Books

These poems, threaded by the teachings of Buddha, examine loss—the death of a loved one, the longing for a child, the yearning for another place and time—and the suffering such attempts transpire, but ultimately the poems are an affirmation that to be born into human life is our greatest opportunity to transform loss and sorrow into awakening joy.

Winner of the 2006 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry.Angela Ball’s lyrical, wry, and rueful poems float on a river of incongruities on which we may find Ron Popeil, Lord Byron, and Rudyard Kipling sharing the same raft; they create a fascinating commerce between the sublime and the ridiculous.

After the Fall refers to the twin towers, and is Field’s ode to the events that transpired thereafter—the war in Iraq andthe attack on civil rights in America—as well as his own personal struggles over the indignities of aging.

Winner of the 2008 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence

The Plum Flower Dance includes new poems and poems from Weaver’s earlier works My Fathers Geography, and Timber and Prayer, among others.

The Floating Bridge, David Shumate’s second collection of prose poems, transports its readers over the chasm between the mundane and the enchanted. We traverse one bridge and find ourselves eavesdropping on Gertrude Stein and her gardener. We take the night bus to Gomorrah to have a look around. Halfway across, each bridge vanishes beneath our feet. Our world shifts. The commonplace begins to glow. We turn the page. Another bridge awaits.

In her third collection, Beatty travels inside the body to the blood that codes us, moving beyond the language of post-confessionialism into fourth-wave feminism, challenging notions of the “romantic” “and the “brutal” and how they exist within us and between us.

The poet employs colloquial diction, references pop and classical culture, and travels at 1000 miles per hour in his fourth collection. For those who think contemporary poetry is about abject confessions, vacation in Provence and opaque ‘academicisms,’ McDaniel is an intro to a new world.

These poems describe the private and sometimes secret spaces of marriage, parenthood, and knowledge.

For a Limited Time Only explores issues of aging, illness, and mortality, and the philosophical and theological speculations that arise from personal tragedy, and invokes humor, hope, and consolation in the face of death and loss.

Winner of the 2008 Posner Book-Length Poetry Award.

Winner of the 2009 Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Award.

Winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Prose poems that profile the interrelationship of the two central characters, looking deeply into their psyches and thoughts of race, class, and identity.

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Winner of the 2007 Donald Hall Prize in PoetrySelected by Bob Hicok

Burn and Dodge is a collection of poems that “burns” with contemporary vices such as: Guilt, Envy, Regret, and Indecision while also “dodging” such concerns with formal playfulness.

Love on the Streets is a selection of poems from four of Doubiago’s books of poetry, two of which are book-length poems, plus new poetry. It is the culmination of thirty years of writing “on the road.”

Leaping Poetry is Robert Bly’s testament to the importance of the artistic leap that bridges the gap between conscious and unconscious thought in any great work of art. Part anthology and part commentary, Bly seeks to rejuvenate modern Western poetry through his revelations of “leaping” as found in the works of poets from around the world, while also outlining the basic principles that shape his own poetry.

In 1970, as the war in Vietnam was heating up, Ostriker was awaiting the birth of her son. On April 30, President Nixon announced the bombing of Cambodia. On May 14, four students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University. The poems in this collection confront Ostriker’s personal tumult as she considered the world she had brought her son into.

Ka-Ching! is a book of poems that explores America’s obsession with money. It also includes a crown of sonnets about e-bay, sestinas on the subjects of Sean Penn and the main characters of fairytales, a pantoum that riffs on a childhood riddle, and a villanelle inspired by bathroom grafitti.