Drake brought to his international bestselling books Beautiful Chaos, Black Butterfly and A Brilliant Madness, Robert M. Drake now takes his readers to a deeper level of his consciousness with this collection of stories. A man encounters God in a bar; a family is saved by a time traveler in the middle of the night; a journey into the mind of a severely autistic man; a woman finds herself one night out in the city and more.Beautiful and Damned is as haunting and as captivating as the stories it tells, it is proof that Robert M. Drake is one of the most visionary writers working today.

    The poems negotiate the colossal movement of hearts figuring and being figured by history. This is a voice that knows the intelligence of passion, that moves through and inside the questioning of who we are in the structures of things we give the power to name us until a song sends us out to question the territory. The poet moves with the exactness of math or physics, with the fearful knowledge of careful imbalances that would have us believe in equilibrium, and with the assuredness of art that knows all is change, that the semblance of order is creation, something we are given the gift of imitating in some small way. The poems in this collection summon the largeness, the volume of a voice that disembodies itself in order to search for the love that made it whole.

    . . " In words drawn from urban and Navajo perspectives, Sherwin Bitsui articulates the challenge a Native American person faces in reconciling his or her inherited history of lore and spirit with the coldness of postmodern civilization.Shapeshift is a collection of startling new poetry that explores the tensions between the worlds of nature and man. Through brief, imagistic poems interspersed with evocative longer narratives, it offers powerful perceptions of American culture and politics and their lack of spiritual grounding. Linking story, history, and voice, Shapeshift is laced with interweaving images—the gravitational pull of a fishbowl, the scent of burning hair, the trickle of motor oil from a harpooned log—that speak to the rich diversity of contemporary Diné writing."Tonight, I draw a raven's wing inside a circle measured a half second before it expands into a hand. I wrap its worn grip over our feet As we thrash against pine needles inside the earthen pot." With complexities of tone that shift between disconnectedness and wholeness, irony and sincerity, Bitsui demonstrates a balance of excitement and intellect rarely found in a debut volume. As deft as it is daring, Shapeshift teases the mind and stirs the imagination.

    It offers humorous reflection upon our species' endless attempts to transmit insight regarding our human condition.

    They are truly delightful and robustly original—a poetic joy."—Tony HoaglandSelected by Bernadette Mayer for the National Poetry Series, these poems engage the structures of family and intimacy, exposing the viscera of the everyday, all its frailties and familiarity rendered absurd and remade through language.Outside there's a world where every love-scenebegins with a man in a doorway;he walks over to the woman and says "Open your mouth."Hannah Gamble has received fellowships from Rice University, The University of Houston, and The Edward F. Albee Foundation. She teaches literature and writing at Prairie State College and is the poet-in-residence at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.

    Thanks. is an innovative book based on the recorded improvised poetic collaborations between two award-winning poets, Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer. Nice Hat. Thanks. is a collection of transcriptions of these collaborations, with poems ranging from a few words to several pages.

    Each word in this little book might rise up from somewhere deep in the earth, but they turn into stars." - Nick Flynn"In Islam prayer is not transactional, poetry is not divorced from the quotidian and portraiture is embraced only in the abstract. And yet here in Kaveh Akbar's book, entreaty is earnest, aimed at the human and particular more often than the divine but at the same time the language and form elevate themselves to the fevered register of desperation. Yes, sure, fine, you would think that a Muslim writing about being a drunk would have to adopt unconventional approaches, but drunkenness in the Islamic literary tradition is a long and time-honored metaphor. For what? Abandonment to God, a cessation of the self--but not so here; no. Here it's real, it's coarse, it's dangerous. The reason we Muslims do not pray for things is that it is similarly dangerous for one to call God's attention onto oneself. But for Kaveh Akbar, whose very name means 'poetry, ' it is a risk every poem takes with gusto. And speaking purely for myself, these poems give me life because 'for so long every step I've taken/ has been from one tongue to another.' Be careful, little brother. God's got His eye on you now." - Kazim Ali

    I can think of just about no contemporary poets who publish such consistently great work.” —Corduroy Books “Bob Hicok's poetry is a fleeting comfort, a temporary solace from the chaos of the world. Smart, honest, powerfully inventive, his writing asks the biggest questions while acknowledging that there are no answers beyond the imposed structure of the page.” —Los Angeles Times on This Clumsy Living “The most potent ingredient in virtually every one of Bob Hicok's compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself, a sweet waggery that suggests there's almost no problem that can't be solved by this poet's gentle humor.” —New York Times Book Review on Insomnia Diary

    I want nothingto reveal feeling but feeling--as in freedom,or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,or the sound of water poured in a bowl.--from "Gravity and Center" In his sixth collection of poetry, Henri Cole deepens his excavations of autobiography and memory. "I don't want words to sever me from reality," he asserts, and these poems--often hovering within the realm of the sonnet--combine a delight in the senses with the rueful, the elegiac, the harrowing. Many confront the human need for love, the highest function of our species. But whether writing about solitude or the desire for unsanctioned love, animals or flowers, the dissolution of his mother's body or war, Cole maintains a style that is neither confessional nor abstract. And in Blackbird and Wolf, he is always opposing disappointment and difficult truths with innocence and wonder.

    Her deeply personal poems echo everything from nursery rhymes to classics, revealing poetry buried in ordinary speech. Whether remonstrating with a former lover or evoking her young children, the poet who reveals herself here is appealingly vulnerable yet gutsy, by turns blunt and tender. With dexterity and wit she stretches language to the wildest boundaries of poetic possibility: hers is a voice intimate and assured, her observations of the world delivered in love notes addressed to us all."did I mention my first kiss was extractedby someone who never should have been thatlucky?" - From "Keep Some Stuff for Yourself"

    As Shaughnessy conjures our potential future, she movingly (and often with humor) envisions an age where cephalopods might rule over humankind, a fate she suggests we may just deserve after destroying their oceans. These heartbreaking, terrified poems are the battle cry of a woman who is fighting for the survival of the world she loves, and a stirring exhibition of who we are as a civilization.

    The voice is consistently spare, honest, understated, and eccentric.

    This moment has waited its whole life for you.These are the opening lines of "Today Means Amen," YouTube star Sierra deMulder’s immensely powerful and virally popular poem, which lends its title to this collection. Like her fellow Millennial poets Tyler Knot Gregson, Clementine von Radics, and Lang Leav, Sierra has the gift of speaking directly to the reader. “Today Means Amen” has become an anthem of sorts to thousands, who find themselves reflected in its pain, its fierceness, its tenderness — but also in its triumphant culminating refrain:  You made it You made it You made it Here.The poems in Sierra's new book explore the rocky terrains of love, family, and womanhood with this same remarkable honesty and generosity. Today Means Amen brings this important young poet's work to an even broader audience.

    Filled with nostalgia, love, heartbreak, and the author's signature wry examinations of mental health, this book helps explain what lives inside us, what we struggle to define. Written on the road over two years of touring, The Future is rugged, genuine, and relatable. Grabbing attention like gravity, Hilborn reminds readers that no matter how far away we get, we eventually all drift back together. These poems are fireworks for the numb. In the author's own words, The Future is a blue sky and a full tank of gas, and in it, we are alive.

    Each of Levin's poems is an astonishing investigation of human darkness, propelled by a sensuous syntax and a desire for healing."This is the language of a prophet: Levin's art, in this book certainly, takes place in a kind of mutating day of judgment: it means to wipe a film from our eyes. It is a dare, a challenge, and, for all its considerable beauty, the opposite of the seductive...Sensuous, compassionate, violent, extravagant: what an amazing debut this is, a book of terrors and marvels."-Louise Gluck, from the IntroductionDana Levin was raised in Lancaster, California, in the Mojave Desert. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Arts Council, and New York University, where she received her M.F.A. She lives in New Mexico and teaches Creative Writing at the College of Santa Fe.