|9780822957867| Winner of the 2001 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize Runner-up, Society of Midland Authors 2002 Poetry Prize Gabriel Gudding’s poems not only defend against the pretense and vanity of war, violence, and religion, but also against the vanity of poetry itself. These poems sometimes nestle in the lowest regions of the body, and depict invective, donnybrooks, chase scenes, and the abuse of animals, as well as the indignities and bumblings of the besotted, the lustful, the annoyed, and the stupid. In short, Gudding seeks to reclaim the lowbrow. Dangerous, edgy, and dark, this is an innovative writer unafraid to…

|9780822957898|Rouge Pulp explores notions of body and beauty, birth and death, in a contemporary America driven by its contradictions: material plenty and spiritual lack. Dorothy Barresi writes about strippers, hair salons, cancer, good credit ratings, cockfights, childbirth, maternal love, war. Her poems take the world’s brutal vitality as their music, and they refuse to despair.| Dorothy Barresi| Pitt Poetry Series| Poetry / American / General Poetry / General

|9780822957874| Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize Selected by Marilyn Nelson Finalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize “Imagine Leda black—” begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present. In Van Clief-Stefanon’s powerful voice, last night’s angry words “puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits.” She remembers a child’s innocence “lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my…

|9780822957973|Poems|Written in the spaces between otherness and brotherhood, Otherhood combines traditional lyricism with experimentalism, passionate engagement with cold-eyed investigation, and personal details with a depersonalized distance to create a new poetic synthesis.| Reginald Shepherd| Pitt Poetry Series| Poetry / American / General Poetry / General

|9780822958130|Song of Thieves delves into issues of racial identity and politics, the immigrant experience, and the search for “home” and family histories. In this follow-up to her award-winning debut collection, The Water Between Us, Shara McCallum artfully draws from the language and imagery of her Caribbean background to play a haunting and soulful tune.| Shara McCallum| Pitt Poetry Series| Poetry / American / General Poetry / General