What You Wanted
What You Wanted
Available in both print and digital formats.
Jill McDonough's seventh book of poems, What You Wanted, is forthcoming from Alice James. She is the author of American Treasure (Alice James, 2022), Here All Night (Alice James, 2019), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), and Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation,The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston, started a program offering College Reading and Writing in two Boston jails, and is a visiting writer at a juvenile correctional facility. Her website: jillmcdonough.com.
Additional Praise:
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More by Jill McDonough:
Jill McDonough
”Here’s Jill McDonough, Here All Night, belting out an endearing song of herself that is, as Whitman’s is, tuned in to some thrumming undercurrent of joy in all the mess that is America. The poems’ catalogue of the unwieldy stuff of domestic life ultimately insists that things are pretty good—love endures, friends come through, there’s plenty of gin. Unabashed and boisterous, McDonough’s voice also coos with gratitude and aching tenderness. A vital book in multiple senses: read it and feel more alive.”
—Maggie Dietz
September 2019
ISBN: 9781948579025
Jill McDonough
Winner of the 2023 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry
Longlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award
A 2023 Mass Book Award “Must Read”
”What does it mean to be free, especially when one’s personal freedoms have come at another’s expense? Jill McDonough’s newest book takes on this question and others, examining what fantasies we engage when we declare ourselves free from pain, free from want, free from prison, free from fear, or free from history, when none of us are ever free from such things. But it’s this shared fantasies of self-governance, McDonough’s biting poems suggest, that are too precious for us to abandon, becoming the real “American Treasure” we each hoard for ourselves. In poems both hilarious and deeply personal, McDonough examines how our refusal to be held accountable for anything finally shackles us to a vision of America that is anything but free. The funniest jokes are, in reality, deadly serious; American Treasure is a wildly funny book.”
—Paisley Rekdal
November 2022
ISBN: 9781948579292
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
Jill McDonough
A 2017 Minnesota Public Radio Best Book of the Year
“McDonough works to humanize the technologies that carry out our most dreadful acts and forces us to examine the ways in which we abandon—or, perhaps more accurately, ignore—our agency in order to protect our fragile consciences.”
—Hobart
April 2017
ISBN: 9781938584268