An Oral History of the Flat Earth
An Oral History of the Flat Earth
Matthew Olzmann
"Being human is the bleakest, saddest, most incomprehensibly infuriating endeavor I have ever participated in. And yet. So much laughter. So many delicious things to eat. So many friends who make life worth living. Why is Matthew Olzmann one of the only poets I know who actually allows all of this to be true. Everyone talks about Matthew Olzmann as one of our funniest poets. Higher praise to me is that he is our true Bard of Oblivion. And that honesty. That ethics and care to not insist that it gets better becomes the most revelatory thing: honesty, which becomes a gateway to hilarity, which becomes the physical manifestation of laughter and crying and marveling and telling one's friends about it. At the end of the world may I have poetry and friendship and love like Matthew Olzmann. This book should be seen as part of an oeuvre of unrelenting fury and grace. Let that be the end of the world I am part of. Olzmann is unmatched and welcomes every one of us."
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of The New Economy
September 2027
ISBN: 9781949944006
Available in both print and digital formats.
Photo by Quinlan Corbett
Matthew Olzmann is the author of three collections of poems from Alice James Books: Mezzanines, which was selected for the Kundiman Prize, Contradictions in the Design, and Constellation Route. His writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Brevity, and elsewhere. He’s been awarded fellowships from the Kresge Arts Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony. Currently, he teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Additional Praise:
"An Oral History of the Flat Earth allows us to witness one of our most imaginative, ambitious, and innovative poets at the peak of his powers. Within the span of a single collection there are poems that made me fall out of my chair in laughter and poems that fundamentally reoriented my relationship to the world. There is no other poet on the planet like Matthew Olzmann. We are so lucky to have this book."
—Clint Smith, author of Above Ground
More by Matthew Olzmann:
Matthew Olzmann
“The poems in Olzmann’s [Contradictions in the Design] thrill the reader with straightforward insights regarding the natural and human world thanks to their humor, diversity of topics, startling metaphors and profound observations.”
—Tupelo Quarterly
November 2016
ISBN: 9781938584275
Matthew Olzmann
A Rumpus Poetry Book Club Pick for November 2021
Longlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award
“Conceived as the assembled contents of a mail carrier’s pouch, the intimate and affecting third book by Olzmann (Contradictions in the Design) presents the poet as sender, receiver, and courier. … In language at once direct and artful, Olzmann memorably explores the question of how one might speak across the gulfs dividing humankind.”
—Publishers Weekly
January 2022
ISBN: 9781948579230
Matthew Olzmann
"Being human is the bleakest, saddest, most incomprehensibly infuriating endeavor I have ever participated in. And yet. So much laughter. So many delicious things to eat. So many friends who make life worth living. Why is Matthew Olzmann one of the only poets I know who actually allows all of this to be true. Everyone talks about Matthew Olzmann as one of our funniest poets. Higher praise to me is that he is our true Bard of Oblivion. And that honesty. That ethics and care to not insist that it gets better becomes the most revelatory thing: honesty, which becomes a gateway to hilarity, which becomes the physical manifestation of laughter and crying and marveling and telling one's friends about it. At the end of the world may I have poetry and friendship and love like Matthew Olzmann. This book should be seen as part of an oeuvre of unrelenting fury and grace. Let that be the end of the world I am part of. Olzmann is unmatched and welcomes every one of us."
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of The New Economy
September 2027
ISBN: 9781949944006
Featured:
Kevin Goodan
“[Anaphora has] heart-searing intensity. . .”
—Library Journal
October 2018
ISBN: 9781938584961
Iain Haley Pollock
". . . Pollock delivers moments of levity, lyric beauty, and a creeping melancholy that lend his work its distinct atmosphere."
—Publishers Weekly
September 2018
ISBN: 9781938584954
Andrés Cerpa
A Book Riot Must-Read Poetry Collection
Recommended by Foundry Journal
"With fierce despair and wisdom hard won through pain...these experiences have sharpened Cerpa’s stunning, dark observations and sparked chilling lines.”
—Publishers Weekly
January 2019
ISBN: 9781938584978
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
2019 Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Excellence in Publishing
The 2018 Nautilus Gold Award Winner
“At the Empress: An Epithalamium” named the winner of the 2019 Singapore Poetry Contest
One of Electric Lit’s 10 Books of Poetry that Highlight the Diversity of Asian America
One of Entropy Magazine’s 2018 Best Poetry Books
Top Fall Poetry Collection from Library Journal
“By turns delicate and anguished, the poems [in Isako Isako] ask how one can recover—and recover from—experiences that are not one’s own.”
—Publishers Weekly
September 2018
ISBN: 9781938584947
Donald Revell
2018 Balcones Poetry Prize Finalist
“Thoroughly integrating sacred and secular, Revell produces a book of love and rapture.”
—Publishers Weekly
May 2018
ISBN: 9781938584763
Anna Rose Welch
“This is How You Beg” recognized as a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII
"Welch digs deep into desire, origin, and the chaos of creation in a debut collection of rich, sensuous poems that juxtapose scriptural material with the sexual."
—Publishers Weekly
April 2018
ISBN: 9781938584756
Monica A. Hand
2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee
“DiVida stands as a timeless presence burdened by the injustices of systemic racism. Her power is rooted in black women’s ability, born of necessity, to inhabit their bodies in multiple ways.”
—Publishers Weekly
April 2018
ISBN: 9781938584749
Jennifer Chang
Winner of the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award
Longlisted for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award
A 2017 Poets.org Noted Book of the Year
12th Annual National Indie Excellence Award Winner
2017 Julie Suk Award Longlist Finalist
A 2017 Minnesota Public Radio Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Beltway Poetry Quarterly Best Book of the Year
A Lit Hub Book that Deserved More Attention in 2017
Recommended by the New York Public Library
“Chang is fearless in taking on traditional notions of what poetry can do to the self and to the natural world.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
October 2017
ISBN: 9781938584664
Kaveh Akbar
Winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award
2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Gold Winner
2018 Levis Reading Prize Winner
2017 Julie Suk Award Winner
A 2017 Nautilus Silver Award Winner
2017 Florida Book Award Gold Winner
A 2018 First Horizon Award Winner
Winner of the 2018 Eric Hoffer Small Press Award
Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize
A 2018 Montaigne Medal Finalist
A 2017 NPR Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Entropy Magazine Best Book of the Year
A 2017 The Coil Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Sundress Publications Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Indianapolis Monthly Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Volume 1 Brooklyn Best Book of the Year
A 2017 Interview Best Book of the Year
“A breathtaking addition to the canon of addiction literature, Akbar’s poetry confronts the pain and joy in denying oneself for the sake of oneself…Akbar’s poems offer readers, religious or not, a way to cultivate faith in times of deepest fear.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
September 2017
ISBN: 9781938584671
June Jordan
Edited by Christoph Keller & Jan Heller Levi
A 2017 Poets.org Noted Book of the Year
A 2017 Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An Oprah.com Editor’s Pick for New Collections by and About Bold, Free-Spirited Poets, Nov. 2017
12th Annual National Indie Excellence Award Winner
“Jordan begs us to trust one another and to tell the truth, to read the world more closely, to learn the wisdom of those who came before, who resisted before, and loved before. She laid a foundation, leaving a revolutionary blueprint for poetry to transform our lives beyond the white gaze and its literary imagination. . . .This book is not just a collection of figurative words; it is a tool for liberation.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review by Aja Monet
September 2017
ISBN: 9781938584350
Matthew Olzmann
“There’s something inherently spiritual about Olzmann’s Mezzanines. . . . It’s a place of reflection and contemplation, a temporary reprieve from the world’s chaos and a reach for a vision of paradise.”
—The Los Angeles Review of Books
April 2013
ISBN: 9781882295982