With poems in the leading journals of the day -- American Poetry Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, The Boston Review, to name just a few -- Gander plumbs the erotic depths of human interaction with the land. The poems in Science Steepleflower test this relationship with what Publisher's Weekly has called "an inbred (and often haunting) spirituality", bringing us to new vistas of linguistic and perceptive grace.

    Amazing in its thematic range and stylistic breadth, his poetry "leaps continents and covers war and peace, intolerance and human striving . . . a passionate and essential edition of his collected poems" ( The New York Times).

    How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, their bodies, to express ourselves? Danger is everywhere in these poems, but never overwhelms them; the poet is always an anchor on the other side. And his story carries us relentlessly along.

    As warm and intelligent as it is ribald and cunning, this collection of Thom Gunn's is his richest yet.

    This is a major new voice.” — Margaret AtwoodThe Country Between Us opens with a series of poems about El Salvador, where Carolyn Forché worked as a journalist and was closely involved with the political struggle in that tortured country in the late 1970's. Forché's other poems also tend to be personal, immediate, and moving. Perhaps the final effect of her poetry is the image of a sensitive, brave, and engaged young woman who has made her life a journey. She has already traveled to many places, as these poems indicate, but beyond that is the sense of someone who is, in Ignazio Silone's words, coming from far and going far.

    We find her awake in the middle of the night, contemplating love and heartbreak in all their exhilarating and anguished specifics. With astonishing openness, in language both passionate and enchanting, she offers us an intimate map of a troubled and far-flung heart: “Can you believe I thought that?” she asks, “That we would always go/roaming brave and dangerous/on wild unlit roads?”At once witty and tender, with Dorothy Parker–like turns of the knife and memorable partings from lovers in New York, London, Rome and beyond, these poems capture a restless movement through loves and locales, and charm us at every turn with their forthrightness.From the Hardcover edition.

    Her poems are already making waves--several from this collection have received award attention, including: "The Fiddlehead"'s 23rd annual Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, "The Malahat Review"'s 2012 Far Horizon's Award for Poetry and an Editor's Choice Award in "ARC Poetry Magazine'"s 2012 Poem of the Year Contest. They have also been shortlisted for "The New Quarterly"'s 2013 Occasional Verse Contest, longlisted for CBC's 2013 Canada Writes Poetry Contest and have appeared in literary publications across North America.The poems in "For Your Safety Please Hold On" move in thematic focus from family, to girlhood, to adulthood, each permeated by Czaga's lively voice and quick-witted, playful language. They test the line between honest humour and bitter reality in a sophisticated, incisive manner that tugs at the gut and feels true.The linguistic hopscotch of Czaga's poems about girlhood is often beautifully juxtaposed with feelings of menace or a first taste of smothering expectations--"She sits. She sips her bright pink fingers. / She slips into smart short haircuts, yes, / she does so, and does herself up just so." While her pin prick meditations on contemporary adulthood suggest a yearning for personal meaning and purpose on a larger scale--"I still wander, sometimes, / my coat closing the world out of my body, with pockets / full of garbage, with my slender steady want. I still / make the bed and at bedtime unmake it."The irrepressible energy of the poems in "For Your Safety Please Hold On," paired with their complex balancing act between light and dark, humour and melancholy, innocence and danger, make this collection an extraordinary first offering.

    A title guaranteed to generate "No, wait, read this one!" responses, "The Armpit of Doom" is more mayhem from one of the masters. (J. Patrick Lewis, US Children's Poet Laureate, author of "Please Bury Me in the Library")Kenn Nesbitt wrote a book of poems A funny one I think. And though it's colored black and white Watch it tickle you PINK! (Douglas Florian, author and illustrator of "Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings")Kenn Nesbitt's brain is the clown car of children's poetry. I don't know how they all fit in there, but they keep tumbling out, one after another, each one funnier than the one before it. (Eric Ode, poet and songwriter. Author of "When You're a Pirate Dog and Other Pirate Poems")I liked "Armpit" (the book) a lot. Armpits aren't my favorite body part. (Bruce Lansky, author of "If Pigs Could Fly... And Other Deep Thoughts" and "My Dog Ate My Homework")Despite the many warnings ("Please Don't Read This Poem!") kids cannot escape the odorous allure of Nesbitt's THE ARMPIT OF DOOM! No problem. They won't want to! Instead they will find "There's only one solution. Here's what you'll have to do: Tell all your friends and family they shouldn't read it too!" (Charles Ghigna, AKA "Father Goose," author of "Score! 50 Poems to Motivate and Inspire")What makes this collection most special are the contemporary details sprinkled throughout (the iPod, XBox, and Kindle, Red Bull, J.K. Rowling, scrunchies, computer woes). Kids will really love the clever nonsense in poems like "On the Thirty-Third of Januaugust" and "It's Fun to Leave the Spaces Out." Teachers, beware: theirsentencesmightlooklikethisforafewdaysafterreadingthisbook!" (Janet Wong, author of "You Have to Write")Fans of Kenn Nesbitt will gobble up this new offering, which combines his infallible command of rhyme scheme with the hilarious--yet oddly contemplative--wisdom of a child pondering the world. (Joyce Sidman, author of "Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature")

    In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, Jackself spins a kind of 'fictionalized autobiography' through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales, and through the many 'Jacks' of our folktale, legend, phrase and fable - everyman Jacks and no one Jacks, Jackdaw, Jack-O-Lantern, Jack Sprat, Cheapjack and Jack Frost. At once playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling, Jackself is an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood lost in the darker corners of Reiver country and of English folklore, and once more shows Polley as one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.

    Notley's work has always been highly narrative, and her new book mixes short lyrics with long, expansive lines of poetry that often take the form of prose sentences, in an effort "to change writing completely." The title piece, a folksong-like lament, makes a unified tale out of many stories of many people; the middle section, "The Black Trailor," is a compilation of noir fictions and reflections; while the shorter poems of "Hemostatic" range from tough lyrics to sung dramas. Full of curative power, music, and the possibility of transformation, In the Pines is a genre- bending book from one of our most innovative writers.