In these poems, which explore aspects of race, identity, and popular culture, Beatty was honing the comic, satirical voice and vivid imagination that came to full realization in his acclaimed fiction. Joker, Joker, Deuce "moves to fierce urban rhythms, both cool and hot," writes Jessica Hagedorn. "A rush of intense visual images and electric word music."

    Pieces of Air in the Epic is the second book of a tetrology that takes the elements--earth, air, water, fire--as its subject. As Hillman's previous collection, Cascadia, explores "earth," the present collection considers "air"--the many meanings of the word and the life-giving medium we breathe--to test a reality that is both political and personal.These formally inventive poems reexamine epic and lyric, braiding fact and dream, the social with the self. Hypnotic, spare verses use air on the page as a matrix for cultural healing; some are presided over by a feminine presence and address war in human history, while others are set in streets, parks and wilderness. There are meditations on auras, dust motes, and reading in libraries as acts of restorative memory. This work fuses animist consciousness with cautionary prophecy, and belongs to the mode of H.D. and Robert Duncan. Hillman's poetry continues to explore ways in which human life might be redeemed by imagination.

    Free, for the time being, from the power of the gods and the ceaseless weight of the rock, he struggles to navigate twenty-first-century America. In language by turns mordant and tender, often elegiac, Dunn illuminates the quotidian burdens of his all-too-human hero, as well as the abrasions of ambivalence and choice, finally concluding that "here / and there, though mostly here, even fate is reversible / with struggle or luck."In a second sequence of poems, nineteenth-century novelists become "local visitors" to the author's South Jersey towns. "Chekhov in Port Republic," "Jane Austen in Egg Harbor," "Dostoyevsky in Wildwood": these inventions and others give Dunn provocative new latitudes. As in his previous books, "he balances the casual and the vivid as he plumbs the ambiguity and mystery of human relations" (New York Times Book Review).

    0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press

    Lana’s music and lyrics evoke images of a saturated Kodachrome photograph, so it would stand to reason that she’d now add “poet” to her artist’s kit. Even without music, her words work their way around you, pulling you into a world that’s not unlike a David Lynch movie.[from barnesandnoble.com]

    Crazily enough, it's also packed with truth.”—NPR“The voice of this third book from Bibbins is marked and numbed by the onslaught of American media and politics that saturate the Internet, television, radio, and smartphone: ‘the way things are going, children/ will have to upgrade to more amusing.’ Much like advertisements or news stories vying for viewer’s attention, the book intentionally overwhelms, eschewing sections; the author instead differentiates the poems by repetition, creating a sort of echo chamber, similar to the way viral information cycles through social media platforms.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review"[A] hilarious send-up of contemporary values and an alarm bell of sorts, directing attention to all that is so sinister in our civilization.”—American Poets"Whip-smart and wickedly funny, They Don't Kill You is Bibbins's most authoritative and self-possessed collection to date."—Boston ReviewThe poems in Mark Bibbins's breakthrough third book are formally innovative and socially alert. Roving across the weird human landscape of modern politics, media-exacerbated absurdity, and questionable social conventions, this collection counters dread with wit, chaos with clarity, and reminds us that suffering is "small//compared to what?"Mark Bibbins teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia University, and edits the poetry section of The Awl. He lives in New York City.

    Wright’s best lyrics, narratives, prose poems, and odes with new "retablos" and a bracing vigil on incarceration. Long admired as a fearless poet writing authentically erotic verse, Wright—with her Southern accent and cinematic eye—couples strangeness with uncanny accuracy to create poems that "offer a once-and-for-all thing, opaque and revelatory, ceaselessly burning."from "Our Dust"You didn’t know my weariness, error, incapacity,I was the poetof shadow work and towns with quarter-inchphone books, of failedroadside zoos. The poet of yard eggs andsharpening shops,jobs at the weapons plant and the Maybellinefactory on the penitentiary road."Wright has found a way to wed fragments of an iconic America to a luminously strange idiom, eerie as a tin whistle."—The New Yorker"Wright shrinks back from nothing."—Voice Literary Supplement"C.D. Wright is a devastating visionary. She writes in light. She sets language on fire."—American LettersC.D. Wright has published nine collections of poetry and earned many awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at Brown University and in 1994 was named State Poet of Rhode Island. With her husband, Forrest Gander, she edits Lost Roads Publishers.

    Doughty’s poems are at once absurdist and matter-of-fact; the images he conjures are thrown into high relief through cutting wordplay. In a series of prose poems about showbiz, he reimagines Cookie Monster as a burned-out suicide, and cheesy talk-show host Joe Franklin as a cross-dressing witness to the apocalypse. And in “For Charlotte, Unlisted,” he wrenchingly tracks the elusive memory of a faded romance.

    Few poets so thrillingly portray the physical world, or man's creaturely self, or the cycling strain of desire and self-reproach. Few poets so movingly evoke the human quest of "a man alone," trying --to say something true that has body, because it is proof of his existence.. . Middle Earth is a revelatory collection, the finest work yet from an author of poems that are . . .marvels-unbuttoned, riveting, dramatic-burned into being-- (Tina Barr, Boston Review).

    tr Rosmarie Waldrop, second of 2-vol set

    She gave her up dreams in college just to follow him as he pursued his. Kema knew that with fame and money would come the thirst of the groupies, but she never would have imaged his biggest sideline chick would be her very own cousin. Rashaad loves Kema and plans to marry her someday, but right now he's just having too much fun with his new found fame as a pro athlete. With money and unlimited women at his disposal Rashaad is having second thoughts of truly being a one woman man. When he fumbles off the field and ends up getting Kema’s cousin pregnant, he now has to decide what's more important; keeping his woman or raising his child. Katrina has always been the chick who was used to getting what she wanted by any means necessary, and her cousin’s man Rashaad is no exception! When she finds out that she's pregnant by him she knows that she has hit the jackpot. The baby will be her meal ticket and Katrina will do whatever is necessary to make sure that no one gets in the way of not; including her cousin.

    Shaped prose is a form that works the "little edges" of lyric and discourse, and radiates out into the space between them. As occasional pieces, many of the poems in the book are the result of a request or commission to comment upon a work of art, or to memorialize a particular moment or person. In Moten's poems, the matter and energy of a singular event or person are transformed by their entrance into the social space that they, in turn, transform. An online reader's companion is available at http: //fredmoten.site.wesleyan.edu.

    And he also showed that within him beat the heart of an artist -- a major factor in his resilience and recovery.Now with Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?, his first collection of poetry, Antwone Fisher reveals the inner truths that took him from a tumultuous childhood to the man he is today. The powerful poems presented here range from impressions and expressions of Antwone's years growing up to the love that he has gained from the family he made for himself as an adult.From the title poem -- which is featured prominently in the movie Antwone Fisher -- a plaintive, haunting tribute to a childhood lost to abuse and neglect, to "Azure Indigo," the uplifting and touching poem about his daughters, many readers will find their own feelings and experiences reflected in this lyrical and passionate collection.

    "With this fine new collection," says Library Journal, Martín Espada "joins the top ranks of poets anywhere"; in the words of Earl Shorris, he is "well on his way to becoming the Latino poet of his generation."

    She’s an accountant and a partner with her brother in a private investigation business. But when her old friend Stacy North comes looking for help, Charlie gives in and agrees to help.Stacy’s Rolex watch is missing and she’s afraid her husband Brad will find out. The truth is that she was seeing another man, and she’s terrified of Brad’s legendary temper. Charlie finds the missing watch--no problem--but when the “other man” suddenly turns up dead, Stacy is desperate. Can Charlie find out who the real killer is before the police connect Stacy to the victim? It turns out to be the challenge of Charlie’s life.BOOK 2 - Vacations Can Be MurderCharlie is riding front seat on a Hawaiian helicopter tour when she and the pilot spot a lifeless body lying on the rugged rocks of Kauai’s NaPali coast. Drake Langston is the pilot flying the tour. When the flight is over, Charlie assumes her acquaintance with Drake is, too. Within twenty-four hours, though, Drake’s friend and employer, Mack Garvey, is arrested for murdering Gilbert Page. Drake persuades Charlie to help clear Mack.It isn’t easy. The investigating officer has an old grudge against Mack, and it doesn’t help that Mack knew the victim and owed him a half million dollars. Charlie roots out the suspects one by one, never guessing that her own life will be in danger before her vacation is over.BOOK 3 - Partnerships Can Be MurderCharlie returns from her Hawaiian vacation to find her older brother Ron involved with a much younger woman. The more Charlie sees of cute Vicky, the more she realizes how deceitful Ron’s new love is. Is it simply a case of male mid-life crisis, or is there something more devious going on?Meanwhile, Charlie doesn’t have much time to ponder Ron’s problems. Her friend Sharon Ortega is a partner in a restaurant business with David Ruiz. When David turns up dead, an apparent suicide, Sharon comes to Charlie for help. Sharon’s problem is a double-edged sword. If he did kill himself, David’s life insurance won’t pay and Sharon will probably lose the restaurant because she can’t afford to hire a replacement. But if he didn’t kill himself, then it was murder, and Sharon could very well find herself a suspect.BOOK 4 - Small Towns Can Be MurderTucked into the mountains and valleys of northern New Mexico are the hidden towns, little enclaves of history and tradition–and secrets. Charlie and her office assistant Sally Bertrand visit one such place over the July 4th weekend, and when they drop in on a friend they learn that Cynthia Martinez suddenly suffered a miscarriage and died. Privately, friends wonder if spousal abuse caused her death. Charlie agrees to ask a few questions and see what she can find out. Meanwhile, Charlie and her brother Ron have an ongoing dispute over gun control. And Drake Langston, the helicopter pilot she met in Hawaii, is visiting and the romance is heating up.