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Poetry that presents another aspect of Civil War life in the voices of side show characters
Poetry. "The wind in these eloquent, elegant, tensile poems is present as spirit, of course; as spirit it can manifest as the longing or fate of the body (it expires), as intellectual momentum (it inspires), as power for social justice (it aspires). In all these modes, L.R. Berger both controls the energy as form, and honors the charge of the moment,--perception by brilliant perception, breath by mortal breath."--Stephen Tapscot "In this beautiful new book, words are unusually alive and active in the poet's capable hands. A whispered finale meaning finally, a riff on up, an exploration of the letter p: these are among the linguistic players that address both personal loss and political realities, which L. R. Berger explores with searing honesty, emotional depth, and lyrical grace. No precious word is wasted here; you will read carefully and gratefully, and want to read again."--Martha Collins
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize * Poet Laureate of the United States * * A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * * A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself To lift you past the rungs of your crib. What Would your life say if it could talk? —from "No Fly Zone" With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation.
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. African & African American Studies. Australian Book Review Book of the Year. Honorable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. "Timothy Ogene's poems are writings of witness, displacement and beauty. Instead of a home address there are poems as address, at once exquisitely gentle and acute. The sharpness of the poems' blades --whether literal, like the blades that peel cassavas and leave the speaker's arms scarred, or deeper injuries of trauma and loss--sits alongside their subtlety and tenderness. These are poems of deep attentiveness to the smallest encounters, and to the largest questions of love, doubt, solitude and migration. Their crafting reveals Ogene's deep reading, both of poetry and of the landscapes the poems explore. How do poems that bear witness to violence, loss and displacement open so gently to the reader? This paradox is one of many in these wise, important poems. I am reminded of Hélène Cixous's description of Paul Celan's poetry as 'writing that speaks of and through disaster such that disaster and desert become author or spring.' Where trees hold 'time in absent leaves,' these poems mourn roots but refrain from 'easy paths,' offering, instead, the force and grace of a numinous poetics."-- Felicity Plunkett "Where does he come from, Timothy Ogene? From Nigeria, from Liberia, from Texas, from Oxford, now Boston. But look for him in the future, where he will be writing great books. Look for him in the present, too, in this satisfying, wonderful book--already he can do everything--he makes music, his figurative language is rare in that it goes deep, is never arbitrary, there is a care for especially the poor people and objects of this world, he remains hidden behind his language yet clear, which is to say his ego does not control the writing, something else does--a desire to lead us gently to noticing. Not just noticing, experiencing. Suddenly an empty bench comes to the forefront of our sight, from the "remains" of fog. He can personify without anthropomorphizing, maybe because he loves the world without needing to hold on to any aspect of it. He is unusually free yet aware of the limitations imposed on us politically and yes by language itself. If you want some pleasure, slow down and listen to his poems."-- Ruth Lepson "Timothy Ogene's debut collection, DESCENT & OTHER POEMS, presents a lyric and emotional journey that swiftly and utterly captures the reader's eye and heart."--John Keene, judge for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry
Poetry. NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE is a book of 99 poems. One endorsment called it "nothing short of breathtaking." The substance and acquity of Martina's writing demystifies itself through refractive language. Poems playfully at times, at times seriously, remeasure characterizations focusing the reader's attention on the life of the poem and the poem's intent. This book's numbered sequence of poems has no page numbers so the table of contents is a numbered list, and the pages are not devoted to a poem per page but run-on. "These poems are driven by a passion both sexual and scriptural through configurations of surrender to instinctive logic and imaginative opportunities. Nothing is lost upon her. She treats each moment of each scene as her raison d'etre: Devotion to the project of creative language. The collection or series is endlessly interesting. She is an artist touched by brilliance,and her gifts simply refuse to be denied. I have been blessed in my exposure to her work, as I feel sure, you will be also. Poets, they say, are either born or made. Martina Reisz Newberry is both."--Gerald Locklin "Martina Reisz Newberry's newest collection, NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE, is nothing short of breathtaking. In poem after poem you find a generous spirit, a stunning acuity of image and vision, and, above all, her rare gift to wake us to a deeper circuitry that helps give our lives their necessary shape and substance. A truly superb collection, an absolute joy to read."--Robert Hedin "Martha Reisz Newberry may not be completely awake, but she is completely aware in these richly sensual poems. As she comes to terms with the aging of the physical body, her spirit waxes ever stronger and wiser in this mature collection. As she tells us, 'It's really about... how much dark you can stand.' But, there's plenty of understanding and enlightenment along the way. Self-reflective, quietly ironic, this poet constantly observes and attends. From the Hollywood Blvd. Wax Museum to the Burningman office, from the death of a brother to the loss of a lover, she leads us through different emotional landscapes, always grounded in beauty. Whether in a vision or a waking dream, she offers us both prayer and wind in the living, breathing world."--Robin Scofield "Transfixed by the hourglass, yearning for continuance the voices invoked by Newberry quest after ways to transcend, to keep going. Here, struggle and surrender dance their inseparable tango. Those whose lives she bids us enter exist like storm- driven kites: dipping and rising, finding the heights, fearing the line will snap. Be it rainfall of needles, pack of greyhounds, or a woman attuned to her neighbor, Newberry summons from any and each of these the place where anguish and solace collide, and--if we're lucky--resolve. Hers is a universe freely dipped in various faiths, compelled to ask 'how much dark you can stand,' even as it offers refuge."--Margot Farrington
Mimi White explores new forms with her sensitive poetic reach in language and vision, often mixing the natural world and the human condition together to express the mysteries of life as a sense of those things that cannot be seen.
Winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award "A 19th-century automaton and other museum exhibits narrate this collection of poems . . . . Uncanny, heart-wrenching, and beautifully crafted poems by an original voice." -Kirkus Reviews, August 5, 2020, starred review "Vast in scope, passionately imagined, and constructed with as much ingenuity as the famed contraption at its narrative's heart, Matthew Pennock's second book hints at serious ontological questions as it invents its hero's journey from automaton to autonomy. Like all contrivances that simulate human life, Pennock's synthetic boy compels us to interrogate our own materiality, and to ask, if we are all just portions of the twisting / stew of particles and light assembled by mechanical chance, then what puts the lonely in us? Packed with insight and wit and told by a congress of oddities-the narration travels back and forth in time and juggles various perspectives, including that of a trained seal, a fortune teller machine, and both halves of P.T. Barnum's bogus mermaid-The Miracle Machine is an irresistible, at times provocative, and often powerfully affecting book." -Timothy Donnelly, author of The Problem of the Many
Painting a raw picture of feeling broken "in some fundamental way," Carson's poems sing to how that feeling can be mended
Poetry. "Years ago, I predicted that David Sloan's name would easily join those who revel in the stubbornly elusive meld of craft and lyric. Ever since I've known him, he's mastered it with enviable ease, in deftly-spun poems probing what consoles and disquiets us--inexplicable loss, love that illuminates, the quirks and quandaries of the natural world. This is the book that will do it."--Patricia Smith "David Sloan's second collection of poems astonishes and delights at every turn, literally as each line breaks upon a next elegant phrase, apt image or surprising metaphor. There are several ekphrastic poems that are among the best I've ever read, a sestina that definitely is, a supple and indelible ghazal. The scope of subject matter is breathtaking: birth, childhood, grief, marriage, relationships of all ilks, including one's relationship to Nature, and many more. A few poems are hilariously funny, others beautifully dark and sobering. More are praise songs, and every mood and tone of voice is artfully encoded. Abundance enough, but here as well, a consistent richness of texture, of the intricate workings of sound and thought that only happen when someone falls madly in love with, and remains under the spell of, language itself. This collection demonstrates, full-bore, Sloan's accomplishment: a true poet expressing with elegant restraint and consummate skill the agony and the ecstasy of human existence in North America at this time in history."--Gray Jacobik
Poetry. "With variously sized poetic scopes, ever focused, Leonore Hildebrandt finds us connective paths through space and time, delineating the material and spiritual dimensions of shelter. WHERE YOU HAPPEN TO BE takes its cue--and title--from Buckminster Fuller's directive: 'The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet's surface at that time.' A poet of the keenest relational reasoning, Hildebrandt marks out the directions of a nostos poetics, venturing, but never claiming, the way home. Her precision of image and tone is all the more indelible for this concomitant spirit of wandering. This is a book you read in one fascinated swoop, then return to again and again with love and gratitude. There are so few books of contemporary poetry contributing to what I'd call a 'wisdom tradition.' This is most certainly one of them."--Sarah Gridley "The reigning intelligence in Leonore Hildebrandt's WHERE YOU HAPPEN TO BE is a wanderer over physical, political, and spiritual landscapes. Intensely observant, ever aware of the contingency of her present circumstances, Hildebrandt carries the reader from the Maine coast, where 'the ocean was right in its fervor' to the arid hills of northern New Mexico, their 'desert patina...chiseled' with petroglyphs; from ominous urban ruins to the great, dark forests of fairy tales and the unconscious. Do not come to these poems looking for peaceful resolution; this poet is too busy with the work of being 'unconstructed / uncontrolled / unstoppable.' But do come to these poems."--Lee Sharkey