Death, fame, art, and religion become comic subjects in "Twenty First Century Blues, "the fourth collection from Richard Cecil.""Whether elegizing his predecessors, predicting his own end, channeling Dickinson s corpse-eye-view of stony death, or imagining Yeats living in Indiana and dealing with English department politics, Cecil tempers his morbidity with a straightforward, tender brand of humor and a refreshing honesty about the shelf life of contemporary poetry. Deadpan and dark, yet pulsing with the spirit of life, these poems speak of historic France, Italy, and Switzerland, where...
Death, fame, art, and religion become comic subjects in "Twenty First Century Blues, "the fourth collection from Richard Cecil.""Whether elegizing ...
In her first collection of poems, Kansas native Amy Fleury captures images of dragging clotheslines, baked lawns, and sweet potato babies, inserting them with an earnest dignity into her stories of midwestern life. Beautiful Trouble explores the subtleties of landscape, place, families, girlhood, womanhood, and everyday existence on the prairie. Fleury writes of the Midwest with authenticity, speaks of romance with delicate allure, and recalls the heartbreak of childhood without self-pity. In meditations on resilience and life's contradictions, Fleury engages her characters fully and...
In her first collection of poems, Kansas native Amy Fleury captures images of dragging clotheslines, baked lawns, and sweet potato babies, inserting t...
Running the gamut from traditional to radical forms, Timothy Liu s sixth collection of poems, "For Dust Thou Art," continues the trajectory of his previous books but extends his lyrical range. The centerpiece of the volume s tripartite structure is a meditation on the events surrounding 9/11 and its aftermath. In his poems, Liu explores what a twenty-first century American poetry of witness might look like and protests the charge that the poetic generation to which Liu belongs is stymied by a kind of jaded amorality. Whether taking on public spectacle or contemplating the fallout of a...
Running the gamut from traditional to radical forms, Timothy Liu s sixth collection of poems, "For Dust Thou Art," continues the trajectory of his ...
"Roam" explores the loss of a parent to cancer and the resulting uprootedness that loss can create. In searching for a sense of home and belonging, this collection of free verse looks both inward and outward, to landscapes rural and urban, and speaks in haunting and musical lyrics. Unexpected voices emerge from history and myththose of Joan of Arc, Ophelia, Circe, Daedalus and Icarus, and Achilles mother, Thetisand mingle with the author s own voice. From the naming of the first woman, Eve, to the naming of the first European child born in the Americas, Virginia Dare, these characters seek...
"Roam" explores the loss of a parent to cancer and the resulting uprootedness that loss can create. In searching for a sense of home and belonging,...
"Always Danger" offers a lyrical and highly imaginative exploration into the hazards that surround people s liveswhether it s violence, war, mental illness, car accidents, or the fury of Mother Nature. In his second collection of poems, David Hernandez embraces the element of surprise: a soldier takes refuge inside a hollowed-out horse, a man bullies a mountain, and a giant pink donut sponsors age-old questions about beliefs. Hernandez typically eschews the politics that often surround the inner circle of contemporary literature, but in this volume he quietly sings a few bars with a...
"Always Danger" offers a lyrical and highly imaginative exploration into the hazards that surround people s liveswhether it s violence, war, mental...
In works whose subjects range from the religious to the carnal, the whimsical to the foreboding, Jennifer Maier s debut collection of poems, "Dark Alphabet, "explores the everyday mysteries of our common experience with humor, lucidity, and an unblinking yet compassionate eye. Whether occasioned by a song overheard on the car radio, a packet of risque postcards from the 1920's, a conversation with a dead parent, or the behavior of ducks in mating season, each poem sets off on a journey that ranges far from its origins, arriving with the reader in a clearing at dusk, in a place of wise good...
In works whose subjects range from the religious to the carnal, the whimsical to the foreboding, Jennifer Maier s debut collection of poems, "Dark Alp...
In her third book of poems, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers expresses her familiarity with the actual and imaginary spaces that the American South occupies in our cultural lexicon. Her two earlier books of poetry, The Gospel of Barbecue and Outlandish Blues, use the blues poetic to explore notions of history and trauma. Now, in Red Clay Suite, Jeffersapproaches the southern landscape as utopia and dystopia--a crossroads of race, gender, and blood. These poems signal the ending movement of her crossroads blues and complete the last four "bars" of a blues song, resting on...
In her third book of poems, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers expresses her familiarity with the actual and imaginary spaces that the American South occupies in...
"If No Moon" by award-winning author Moira Linehan documents the effects of profound loss and the dark withdrawal into grief. Wherever the author turns the landscape of her backyard in Massachusetts, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, the museums of Florence, or the cliffs of Inishmor in Ireland she sees only the geography of emptiness. Crossovers between craft and art, form and voice, knitting and memory, recur throughout the poems. Lying within the tradition of narrative poetry, elegy, and the lyric, the collection reveals the mysterious journey of return. Coming full circle to find again...
"If No Moon" by award-winning author Moira Linehan documents the effects of profound loss and the dark withdrawal into grief. Wherever the author turn...
Furious Lullaby is both a celebration of and a eulogy to the body in the twenty-first century. The collection, which examines the larger concepts of salvation and temptation in a world of blossoming strife, includes a series of aubades dramatic poems culminating with the separation of lovers at dawn. The lovers suffer a metaphysical crisis, seeking to know what is good, what is evil, and how to truly know the difference. Knowing, however, invites the terrible into their world. The Devil, a seductive trickster, haunts the landscape as a voice who dares each inquisitor to learn about...
Furious Lullaby is both a celebration of and a eulogy to the body in the twenty-first century. The collection, which examines the larger concep...
In "Cinema Muto," Jesse Lee Kercheval examines the enduring themes of time, mortality, and love as revealed through the power of silent film. Following the ten days of the annual "Le Giornate del Cinema Muto" in Italy, this collection of ekphrastic poems are love letters to the evocative power of silent cinema. Kercheval s poems elegantly capture the allure of these rare films, which compel hundreds of pilgrims from around the world from scholars and archivists, to artists and connoisseurs to flock to Italy each autumn. "Cinema Muto "celebrates the flickering tales of madness and...
In "Cinema Muto," Jesse Lee Kercheval examines the enduring themes of time, mortality, and love as revealed through the power of silent film. Follo...
