Poetry / poems by individual poets
University of Notre Dame Press Furious Dusk
Book SynopsisRhina P. Espaillat, judge of the 2014 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, describes Furious Dusk, David Campos's winning collection, as a work whose five parts trace a son's effortsonly partially successfulto fulfill his father's expectations andperhaps even more difficultunderstand those expectations enough to forgive them. The poet''s reflections are catalyzed by learning of his father's impending death, which, in turn, forces him to examine his father's expectations against his own evolving concept of what it means to be a man.The poems'' speaker sifts through his past to find the speckles of memory that highlight the pressures to fit the mold of masculinity forged both by the Mexican culture of his father and the American culture he inhabits. The problematic norms of both rip the speaker in two directions as he recounts his father's severe parenting, as he explores the inability to father a child, as he witnesses human suffering, as he overeats and confronts the effects oTrade Review“David Campos writes tenderly and with compassion about fathers, sons, and the way we become men. He writes with an original voice and fire about race, identity, and nation. He writes lyrics that skirt tightropes of impossible, beautiful contradictions. David is a Fresno poet, an American poet, a Chicano poet, and more. This is an extraordinary book of grace, I cannot recommend it highly enough.” —Chris Abani, author of Sanctificum and Hands Washing Water“A monster debut collection that refuses to go unnoticed, the same way one cannot divert their eyes from an anatomical dissection. In five deftly crafted sections, we are given an unflinching view of the poet’s own innards; from wrestling with eating disorders to father-son relations, body image, and marriage, the tendons and ligaments of a life are exposed, and the red muscle of reality is left jutting toward you, the reader. Campos’s poetry is a physical experience, a glimmering mirror that forces us to call out our own dark secrets, to be accountable and 'take comfort that we’re alive as animals.' From the same literary stomping grounds and fertile groves that first produced the fearless and prophetic Andrés Montoya himself—emerges this new and necessary breed of luminary voice.” —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Mañana Means Heaven"This is a fearless poetics—no heroes, no myth-making, no jazzy lingo games. David Campos is intent on one inner phrase: 'I will become the fire.' I applaud David’s first book. It is relentless in wrestling the darkness, reminiscent in some ways of Delmore Schwartz, Joan Larkin, and Victor Martinez. A tour de force, a rare heart of raw light." —Juan Felipe Herrera, California Poet Laureate“The Fresno City College teacher received the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for 2014 for his collection of poetry, Furious Dusk. Contest judge Rhina P. Espaillat describes Campos’ winning collection as ‘a work whose five parts trace a son’s efforts – only partially successful—to fulfill his father’s expectations and—perhaps even more difficult—understand those expectations enough to forgive them.’” —Fresno Bee"Furious Dusk is an accessible, narrative collection of confessional poems. David Campos is unflinchingly observant of his subjects—highlighting the dark, uncomfortable elements with a commendable specificity. . . . A collection centering on issues of masculinity, machismo, family, cultural expectations, and feelings of inadequacy, Furious Dusk follows the persona's reflective journey upon learning of his father's impending death. . . . [T]his collection shows ambition." —Kenyon Review “Just as Campos felt the need to kill the image that he had of his father as a child to craft his own version of manhood, the pieces dealing with the couple’s struggles with fertility are ‘exaggerated and dramatized’ in a way that dramatizes the emotional toll that such a crisis takes on the relationship. In that way, Campos’ work speaks to a larger truth.” —South Bend Tribune
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Damage
Book SynopsisThe poems in this work examine a variety of cultural, natural and personal damages in a lyrical voice ironically marked by intense beauty. This disjunction is what makes the volume so disturbing and yet so tantalizing.
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press What You Hear in the Dark
Book SynopsisWhat You Hear in the Dark gathers the best of Sonia Gernes'' three previous books of poetry and builds on their themes with three sections of new poems that give lyric voice to the thoughts and questions that surface in the midnight hours: the value of the lives we''ve chosen, time and mortality, the struggles with belief. Like Teilhard de Chardin, Gernes is convinced that we find the universal by going deeply and authentically into the personal, and these poems detail the small human dramas that reveal us to ourselves.Both the new and the selected poems distill Gernes'' impulse to give voice to the voiceless and to nudge her lyrics toward narrative. She writes of survival and longing on a flat and fertile earth in poems from Brief Lives, of the resiliency and beauty of mid-life women in poems from Women at Forty, of a young woman thrust into teaching at a Minnesota Indian School in 1930, and a pioneer woman undone by Australia''s forbidding terrain in Trade Review“Gernes' love of language is evident in every poem in this collection, including powerful narrative poems from A Breeze Called the Freemantle Doctor (1997) and insightful meditative lyrics on aging and poignant memory-driven poems from other earlier, now out-of-print collections. This volume begins, however, with 25 new poems that display Gernes' best poetic gifts: thoughtful economy of words, measured reflections, lyrically fluid language, and gently pulsing rhythms. Several of the more heartrending current poems tackle a mother's Alzheimer's, a father's death, and a newfound voice of loneliness that cries but also sings of ‘the force that propels / even the lonely soul / to seek and gain the sky.’ Gernes is a highly accessible and engaging poet who will surely appeal to many types of reader.” —Booklist“What You Hear in the Dark is a masterful collection of songs, of singing words, of pictures, of ideas, of poetry. It will lead you to wondrous places.” —Midwest Book Review"This collection of poems by Sonia Gernes develops a striking voice and powerful drive, displays astonishing branchings of the imagination and manifests the proper double vision of the poet: an outer eye for the personal and immediate and an inner for the most closely-held truths of the community." —John Engels, author of Recounting the Seasons"What You Hear in the Dark is one of those rare, loving, heartbreaking books that has come together as all the necessary parts of a life come together, in order to help us connect anew. I am grateful for Sonia Gernes' generosity." —Gary Gildner, author of Somewhere Geese Are Flying
£15.19
University of Notre Dame Press F2F
Book Synopsisf2f: Shorthand for face-to-face, as in meeting someone in real life, flesh-to-flesh, as opposed to in the electronic world of cyberspace. Used in chat rooms and while instant messaging on the Internet. At the core of this challenging new collection from Janet Holmes is the conceit of the sense of sight and the complex role it plays in women''s self-identities and relationships. Emily Dickinson is introduced as the iconic female writer who, unread in her time, is frequently misinterpreted and unheard. Holmes relates Dickinson''s self-isolation to the writer''s isolation from the reader and the intimacy of the act of reading. Echo, Eurydice, and Erosother E figures, these mythological, their stories relying on seeing and being seenare related by Holmes to twentieth-century counterparts manifesting as an anorexic, a flamboyant dresser, and a love god, respectively. Holmes intersperses her meditation with the language of online text-messaging, employing it asTrade Review"Holmes's attention to sound ("write with light / durable words indelible") is familiar poetic territory, but here it takes on new meaning because it so exceeds, or opposes, the text-messaging medium from which the language is drawn. This is like William Carlos Williams's experiments—or Bob Creeley's—in the excerpting and reframing of casual speech; the perception that a general method could be applied to a new, apparently unpromising and impoverished linguistic realm is one of the book's most forward brilliances." —Charles O. Hartman, Connecticut College"E, Echo, Eurydice, Emily and Eros—legacy resonance meets current disturbance f2f in Janet Holmes's melancholy music; reader, she addresses you, as she gently probes, pings, love life on the network." —Stephanie Strickland, author of V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una"In F2F, the word-wall between author and reader becomes a projection screen for a shadow-play of sad couplings—Echo and Narcissus, Eurydice and Orpheus, a pair of instant-messaging lovers. Be warned: the witty, techy feel of Holmes' writing is the flashy surface of a bruising vision of human interaction in which self-exposure is impossible and invisibility is punishingly lonely." —Catherine Wagner, author of Macular Hole and Miss America“Drawing heavily from the compact linguistic style of modern text messaging, F2F (shorthand for 'face to face,' that is, meeting someone in real life rather than in cyberspace) draws both upon modern experience and upon classic dichotomies of myth as it represents the technological communications of love.” —The Midwest Book Review"Janet Holmes' fourth poetry collection, F2F, explores how people communicate and how the loss of sight results in isolation. Holmes, who once worked in software development, bridges the language of technology with the language of poetry.” —BookPleasures.com
£15.19
University of Notre Dame Press Falling Through the Music
Book SynopsisIn Falling Through the Music, his fifth major book of poetry, Mark Halperin gives us consolation, guidance, and companionship while delivering an accomplished meditation on the first real glimpses of the limits on a life. Displaying an agility of formal inventionhe moves easily from a Whitmanesque and witty litany to rhymed quatrainsHalperin deftly melds technique to theme. As in Someone Pausing, he is able to place us in the mind of someoneany one of uswho has stood on an island in the street, fully attentive and present, knowing nothing stays, not even the observer. Trade Review“Falling Through the Music is a book about high middle age when entropy, mortality, and overall decline cease to be rumor and feel more or less like the beginning of something that, for all its fear and sadness, promises to be fundamentally interesting. The poems range from the personal and familial across cultures and across other boundaries into the affirmations of art. This is the place where the artistic impulse does not save one from falling through music into death and nothingness, but somehow the companionship of art seems to be the best counterbalance to the terrors. Halperin deftly conjoins the mortal fears of advancing age with fears that one inherits through family and history, with the fear that there is really nothing stable or salvific in the world unless it is what we create. And therein resides the greater pleasure of this book—the sense that what is created is all we have and must be treasured for that. In short, this is a book of considerable emotional sophistication and impact.” —Frederick Marchant, Suffolk University, BostonThe mood of Mark Halperin's new poems is autumnal and elegiac, yet the effect of his book is surprisingly bracing. This is due in no small measure to Halperin's persona—he is trustworthy, unflappable, and a wryly unjudgmental observer of human folly. And, as readers of his work have come to know, his command of technique, whether of received form or of the prose poem, is considerable. This makes both his tender poems of family history and his poems drawn from his travels in Russia acts of wonderment.” —David Wojahn“Mark Halperin’s wry poems are easy to love: what’s “The Trouble with Spring”? It ends. ”Valentine” begins, “Say the heart’s principal industry is worry . . . .” The poet generously believes the great poets of the past no matter their flaws of character and behavior (which he notes); his poems ironically defend lying and the shedding of sincerity (they do, or seem to), and they also notice “for the aristocracy, friend / and servant are so close they seem to blend.” Halperin’s observations, like his syntax, are little surprises, eloquent and fair. “the guilt / without reason of survivors who react / much later, the slide and blank after impact.” (“After the Crash”) The music here—form, rhyme, language and meaning, geometry and identity—is gorgeous: “All I can’t hear gives me trouble now, as the dead do, falling through the music” (“At the Concert”). Here are poems that adhere by sound—of family, memory, loss, and love—all captured by a brilliant poet who teaches as he goes. Lucky readers.” —Hilda Raz, author of Trans and Divine Honors“Falling Through the Music concerns itself with the mind’s accommodation of ‘gaps’ in time. Both personal and historical memory limit the past’s liabilities. . . . First-time readers of Halperin . . . will return to his work again and again . . . for the benefits of a disciplined imagination, a mature and rigorous skepticism, a breadth of experience that by making modest claims for itself, yields much.” —Notre Dame Review
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Juan Lunas Revolver
Book SynopsisThe poems in Juan Luna'' s Revolver both address history and attempt to transcend it through their exploration of the complexity of diaspora. Attending to the legacy of colonial and postcolonial encounters, Luisa A. Igloria has crafted poems that create links of sympathetic human understanding, even as they revisit difficult histories and pose necessary questions about place, power, displacement, nostalgia, beauty, and human resilience in conditions of alienation and duress. Igloria traces journeys made by Filipinos in the global diaspora that began since the encounter with European and American colonial power. Her poems allude to historical figures such as the Filipino painter Juan Luna and the novelist and national hero Jose Rizal, as well as the eleven hundred indigenous Filipinos brought to serve as live exhibits in the 1904 Missouri World''s Fair. The image of the revolver fired by Juan Luna reverberates throughout the collection, raising to high relief how separaTrade Review"In Juan Luna's Revolver, Luisa Igloria establishes herself as a singular and revelatory voice in American poetry. Here, she explores the dichotomy of Filipino: interwoven yet hermetically singular, acquisitive yet inventive, docile yet amok. Her engrossing poems hide, behind their gorgeous scrims, a bristling wall of spears." —Sabina Murray, author of Forgery, A Carnivore's Inquiry, and The Caprices“When I read a Luisa Igloria poem, a bright enchanted light falls over my being. Juan Luna’s Revolver is Igloria’s best work to date. These poems never let us forget they are wrought from an immigrant's love for family, country, and the history of the reinvented self.” —Virgil Suarez, author of 90 Miles“In sure and compelling measures, with richly textured turns, and attending to the mystery of matter, Luisa Igloria’s poems offer a powerfully tangible world, and a world within, and a world beyond.” —Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected“Igloria's triumph is that, beyond the cinematic beauty of her verse, she places her audience squarely in the situation of cultural strangers, putting a face upon the 'foreigner' that mirrors our own. When we witness the Other in extremis, we also see ourselves.” —Virginian Pilot“The poems in Juan Luna’s Revolver are captivating, incisive, and at times, deceivingly pointed. But this is for the best. When you read Igloria’s verses, you feel that your existence is imbued with some rich and resonant meaning once again. This is especially true for her fellow Filipinos who are eternally it seems, searching for a higher relevance in what is a forbidding life landscape.” —Allen Gaborro, Philippine News
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Pity the Drowned Horses
Book SynopsisPity the Drowned Horses is the winner of the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. This collection is about place and many of the poems in it are set in the desert southwest on the U.S./Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. Sheryl Luna's poems are also about family and home within the broader context of the border as both a bridge and a barrier. They deal with the bilingual and bicultural city and how a place is longed for and viewed very differently as the observer changes and experiences other cultures.The first two sections of poems focus on home and family. They show that, despite poverty and geographical isolation, the border towns of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are places of beauty and promise. The third section explores cultures: how anxiety over aesthetic judgments, values, and difference are negotiated. The final section is one of praise and recognition that despite differences we are all longing for faith and a place to call home.Trade Review“Sheryl Luna’s debut collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, poses several questions about the meaning of ‘home’: is it rooted to a particular place? can we escape it? can we find it elsewhere? once we’ve left, can we return? . . . She circles through various locales and landscapes, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Prague, and Paris, but like the frayed-wing hawk who drifts through the collection, Luna’s speaker is drawn, slightly battered, back to the desert of her origins.” —Latino Poetry Review"[A] heartfelt testimony from the borderlands, the place where music clanks like chains as history simultaneously crumbles and rebuilds itself, where weary dancers laugh anger away. …a triumphant debut and worthy of keeping company with the classic titles of border literature. Luna proves herself a leader among the next generation of Chicano poets."—El Paso Times"In her opening poem, Luna declares that 'pain is living and living is pain,' but while she relentlessly probes the hardscrabble lives of many of America's Latinos, these poems aren't grim reading. They're transfigured by this debut author's extraordinary lyric power." —Library Journal"... there's a weighty mournfulness to Luna's borderlands, where the stark poverty of Mexico butts against the brash, unyielding sprawl of her American city. Pity the Drowned Horses takes its reader across a ravaged landscape where ... the last few hares sprint across a bloodied/highway and there are women everywhere/who have half-lost their souls/in sewing needles and vacuum-cleaner parts. In this world of little comfort, Luna is intent on seeking meaning—however bitter—in the emptiness and meditating on the redeeming power of language."—The Texas Observer"From Sylvia Plath to popsicle-sellers in Juarez, from Mozart to maquiladoras, this stunning debut collection charts 'the way of borders....the way things thirst.' Remarkable!" —Lisa D. Chavez"Sheryl Luna’s book Pity the Drowned Horses bears witness not only to the poverty and wonder of the borderlands, to their dynamic and often tragic clash of cultural rivers, but also to an intense, tender, and unflinching sensibility refusing the easy distance of mere reportage. Rarely do we encounter a poet with such associative speed, such free access to her unconscious resources, who simultaneously reaches out with such heartbreaking clarity and sweep of vision. Here we see the moral imagination made both vulnerable and bold by its transfigurative investments, its impassioned music, its raw energy and recovering grace. A dazzling debut." —Bruce Bond“In Pity the Drowned Horses, Sheryl Luna carves out of the El Paso landscape the music of the borderlands where loss and acceptance converge. . . . Luna exquisitely captures—like no other poet before her—the ‘unsung positive capability/ of the desert’; her syntax—sometimes raw and edgy—creates a tableau where everything rushes toward ‘our wild need, all sweat, all shiver.’ The overall effect is simply mesmerizing.” —Robert Vasquez
£15.19
University of Notre Dame Press The Yearning Feed
Book SynopsisThe poems in Manuel Paul López''s The Yearning Feed, winner of the 2013 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, are embedded in the San Diego/Imperial Valley regions, communities located along the U.S.-Mexico border. López, an Imperial Valley native, considers La Frontera, or the border, as magical, worthy of Macondo-like comparisons, where contradictions are firmly rooted and ironies play out on a daily basis. These poems synthesize López's knowledge of modern and contemporary literature with a border-child vernacular sensibility to produce a work that illustrates the ongoing geographical and literary historical clash of cultures. With humor and lyrical intensity, López addresses familial relationships, immigration, substance abuse, violence, and, most importantly, the affirmation of life. In the poem titled Psalm, the speaker experiences a deep yearning to relearn his family''s Spanish tongue, a language lost somewhere in the twelve-mile stretch between his family''s Trade Review"In this eclectic collection, López brings readers to the edge of their convictions then redraws the borders, leaving us to find our own way back home. He has an uncanny ability to drop dynamic characters into situations where they face universal moral dilemmas. These pieces are inundated with haunting landscapes of dialogue, poignant juxtapositions, deliberate capriciousness, and spontaneous humor that will immigrate into your consciousness." —Rebecca Schumejda, author of Cadillac Men"Manuel Paul López's The Yearning Feed evokes the rich, beautiful, and bizarre geocultural (and psychological) tapestry that is the California Imperial Valley. Like some enchanted reincarnation of Dante Alighieri (or Virgil), he guides his reader through the hot, sandy expanses right at the heart of the Americas. The frontier dividing and defining the United States and Mexico reaches new heights in the diverse poetic and prose portraits found in this remarkable new collection." —William Anthony Nericcio, author of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America"It is enthralling and frightening to live in this book of poems: wisdom is so often derived from experience, and Manuel Paul López ladles out wisdom as if from a bottomless well. . . . Spanning forty-five pages, the poems [in 'The Desert Series'] are undoubtedly López’s most profound artistic statement on the need for human-to-human relations among all the peoples on the continent of the Americas." —World Literature Today
£15.19
University of Notre Dame Press American Compass
Book SynopsisBill Meissner's fourth book of poetry, is a collection that steers the reader on a varied, memorable journey down the American highway. Like the four points of a compass, each of the book's four sections has a distinct direction.Trade Review"Writing accessible poems that are evocative, often elegiac, yet which still retain a wry humor, Meissner charts the passage from adolescence to adulthood in a landscape marked by unrealized dreams." —North Dakota Quarterly"As a continuous journey, American Compass points readers in the right directions and does a good job leading them through the lives of a few classic American characters. …an overall uplifting and level-headed collection of American poems. This book belongs in the hands of anyone interested in the heart of this country, or anyone wanting to learn a little bit more about the lives of those who live there." —The Corresponder"From a poet with less heart, attention to detail, and quiet eloquence, such material might produce cliché. Meissner, however, infuses his dreams and recollections with grace, nuance, and surprise. Meissner creates poems in which the metaphors are artfully constructed but also satisfying and justified." —Aethlon“Meissner elegizes the American fifties: childhood, a traveling salesman father, baseball (Joe DiMaggio, sandlots, wiffle balls), pop culture (James Dean, Elvis). Meissner is a master at getting out of a poem, closing each poem with a satisfying exhale and click.” —North American Review"Bill Meissner is unapologetically in love with America’s favorite pastime—dreaming. He writes with surprising generosity about the American psyche broken and made wise by all the old Chevies, baseball games, and heroes who perish young, by all the things that feed and fail and yet endure. Most of all, he understands the gestures of love, of enduring the small wounds of living. These fine poems deserve to be read and reread." —Jonis Agee, novelist and poet“These warmhearted, humorous poems comment wisely and well on our culture.” —Star Tribune“American Compass negotiates a topography few poets can manage, which is to say that only occasionally does a writer chart with such conviction and accuracy the complex region of the human heart. I so admire the unadorned eloquence of these poems, and how the restraint of each manifests a kind of grandeur I find rare and utterly convincing. Bill Meissner is an American original, and this is his finest collection yet.” —Jack Driscoll, author of Lucky Man, Lucky Woman“The legends of Bill Meissner’s boyhood and youth, those well-known American icons and everyday folk cast larger-than-life, lend a long-last note to the national chorus as this poet hears it. Wry and good-natured, these poems take us aside to talk to us the way an old family friend would, telling us what it all meant, what it all might mean.” —Heid Erdrich, author of Fishing for Myth and Sister Nations
£11.99
University of Notre Dame Press My Kill Adore Him
Book SynopsisMy Kill Adore Him is a collection of poems from Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize-winner Paul Martínez Pompa. With a unique, independent voice, Martínez Pompa interrogates masculinity, race, language, consumerism, and cultural identity in poems that honor los olvidados, the forgotten ones, who range from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys' bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner's Office. Some of the poems rely on somber, at times brutal, imagery to articulate a political stance while others use sarcasm and irony to deconstruct political stances themselves.Trade Review"Like the poet’s native Chicago, even when violent or troubling, Paul Martínez Pompa’s poems risk beauty. His work possesses a fluidity that appears both effortless and well earned. His is a Chicago Renaissance of one—Gwendolyn Brooks’s Bronzeville and Carl Sandburg’s 'city of big shoulders' becoming a 'city of broken lovers' and 'an entire city in your ears' in Martínez Pompa’s capable hands. Playful and political and passionate, the poems in My Kill Adore Him mark an important debut, one you’ll surely adore."—Kevin Young author of Dear Darkness and For the Confederate Dead“This is an important book if we care about the lives of men, day-laborers, immigrants, factory workers and those on the urban fringe who don't get a fair shake. And this is an important book if we don't. Paul Martínez Pompa knows how to write; these poems vividly evoke people and lives that urge us toward awareness and honesty and compassion. Poetry can do no better than this.” —Valerie Martínez, author of Each and Her and Absence, Luminescent."This is one tough, smart poet. The poems of Paul Martínez Pompa are gritty and visceral, but never cross the line into sensationalism. They are poems that vividly evoke the urban world, especially Chicago, without ever lapsing into urban cliché. They are poems that seek justice for the Latino community without ever resorting to the overheated language that all too often consigns poetry of social conscience to oblivion." —Martín Espada, 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize judge“Paul Martínez Pompa deconstructs with a deft sword. Straddling literary strategies, no supposition nor paradigm is safe. He slays the stereotypic dragons within as well as without, putting popular culture, elegy, nightmare, personal narrative, identity and gender politics in the same hat, and drawing from the source, Pompa plays a poetic hand for keeps. Every turn of trope is more delightful than the last—a breakaway collection from an exciting new writer.” —Lorna Dee Cervantes, author of Drive: The First Quartet"There is so much more going on in this book . . . My Kill Adore Him is an exciting and tough collection of very well-composed and accessible poems. It’s been a while since I tore through a book of poetry and really enjoyed the read." —Harriet: A blog from the Poetry Foundation“My Kill Adore Him is a collection of poetry from Paul Martinez Pompa focusing on the issues of masculinity, race, and who people are. My Kill Adore Him is an entertaining and thought provoking work, highly recommended.” —The Midwest Book Review“Martinez Pompa’s collection engages the urban landscape and how its cultural and historical legacies extended south into the border and Mexico itself. . . . As a first collection, My Kill Adore Him . . . is definitely a find, with its impressive range of Latino literary influences, from Herrera to Andres Montoya, to Martin Espada. With such poetic energy and intensity in one book, there’s no doubt that Martinez Pompa’s next collection will engrave him on the literary map.” —El Paso Times"In his breathtaking debut poetry collection, Martinez Pompa bursts onto the contemporary Latino scene with literary guns ablaze. He is precisely what we need right now: a brave poet just as critical of himself as he is of others. Within the pages of this clever and brutally honest text lie the words of an old soul—who just happens to be a young poet. Martinez Pompa's youth and aged wisdom coexist in each and every poem, resulting in a fresh, yet deadly serious new voice that is not to be trifled with. . . . Highly recommended reading for anyone on the lookout for what comes next in Latino poetry." —Multicultural Review“. . . a critical tone is set from the opening quotation, lent to the collection by Joe Wenderoth: ‘As hypotheticals go, “man” seems to me the most damaging.’ Martinez Pompa sets the stage early for an exploration into what makes a man, indeed, what makes humanity. . . . Martinez Pompa illustrates the ways in which there is no recourse when decisions are made across a border in a land beyond imagination.” —Post No Ills“Paul Martinez Pompa’s My Kill Adore Him, winner of the 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, vividly captures the traumatic experiences of many Latino/a immigrants. . . . Pompa’s sensitive eye doesn’t take us with the men who find a job for that day, but lingers on the man left behind, the man who will not make any money that day.” —Kenyon Review Online
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press The News and Other Poems
Book SynopsisIn The News and Other Poems, David Citino confronts and attempts to make sense of the news. He explores the good and bad ways the world has of careening into a life and sending it off course. Citino tries to understand how we come to know what we know, driven as we are by haughty assumptions about the world we're making and the control we think we exert over our own lives and loves.While still holding romantic notions of ivory towers and ivy-covered garrets, Citino welcomes the latest informationno matter how bad the news. He struggles to understand stories from sources impeachable and unimpeachablesupermarket tabloids and journals of science, folklore and the laboratory, chronicles of ancient history and news wires, even those sometimes terrible things we learn from our doctors or those we love.Trade Review“At times keenly empathetic (‘Ode to Billy Dove’), and often irreverent (‘Funding the Dead’), Citino’s intense observations and wit yield irresistible poems.” —ForeWord"This is a surprising book, given as it is to its tonally bright, aghast/funny treatment of 'the news,' wittily daring to close that oft-quoted schism between news and poetry in its short-sentenced, flabbergasted, tight-stanza'd mode of attack-beyond the spirit of play at work, it also has the capacity to be heartbreaking."—Poetry International
£70.55
University of Notre Dame Press Underdays
Book SynopsisWe encounter many voices in life: from friends and family, from media, from co-workers, from other artists. In a highly connected global world, where people and entities are electronically enmeshed, we filter these voices constantly to get to what we determine to be the truth. Taking inspiration from pop culture, politics, art, and social media, Martin Ott mines daily existence as the inspiration and driving force behind Underdays. Underdays is a dialogue of opposing forces: life/death, love/war, the personal/the political. Ott combines global concerns with personal ones, in conversation between poems or within them, to find meaning in his search for what drives us to love and hate each other. Within many of the poems, a second voice, expressed in italic, hints at an opposing force under the surface, or multiple voices in conversation with his older and younger selveshis Underdaysto chart a path forward. What results is a poetic heteroglossia expressing the richTrade Review"In Martin Ott's new book of poems, Underdays, there's nature, children, desire, war, and Los Angeles, but everything is shrouded with the speaker's experiences as an interrogator in the military—an institution that leaves nothing untouched, even Ott's haunting and dark poetry. But more importantly, Ott's poetry is sonically beautiful and written with such a skilled hand—a hand that was meant to write the poetry of a gifted and haunted soul." —Victoria Chang, author of The Boss "I so admire the spirit in Underdays that clearly wants to—and does!—make beautiful poems, both in the midst of trouble and OUT of it. Turn the pages, and be met by beguiling surprises: madlibs, the heartfelt voice, jazzy soliloquies as bullets fly, lyric reveries in landscapes of dream. These poems feel pressured into being by all that's fleeting, and reading them, we may feel that toughest of dichotomies dig deeper in: 'the dangers of living, of forgetting.'" —Nance Van Winckel, author of Pacific Walkers "The poems in Martin Ott’s Underdays are in-between—the war and its aftermath, the love affair and its despair. In dense, often hauntingly musical verse, Ott interrogates our wide broken world, from Afghanistan to Los Angeles, with the unity of a singular, relentless voice." —Dan O’Brien, author of War Reporter and Scarsdale
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Barefoot
Book SynopsisHart's eight collection of poems, Barefoot draws on Christianity and the rich heritage of American Blues, creating a blend of religious poetry and love poetry.Trade Review“Kevin Hart’s Barefoot is a magnificent book. Hart’s poetry has always been marked by a tenderness and sensuality and an openness to existence, and it remains so here, but that openness now extends to the negative aspects of existence, which make the book both exhilarating and harrowing. I think that Barefoot is one of Kevin Hart’s finest achievements.” —John Koethe, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee“One of the finest poets now writing in English, Kevin Hart beautifully and indelibly surveys the human position—not only our body-life in time, but also our apprehensions of what lies beyond us. The title of his marvelous new collection, Barefoot, perfectly expresses its openness, freedom, power, and delight.” —David Mason, author of The Sound: New and Selected Poems“One of the strengths of this book is Hart’s penetrating lucidity and his passionate ideas. He is a master craftsman with a visionary imagination and these are his finest poems.” —Robert Adamson, CAL Chair in Poetry, University of Technology Sydney"When I read Kevin Hart, I feel less alone, which is to say that I feel that someone understands my own desire to be alone. I feel a companion spirit, out there wandering barefoot in the darkness, looking for God. But this does not mean that the experience is entirely comforting; this is not some faux-poetry of greeting-card consolation." —Marginalia, Los Angeles Review of Books"In Kevin Hart’s eighth book of poetry, he uses poetry to talk to the absent or, rather, the ambiguously present: his late father, God, past lovers, and versions of himself. . . . Like many mystics before him, Hart often speaks of the divine in erotic terms." —World Literature Today“Kevin Hart’s Christianity is ever present even as he writes passionately of young love, titillation, and ‘thin girls who taste of Beaujolais at night.’ That he is comfortable with grief, mystery, solemnity, biblical and classical history, and humility instills his work with rare depth.” —Foreword Reviews
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press The Inheritance of Haunting
Book SynopsisInvoking individual and collective ghosts inherited across diverse geographies, Rhodes' poetry collection queers the space between past, present, and future through generations of violence, war, and survival.Trade Review"This book—historical, mystical, fiercely alive—is a book of laments that are also geographies, words that are also figures, perforations, marks ferrying the dead, the dead who have taught this poet how to read the air, the scar, the hair. Traces of the lost in what is not lost. And (this is the thing!) the poems themselves are signals and routes. A song repeats, reminds us of our Befores as they worked toward getting free, getting us free. These poems are a part of that same long song. Spell, testimony, strategy, prayer. They flood me with courage and attention. From somewhere under the paper comes a sound: 'this is how you read. / this is how we arm you in the language. . . '" —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria"The Inheritance of Haunting honors the legacies of our dead, traces a connective tissue across suffering from the Andes to Palestine. But instead of only noticing suffering, this book is a canto 'with roots too deep to measure.' Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes's first collection is a spell that disintegrates carnivorous colonizers and locates 'the go back to where you came from when there is nowhere but here.' Rhodes transforms history into a reminder about 'how hard we fought for here, this simple morning.' Behold: 'the holy songs of trees.'" —Vickie Vértiz, author of Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut"This collection is a rumination on the memories, the violence and the acts of liberation that live in the body across generations of colonization, war, and upheaval. . . . Representing the voices of individual and collective ghosts from across Latin America, this collection asks us to account for the past and to celebrate the lives that come after." —Electric Lit"Restrepo Rhodes’s The Inheritance of Haunting stands out, at least to this reader, as an aesthetically potent and ethically rigorous work with unrivaled incantatory powers. . . . [Its] poetics are akin to a cathartically rich espiritismo séance—and, as a caribeño, I don’t use these words lightly." —The Rumpus“A brutal, but necessary, unveiling of violence and the ghosts we carry with us daily, The Inheritance of Haunting sings the unbearable and still makes a claim for survival. These are intricate poems that are odes to the women who have come before us, odes to the women who have been silenced by fear, and odes to the ‘wreckage of centuries.’ With language that is alive, inventive, sound-driven, and ricocheting with power, this is a fierce and breathtaking collection that risks calling for a great reckoning with our collective past.” — Ada Limón, author of Bright Dead ThingsTable of ContentsForeword Part 1. El Otro Lado / The Other Side 1. the past is a candle in the temple of my mouth 2. the other side (I.) 3. scar 4. all your braids like a compass will bring us home 5. all that is left 6. where it begins 7. tristeza profunda 8. heard in the yes of gods 9. she who does not feel her name beneath her feet will wander, will wander 10. if I wear my hair this way 11. imbunche 12. 1901 13. blood of la mojana 14. the flower husband 15. purgatory 16. la llorona 17. the dream in which we die together 18. heresy in our bones 19. missionary 20. prayer for the children who will be born with today’s daggers in their tomorrow eyes 21. the other side (II.) Part 2. Casi Pájaros / Almost Birds 1. dis-astre 2. when the machete will sever the ballad (memory-mourning for El Mozote) 3. fog 4. last balloon 5. eternal return 6. so far 7. the terror of clean 8. A11728 9. non-combat related incidents & other lies 10. elix/womb/house 11. what the bird has seen 12. like fish like song 13. little birds 14. onomasticon (I.) (or, I sing the names of our dead) 15. the ache on the tongue of the grieving 16. the value of sparrows 17. azan, or the call to prayer, o resistir es rezar que arrasamos el orden de arrancamiento, or when the sky opens & I am swallowed 18. ‘til the taste of free in our mouths (brown baby lullaby) 19. for the boy who went to war & came back fire, came back song 20. fishbone Endnotes Gratitude
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press The Inheritance of Haunting
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, The Inheritance of Haunting, by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, is a collection of poems contending with historical memory and its losses and gains carried within the body, wrought through colonization and its generations of violence, war, and survival.The driving forces behind Rhodes's work include a decolonizing ethos; a queer sensibility that extends beyond sexual and gender identities to include a politics of deviance; errantry; ramshackled bodies; and forms of loving and living that persist in their wild difference. Invoking individual and collective ghosts inherited across diverse geographies, this collection queers the space between past, present, and future. In these poems, haunting is a kind of memory weaving that can bestow a freedom from the attenuations of the so-called American dream, which, according to Rhodes, is a nightmare of assimilation, conquest, and genocide. How love unfolds is also a Big Bang emergencTrade Review"This book—historical, mystical, fiercely alive—is a book of laments that are also geographies, words that are also figures, perforations, marks ferrying the dead, the dead who have taught this poet how to read the air, the scar, the hair. Traces of the lost in what is not lost. And (this is the thing!) the poems themselves are signals and routes. A song repeats, reminds us of our Befores as they worked toward getting free, getting us free. These poems are a part of that same long song. Spell, testimony, strategy, prayer. They flood me with courage and attention. From somewhere under the paper comes a sound: 'this is how you read. / this is how we arm you in the language. . . '" —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria"The Inheritance of Haunting honors the legacies of our dead, traces a connective tissue across suffering from the Andes to Palestine. But instead of only noticing suffering, this book is a canto 'with roots too deep to measure.' Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes's first collection is a spell that disintegrates carnivorous colonizers and locates 'the go back to where you came from when there is nowhere but here.' Rhodes transforms history into a reminder about 'how hard we fought for here, this simple morning.' Behold: 'the holy songs of trees.'" —Vickie Vértiz, author of Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut"This collection is a rumination on the memories, the violence and the acts of liberation that live in the body across generations of colonization, war, and upheaval. . . . Representing the voices of individual and collective ghosts from across Latin America, this collection asks us to account for the past and to celebrate the lives that come after." —Electric Lit"Restrepo Rhodes’s The Inheritance of Haunting stands out, at least to this reader, as an aesthetically potent and ethically rigorous work with unrivaled incantatory powers. . . . [Its] poetics are akin to a cathartically rich espiritismo séance—and, as a caribeño, I don’t use these words lightly." —The Rumpus“A brutal, but necessary, unveiling of violence and the ghosts we carry with us daily, The Inheritance of Haunting sings the unbearable and still makes a claim for survival. These are intricate poems that are odes to the women who have come before us, odes to the women who have been silenced by fear, and odes to the ‘wreckage of centuries.’ With language that is alive, inventive, sound-driven, and ricocheting with power, this is a fierce and breathtaking collection that risks calling for a great reckoning with our collective past.” — Ada Limón, author of Bright Dead ThingsTable of ContentsForeword Part 1. El Otro Lado / The Other Side 1. the past is a candle in the temple of my mouth 2. the other side (I.) 3. scar 4. all your braids like a compass will bring us home 5. all that is left 6. where it begins 7. tristeza profunda 8. heard in the yes of gods 9. she who does not feel her name beneath her feet will wander, will wander 10. if I wear my hair this way 11. imbunche 12. 1901 13. blood of la mojana 14. the flower husband 15. purgatory 16. la llorona 17. the dream in which we die together 18. heresy in our bones 19. missionary 20. prayer for the children who will be born with today’s daggers in their tomorrow eyes 21. the other side (II.) Part 2. Casi Pájaros / Almost Birds 1. dis-astre 2. when the machete will sever the ballad (memory-mourning for El Mozote) 3. fog 4. last balloon 5. eternal return 6. so far 7. the terror of clean 8. A11728 9. non-combat related incidents & other lies 10. elix/womb/house 11. what the bird has seen 12. like fish like song 13. little birds 14. onomasticon (I.) (or, I sing the names of our dead) 15. the ache on the tongue of the grieving 16. the value of sparrows 17. azan, or the call to prayer, o resistir es rezar que arrasamos el orden de arrancamiento, or when the sky opens & I am swallowed 18. ‘til the taste of free in our mouths (brown baby lullaby) 19. for the boy who went to war & came back fire, came back song 20. fishbone Endnotes Gratitude
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Splinters Are Children of Wood
Book SynopsisThe wildly unrestrained poems in Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson''s second collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, pose an increasingly desperate question about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls are shaped by the world, as well as the role myth plays in this coming of age quest. Wilson, an afakasi Samoan poet, divides the book into three sections, linking the poems in each section by titles. In this way the poems act as a continuous song, an ode, or a lament revivifying a narrative that refuses to adopt a storyline.Samoan myths and Western stories punctuate this volume in a search to reconcile identity and education. The lyrical declaration is at once an admiration of love and self-loathing. She kills herself. Resurrects herself. Kills herself again. She is also killed by the world. Resurrected. Killed again. These poems map displacement, discontent, and an increasing suspicion of the world itself, or the ways people leaTrade Review"Leia Penina Wilson has carved an epic, avant-garde, feminist spell. She calls forth the wildness of language in order to dispel the violence against––and to evoke the power of––'gurls' and women. Within the mythos of this book, we encounter 'guardian beasts,' the Samoan female warrior Nafanua, scarred/sacred bodies, a 'sharpsharp' tongue, golden cunt, and ancestral skulls. Read these poems aloud to hear its haunting 'bloodsong' emblossom the wounds of this splintered world." —Craig Santos Perez"Like the sea, this book is feral, choral, and female. The speaker bares fang and claw to dig to the source of all violences but finds there is no bottom to the violences she must unearth; drawing on her own capacity for newness as well as the ingenuity of her grandmothers, she denatures and remakes these violences, configuring shield and spear, shrapnel-epic and battle-engine. If this poetry is cannibalistic and blood-drenched, it is the trans-hemispheric, trans-historical patriarchy that it consumes with cosmic joy, growing larger and stronger as it does so. 'Vengeance! come!' she sings in self-delight. 'A poem / pigeon eaten out by rat saved you.'" —Joyelle McSweeney, author of The Necropastoral"Unbecoming is the sister wife of becoming. In Leia Penina Wilson’s Splinters are Children of Wood, the things of the world give themselves over to partiality to find a place to bear and be. As the splinter is the offspring byproduct of the wood, so Wilson’s poems put forward an ongoing, generative womanhood that is as joyous as it is terrified and angry. I’m gratified by the ultimate welcome I hear in this lovely book, and by Leia Wilson’s unwillingness to accept anything but her whole experience." —Claudia Keelan, author of We Step into the Sea: New and Selected Poems"In this stark and arresting book-length sequence, Wilson asks questions of violence, victimization, and complicity . . . with its blend of spare but powerful lines, many readers will find this an inspired effort to rally disempowered voices." —Publishers WeeklyTable of Contentsam i the world or the gurl i appear seeking revenge for the destruction of those children you must always feed from the bodies
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Splinters Are Children of Wood
Book SynopsisThe wildly unrestrained poems in Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson''s second collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, pose an increasingly desperate question about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls are shaped by the world, as well as the role myth plays in this coming of age quest. Wilson, an afakasi Samoan poet, divides the book into three sections, linking the poems in each section by titles. In this way the poems act as a continuous song, an ode, or a lament revivifying a narrative that refuses to adopt a storyline.Samoan myths and Western stories punctuate this volume in a search to reconcile identity and education. The lyrical declaration is at once an admiration of love and self-loathing. She kills herself. Resurrects herself. Kills herself again. She is also killed by the world. Resurrected. Killed again. These poems map displacement, discontent, and an increasing suspicion of the world itself, or the ways people leaTrade Review"Leia Penina Wilson has carved an epic, avant-garde, feminist spell. She calls forth the wildness of language in order to dispel the violence against––and to evoke the power of––'gurls' and women. Within the mythos of this book, we encounter 'guardian beasts,' the Samoan female warrior Nafanua, scarred/sacred bodies, a 'sharpsharp' tongue, golden cunt, and ancestral skulls. Read these poems aloud to hear its haunting 'bloodsong' emblossom the wounds of this splintered world." —Craig Santos Perez"Like the sea, this book is feral, choral, and female. The speaker bares fang and claw to dig to the source of all violences but finds there is no bottom to the violences she must unearth; drawing on her own capacity for newness as well as the ingenuity of her grandmothers, she denatures and remakes these violences, configuring shield and spear, shrapnel-epic and battle-engine. If this poetry is cannibalistic and blood-drenched, it is the trans-hemispheric, trans-historical patriarchy that it consumes with cosmic joy, growing larger and stronger as it does so. 'Vengeance! come!' she sings in self-delight. 'A poem / pigeon eaten out by rat saved you.'" —Joyelle McSweeney, author of The Necropastoral"Unbecoming is the sister wife of becoming. In Leia Penina Wilson’s Splinters are Children of Wood, the things of the world give themselves over to partiality to find a place to bear and be. As the splinter is the offspring byproduct of the wood, so Wilson’s poems put forward an ongoing, generative womanhood that is as joyous as it is terrified and angry. I’m gratified by the ultimate welcome I hear in this lovely book, and by Leia Wilson’s unwillingness to accept anything but her whole experience." —Claudia Keelan, author of We Step into the Sea: New and Selected Poems"In this stark and arresting book-length sequence, Wilson asks questions of violence, victimization, and complicity . . . with its blend of spare but powerful lines, many readers will find this an inspired effort to rally disempowered voices." —Publishers WeeklyTable of Contentsam i the world or the gurl i appear seeking revenge for the destruction of those children you must always feed from the bodies
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Stepmotherland
Book SynopsisStepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America.Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes's first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes's work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of the discovery of America, the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same.Holnes's poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their iTrade Review"From narrative poems that sing, to lyrics that make of rhythm a spell, to moving portraits, to poems that go across borders and smash those borders, Stepmotherland is a splendid debut. I love its rhapsodic, incantatory music." —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award"Stepmotherland is a procession of lines (lives), with one song facing forward and another facing back. It is a lyrical document that attends to the histories of touch out of which Holnes emerges, and so, in a language both lithe and live, the work teems with expanse and collapse, terror, tenderness, pleasure." —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria"In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes teaches us the complications of love, whether it comes in the form of romantic passion or unrequited patriotism. But this is also a view of the many permutations of manhood, all of its beauty and even its bruises—and sometimes under the makeup, we find both." —A. Van Jordan, author of The Cineaste"Stepmotherland is the brilliant and vertiginous movement of a soul from the state of innocence to experience and a remarkable and groundbreaking collection. No one who reads these stunning poems is likely to remain unmoved or unchanged by them." —Lorna Goodison, author of Supplying Salt and Light and former Poet Laureate of Jamaica“In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes moves from bilingual lines to script-like dialogue to gorgeous subversions of form in his search for a language that can properly articulate what home is. . . . This book is a kind of coming of age into brilliance.” —Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition, winner of the Pulitzer Prize“Stepmotherland is a balm. The lyrics to a melody that has always played in our heads. Holnes gives us the heartbreaking and healing song. A stunning debut.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming and winner of the National Book Award“Darrel Alejandro Holnes navigates the fraught politics of national, racial, and sexual identities with grace and wisdom beyond his years in order to locate that precarious but remarkable space that a queer Afro/Black-Latino immigrant from Panamá can call home. . . . What a unique, multivalent, and incredibly moving debut.” —Rigoberto González, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author of The Book of Ruin"In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes meditates on migration and the American dream. This collection is a satisfying book that leaves us excited for all that is to come from this poet. Revolutions always happen on rainy days, he writes, and you are left wondering: what else will he teach me?" —Yesenia Montilla, author of The Pink Box and Muse Found in a Colonized Body"Poet and playwright Holnes lights the page on fire with blazing lyrics in this crackling debut collection of poetry. Drawing on African, American, Panamanian, and Chocó heritages, Holnes cracks open the intersections between race, language, class, gender, and sex to create moving, multivalent poems that can be pithy and direct . . . but also brazenly breathtaking." —Booklist (Starred Review)"An autobiographical odyssey from Panama to Texas, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s poetry collection Stepmotherland ponders split identities through art, current events, and religion. Of African and Chocó descent, Holnes describes himself as 'Black but not black enough': a mixed-race background and queerness complicate his access to the American dream." —Foreword Reviews"Stepmotherland is a collection that sings out the power of multilingual writing; as we see in 'Af•ri•can-A•mer•i•can•ize,' this is a poet 'becoming a force forever expanding the universe.'" —Harriet Books"Holnes’s ecstatic debut transforms an immigrant’s dislocation into a newly discovered sense of belonging. Crossing borders and languages, these poems speak a truth about identity that’s more complex than mere labels can capture." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)"The term, stepmotherland, points to the lack of identity, belonging, and inclusion that the poet-speaker experiences in their native homeland and in the US. This identity problematic runs triple deep as a Black, Latin@, and (African) American in an adopted homeland that does not feel like home. Holnes beautifully accomplishes this through vivid imagery and a unique style that mixes poetic verse with poetic narrative often through a cinematographic lens and gaze." —The Latinx Project"Holnes offers a critique of quotidian melancholy of the mestizo tyrannies of a Spanish-language América that force Black people into the margins, the prisons, or onto the soccer fields. Holnes is also calling attention to the poverty of imagination that plagues mestizo artists in their inability to exalt Blackness. " —Hayden's Ferry ReviewTable of ContentsForeigner 1. When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father 2. Praise Song for My Mutilated World 3. Scenes from Operation Just Cause 4. 20 de Diciembre, 1989: When the U.S. Invades Panamá 5. When the Narcos Kidnap JuanFe 6. The Art of Diplomacy 7. Bread Pudding Grandmamma 8. Poder Inmigrante 9. Tú 10. Conception 11. How to Dream About a Woman 12. ba-by 13. Pietà by Michelangelo: Marble, 1499 14. OTM or Other Than Mexican 15. Mirror Woman 16. Marvelous Sugar Baby Citizen 17. Cristo Negro de Portobelo 18. African-Americanize 19. African Klan Suit #2 20. Ferguson, USA 21. Links 22. Ode to My Father, The Captain 23. Breaking & Entering 24. Angelitos Negros Patriot 25. The Down-Low Messiahs 26. Power Bottom 27. Vinyl 28. I Always Promised I’d Never Do Drag 29. Arroz Con Pollo 30. Joseph on Knowledge in the Biblical Sense 31. All Legs Lead to Naomi Campbell 32. Rihanna & Child 33. Naturalization 34. Black Parade 35. Homecoming Notes Acknowledgments
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Stepmotherland
Book Synopsis"In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes meditates on migration, and the American dream. He reminds us that Blackness is everywhere, persevering against erasure and violence. This collection is a satisfying and essential second book that leaves us excited for all that is to come from this poet." —Yesenia Montilla author of The Pink BoxTrade Review"From narrative poems that sing, to lyrics that make of rhythm a spell, to moving portraits, to poems that go across borders and smash those borders, Stepmotherland is a splendid debut. I love its rhapsodic, incantatory music." —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award"Stepmotherland is a procession of lines (lives), with one song facing forward and another facing back. It is a lyrical document that attends to the histories of touch out of which Holnes emerges, and so, in a language both lithe and live, the work teems with expanse and collapse, terror, tenderness, pleasure." —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria"In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes teaches us the complications of love, whether it comes in the form of romantic passion or unrequited patriotism. But this is also a view of the many permutations of manhood, all of its beauty and even its bruises—and sometimes under the makeup, we find both." —A. Van Jordan, author of The Cineaste"Stepmotherland is the brilliant and vertiginous movement of a soul from the state of innocence to experience and a remarkable and groundbreaking collection. No one who reads these stunning poems is likely to remain unmoved or unchanged by them." —Lorna Goodison, author of Supplying Salt and Light and former Poet Laureate of Jamaica“In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes moves from bilingual lines to script-like dialogue to gorgeous subversions of form in his search for a language that can properly articulate what home is. . . . This book is a kind of coming of age into brilliance.” —Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition, winner of the Pulitzer Prize“Stepmotherland is a balm. The lyrics to a melody that has always played in our heads. Holnes gives us the heartbreaking and healing song. A stunning debut.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming and winner of the National Book Award“Darrel Alejandro Holnes navigates the fraught politics of national, racial, and sexual identities with grace and wisdom beyond his years in order to locate that precarious but remarkable space that a queer Afro/Black-Latino immigrant from Panamá can call home. . . . What a unique, multivalent, and incredibly moving debut.” —Rigoberto González, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author of The Book of Ruin"In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes meditates on migration and the American dream. This collection is a satisfying book that leaves us excited for all that is to come from this poet. Revolutions always happen on rainy days, he writes, and you are left wondering: what else will he teach me?" —Yesenia Montilla, author of The Pink Box and Muse Found in a Colonized Body"Poet and playwright Holnes lights the page on fire with blazing lyrics in this crackling debut collection of poetry. Drawing on African, American, Panamanian, and Chocó heritages, Holnes cracks open the intersections between race, language, class, gender, and sex to create moving, multivalent poems that can be pithy and direct . . . but also brazenly breathtaking." —Booklist (Starred Review)"An autobiographical odyssey from Panama to Texas, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s poetry collection Stepmotherland ponders split identities through art, current events, and religion. Of African and Chocó descent, Holnes describes himself as 'Black but not black enough': a mixed-race background and queerness complicate his access to the American dream." —Foreword Reviews"Stepmotherland is a collection that sings out the power of multilingual writing; as we see in 'Af•ri•can-A•mer•i•can•ize,' this is a poet 'becoming a force forever expanding the universe.'" —Harriet Books"Holnes’s ecstatic debut transforms an immigrant’s dislocation into a newly discovered sense of belonging. Crossing borders and languages, these poems speak a truth about identity that’s more complex than mere labels can capture." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)"The term, stepmotherland, points to the lack of identity, belonging, and inclusion that the poet-speaker experiences in their native homeland and in the US. This identity problematic runs triple deep as a Black, Latin@, and (African) American in an adopted homeland that does not feel like home. Holnes beautifully accomplishes this through vivid imagery and a unique style that mixes poetic verse with poetic narrative often through a cinematographic lens and gaze." —The Latinx Project"Holnes offers a critique of quotidian melancholy of the mestizo tyrannies of a Spanish-language América that force Black people into the margins, the prisons, or onto the soccer fields. Holnes is also calling attention to the poverty of imagination that plagues mestizo artists in their inability to exalt Blackness. " —Hayden's Ferry ReviewTable of ContentsForeigner 1. When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father 2. Praise Song for My Mutilated World 3. Scenes from Operation Just Cause 4. 20 de Diciembre, 1989: When the U.S. Invades Panamá 5. When the Narcos Kidnap JuanFe 6. The Art of Diplomacy 7. Bread Pudding Grandmamma 8. Poder Inmigrante 9. Tú 10. Conception 11. How to Dream About a Woman 12. ba-by 13. Pietà by Michelangelo: Marble, 1499 14. OTM or Other Than Mexican 15. Mirror Woman 16. Marvelous Sugar Baby Citizen 17. Cristo Negro de Portobelo 18. African-Americanize 19. African Klan Suit #2 20. Ferguson, USA 21. Links 22. Ode to My Father, The Captain 23. Breaking & Entering 24. Angelitos Negros Patriot 25. The Down-Low Messiahs 26. Power Bottom 27. Vinyl 28. I Always Promised I’d Never Do Drag 29. Arroz Con Pollo 30. Joseph on Knowledge in the Biblical Sense 31. All Legs Lead to Naomi Campbell 32. Rihanna & Child 33. Naturalization 34. Black Parade 35. Homecoming Notes Acknowledgments
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press Buland AlHaidari and Modern Iraqi Poetry
Book SynopsisIn this brilliant book, ?Abdulwa?id Lu'lu'a translates and introduces eighty poems from one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry, Buland Al-?aidari.Buland Al-?aidari might fairly be considered the fourth pillar holding up the dome of modern Arabic poetry. Alongside his famous contemporaries Nazik al-Mala''ika, Badre Shakir Al-Sayyab, and Abdulwahhab Al-Bayyati, Al-?aidari likewise made significant contributions to the development of twentieth-century Arabic poetry, including the departure from the traditional use of two-hemistich verses in favor of what has been called the Arabic free verse form.A few of Al-?aidari's poems have been translated into English separately, but no book-length translation of his poetry has been published until now. In Buland Al-?aidari and Modern Iraqi Poetry, ?Abdulwa?id Lu'lu'a translates eighty of Al-?aidari's most important poems, giving English-speaking readers access to this rich corpus. Lu'lu'a's perceptive introductioTrade Review“Long overdue, this highly competent translation fills a major gap in our understanding of Arab literary history. No Middle East studies collection will be complete without it.” —Hussein N. Kadhim, author of The Poetics of Anti-Colonialism in the Arabic QaṣīdahTable of ContentsFrom Clay Throb (1947) 1. Semiramis 2. Autumn Echo 3. Whimper 4. Dreaming Silence 5. Boredom 6. Clay Throb 7. Shades 8. Closed Lips From Songs of the Dead City (1951) 9. Barrenness 10. Depths 11. Postman 12. Image 13. Three Signs 14. The Hypocritical Wound 15. At Night 16. Here You Are 17. Roads 18. Old Age 19. Dream 20. An Old Love 21. Slavery 22. O My Friend 23. Deceit 24. Lost Step 25. Loss 26. Where To From Steps in Exile (1965) 27. Secret 28. Old Image 29. Judahs’ Repentance 30. You Came with the Dawn 31. Bitter Land 32. I Want To 33. Tomorrow Here 34. And Tomorrow I Return 35. He Said Something to Us 36. Return to Hiroshima 37. In a Few Hours 38. A Talk for Next Saturday 39. The Eighth Journey 40. At Forty 41. To My Town 42. Steps in Exile From The Journey of Yellow Letters (1968) 43. To a Negro from Alabama 44. Disappointment of the Man of the Past 45. Desolation 46. Genesis 47. Dreaming of Return 48. Two Faces 49. Message of the Small Man 50. The Paling Salt 51. Age of Rubber Stamps 52. I Wish If 53. Short Laugh 54. The Waiting Sails 55. Suffocation 56. Call of a Nation 57. Dream of the Snow 58. At the Crossroads 59. A Child of the First War 60. Night, Cold and Wardens 61. Journey of the Yellow Letters From Songs of the Tired Guard 62. Sleeping Pills 63. Indicted, Though Innocent 64. A Call for Stupor 65. A Dream in Four Scenes 66. Expulsion 67. The Killed Witness 68. Apology 69. Between Two Points 70. Dialogue in the Bend 71. Confessions from 1961 72. Hey… You are Indicted 73. Dialogue in Three Dimensions 74. Procession of the Seven Sins 75. Call of the Seven Sins 76. Stolen Frontiers 77. Sindbad’s Eighth Journey 78. On the Verge of the Fallen World 79. Two Voices Late at Night 80. I’ll Stay Here
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£999.99
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisThe Rivers Are Inside Our Homes handles themes of loss and exile, aging generations, fable and fairy tale, marriage and hurt, with the island of Cuba at its heart.These incandescent poems by Cuban American poet Victoria María Castells explore how we can salvage our notion of paradise in an overspent Eden. In thwarted homes located in Havana and Miami, Rapunzel and her prince, persecuted nymphs, Morgause, and Bluebeard's wife speak to us directly, all in need of returning to safety. Confronting machismo, illness, heartbreak, and isolation, the poems depict how women are at the mercy of men, either husband or oligarch. Yet all generations of Cubans are bombarded with this need to return or to leave, to have both, to have neither.Meanwhile, hurricane seasons add further instability to shelter and family, growing fiercer every year. Exile and displacement are accepted as permanent conditions. Latin America will mirror Cuba's violent struggles as conquered lanTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£999.99
University of Texas Press Gondals Queen
Book Synopsis In Gondal’s Queen, Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford presents a cycle of eighty-four poems by Emily Jane Brontë, for the first time arranged in logical sequence, to re-create the “novel in verse” which Emily wrote about their beloved mystical kingdom of Gondal and its ruler, Augusta Geraldine Almeda, who brought tragedy to those who loved her. Thanks to previous publications by Ratchford, the imaginative world of Gondal is well known not only to Brontë scholars but also to general readers. Only in the present book, however, with Emily’s lovely poems restored to the setting which gave them being, can the full impact of this extraordinary literary creation be realized. The life story of Gondal’s Queen, from portentous birth to tragic death, is set in a world compounded of dark Gothic romance and Byronic extravagance; yet out of it emerges not only a real country of wild moor sheep and piercingly beautiful nights but also the porTable of Contents Introduction The Argument Dramatis Personae Geographical Background Chapter I: The Birth of a Princess Chapter II: Love Dawns Chapter III: Alexander, Lord of Elbë Chapter IV: The Lady of Aspin Castle Chapter V: Julius Again Chapter VI: Conquest Chapter VII: Revenge Chapter VIII: Crumbling of an Empire Chapter IX: The Fugitive Chapter X: Fifteen Wild Decembers Chapter XI: Fernando De Samara Chapter XII: The Death of a Queen Appendix I: Emily Brontë’s Poems Pertaining to the Republican-Royalist War in Gondal Appendix II: Emily and Anne Brontë’s Prose Notes Index of First Lines General Index
£17.99
University of Washington Press Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today, Kwasny explores [the soul] like she's a hundred Wallace Stevenses looking at a blackbird (if the blackbird was a soul) and the result is a book that gives ‘soul’ the kind of in-depth attention it's needed, in a way that feels fresh and specific and full. . . . This is a collection that butts up against the idea that the soul is a pure, untarnished entity fit only for some afterlife in a heaven away from earth. It's also a collection about human limitations. The soul portrayed here is beautiful and messy, and our perception of it can't really ever be separated from the bodies we live in." -- Erika Fredrickson * Missoula Independent *Table of ContentsContents The Hide and Skin Handbook 1. The Deer People 2. Another Letter to the Soul 3. The Blue Heron People 4. Another Letter to the Soul 5. The Hawk People 6. Another Letter to the Soul 7. The Creek People 8. Another Letter to the Soul Notes and Acknowledgments About the Author
£999.99
University of Washington Press Republic Café
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Arguably his finest work. . . Republic Café seems effortlessly ambitious in scope. Biespiel explores broad, overarching themes that few poets are willing to meet head on today. Though the story background is horrific, the poem is hopeful. . . . It reminds us that love is key to our survival and that forgiveness is a requirement, not an option. Republic Café is the graceful and moving work of a poet at the top of his game. It should be part of your permanent library." * Plume *"David Biespiel’s sixth and latest book of poems, Republic Café, should be within your reach as soon as you can make it happen. The book shouldn’t be placed in between others on your bookshelf or in your 'books to read' pile. Republic Café should be where you can reach it so it can open its door for you, seat you immediately, and begin giving you what you didn’t know you could order or hunger for." * The Rumpus *"Eloquent and personal, beautiful and wrenching, these poems mine deeply the nature of love, violence, and memory, drawing you into a world of evil and pain but also touch, healing, and love...Not to be missed." * Library Journal *"Biespiel's voice truly soars. . . .Throughout the course of the collection, [he] weaves a narrative, of lovers whose lives are full of foliage and feeling before being ripped apart by history." * Willamette Week *"Republic Café calls the liminal space we straddle in times of crisis home, out of necessity as well as courage." * Colorado Review *
£999.99
University of Washington Press The Grief of a Happy Life
Book SynopsisIn Christopher Howell's twelfth collection of poems, his gifts for elegy, humor, and lyricism are on full display. The Grief of a Happy Life explores the interplay between memory and imagination, celebrating the ways that happiness and grief inform one another and give our lives fullness and vitality. Arranged in four sections, Howell's poems feature not only these concerns, but a large and various cast of characters as well. Aeneas, Saint Theresa, Ovid, Kierkegaard, a German submarine, and so much more are woven together with Howell's trademark precision and accessibility into exquisite tableaux, each providing a view of both what we must live with and what we must not live without.
£999.99
University of Washington Press Awake in the River and Shedding Silence
Book Synopsis
£25.32
University of Washington Press The Lives of the Saints
Book SynopsisThe lives of the saints take place all around us, under us, so much of the earth they seethe in it. This book brings the author's voice to the meditative tradition. It presents poems that trace the spiritual inquiries of a series of linked personae adrift in bodies and a world made toxic by the residues of scientific experimentation.Trade Review"The beauty of this work lies in its intricate interweaving of medieval voices with modern voices, of ancient times with our times, of archetypal story with news story. This is no loose batch of poems, but a single work made from interrelated poems. The multi-voiced chorus recites—in soul-shuddering and very real terms—the terrors of our own times." * Women's Review of Books *"The richness of The Lives of the Saints eludes description..At its best, what [it] is about is the breaking of one realm into another, and this it exemplifies with rare intelligence and a language as passionate and clear as lived faith once must have been." * Water-Stone *"A definite must for anyone interested in interwoven styles and themes, not to mention carefully crafted poems that resonate with not only great beauty but power and wit as well..Paola's poems deserve to be admired: a good book to hide inside the torn-off cover of a hymnal while at church." * The Adirondack Review *"Suzanne Paola's collection reveals an amazing mind. Her words flow in their own directions, bringing insight, taking us on arcane journeys to familiar places suddenly redolent with new understanding. This is devotional poetry of a new sort." * Salem Statesman-Journal *Table of ContentsPrologue The Lives of the Saints The First Letter of St. Paul to the Clones Blessed Ludovica Albertoni The Second Letter of St. Paul on the Human Genome Project Patient 6 The First Letter of St. Paul to the Columbines Caterinati The Third Letter of St. Paul at the Playground The Lives of the Saints II; Rosette The First Letter of St. Paul in the Homogocene Notes Acknowledgments
£20.13
University of Washington Press The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608
Book SynopsisThe Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608 is one of the Folger Shakespeare Library's greatest treasures. This book features the facsimile of the entire manuscript to celebrate Folger Shakespeare Library's 75th anniversary in 2007.Trade ReviewThe Trevelyon Miscellany, a vivid and imposing witness itself, complete apart from a few missing leaves, is a ready guide . . . . the largest collection of the words and images that meant most, not to an ideal, but an average Elizabethan, all the more important because in no way exceptional. Thomas Trevilian is only remarkable for the extraordinary pertinacity with which he pursued and got all the graphic images around him and the single-minded devotion that he bestowed on copying them, together with appropriate words. As a window on his mind, rather than on the events around him, however, it is ideal. * The Book Collector *Table of ContentsForeword and Acknowledgments, 6 Introduction, 7Trevelyon's sources, 16Trevelyon's stock images, 22Visual index, 25Cross-reference index to the great book, 49First-line index to verse, 51Cross-reference index to J.L. Nevinson's catalogue of patterns and motifs, 53Scripture index, 54Subject index, 56Iconography index, 58The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608: A Facsimile, 61
£999.99
University of Washington Press The Book of Men and Women
Book SynopsisA collection of contemporary poetry showcasing a 'true poetic innovator' at the very top of his formTrade Review"Biespiel is a true poetic innovator." * The Portland Mercury *"Biespiel has a gift for transformation . . . he can make a command sound like an incantation. He can create psalm—like beauty from the repetition of a simple phrase . . . one must note the instances of raw brilliance." * Chelsea *"[Biespiel] writes with a belief in the redemptive powers of poetry." * Choice *"When David Biespiel tempers his 'bared teeth' voice with a commitment to the things, and not just the atmospheres, of this world, he can register sharp portraits of people, in relationships and alone, in all their bitter, beautiful want." * Poetry Magazine *"Biespiel's debut collection is sustained by a search for transcendent, intuitive truths." * Publisher's Weekly *"In his book about regret, longing, and loss, Biespiel explores the intricacies of relationships between men and women in settings both real and imaginary." * The Poetry Foundation *Table of ContentsEvening Watch 1 Genesis 12 Poet at Forty Though Your Sins Be Scarlet The Ex-Lovers Close Down the Hawthorne Boulevard Bars on the 1000th Night of the War Embouchure Kohain The Sleeping Beauty Dover Butch Citizen Dave Tale Bearer 2 Mississippi God Damn Richard Hugo Old Adam Outside the Wall of Eden Genesis 27 Overcast William Clark’s Sonnets Ezra Pound Bad Marriages Luke’s Ukulele P.O.E.M. Mass Man 3 The Husband’s Tale The Wife’s Tale The Wife’s Tale (II) The Crooner Prudery Lust A Cloud of Crows Engine Man Little Crow Rag and Bone Man 4 Man and Wife Bloom and Decay The Hummingbird Bathsheba Psalm 51 The Green Bed Banished Marvel Secret Ovid in Exile Dissolution in Winter O’Bryant Square The Theory of Hats Acknowledgments About the Poet A Note on the Type
£20.13
University of Washington Press Dreamless and Possible
Book SynopsisA generous volume of new and selected poems by Christopher Howell encompassing three decades of his distinguished workTrade Review". . . gleans the Spokane resident's best work from eight books and his haunting new work." -- Mike Dillon * City Living *"There are stable frames of reference in his poems, but he's good for a substantial surprise almost every time….Those who seek Howell's book out will find a poet who over time has grown more and more comfortable with surprising word choices, comparisons, and lists. He's so sure the force of his narratives will carry the reader through to the end, so sure the feelings that come through in his poems are real and undeniable, he can risk what looks at first like irrelevance…." * Constant Critic *"Over the last three decades, Howell's poetry has deepened yet lost none of its quicksilver movement where the quotidian and eternal play tag." * City Living *
£20.13
University of Washington Press Second Nature
Book SynopsisA passionate and energetic collection from a nationaly recognized poetTrade Review"Much of Second Nature is written in what Witte calls 'whiplash triplets,' minimally punctuated, heavily enjambed three-line stanzas, in which each successive line lengthens. The form demands that we follow syntax closely, keeping us awake to language. It also allows Witte great freedom to switch topic and location. Juxtapositions go unannounced; phrases and images simply run together. Witte counts on us to experience the friction . . . . the light-hand is apiece with Witte's calm intelligence. This generous, humble collection sings about our joy, but neither naively nor 'too loud.' ." * The Antioch Review *"Using skilled and expert verse to explain his views of the world, human nature, and history, his message is optimistic and uplifting, as well as poignant and powerful." * Midwest Book Review *"[A] resonant collection of poems from a life closely observed. . . . [the] eighth volume in the excellent Pacific Northwest Poetry Series." * Seattle Post-Intelligencer *
£20.13
University of Washington Press Charming Gardeners
Book SynopsisTrade Review"These are lengthy, traveling poems that talk and click along like a train (though most of the travel is by plane), engines full of breath. It’s an encyclopedic book, chock-full of references of every kind, both personal and general . . . a book that strikes out to find America." -- Joe Linker * The Coming of the Toads *"David Biespiel‘s Charming Gardeners is unlike any book I’ve read in a long time. Filled with epistolary poems, his book – despite being populated by the poet’s friends and family – is actually a work of great loneliness. In many ways, Biespiel’s journey is America’s, where the road is both a symbol of arrivals, but also departures, and in between is solitude." -- John Ebersole * New Books in Poetry *"[This] incandescent collection grabs hold of and portrays the ghosts of history, family, and place that captivate the poet." -- Susan Seligson * Bostonia *Table of ContentsTo from the Jewish Cemetery in Williamson, West Virginia To Wendy from Yellow Hickory To Plumly from Lummi Island To Hugo from SoDo To Biespiel from Schul To Wiman from Walla Walla To Keller from Skamania Lodge To Ruest from Winston-Salem To Gifford from Kiowa County To Bierds from the Cannery Pier Hotel To Ansel from the Hotel Andra To Di Piero from Dufur To Farnsworth from Bar Avignon To Collier from United Flight 304 To Buckley from Berkeley To Conda from Anaconda To Wendy from the Gershwin Hotel To Smith from Northampton To Snyder from the Blue Scorcher Café To Sylvester from Terminal B To Gifford from United Flight 308 To C. D. from D.C. To Unrau from Union To Lenney from the Greenbrier Hotel To Biespiel from United Flight 1037 To Luke from United Flight 251 To Wendy from the Crow’s Nest Postscript Acknowledgments About the Author
£20.13
University of Washington Press Vagrants Accidentals
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The University of Washington Press’ Pacific Northwest Poetry Series has shepherded a gorgeous new collection of Craft’s poetry into being: Vagrants & Accidentals, which feels like a book that’s been bottled up for a decade, just waiting to be introduced to an unsuspecting world. The poetry in Vagrants is eager and obsessed with big ideas like evolution and the act of becoming. . . . Craft argues that without the eyes to see and the lips to speak and the fingers to write, the world may as well not have existed at all. On that same wavelength, a Seattle without Craft’s poetry in it would be a forgettable dot on a map. He breathes life into our world, as an editor, a publisher, and most definitely as a poet." -- Paul Constant * Seattle Review of Books *Table of ContentsPart One 1. Vagrants 2. Borders without Doctors 3. The Descent 4. Carousel 5. The Changeling 6. Among the Cypresses (23 Remedies) 7. After Caravaggio 8. Carbon Copy 9. Utilitarianism 10. Cycladic Head 11. Les Calanques 12. The Weir 13. Wilson’s Warbler Part Two 1. Matinee 2. Untitled #10 3. Parents 4. The Beardsley Limner 5. Small Government 6. Flash Drive 7. For the Climbers 8. Skunk Cabbage 9. Not Waving but Growling 10. God: A Study 11. On a Friday 12. Finesse Part Three 1. Transparency 2. Linear A 3. Persona Non Grata 4. On Turning 38 in Rome 5. New Volunteer at the Art Museum 6. Nisqually Delta 7. Lignum Vitae 8. Linear B 9. Carmen Saeculare 10. Parakeets in Rome 11. The Quagmire 12. Bivalve Lullaby 13. Low Hanging Fruit Part Four 1. Old Paradox 2. Accidentals 3. Entanglement (Sombrero) 4. Core Sample 5. Therefore Wander 6. Entanglement (Satellite) 7. Pigeon Guillemots 8. The Break 9. House Finch in Bird Bath 10. An Illustrated Guide to Feathers 11. Hard Return 12. The Undertow 13. One Atmosphere
£999.99
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin The Poetry of Capital Voices from TwentyFirstCentury America
Book SynopsisWhat do we talk about when we talk about money? As the forty-four poets in this brilliant new anthology show, the answer is everything. From the impact of global economic crises to local tag sales, to sweatshops where our clothes are produced to the malls where they are sold, this volume gets to the heart of Americans' relationships to capital.Trade ReviewFresh, memorable, original. The coeditors have constructed a meaningful and timely anthology that, in significant ways, gathers together a range of poems about money and class structures in America."" - Judith Vollmer""Money may be, as Denise Duhamel notes in her mini-essay, one of the last taboo subjects in the arts as well as in polite company, but that's exactly what the forty-four diverse and wide-ranging contemporary American poets in this wonderful anthology so memorably explore - if by 'money' you mean everything in our increasingly stressed and stressful capitalist society that money informs. There's an embarrassment of riches here. You can bank on it."" - Ronald Wallace
£18.36
Yale University Press Yvain The Knight of the Lion Chretien de Troyes
Book SynopsisA twelfth-century poem by the creator of the Arthurian romance describes the courageous exploits and triumphs of a brave lord who tries to win back his deserted wife's love.Trade Review"A masterpiece on the conflict between romantic love and knightly duty. . . . An excellent introduction to the poet and to his aesthetic and moral sensibilities."—Library Journal"The translation reads with remarkable fluidity in English and succeeds better than any other I know in evoking the rapid rhythms, the changing moods, and lively colloquialness of the original. For all its poetic merits, R.'s translation remains remarkably faithful to Chrétien's text. . . . R.'s poetic rendition, reasonably priced, beautifully reproduced, and delightful to read, should awaken a great many modern readers to the marvels of Chrétien's world."—William W. Kibler, Romance Philology"The mystery and excitement of early French romance are epitomized in Yvain. In this fine translation the rendering of the speech-like quality of Old French verse provides an accurate sense of the original, while the rhythmic variation continually pulls one's attention toward the narrative itself in all its enigmatic charm."—Stephen G. Nichols"To enable us to share in the pleasure of Yvain, we now have the lively and colloquial rendering of Burton Raffel. It is an effective intermediary between Chre'tien and us, one that is faithful to the tenor of the romance but embodied in unaffected contemporary English, free of all traces of stiltedness and archaicism."—Joseph J. Duggan, from the Afterword
£22.50
Yale University Press Ovid
Book Synopsis
£22.50
Yale University Press Lancelot
Book SynopsisThis translation of "Lancelot" brings to English-language readers, the fourth of Chretien's five surviving romantic Arthurian poems. This poem was the first to introduce Lancelot as an important figure in the King Arthur legend.
£20.00
Yale University Press Eruv Yale Series of Younger Poets
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2013 Yale Series of Younger Poets prizeTrade ReviewI am standing on the freeway and cars move by like drunk panthers I am loved again like there was future again— —from “Sounds (Second Walk)”“In American character, there is an interval between Vision and Prophecy, during which time the deepest poems first find themselves aloud. Eryn Green literally phases that interval straight across spellbound pages. These poems show character alight. They show a continent its names.”—Donald Revell, author of Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems“Make the whole neighborhood your house, and then allow the wholeness of the universe to become your shining shelter. Eryn Green’s poetic brilliance extends our sense of home, of our being at home in the universe.”—Bin Ramke, author of Aerial“These poems, filled with and discharging light, are open-voiced trajectories tracing the energy fields that extend around the human figure. They are the lighted path not to the exit but to the opening door, their motion the very figure of outward—alive, in love, moving through the passageway with the hope of the lyric. We don’t come to our senses, but to the open-hearted word bursting out toward the world.”—Eleni Sikelianos, author of The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead
£13.99
WW Norton & Co The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons
Book Synopsis“One of the great American poets . . . he sounds like nobody else.”—Helen VendlerTrade Review"It’s a rocking double-wide mobile home of electric American verse." -- International New York Times
£35.99
WW Norton & Co Poets of the Bible
Book SynopsisThe vividness and beauty of the language emerge in a fresh way... with evocative simplicity.Robert AlterTrade Review"...fascinating new volume..." -- Herald Scotland
£25.19
WW Norton & Co A Strangers Mirror
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the National Book Award.Trade Review"Stands as a textured but unified testament to [Hacker's] output over the past two decades." -- Publishers Weekly "[Hacker] remains an undisputed master of formal verse... one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today. No other poet manages the casual pyrotechnics she accomplishes in form." -- Carol Muske-Duke - Los Angeles Times
£22.79
WW Norton & Co Roll Deep
Book SynopsisThis breakthrough volume appropriates the vernacular notion of “rolling deep” to explore human intimacy and war.Trade Review"Devastatingly effective...lushly memorable." -- Washington Post"Extraordinary...Jackson has created a new poetry of praise." -- San Francisco Chronicle"A remixed Odyssey whose speaker 'rolls deep'...far from home by staying true to where he's from." -- New York Times Book Review"Major Jackson wants art to ‘Blow / back the ordinary / jive of planet Earth,’ and his new poems roil and buckle, skitter and swerve, clot and spill out into the world. Roll Deep is his fourth and best book; his voice seems to have broken loose, allowing for all manner of praise and lament, for observation and meditation, the grim and the goofball, and for outbreaks of pure sorcery, where ‘punctuation is my jury and the moon is my judge.’" -- Mark Doty"Major Jackson’s fourth collection of poetry, Roll Deep, juxtaposes the physical and the metaphysical, the external and the internal where the landscape and the mind of the poet converge until time bends. The imagery travels through a timely multiplicity, always surefooted and attuned, but never outdistancing the natural truth in this cosmopolitan voice. The poet writes the world he encounters, and imagines, with playfully deep interplay. The music in the language of Roll Deep is seductively straightforward, and each body-brain poem here puts genius squarely on the line." -- Yusef Komunyakaa
£18.99
WW Norton & Co Entering History
Book SynopsisLyrical narratives that chronicle a long marriage, rich with wit, dark irony, and poignancy.Trade Review"I’ve read, loved, admired, enjoyed, and was generally knocked out by Entering History. [Hammond] is sui generis as a writer. [The poems] fit in no school, are not summable up, have more wit and candor and sheer nerve than a dozen others. [The] comic turns scour our pretensions; some of the poems are harrowing, always revelatory, incredibly smart, and finally cathartic." -- Eleanor Wilner"The poems seem both vast and focused or intimate… ‘There’s nothing special about being a poet,’ the poet says, but there’s lots special about poetry that’s alert to the secret vibrations of contemporary life… These terrifying and glorious poems brim with proof of the powers of the poet’s transfiguring imagination." -- Henri Cole"A beautifully readable book. Intelligence permeates each phrase; [Hammond’s] language is alive to corruptions and multiplicities of sense… Her wit is an instrument of moral intelligence." -- Rosanna Warren
£19.94
WW Norton & Co Square Inch Hours
Book SynopsisA vividly rendered collection tracing the aftermath of a breakdown and the struggle to reconnect with the realities of daily life.Trade Review"Subtle, reflective. . . . These diorama-like texts, which locate a range of human feelings in the sundry details of the everyday, are something of a contemporary Book of Disquiet." -- Publishers Weekly"In Square Inch Hours Sherod Santos brilliantly negotiates the provinces of poetry and prose, of imagination and memoir, in devastating documents that range from fragments to sustained prose sequences. These are the lyrics of breakdown—of shock and aftershock—in coming face-to-face with dread and the depths of one’s own soul. At times piercing, at times as if anesthetized, Santos’s new work approaches the truths of love, death, family, sorrow. . . . As enigmatic as Borges, and beautiful in a way only Santos can be." -- David Baker"This is an immense book. Read its calm, its deeply crafted poise, in a single sitting, and you’ll finish absolutely breathless. Read it again, slowly, over a longer period of time, meditatively, and vistas will burst open. In distress, in disruption, in damage, out of elegy, there is renewal. I have never read a work quite like it, and every time I come up with a literary comparison, I realize it doesn’t hold, because Sherod Santos has produced a work entirely unique, in which literary, philosophical, and filmic references exist as extensions of the moment. These prose poems and aphorisms, these lyrical narratives, unfold exponentially. This truly is a work much greater than the sum of any parts. Stunning." -- John Kinsella"There are seraphim and scars, fog and Fellini in this brilliant collection, where the incisive, rhythmic imagery of poetry meets the depth and narrative of fiction. Every page evokes and invites the reader to see more clearly, to imagine more wildly, to read and to breathe more deeply." -- Amy Bloom"This is a book of observation, a catalog of urban surfaces and psychological detachment—as if suddenly Camus’s Stranger started to walk in the Chicago streets. Sherod Santos’s brilliant literary experiment." -- Adam Zagajewski
£19.94
WW Norton & Co Collected Poems
Book SynopsisThe collected works of Adrienne Rich, “one of the most influential and political American poets of the last century” (The Guardian).Trade Review"Poetry, like Adrienne Rich’s – in her Collected Poems... can awaken us to the kinds of deeper truths that are unsayable in prose..." -- Laura Elkin, Best Books of 2016 - The Guardian"The book is a fascinating document of shifts in style, swerves in perspective that never, for all that, touch or compromise the integrity of an essential poet." -- Eavan Boland, Our Favourite Books of 2016 - The Irish Times
£58.49
WW Norton & Co Grace Notes Poems
Book SynopsisWith this her fourth book of poems, Rita Dove expands her role as a leading voice in contemporary American letters.Trade Review"What will impress readers most about Grace Notes is [Dove's] craftsmanship, the richness of her imagery, the delicacy and sureness of her ear. She is moving steadily toward an absolute mastery of her art."
£12.82
WW Norton & Co Mother Love
Book SynopsisCalling upon the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, Mother Love examines the love between mother and daughter, two tumblers locked in an eternal somersault: each mother a daughter, each daughter a potential mother.Trade Review"This volume shows Dove—Pulitzer Prize winner, novelist, and 1993-95 U.S. Poet Laureate—at the height of her poetic powers." -- Publishers Weekly"Mother Love is an unsparing book. . . . Rita Dove's laser glance exposes and cauterizes its subjects in new and disturbing ways." -- Helen Vendler - The New Yorker
£12.34
