Introduction by Geof Hewitt. Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914-2005) was an American poet from Montclair, New Jersey. Though Hamilton wrote thousands of poems during his lifetime, only a small percentage of them ever found their way into print. His poems appeared in small poetry journals during the '60s, '70s and '80s; two chapbooks, The Big Parade and Sphinx; and one full-length collection, The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, published by The Jargon Society in 1970. In this new volume, Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal present a collection of Hamilton's poems from these publications, along with many of Hamilton's poems that were previously considered lost and poems from posthumously found notebooks."Hamilton is the author of spare, wry, slightly surreal poems that have, so far as I can see, no real equivalent in American English."—Ron Silliman"Alfred Starr Hamilton 'wrote to the governor of poetry / And simply signed [his] own name.' Consider this collection—assembled by two very dedicated allographers—an essential expansion on said letter. People who've encountered Hamilton's work previously will be glad for the chance to see familiar poems alongside many marvelous new ones. And how I envy first-time readers of this most generous and genuine American writer."—Graham Foust"It is a hidden world, a hushabye place that Alfred Starr Hamilton occupies, a secluded place where he is free to summon daffodils and stars, chimes and angels, thread and old-fashioned spoons. There is Hungarian damage, blue revolutionary stars, a sedge hammer (which is not a typo). He is obsessively drawn to fine metals—bronze, silver and gold. He would be golden, but can never grasp the elusive sad: 'One cloud, one day / Came as a shadow in my life / And then left, and came back again; and stayed' like "Anything Remembered" which is the title of that poem. He is too removed to see things any other way but his own. It is a silver peepshow in the wonderbush, and there is always a moon to scrape from the bottom of his view."—C. D. Wright"We are living in the Badlands. Dorothy's ruby-slippers would get you across the Deadly Desert. So will these poems."—Jonathan Williams

    The exquisitely rendered poems in this, her fourth collection, reach back to an early affinity for proverbs and riddles and the proto-poetry found in those forms. Taking on epic subjects—time and memory, metamorphosis and indeterminacy, the complicated nature of beauty, wordless states of being—each poem explores a bright, crisp, singular moment of awareness or shock or revelation.  Purpura reminds us that short poems, never merely brief nor fragmentary, can transcend their size, like small dogs, espresso, a drop of mercury.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    . . . [Jamaal May's] poems, exquisitely balanced by a sharp intelligence mixed with earnestness, makes his debut a marvel."—Publishers WeeklyFollowing Jamaal May's award-winning debut collection, Hum (2013), these new poems explore parallel landscapes of the poet's interior and an insidious American condition. Using dark humor that helps illuminate the pains of maturity and loss of imagination, May uncovers language like a skilled archaeologist—digging up bones of the past to expose what lies beneath the surface of the fragile human condition.From: "Ask Where I've Been":Ask about the tornado of fists.The blows landed. If you canwatch it all—the spit and blood frozenagainst snow, you can probably tellI am the too-narrow road winding outof a crooked city built of laughter,abandon, feathers and drums.Ask only if you can watch streetlights bow,bridges arc, and power lines sag,and still believe what matters mostis not where I bendbut where I am growing.Jamaal May is a poet, editor, and filmmaker from Detroit, Michigan, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. His poetry won the 2013 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and appears in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, the Believer, NER, and the Kenyon Review. May has earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and The Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. He founded the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press.

    His un-extraordinary life is turned upside down as rival factions of magicians seek to gain control over his new-found gift. Escaping from life-threatening dangers, Alex quickly realises there is more to being a magician than he thought. With the help of the Order, a small group dedicated to upholding the Laws of Light, Alex learns to control his power and fights to prevent an ancient darkness from returning and destroying our world.

    She plunges deep into her inner world, shadowing the progression of the disease. Reality takes on sharp edges: the swell of cancer and its retreat with chemo. Her inner corporeal reality versus her outer manifestation of health, vitality, and femininity. Holding fast to the great love of her life, while preparing to leave him behind. Contemplating who she was before cancer, and who she is now.Starkly honest and wholly profound, Not One of These Poems Is About You distills life to its essence. Teva Harrison continues to gift the world with her clear-eyed insight and her open heart.

    In 55 poems that swerve and crackle with a rare music, Inua Ellams unleashes a full-throated assault on empire and its legacies of racism, injustice and toxic masculinity.Written on the author's phone, in transit, between meetings, before falling asleep and just after waking, this is poetry as polemic, as an act of resistance, but also as dream-vision. At its heart, this book confronts the absolutism and 'foolish machismo' of hero culture-from Perseus to Trump, from Batman to Boko Haram. Through the thick gauze of history, these breathtaking poems look the world square in the face and ask, "What the actual - ?".'This is what poetry looks like when you have nothing to lose, when you speak from the heart, when you have spent years honing your craft so that you can be free. This is what poetry looks like when you are a word sorcerer, a linguistic swordsman, a metaphor-dazzler, a passionate creator of poetry as fire, as lament, as beauty, as reflection, as argument, as home. I was blown away by this book' Bernadine Evaristo'This first collections is a masterclass in subtlety: poems that manage to be tender, angry, vulnerable, sad, funny, yearning and interrogating of history, both recent and long ago, all at once. It's a phenomenal piece of work about what it is to exist in this time, and his dissection of pop culture, colonialism, social interactions and the cruelty of the world, of men, of systems will be read and studied for years.' Nikesh Shukla

    It's part nostalgia, part confusion, and part an ongoing wondering: How do any of us achieve adulthood? And why would we want to, if we had the choice? This collection is woven from and interrupted by extraordinary sequences, including Stephanie poems about Stephen's female self; poems on particular years of the poet's early life, each with its own memories, desires, insecurities, and pop songs; and versions of poems by the Greek poet Callimachus, whose present-day incarnation worries (who doesn't?) about mortality, the favor of the gods, and the career of Taylor Swift. The collection also includes poems on politics, location, and parenthood. Taken all together, this is Stephen Burt's most personal and most accomplished collection, an essential work that asks who we are, how we become ourselves, and why we make art.

    Here, using the cuts of the cow as a metaphor Miller, explores addiction, family & tragedy.Butcher takes the body of a cow and cleaves it into 5 parts: envisioning the cuts as relationship with family members and social forces. Her Mother the rib, her Brother the brisket, her queerness as the tongue and cheek. Butcher is raw and tender. It’s a book that tells the story of a woman who redefined success after losing the most valuable thing to her.

    Through poetic portraits, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan honor the witchy qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more.Perfect for both book lovers and coven members, Literary Witches is a treasure and a source of inspiration. Kitaiskaia and Horan bring fresh insights on your most beloved authors, suggest enchanting new writers, and invite you to rediscover the magic of literature.

    The poet crosses challenging threshholds, fear of commitment, of motherhood, shame and panic. 'I am proficient at beginnings,' Caroline Bird says. This book goes further and (with her characteristic energy and exuberance) risks the next level. People run on treadmills facing blue walls, burn talismans in their gardens, mime marriage with invisible wedding rings. Pilots bung bullet-holes with chewing gum. We cling on, to rickety rope-bridges, to something in the air, to one another. Bird's speakers exist in a state of suspension, trapped in liminal space between take-off and landing, a time of pure transition. Love is uncontrollable, joy comes and goes at hurricane speed. They walk to the cliff-edge, close their eyes and step out into the air.

    Did all men take one look at her well-endowed breasts and think sex? The last thing she was about to do was make out in a tiny car on some godforsaken mountain with a date she never wanted to see again. Daniel Fox wanted to forget a case gone bad and a relationship gone sour. When a client he had defended killed his wife, Daniel took a leave of absence and, alone, heads for a mountain retreat to deal with the guilt. The last thing he wants is company. A winter storm forces them together and they must share a tiny cabin with one bed. In that bed they discover a dark passion that rules them both. Neither of them gets what they had planned...but both get something better.

    It is yet another virtuosic showcase for Charles Wright's acclaimed descriptive powers, and also an inquiry into the nature of description itself, both seductive and dangerous: "a virtual world/ Unfit for the virtuous." Like his previous books, Sestets is seeded with the lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, and "there is always room to connect his highly polished poems to the world where most of us lead mundane lives" (Miami Herald). Soaring and earthy, lyrical and direct, Charles Wright is an American treasure, and his search for a truth that transcends change and death settles finally on the beauties of nature and language: "Time is a graceless enemy, but purls as it comes and goes."

    Here parody does not exclude the cri de coeur any more than seriousness excludes the joke. With surrealist volatility, these poems are the result of experiments that continue for the reader during each reading. Young moves from reworkings of creation myths, the index of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, pseudo reports and memos, collaged biographies, talking clouds, and worms, to memory, mourning, sexual playfulness, and deep sadness in the course of this turbulent book.

    Immersing herself in the heady rhythms of a city that is like something wild, caged, and pacing, Laurel tries to lose herself. But when she runs away from the past, she discovers a passion so powerful, it brings her roundabout and face-to-face with the demons she wants to avoid.In a stunning departure from her enormously popular Weetzie Bat books, Francesca Lia Block weaves a darkly exhilarating tale of shattered passions and family secrets.

    Because let’s face it! We hoomans are obviously stupid and trust me unicorns are never wrong. Did you know? The horn of the unicorn symbolizes ultimate truth and it has the power to pierce the chest of anyone who tries to lie. Damn!‘Uuuuuuuunicornnnnnnnnnnnnn,’ I yawned, waking up, after being thrown back to our crap-shit called Earth.‘So fellow hoomans, let’s begin.’About the book:This book is a sarcastic and humorous take on various themes like love, life, humanity, healing, and heartbreak - expressed through 51 beautiful chapters of relatable quotes, musings and poems. It basically deals with what we humans go through on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, every chapter is accompanied by a unique and perfectly orchestrated author's rant or opinion focused on one single person; You.