Catalog

“Formally elegant, thematically intelligent, rgent and thoughtful, A Change of Maps traverses the American landscape-its primal beauty and human diminishment-and explores the tensions in the nature of this country, its mix of cultures, and its losses both national and personal. In these brilliant and intuitive poems, Carolyne Wright reflects on love and independence, love and work, choices…

“A poet examines his life: what he’s been dealt, what he’s chosen, the workings of history with personal griefs and delights, “amnesty” of an uneasy coming-to-terms with self and others, being his muse. There’s a macabre wit, masculine vulnerability, and soul-conflict in the best of these poems, adding up to a very strong book.” —Adrienne…

“As Is tells the heroic story: loss, struggle, victory, and how god is milk and throat at once, and rock and child, & how the future leaks outlandishly into the present. That the reason humans exist (now didn’t you ever want to know that?), the reason for humans is that we can love. It’s our job…

” What I love about this collection is that it catches perfectly that special sense of rural Ireland which might be described as mixture of raw satirical humour, tragedy, and a kind of yearning for love and connection in a society that feels a constant tension between materialism and spirituality. At the Edge of the Western…

“Caliban is a brand new voice, charged with rage, wit, and a wild, wry sweetness. John Whalen brings us an open ear, a strict eye, and a generous heart.” —Max Phillips

“Robert Pack’s new volume of poetry, Composing Voices: A Cycle of Dramatic Monologues, is a fabulously expanded version of his 1984 book, Faces in a Single Tree. In each of the poems a single person is talking to one other person to whom he is intimately related, creating deep dramatic tension: a father talking to a bereaved…

“Gathered from the root-zones of many different trees, knife-scraped from rock-face, lifted from dung, spore-flung into air, these gathered mushroom poems offer undomestic, distinctive discoveries to all who choose to join the effort to find them.” —Jane Hirshfield

A woman hides from her husband in a fish tank and another absently bakes sponges inside her tarts. Appliances drop from the sky, men grapple with chainsaws, women struggle with hormonal violence, and abandoned boys beg on doorsteps. Enter into the territory of broken people and the folks that love them. Sensitive and unruly, sincere…

“In James Grabill’s unique view no one should settle for a world that conducts itself as though there were no mythic dimension; his other collection of essays and his many stunning books of poems make this clear. But unlike many American writers critical of the way this world we shouldn’t settle for is going, Grabill…

“Imagine Joyce Carol Oates as William Burroughs and you’ve got Janet Kieffer, writing of losers and lost in biting prose that glitters like rhinestones. A flotsam and jetsom parade of burlesque and grotesque on the edgy side of realism.” —Marilyn Krysl