Poetry. History. Travel. Blending historical, scientific, and literary scholarship with an impressive range of poetic forms, Seattle poet Melinda Mueller re-creates one of the most astounding survival
Highly intelligent and a master of camouflage, the octopus is a creature destined to thrive in the poetic ecosystem. In The Octopus Game, the figure of the octopus shape-shifts and reinvents itself th
In his third collection of poetry, John Hoppenthaler surveils the remnants of an American Dream. What devotion might mean and look like in our time is at the book’s heart. The poems, written in a vari
One of the main themes is the essential presence of music and music-making in the world; “I would never go into the dark without the voices,” as the title poem says. The book also includes a number of
Like Robert Frost's North of Boston, David Yezzi's Birds of the Air intersperses charged lyrics with longer dramatic narratives. His monologues explore the frenetic pressures of urban life, as a numbe
The voice of these poems is clear and strong, rising as it does out of the earth to “the celebrations of the reeds,” living simply and daily among cat-tail, wren, peacock, children, women, “praising t
In Rachel Richardson’s second collection of poems, she juxtaposes the grand quests of Ahab and Melville with the quotidian journeys of contemporary life. Hundred-Year Wave launches stories of marriage
The Nomenclature of Small Things explores grief through the language of science, history, and art. From Charles Darwin to Carl Linnaeus, from the passenger pigeon to fossil ammonites, each poem seeks
Suddenly exiled from Paris by her father, fifteen-year-old Agnes finds herself living in the south of France with her sister Sophie, her ailing grandfather and two servants in the family’s long-neglec
This anthology celebrates the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Writing Awards at Carnegie Mellon University, a poetry and prose writing contest that, since 1999, has invited Pittsburgh-area high school and
These poems both celebrate and question the psychological existence we give to the objects that define our lives: the silver spoon from which the speaker sips, during each Epiphany, the sacred Borscht
Tell me, pleads the speaker in the opening lines of "Poem for Virginia in Ecstasy." Tell me all about it. That consuming curiosity is emblematic of this anticipated debut collection, which investigate
Jason Whitmarsh’s The Histories is an extravagantly funny and deeply affecting work of the imagination. With an obsessive precision, Whitmarsh catalogs our misunderstandings, our absurdities, our joys
Kingdom extends Joseph Millar’s articulate devotion to the astonishments of daily life—their mingled beauty and pain. As in his first three books, Millar, like the late Philip Levine, has a keen eye f
In Swastika into Lotus, Richard Katrovas, a “punk formalist,” casts a wary eye on poetry, poetry readings, higher education, the UFO cottage industry, organized religion, fine dining, climate change d
From mermaids to lovers to skinny dogs to dervishes, Heather Hartley’s second collection, Adult Swim, gathers together unlikely characters whose different stories explore the connections we share—love
Magicians, wig makers, sculptors, perfumers, choreographers, and composers all help conjure the worlds of Frank’s second collection, The Spokes of Venus. These poems offer a landscape shaped by the te
These poems grapple with conflicts arising from a world in which the personal, political, cultural, and aesthetic are deeply entangled and often troubling. Charara does not shy away from the tensions,
