Snyder reveals the roots of community in the family and explores the transmission of cultural values and knowledge. "In making the handle of an axe by cutting wood with an axe the model is indeed near at hand." In exploring this axiom of Lu Ji’s, Gary Snyder continues:I am an axeAnd my son a handle, soonTo be shaping again, modelAnd tool, craft of culture,How we go on.This is a collection of discovery, of insight, and of vision. These poems see the roots of community in the family, and the roots of culture and government in the community.Formally, the 71 poems in Axe Handles range from lyrics to riddles to narratives. The collection is divided into three parts, called "Loops," "Little Songs for Gaia," and "Nets," each containing poems of disciplined clarity. Gary Snyder knows well the great power of silence in a poem, silence that allows the mind space enough to discover the magic of song.

    / The elms made tents of solace over grimy / streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.” She writes in graphic, unflinching language about the poor, banished now by politicians because they are no longer “real people like corporations.” There are elegies for her peer group of poets, gone now, whose work she cherishes but from whom she cannot help but want more. There are laments for the suicide of dolphins and for her beloved cats, as she remembers “exactly how I loved each.” She continues to celebrate Jewish holidays in compellingly original ways and sings praises of her marriage and the small pleasures of daily life.This is a stunning collection that will please those who already know Marge Piercy’s work and offer a splendid introduction to it for those who don’t.

    "The Himalayas Within Him" finds Heart worrying about the sound of his own heartbeat, wondering why it doesn't "blare like a quartet of trombones" as it reflects his "ardent complexity." In "Goodbye to the Hands That Have Touched Him" Heart, after suffering many sleepless nights, decides "that love exists at the root of his problems. Without love his path would be as smooth as a plate of glass and he'd sleep like a kitten." Dividing the Heart poems is the long "Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate, " a jazzy disquisition on human isolation and inaction in the midst of a planet full of people feeling similarly. Throughout Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides Dobyns has painstakingly sculpted straight-forward language into a distinct sound, creating an unforgettable collection of poems that offers readers unexpected revelations about the complexities of the heart.

    . . A violently skewed portrait of the female poet and her Muse, a hyped-up version of Stevens and his interior paramour, locked in a soliloquy 'in which being there together is enough' . . . Something in Brock-Broido likes stealth, toxicity, wildness, neon--'perfect mean lines' . . . The poems lead off the page." --Helen Vendler, The New Yorker"These poems are out of Stevens in the abundance, glitter, and seductiveness of their language, out of Browning in the authority of their inhabiting, and out of Plath in the ferocity and passion of their holding on--to feeling, to life, and to us . . . An astonishing first book." --Cynthia Macdonald"Brock-Broido's brilliant nervosity and taste for the fantastic impel her to explore the obscure corners of the psyche and the fringes of ordinary human experience . . . The poems in A Hunger are original, strange, often unsettling, and mostly beautiful." --Stanley Kunitz

    The poems in this collection reach dazzling heights while being firmly grounded in the everyday. Traveling by train, lying on a beach, and listening to jazz on the radio are the seemingly ordinary activities whose hidden textures are revealed by Collins's poetic eye. With clarity, precision, and enviable wit, Collins transforms those moments we too often take for granted into brilliant feats of creative imagination. Nine Horses is a poetry collection to savor and to share.

    Kent dreads the inventory of his enchanted objects. While he loves playing with the hula hoop that can turn back time and the jump rope that makes you invisible, the item in Cabinet 11 always escapes, and this time, it will be during school hours! It will take the teamwork of the Troubled Tweens to help Mr. Kent get the magical mayhem returned to its cabinet in his colorful Wall of Wonders.This 4000-word story from the world of the Troubled Tweens is the perfect introduction to D.D. Roy's book series that begins with Jinnie Wishmaker and continues with Marcus Mender._________________________About the AuthorD.D. Roy is the author of the Troubled Tweens series for readers 8-12 years old. Her first novel, Jinnie Wishmaker, was released in 2011. She has published numerous short stories in literary magazines, and Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents, her iPad/iPhone story book for children, will be released by Polycot Labs in 2012.

    0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press

    There’s Wu-Tang and Mary Magdelene with a foot fetish, Lil’ Kim and a self-loving Lilith. Slurs, catcalls, verses, erasures—Dawson asks readers, “Just how far is it to nigger?” Both grounded and transcendent, the book is reality and possibility. Dawson’s work has always been raw; but, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is as blunt as the answer to that earlier question: “Here.” Sometimes abrasive and often abraded, Dawson doesn’t flinch.  A mix of traditional forms where sonnets mash up with sestinas morphing to heroic couplets, When Rap Spoke Straight to God insists that while you may recognize parts of the poem’s world, you can’t anticipate how it will evolve.   With a literal exodus of light in the book’s final moments, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is a lament for and a celebration of blackness.  It’s never depression; it’s defiance—a persistent resistance. In this book, like Wu-Tang says, the marginalized “ain’t nothing to f--- with.”

    Collaborating with three acclaimed photographers, Gander explores tensions between the familiar and foreign. His eloquent new work voices an ethical concern for others, exploring empathic relations in which the world itself is fundamental. Taking us around the globe to China, Mexico, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Chile, Core Samples shows how Gander’s “sharp sense of place has made him the most earthly of our avant-garde, the best geographer of fleshly sites since Olson” (Donald Revell,The Colorado Review).

    He uses strong, blunt language to describe life as he lives it, and through it all charts the mutations of morality in modern America.Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way is a treasure trove of confessional poetry written towards then end of Bukowski’s life.  With the overhang of failing health and waning fame, he reflects on his travels, his gambling and drinking, working, not working, sex and love, eating, cats, and more.Sifting Through is Bukowski at his most meditative – published posthumously, it’s completely non-performative, and gets to the heart of Bukowski’s lifelong pursuit of natural language and raw honesty.We recommend you read this as Bukowski wrote: by sifting through the madness for what hits you as the word, the line, the way.

    This new book takes place in Lockdown Three. This time Key can make Government-sanctioned expeditions out onto the streets of London (remember?). And it is there that the inaction takes place. Phone calls to his mother, promenades with his loyal friend, bubble-negotiations, sitting his fat arse down on benches, drinking mocha. Another three months of mind-freezing inertia. This time on the move. Conversations interspersed with poetry.

    In this beautiful gathering . . . one encounters a poet who praises and mourns in turn and even at once." — Grace Schulman, The Nation "Stern is one of those rare poetic souls who makes it almost impossible to remember what our world was like before his poetry came to exalt it." — C. K. Williams

    Whether she is exhuming the bizarre ("Cryptozoology" and "A Short History of Unusual Fish"), exorcising her demons, ("Hog Butcher of Workshop Table" and "On Why I Shouldn't Read Books") or celebrating the uncelebrated oddballs of the world ("Little Heard True Stories of Benjamin Franklin" and "Crack Squirrels"), Aptowicz's poetry sings and singes. Everything is Everything illuminates the dark corners of the curiosity cabinet, shining the light on everything that is utterly strange, wonderfully absurd and 100% true.

    Featuring poems, excerpts from his private notebooks, lyrics, and hand-drawn self-portraits, The Flame offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist.A reckoning with a life lived deeply and passionately, with wit and panache, The Flame is a valedictory work.“This volume contains my father’s final efforts as a poet,” writes Cohen’s son, Adam Cohen, in his foreword. “It was what he was staying alive to do, his sole breathing purpose at the end.”Leonard Cohen died in late 2016. But “each page of paper that he blackened,” in the words of his son, “was lasting evidence of a burning soul.”

    Greenstreet's highly original CASE SENSITIVE posits a female central character who writes chapbooks that become the sections in this book. What happens in the book I want to read? Greenstreet asked herself. And how would it sound? Everything the character is reading, remembering, and dreaming turns up in what she writes, duly referenced with notes. Using natural language charged with concision and precise syntax, Greenstreet has created a memorable and lasting first collection. A poem intrigue of the highest order. Greenstreet has made a brilliant beginning with this first book--Kathleen Fraser. A beautiful dwelling of ideas. CASE SENSITIVE suggests that there need be no divide between the associative connections of poetry and the extended thinking of the essay. This is a book full of luminous footnotes, details, and attentive readings. CASE SENSITIVE strings together a series of moments to create something resonate, large, and inclusive--Juliana Spahr.