Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers. Its two central sections--which could be called song cycles--confront the same subject: the black man in America.

The first, which carries the book's title, deals with the vision of the black man in white imagination. Narrated largely by the black kidnapper that Susan Smith invented to cover up the killing of her two sons, the cycle displays all of Mr. Eady's range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, and the way in which he combines the subtle with the charged, street...

Victims of the Latest Dance Craze was the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, an award given for an American poet's second book.

Cornelius Eady's new poems show him in full control of his considerable talents and displaying a rich maturity as he enters midlife. His poems are sly, unsentimental, and witty, full of truths that are intimate and profound.

Hardheaded Weather ranges widely, reflecting the newfound responsibilities Eady has assumed as he transitions from urban renter to nonplussed rural homeowner, as well as the sobering influence of war and the intimation of his own mortality. Yet even at his angriest, the poet has always had a depth of compassion rare in our polarized age, with a sense of humor...

Things That No Longer Delight Me is a collection of poems about family and memory. This book is filled with objects. The author writes: I like objects for company, to decorate the plainest spaces, decorumandI amass details, jade bracelet, her animal-printdresses, an oval coral cameo.How do objects counter loneliness, she asks, and speak to us of how to behave?In Things That No Longer Delight Me, lyric is driven by a compulsion or need to collect, in order to make sense of the past and stay connected to it.And what if that connection were to be lost? Confronting loss, the book pieces together...

Things That No Longer Delight Me is a collection of poems about family and memory. This book is filled with objects. The author writes: I like objects for company, to decorate the plainest spaces, decorumandI amass details, jade bracelet, her animal-printdresses, an oval coral cameo.How do objects counter loneliness, she asks, and speak to us of how to behave?In Things That No Longer Delight Me, lyric is driven by a compulsion or need to collect, in order to make sense of the past and stay connected to it.And what if that connection were to be lost? Confronting loss, the book pieces together...

..".thoughtful recollections, scary memories, articulate reflections, and the resolve of a man who has been there."--Publishers Weekly

At age nineteen, Hugh Martin withdrew from college when his National Guard unit was activated for a deployment to Iraq. After training at Fort Bragg, Martin spent 2004 in Iraq as the driver of his platoon sergeant's Humvee. He participated in hundreds of missions including raids, conducting foot patrols, clearing routes for IEDs, disposing of unexploded ordnance, and searching thousands of Iraqi vehicles. These poems recount his time in basic...