Pageant

~Joanna Fuhrman

short blurb/review praise

The Bitter Withy

“...intensely personal, even visionary accounts and meditations are rendered with lucidity and ease...truly exceptional”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Slamming Open the Door

~Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

"Written with skill in tight, spare lines without sentimentality or melodrama, Bonanno launches readers through the experience, one that evokes a universal terror... A stunning first book."
—Library Journal

Winter Tenor

~Kevin Goodan

"We readers are lucky when we encounter a voice that speaks as if it were speaking to each of us alone, an impossible and therefore necessary illusion, a miracle of multiple visions, essential in a commonplace way only what's divine can determine—this describes Winter Tenor's quintessential and most valuable presence. I love reading this book."
—Dara Wier

Rough Cradle

~Betsy Sholl

"Solid, moving and thoughtful, this eighth collection from the Maine poet laureate...represents patience, affection and generous attention to whoever she loves and to what she hears and sees."
—Publishers Weekly

Shelter

~Carey Salerno

"...Salerno unfolds a story that we cannot stop reading—though...the bare truth on the page hurts... This first collection takes courage to read, but you can bet it took more courage to write, and we should be glad Salerno did it."
—Library Journal

Begin Anywhere

~Frank Giampietro

"The lines in these wise, funny, often startlingly sad poems nudge and jostle each other coltishly, and no wonder: they are the foals of Head and Heart, two mighty steeds to draw the reader’s chariot out of the well-trodden way and straight to poetry’s palace of gold, its realm of the blesséd." —David Kirby

The Next Country

~Idra Novey

"Novey strikes a fine balance between hints and allusions to political history and generalized or allegorical locales, not proper nouns or place names but 'leaping wells to the underworld'. . ." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

King Baby

~Lia Purpura

"Purpura's charming [third collection]...captures both the fierce love and the flighty weirdness of life with a baby, opting always for the symbolic and the surprising over the literal record..." (Publishers Weekly)

The Usable Field

~Jane Mead

"Jane Mead penetrates grief with alacrity and burning self-scrutiny. This work enters the world like wild rain and lightning, an inheritance from Celan's and Tsvetaeva's stuttered lyricism. Those who can brave the revolutions in her music will choose life because of its difficulty." —Jane Miller

Door to a Noisy Room

~Peter Waldor

"...familial, humane, and loyal to the good people and the simple delights of this world." (Publishers Weekly)

The Temple Gate Called Beautiful

~David Kirby

". . .a rarified world, one rendered through the eyes of a keen intelligence." (Library Journal)

A Thief of Strings

~Donald Revell

"No poet so innovative now is more accessible, and no poet half so accessible in recent years has made the language so new." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

The World in Place of Itself

~Bill Rasmovicz

"This passionate debut from New York City–based Rasmovicz places him on an unfamiliar border, between the haunted generalities of Franz Wright and the hunted, bomb-damaged villages of Charles Simic." (Publishers Weekly)

The Glass Age

~Cole Swenson

"Swensen's recent thematic book-length sequences...combine scholarly meticulousness with a postmodern flair for dislocation, cementing Swensen's reputation as an important experimental writer." (Publishers Weekly)

Beloved Idea

~Ann Killough

"Her world cannot be contained within narrow margins; her sentences sprawl across the lines and pages like our own messy beloved geographies, the country we call home." (Library Journal)

Ruin

~Cynthia Cruz

“Cruz writes about illness, death, destitution and addiction with confident authority and disquieting relish.” (The New York Times Book Review)

The Case Against Happiness

~Jean-Paul Pequeur

"...a promising poet with a generosity of spirit and the knowledge that 'joy is not impossible.'" (Publishers Weekly)

Forth A Raven

~Christina Davis

These ethereal poems, curious and necessary, remind us of all that we risk when we venture forth

Here, Bullet

~Brian Turner

"Several hundred books have now been published on the Iraq War...but none have felt necessary until now....With Brian Turner's Here, Bullet, we have the first war poetry since Yusef Komunyaaka's Dien Cai Dau that matters." (Rain Taxi)

Gloryland

~Anne Marie Macari

"...sumptuously visceral..." (Publishers Weekly). Anne Marie Macari’s breath-taking second collection finds unapologetic revelation in the female body.

The Far Mosque

~Kazim Ali

“Painterly minimalism, open-field technique and Near Eastern traditions together give Ali a neatly varied verbal palette for his smart, quietly attractive poems….a poet to watch.” (Publishers Weekly)

Landscapes I & II

~Lesle Lewis

In Lewis' whimsical landscapes, surreal meets New England bucolic, meaning is arrived at cumulatively, and the animated and the “real” converse

Polar

~Dobby Gibson

"...Gibson's land teems with a language so alive and so imaginative that one cannot help but read on with wonder and rapture" (Bloomsbury Review).

In the Ghost-House Acquainted

~Kevin Goodan

Goodan’s mesmerizing first collection wells out of a deeply lived rural life, with all its beauty and brutality. Winner of the 2005 L.L.Winship/PEN New England Award.

Matadora

~Sarah Gambito

"Matadora introduces us to a fearless new talent, whose voice is sure to be a significant and sexy siren call" (Mid-American Review)

Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes are Pierced

~Catherine Barnett

The family response to the sudden deaths of the speaker’s two young nieces is at the center of Catherine Barnett’s first collection. Winner of the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award.

The Devotion Field

~Claudia Keelan

This lively fourth collection should please Keelan’s fans and earn her new ones.

Goest

~Cole Swenson

Esteemed poet Cole Swensen’s ninth collection is haunted by history, discovery, and the color white.

Night of a Thousand Blossoms

~Frank X. Gaspar

In his fourth collection, Gaspar's unique narrative idiom—lush, songful, insistent—firmly establishes him as a distinct, important voice

Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

~Matthea Harvey

"intensely visual....Mournfully comic and syntactically inventive..." —The New Yorker

The Art of the Lathe

~B.H. Fairchild

1998 National Book Award Finalist · 1999 William Carlos Williams Award · 1999 PEN Center West Poetry Award · 1999 Natalie Ornish Poetry Award · 1999 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award · 1999 California Book Award

From Room to Room

~Jane Kenyon

The acclaimed author's first book, still in print after 25 years, apprehends the mystery beneath everyday circumstances and objects.

The River at Wolf

~Jean Valentine

"Reach of spirit, alloy of shock, concern and grace; scope where few look for it; heroic guesses extending poetry out where it must both float and support—why we need and why I love Jean Valentine's poetry." —Sandra McPherson

The Moon Reflected Fire

~Doug Anderson

Inspired by the author's service in the Vietnam War, these wrenching poems scrutinize war and its malignant effects.

Tamsen Donner: A Woman's Journey

~Ruth Whitman

Transforming historical fact into poetic insight, Whitman recreates the journal that pioneer Tamsen Donner lost on her nightmarish journey to California in 1846