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John Beaton’s Leaving Camustianavaig celebrates nature and coexistence and harmony with it, be it in his childhood Scotland, or his adopted homeland of Vancouver Island, with musings distilling the very essence of headwaters, wilderness, forest, mountains, the sea. Beaton’s masterfully crafted metrical poetry is deployed with linguistic prowess in a showcase of given and nonce forms—sonnet, sestina, triolet, villanelle, and others. The accounts of home and community, of the outdoors, or of eking a living from land and river are heartwarming and memorable. Along with its lyrical elegies of belonging, uprootedness, and reminiscences, this is a rapturous debut collection not to be missed....
A.G. Harmon’s Some Bore Gifts is an eclectic collection of stories spanning the traditional to the satirical, with a kaleidoscope of viewpoints and characters that includes tree cutters, department store pianists, museum guides, physicians, florists, actresses, bank managers, junk salesmen, personal trainers, and English professors. Harmon is spellbinding in his depiction of the disenfranchised as of the socially poised, with vivid scenes of the quotidian as of the aberrant, the startling. This captivating book challenges and entertains from start to finish. PRAISE FOR SOME BORE GIFTS: A.G. Harmon is a writer of the first order. These are elegant and humble and ruminative stories of people...
Elizabyth A. Hiscox's Reassurance in Negative Space is a debut collection with the seasoned deftness of a master in its keen intelligence, wit, innovative diction, unflinching handling of loss and grief, and deep lyricism. Hiscox muses with revelatory insights on such wide-ranging topics as multifarious netsuke, nuclear fallout, artichokes “coming into new brilliance,” the DMV line, the Zen of “the sublime [that] can spring from small things.” By turns ecstatic and somber, profane and sacred, wise and whimsical, Hiscox proves she is a poet of the first order with this memorable collection. PRAISE FOR REASSURANCE IN NEGATIVE SPACE: In Elizabyth Hiscox’s impressive debut collection, ...
Emily Grosholz weaves elements of philosophy, mathematics and the sciences into her experience of the social and natural world, to produce wise and cosmopolitan poetry of high lyricism. The Stars of Earth starts with new poems chronicling the months of a year lived and observed, followed by selections from Grosholz’s previous volumes in chronological order. This rare treasury spans four decades of Grosholz’s acclaimed poetry. PRAISE FOR THE STARS OF EARTH: Emily Grosholz is a poet of radiant intelligence, patient lyricism, and meticulous craft. She has a gifted naturalist’s regard for the living world and wherever she looks that world, for its part, offers her its poetry. With a philos...
In The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy, multi-award winning illustrator and graphic novelist James Kochalka brings us a thematic collection of drawings that chronicle the exploits of a worm who embarks on an adventure of rescue, fueled by inescapable surges of bravery. This odyssey is aptly and expertly versified into an ekphrastic epic by former Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea. Readers of all ages will be entertained by the sights, tension, suspense, and humor of this unique collection. Yet here’s a leaf! And here’s a boat! And here’s the cure for the chill of doubt! Why should not hope, however odd, Be just as strong, no, stronger than gods? ABOUT THE AUTHORS: James Kochalka is the aut...
In Melissa Balmain’s Walking in on People, the serious is lightened with a generous serving of wit and humor, and the lighthearted is enriched with abundant wisdom. She shows us how poetry can be fun yet grounded in everyday challenges and triumphs, with subjects ranging from the current and hip (Facebook posts, online dating, layoffs, retail therapy, cell-phone apps, trans fat), to the traditional and time-tested (marriage, child-rearing, love, death). Through it all, her craft is masterful, with a formal dexterity deployed with precision in a showcase of forms such as the villanelle, ballad, triolet, nonce, and the sonnet. It is little wonder then that Walking in on People is the winner ...
Sea Level Rising, John Philip Drury’s fourth collection, revels in water—flowing through rivers, splashing on quays and docked vessels, the wake of speeding boats, the elusive tang of sea salt in the heart of the prairie, even the water of baptism that rebirths the believer. The uplifting lure of water, as with a pair of honeymooners in Venice, may inspire a love “eager to divorce/ anything impeding its energy.” Our state of being might mirror water’s when “everything’s in flux, repeated spasms/ of wake and wave, bright sun, reflecting pool,/ surges made up of intricate detail.” The waves of music, like those of water, are also prominent in the musings of this collection, whe...
David Alpaugh’s Spooky Action at a Distance—a collection of double-title poems—include irreverent, insightful commentary on subjects both current and timeless. The poetic form is Alpaugh's invention. Masterfully versified with taut control of form and content, on topics ranging from the high precision of science and mathematics to the vagaries and subjectivity of art, this unique collection contains a seemingly endless supply of wit, witticism, wonders, and revelations. PRAISE FOR SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE: I can’t count how many times I laughed out loud while reading David Alpaugh’s Spooky Action at a Distance. Alpaugh’s wit is so original, so outlandish, so outrageous, that a...
In Code was born out of Maryann Corbett’s years of work for the Minnesota Legislature, with a nonpartisan office that mandated that she maintain a public silence about politics. In poems that go from elegiac to fiery to funny, she examines behind-the-scenes legislative labor and the people who do it, the tensions of working for government in a climate hostile to government, and the buildings and grounds that put a beautiful face on a history full of ambiguities. This well-honed collection, Corbett's fifth, reflects on doublespeak and public poses; on coworkers and commutes; on legalese, courts, and elections; on news and history; and at last on retirement—through poems masterfully deploy...