghosts, with a red pencil I draw a map. 37 Each Morning Drowns in Open Air 38 The Procedure 39 Upon Opening Another Folded Day 40 Feeble-Minded 41 Dear ghosts, because you are dead and restless 42 Lottie Marks Dreams Escape 43 Dear ghosts, there was a man who lived here 44 Lottie Marks on Silence 45 Agent Pease’s Defense 46 Midden 48 Dear ghosts, when I said all I ever wanted was land 49 Yellow Surprise 50 How to Build a Houseboat 51 Shed Night 52 Potter’s Field 53 Dear ghosts, you say all our bones are made of paper 54 Paddling the Storm 55 Descendant’s Riddle 56 Untold 57 Dear ghosts, this land harvests the body to rubble. 58 Erasure 59 Saudade 61 Final Invocation for Ghosts 62 Afterword 65 Notes 69 Acknowledgments 73
£17.09
Fordham University Press Xamissa
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsProloog 1 Rearrival 7 The Dream of the Road 17 Doppler Shift 21 Folding Screen 29 Twin Soldiers 31 The Prisoner 32 Elegy for the Gesture 33 The Water Archives 35 helena | Lena 43 Lontara Translation 111 Sources 113 Notes 115 Acknowledgments 119
£18.89
University of New Mexico Press My Book of the Dead New Poems
Book SynopsisFor more than thirty years, Ana Castillo has been mesmerizing and inspiring readers from all over the world with her passionate and fiery poetry and prose. Now the original Xicanista is back to her first literary love, poetry, and to interrogating the social and political upheaval the world has seen over the last decade.Trade ReviewAna Castillo's latest work, My Book of the Dead, is a powerful testament to strength and resilience. Its historical references to the struggles our communities have endured and its addressing of political perils and climate crises are lessons needed for this time." - Nancy Mercado, author of It Concerns the Madness
£19.51
University of New Mexico Press The Empty Bowl Poems of the Holocaust and After
Book SynopsisWritten largely in the words of a fifteen-year-old survivor, these poems provide historical entry into the Holocaust. Put simply, the poems explore the reality of the events experienced by Judith Sherman in her determination to survive.Table of Contents Foreword Arthur Kleinman Preface Poems of Before This Time I Too Have a Dream Because My Grandfather Serious Men Poems of the Holocaust My Village of Kurima It Is the Law The Law of the Land My Suitcase and I Morning Mass Toothbrush Gestapo Prison Mirjam's Letter from Hiding Unhiding in the Forest Hiding in the Forest Karpu in Auschwitz Such Good Taste Wagon Train Auschwitz Lord SS Man Knew You Then Morning Prayer During Appell Appell Guard Magda Speaks kein Deutsch Come Messiah Hunger Hunger, Do Not Intrude Let Not Flowers Here The Invitation An Apple in Ravensbruck My Ravensbruck Love Song I Know a Dog Ravensbruck Jesus, Tell Your Father Stand Still, Sun The Roma Girl Ravensbruck Friend Shoes for Life The Mirror in My Right Shoe A Brief Reprieve You Are Invited to My Funeral Reluctant Witness Resistance of Prisoner 83,621 Death March I Say Damn You Liberation Trees I Say Death, Stand Aside at My Liberation Time Poems of After Once You Survive No More Hide-and-Seek Tell Me This This Year in Jerusalem That You Should Know Legacy Poem Do Something Accountability 9/11: Has Anybody Seen My Dad? My Darfur Mother Bosnia Boy To Walk in My Shoes I Smile, I Smile Fresh Washed Sheets Sunrise Summer Woods If God Is Dead Are Things Changed in Heaven How You Are? Oversight If You Apologize Let Me Win A Ladder for God We Should Talk Survivor's Voice Today Survivor's Message Say the Name Afterword Ilana Gelb Acknowledgments Contributors
£15.26
University of New Mexico Press Victory Garden Poems
Book SynopsisRooted in the Midwest but at home anywhere, Glenna Luschei has spent over fifty years writing and supporting other writers in the midst of adventures that have taken her around the globe. Now in her late eighties and as vibrant as ever, Luschei has crafted a collection that comprises a retrospective of her life.Trade ReviewGlenna Luschei, poet and translator, is an elder writing from the bardo, that moment beyond vibrant wildness but before inevitable departure from this life. These deeply rooted poems, like Ms. Luschei, are blooming century plants, towering and powerful in their final days."--Peggy Shumaker, author of Cairn: New and Selected Poems
£15.15
MP-NMX Uni of New Mexico A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery
Book SynopsisGives voice to abused children, murdered women, research animals, war veterans, and even metronomes and lampshades. In poems inspired by Ovid, Tina Carlson explores the roots of voicelessness and journeys into metamorphosis, granting speech to those ignored or victimized and thereby allowing them to provide witness to their own lives.Trade ReviewTina Carlson's images are always palpable, surprising, their resonance almost too powerful for the page. What she does with those images, how she shapes and where she takes them, is an experience her readers won't forget. I am still catching my breath."—Margaret Randall, author of Stormclouds Like Unkept Promises "Here lies a beauty great enough to capture and heal an aching heart, elegiac enough to canonize the lost. These poems cut a path lit by the ancestral flint of Carlson's scalpel. Stepping out into the light after the dark theater of these poems, one perceives more readily a world stripped of its skin, fed by their true seeing, their lazar gaze, and Carlson's own crooked smile, these the touchstones of her artistic reliquary."—Lise Goett, author of Leprosarium"In A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery, vulnerable myths and porous pasts are 'blown open.' These poems unhinge for the reader a kind of nourishment. 'We were once specks of light,' Carlson writes, as she moves us toward illumination."—Lauren Camp, author of Took House "These are the poems, poet Tina Carlson the guide we need at this crucial time in the inferno of our own making."—Carole Simmons Oles, author of A Selected History of Her Heart: PoemsTable of Contents Backyard of Her Alphabets Ghost Town on Iris Avenue A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery My Mother as Moon Cigarette Smoke and a Blue Impala Gran Via Agoraphobia My Father Comes Home from War with Guns My Father Prayed Mud Babies The Embassy of Silence At the Rest Stop, Fully Gloved, She Calls Me Mommy You Will Dream that Great Aunt Dolor Loves Your Wild Hair Dark Dowry How holy the cloth sewn sidewise Sheltering in Place for Beginners Coat-Grave, Nation of Moths ALMA Anatomy of Silence Fin Feather Bark and Skin Day after America Metronome and Daruma Doll As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room Lampshade and Floor Mat Turn the Ship Around Saint Ursula Heaven Snow Queen The Little Robber Girl Monster Open Your Mouth Why did you kill your wife, mr XYZ? Thirteen Children Rescued from Their Parents Testify Ice Matron West Side Murders, Seven Years Later How She Becomes a Fountain Every Bird in My Blood Has a Name Flo and the Frozen Girl Guest Place in the Shadow There I Stood, in All My Forms Until I Could No Longer Fly and So Became a Map: Pegasus From the Island of Pomegranates Pandora on the Mother Road Atlas There I stood begging at the door of my death I Fled the Dry Lips of Men Dermoid Dear Human, The Flying Boy Wearing His Father's Dog Tags Feathers Appear on Branches as Flame And When He Thought He Had Found Me In the Tree Museum The Painter Martia Avalanche Machu Picchu Notes Acknowledgements
£16.11
Seagull Books London Ltd Under the Aleppo Sun
Book SynopsisAleppo is Alice Attie's home city, where her grandparents were born, and with the poems in Under the Aleppo Sun, she takes us there to the months before Assad unleashed his attack in 2011.
£12.34
Seagull Books London Ltd Thick of It
Book SynopsisThe poems of Ulrike Almut Sandig are at once simple and fantastic. This new collection finds her on her way to imaginary territories. Thick of It charts a journey through two hemispheres to the center of the world and navigates a thicket that is at once the world, the psyche, and language itself.
£12.34
Little, Brown Book Group And Still I Rise
Book SynopsisThe classic collection of poetry from the author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS.''A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman'' BARACK OBAMAMaya Angelou''s poetry - lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful - speaks of love, longing, partings; of Saturday night partying, and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams.''She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds'' OPRAH WINFREY''She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate'' TONI MORRISONTrade ReviewA brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman -- President Barack ObamaThe poems and stories she wrote . . . were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace -- President Bill ClintonShe moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds -- Oprah WinfreyShe was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate -- Toni MorrisonAngelou was the first poet since Robert Frost to recite work at a presidential inauguration. And Still I Rise is a tribute to determination, from the title poem to the anthemic "Phenomenal Woman", which sounds like something that Beyoncé could set to music -- Stig Abell * The Times *
£9.49
Bauhan (William L.),U.S. DM Me Mother Darling Poems
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize
£11.66
Bauhan (William L.),U.S. Girl as Birch
Book SynopsisPoetry collection exploring female gender roles.
£12.30
City Lights Books Cruel Futures
Book SynopsisA Latina feminist State of the Union address at the intersection of pop culture and interiority.Trade Review"Giménez Smith's poems in Cruel Futures continue the work of truth telling that she established in her previous collections. She reminds us that our cruel pasts will lead to cruel futures, that the garbage we’ve consumed from television and the non-stop media cycle will color and pollute our perceptions. But in looking unflinchingly at the broken remains of the public and the personal, she also assures us that there is something to be built from the rubble. Whether she is speaking as the quick-witted badass who has 'a machete and a hot head' or the thoughtful 'friend who has walked / alongside your life without judgment,' you want her in your corner."—Boston Review"Giménez Smith seeks release from the pressures of societal expectations in this collection of brief yet powerful poems. She depicts the myriad ways that a woman’s sense of self is at the mercy of assigned gender roles. … She links the concept of becoming a ‘monster' to women’s defiance of prescribed roles, their need to break out of which makes them dangerous … Cultural phenomena such as marriage and television come under scrutiny, and she handles mental illness issues with great care, particularly bipolar disorder and dementia. Giménez Smith’s crisp lyrics and imagery highlight ever-present threats to female personhood and autonomy."—Publishers Weekly"In Carmen Giménez Smith’s Cruel Futures, it’s clear she is not interested in the kind of static attention one associates with William Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as 'emotion recollected in tranquillity.' Instead Giménez Smith has places to go and then to take off from again, in the form, mainly, of social and political critiques. Although her poems achieve a certain velocity, she still manages to delve into volcanic meaning and bask in the mirror of self-reflection. To truly relish her talent is to understand her intellect as one of those plasma balls that lights up with bolts of electricity when one’s hand touches it. The speakers in her poems are charming, self-deprecating, humorous, and awed, especially when they portray what life is like as a mother, a wife, an artist, and a consumer of popular culture and literature. Because Giménez Smith experiments with a thicker set of references and inferential imagery than most, poems such as 'Of Property,' 'As Body,' and 'Ravers Having Babies' seem to outpace whatever triggered their origin, and she almost always arrives at pure lyric possession.”—Major Jackson, American Poets"Though the world of Giménez Smith's poems is late-capitalist America, it's striking to see how much of an apocalyptic quality the collection has. hellip; Giménez Smith's speaker challenges us to consider that we have certain notions of both sex and gender based on age, that women of a certain age feel "terror" when confronting their own femininity. … the collection urges us to be proactive in confronting these harmful notions."—Dorothy Chan, The Cincinnati Review"Cruel Futures is irresistible in its candid, spicy, ceaselessly surprising, totally unashamed self- shaming. 'I want no window into me, not even pores,' she writes, but her poetry is loud with flung-open shutters and windows. … Giménez Smith is so spirited that she would be anybody's hero excepting perhaps her more assimilated children, whose doubts of her she writes about with hilarious honesty. She is at once vulnerable and fearless, full of fun, a headlong, natural performer. Exaggeration is her muse. The writing could equally be described as poetry and cut-up scrappy prose; but it escapes the low pressure and general disesteem of the latter through panicky pacing, an edgy breathlessness that remembers terrors and hurts. … The disregard of gracefulness, the knocking roughness here as throughout, agrees with the no-bullshit temper of the times. I find that it is itself a tricky form of grace, of elegance and poise. Everything Giménez Smith writes compels attention …"—Lana Turner“[I]t’s Smith’s control of the line, the lyric, her use of compression, wry humor, and pointed candor that makes the book’s captivation one that truly endures. She delves into familial issues: child-rearing, sick or aging parents, and mental health with care and magnanimous transparency. Cruel Futures is an insurmountable labor that Smith has carved from a world of grief, but retains love and humor that renders her devotion a masterpiece.”—The Arkansas International“[Giménez Smith’s] new collection that explores the intersections of her various identities and the contrasts between the roles she plays and has played at stages in her life. These poems are rooted in the daily details of her life, and hold a tangible immediacy and frankness that departs from the abstractions of her 2013 collection Milk & Filth. … There is tremendous power in Cruel Futures, a collection both supple in its vulnerabilities and firm in its defenses. Carmen Giménez Smith has survived her own story, and she has ensured her children have survived their own thus far. The book’s tension comes from her awareness that her power to continue to ensure that survival is evaporating from her hands, reconstituting in their own.”—David Nilsen, The Bind"Media distortion, mental illness, trauma, and oppression are among the fixations of this splendid, fierce, and essential new book by Carmen Giménez Smith, who shrewdly documents a woman's passage into and through these crucibles. … Giménez Smith’s self-inquiry drills down relentlessly until it reaches central, molten truths."—Marietta Brill, The Adirondack ReviewCruel Futures is an astonishingly present imagistic exploration of aging, familial bonds, and mothering in the context of late capitalism. Giménez Smith’s poems, sparkling with pop culture and gleaming with intelligence, unpretentiously welcome the reader into mortality, grief, and nurturing, while deftly highlighting how these human conditions are shaped by the race, gender, and class of those who experience them."—Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, The Adroit Journal"Cruel Futures is kinder than its title suggests, and steely. … I am so ready to go over this with a teenage relative who is half-Irish, one-quarter-Chinese, one-quarter-Filipina and so much more fabulous than she thinks, despite encouragement from loved ones and teachers. It goes without saying, though sometimes Giménez Smith thinks she has to, that this poem, this writer, this girl are all deeply American. This is vital language for our time."—The Rumpus
£11.39
City Lights Books Funeral Diva
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for Funeral Diva:"An absorbing and inherently engaging read from first page to last, Funeral Diva is one of those collections of thoughtful introspection and observation that will linger in the mind and"In closing, just in general, thank you for all your years of art and activism. I think the first time I saw you was in the '90s, on the PBS show In the Life, and I think that you might have even used the phrase 'funeral diva' on that show. I have a weird memory. But I remember seeing you on one of those episodes when I was probably in my late teens/early ’20s, in Ohio. And I think that your work and the work of a lot of folks that you write about in Funeral Diva is important. It helped make me. So I just want to say thank you for your work over all those years. And the work that you continue to do for us. Thank you."—Kenyon Farrow,The Body"An absorbing and inherently engaging read from first page to last, Funeral Diva is one of those collections of thoughtful introspection and observation that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Also readily available for personal reading lists in a digital book format, Funeral Diva is especially and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library LBGTQ collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists."—Midwest Book Review"Sneed's reflections provoke awareness of just how impactful our lives are upon each other, while also implicitly embracing poetry's central role in her life. . . . Funeral Diva: sure it's about Pamela Sneed, but the writing is for us all."—Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi Review of Books"Funeral Diva grieves both the end and the continuation of the ills of the 1980s as well as the entangled persistence of pandemics. Sneed grieves the lives lost to HIV/AIDS and, now, to COVID-19."—Tiana Reid, Poetry Magazine"Funeral Diva is the tome for our awakening and for our survival."—Erica Cardwell, writer, critic, and educator"The memoirlike latest from poet, performer, and visual artist Sneed evokes a queer and Black coming-of-age story and its wider cultural resonance. Vividly capturing an array of formative relationships with friends, lovers, and family from the late 1980s and early ’90s, Sneed’s recalled experiences take the reader from the Boston suburbs and AIDS pandemic-era New York to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. Essays such as ‘History' and ‘Ila,' reminiscent of writing by Hilton Als and influenced by Audre Lorde, cross-pollinate with poetic considerations of the present. Frequently, Sneed’s tone is affectingly elegiac: 'And all those gay boys I met and worked with at a restaurant in Boston,/ who disappeared like thousands of bits of paper,/ wind just simply took' Yet just as often, this voice can be wry and lacerating: 'This is some high-wire sawed-in-half lady shit/ This is like some Hannah Arendt the banality of evil and/ the bureaucratization of homicide shit.' Sneed’s speakers welcome complexity in poems like ‘Bey’ ('I have to say I envy Beyoncé/ That she gets to show up after the fact in New Orleans') and ‘Survivor,' which traces the speaker’s uneasy feelings about daredevil swimmer Diana Nyad. In this book, bracing honesty reveals both the necessity and the costs of resilience."—Publishers Weekly"If you wonder what political agency feels like, read this book. If you want to know what a broken heart feels like, read this book. If you’re not sure how to express political agency in spite of a broken heart, read this book."—Avram Finkelstein, After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images "In form-bending poems, Sneed creates her own system of time and meaning in order to chronicle the past, to tell us the news, to save her own and others' lives."—Rachel Levitsky, Women’s Review of Books"Opening with a couple of personal essays before moving into her poetic voice, Funeral Diva (City Lights Books, 2020) by Pamela Sneed movingly expresses her experience of her 1980s, NYC coming of age, including the effect of AIDS on the black queer community, as well as issues encompassing police brutality, queer rights, and the through line to the current COVID-19 pandemic."—Gregg Shapiro, Baltimore OutLoud"These compositions are necessary to the very soul of art itself. Gratitude to the author. All of us should read and thank this poet repeatedly."—Gregg Bordowitz, author of General Idea: Imagevirus (The AIDS Project)
£12.34
City Lights Books Divine Blue Light For John Coltrane
Book SynopsisFrom Will Alexander, finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a new collection of poems from the intersection between surrealism and afro-futurism, where Césaire meets Sun Ra. Divine Blue Light further affirms Alexander’s status as one of the most unique and innovative voices in contemporary poetry.One of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Notable Poetry Books for Fall 2022!“Since the 1980s, the Los Angeles-based Alexander has mixed politics with mesmeric, oracular lines.”—The New York TimesAgainst the ruins of a contemporary globalist discourse, which he denounces as a “lingual theocracy of super-imposed rationality,” Will Alexander’s poems constitute an alternative cartography that draws upon omnivorous reading—in subjects from biology to astronomy to history to philosophy—amalgamating their diverse vocabularies into an impossible instrument only he can play. Trade ReviewPraise for Divine Blue Light:"If anarchism in literature involves breaking down conventions of thought and expression and exploring new ways for words and ideas to rub shoulders, set off sparks, and make beautiful music together, then Alexander may be its prophet.”—Robert Knox, Fifth Estate"Will Alexander’s new book of poetry takes inspiration from its namesake containing poems of such abstraction and vigor that the end result is a reader who can’t feel anything but awe. Awe not only at the vistas suddenly made visible by Alexander’s poetry but also awe at the technique at work. While reading Divine Blue Light, it was apparent that I was at the hands of a master who has honed his craftsmanship to such a degree that every poem seems like a miracle."—Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose Bookstore"Alexander does for sound what he does for space, parsing its smallest units with microscopic precision."—Charles Rammelkamp, The LakePraise for Refractive Africa (2021), finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry:"Will Alexander’s improvisatory cosmicity pushes poetic language to the point of most resistance—incantatory and swirling with magical laterality and recovery."—The Pulitzer Prizes“Since the 1980s, the Los Angeles-based Alexander has mixed politics with mesmeric, oracular lines.”—Greg Cowles, The New York Times"This visionary act of 'transpersonal witness' to a continent is an Afromodernist epic in the tradition of Kamau Brathwaite’s The Arrivants. … Refractive Africa embraces an aesthetic of sprawl and overreach, summoning free-flowing visions of grandeur and desolation. Alexander, an American, is the author of more than 30 books, and his introduction to a British readership is overdue."—The Guardian"There is likely no poetry more propulsive, visually kinetic, and intricately layered than that composed by Will Alexander. … Alexander’s seemingly over-rich language and ideation establish an imaginative realm that is entirely unlike any other, one in which we are immersed in sheer, coruscating energy. … Embodying an intensity of feeling that brims close to overwhelming, these poems bear persuasive witness to the history of Africa, of colonialism, and of Black selfhood and resistance. Too much on these themes, Alexander asserts, is not nearly enough."—Hyperallergic“Powerful and visionary.”—The Skinny"Will Alexander (finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry) writes metaphorically and syntactically rich poetry dense in compound adjectival phrases, creating a world view that poetizes the forces at work in life (biological, historical, and linguistic) and works of the imagination as simultaneous at all levels of material and non-material existence, quantum to galactic, organic and technical. It’s turtles all the way down, up, and out. But what turtles!....Not easy reading but one that rewards study at a slow pace."—Tom Bowden, The Book BeatPraise for Will Alexander:"A long-distance runner extraordinaire, Will Alexander parses and devours information, code and arcana lest they parse and devour him, parse and devour us. What but deep seas and distant galaxies would make such a demand his extended soliloquies implicitly ask and overtly answer."—Nathaniel Mackey“Alexander’s voice speaks to its situation—social, political, ecological—in the Anthropocene. … Anticipating a collective leap of human consciousness comparable to the Mind’s original emergence in Africa, Alexander reports on the ‘world as it is today’ as if from a standpoint in the future, from an alterity in which this momentous leap has already occurred.”—Andrew Joron, Caesura“Cosmological, astrological, philosophical, geological, mathematical, and hypnogogical in scope, Alexander finds concordance in chaotic discord. Like a force of nature, a procession of seamless symbols, the lines roll out as variant strata compress into a crystalline composite.”—Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, The Brooklyn Rail“As we spin toward planetary suicide at the hands of oily capitalizers, it will be the prophetic words of poets such as Will Alexander, with their imaginal radiance, which hold any hope of lighting the way to a true alchemical amnesty and new modes of being.”—Dorothy Wang, author of Thinking in its Presence“It is tempting to label Alexander a surrealist or experimentalist, but he is truly a singular voice.”—Citation for the Jackson Poetry Prize"Alexander’s verbal flights strike me as more shamanistic than free-associational or automatic. His evocation of upper and lower worlds, and his vocabulary which bridges poetry, philosophy, myth, and science, give his verbal fulgurations a sense of linguistic seed that suddenly sprouts, then resprouts … He may be the first major ‘outsider artist’ in American poetry. Whatever he is, he is a force to reckon with …"—American Poet“Alexander’s comfort and willingness to discuss occasions beyond our normal daily experiences excites the imagination with the warmth of ecstatic re-envisioning. This is writing that opens up new worlds, crisp and direct in its offering of unique and valuable gifts.”—Rain Taxi“A vastly under-appreciated and important avant-garde poet, who deserves a wider audience.”—Huffington Post
£12.34
City Lights Books The Crystal Text
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for Clark Coolidge's The Crystal Text:"There’s a majesty in this book with a crystalline center that refracts and reflects this extended, wandering meditation on what it means to write and to be in the world. And there is also an ease and a luminous beauty and such a depth that this book remains resonant years after its original publication.”—Juliana Spahr, author of That Winter the Wolf Came"The Crystal Text is at once a philosophical poem in the lineage of Lucretius and a word-jazz excursion in the spirit of Monk and Lacy. Here, the poet’s stylus becomes a drumstick that patterns a nonlinear logic of fleeting reflections, performing cymbal-clash as symbol-crash. The result is a unified field theory of music, thought, and poetry. The reissue of Coolidge’s long out-of-print masterpiece deserves a standing ovation."—Andrew Joron, author of O0“In The Crystal Text by Clark Coolidge, language is restored to its original grace. And what is the origin of language? Is it innovation? Does it subvert while instructing? This poem brings the written word to life. It was written in the 1980s, serving as a deep source for poets and all those who cherish literature. The poet spars with history, memory, and what it means to be fully human. The informative afterword is a rare treat.”—Neeli Cherkovski, author of The Crow and I"Like the mouth to a cave or mine, The Crystal Text offers the best entry to Clark Coolidge's writing. Here's a sui generis American poet, an eager amateur geologist, conversing with a mineral gifted to him, locating the surfaces along language that allow light's passage. Impossible to imitate, Coolidge tests the hardness of syntax, scratching new registers upon it to clarify human perception and the ways we lend it language.”—Evan Kennedy, author of Metamorphoses"Summoned from a translucent bedrock made of equal parts diamond and table salt, snowflake and graphite, and operating a mineral eon or two away from the more obvious sorts of time, The Crystal Text affirms an irreducible poetic truth: small things are fathomless.”—Paul Ebenkamp, author of The Louder the Room the Darker the ScreenPraise for Clark Coolidge:“Clark Coolidge is a one-man avant-garde.”—Peter Gizzi, author of Archeophonics“A long-time master of the jazzy long work.”—Bernadette Mayer, author of Works and Days"[I]f one merely lies open to it, Coolidge's arresting words will sink in and provide a seldom experienced refreshment. This is still true and the receding monumentality of his landscape enterprise is fuller today than ever before. We are lucky to live in the world he chooses to reflect back at us."—John Ashbery, author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror“In poem after poem he produces lines of abstract, bright, musical phrasing”—Michael Leddy, World Literature Today “An inexhaustible writer capable of taking a subject, any subject, and improvising endless bebop glissandos around it.”—Eliot Weinberger, author of Karmic Traces: 1993-1999 "Clark Coolidge is unquestionably among the finest and most legendary American poets of our time."—Irakli Qolbaia, Caesura“Nothing can prepare you for the experience of reading Clark Coolidge’s poetry. You can listen to Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, and the Rova Quartet; you can read the Beats, and examine every Philip Guston painting; you can go spelunking and spend days staring at rock structures. You can even memorize every word of Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett and recite it all as a soundtrack to a black-and-white cowboy movie. These may contextualize some of the elements in Coolidge’s work, but they will not adequately equip you for the heady mixture of intellectual pleasure, semantic frustration, and visceral musicality that Coolidge’s work is likely to provoke.”—Jake Marmer, Hyperallergic “Coolidge subjects the comforting syntax of traditional lyric to a radical torque as a means of discovering new possibilities of song.”—Aldon L. Neilson, Pacific Coast Philology
£13.29
Hebrew Union College Press,U.S. Now at the Threshold The Late Poems of Tuvia
Book SynopsisThe translated poems in Now at the Threshold: The Late Poems of Tuvia Ruebner are from Ruebner's final three collections, all written from 2014 onward, after the poet's 90th birthday. Translated into English by award-winning translator Rachel Tzvia Back.
£23.75
University of Alberta Press Massacre Street
Book SynopsisPoetic exploration of historical records of the Frog Lake Massacre (1885) links past to present.Trade Review"...Zits' book juxtaposes fragments of others' writing to invite readers to ponder the concept of reconstituting history when the low fog of racism attends cultural difference and shrouds events, when personal investments of witnesses to that history are so divergent, and when oral and written versions of events tell incommensurable stories." -- Susan Gingell
£15.29
Lynx House Press The Present State of the Garden
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. In The Present State of the Garden, both childhood and the natural world are elegized as the speaker works through layers of loss: the dissolution of a marriage and a world on the brink of ecological collapse.
£14.36
