PATRICIA CARLIN:
Second Nature
"Second nature usually means a notion along the lines of "instinctive," and Patricia Carlin's poems always are prodigiously accomplished in this rare sense -- casually (if not effortlessly) deft, smart, stylish, consummate, and winning. But, range a little farther, and second nature also intimates another nature beyond our everyday: rival pasts ("a life gone missing"), or alternate futures ("This is not the body I will die in"). Second Nature is a brilliant, dauntless, and ensorcelling book. I loved it."—Robert Polito
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BURT KIMMELMAN:
Abandoned Angel
"By way of a precise and pared-down language these poems artfully render a physical world while simultaneously serving as objects to be engaged for the contemplation of such a world. The poet not only situates us in the spaces of particular 'Weather' but also opens us to the poignancy of the passage of time against the vibrations of various 'Cities.' And in the latter case what might at first seem to be simple narrative progressions can often startlingly make manifest deeply heartfelt human illuminations. Kimmelman is obviously a master of his chosen strategies in both cases."—Hugh Seidman |
EDWARD FOSTER:
Sowing the Wind
“As a writer, critic, editor, and teacher, Ed Foster is inveterately Apollonian: lucid, balanced, well organized.” --American Book Review
“Edward Foster’s poetry, always exacting and infinitely sweeping, comes to us like a whisper from behind our own ears. . . . His poems suspend themselves just above language, connotative of some understanding—perhaps common to all of us—that recedes at the brink of words. It is just on this cusp, with some doubt, some explaining, that we find Foster, and trust him to guide us on an impossible course. With pristine lucidity, he knows, the ‘propositions weren’t enough.’”
–Brooklyn Rail |
Winner of the 2015 Marsh Hawk Press Prize
TANA JEAN WELCH: Latest Volcano
“The presentation of characters, settings, and situations is as subtly beautiful as it is haunting, and leaves the reader inspired and in awe. These poems are gilt-lined, catching to the eye and the mind, and reminiscent of the broader circumstances found within everyday humanity.—Greg Bem, Rain
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SANDY McINTOSH: A Hole In the Ocean: A Hamptons' Apprenticeship
These irresistibly amusing and engaging recollections of the author's encounters with the great and near-great artists and poets who washed ashore in the Hamptons has a special charm, as our intrepid protagonist plays unofficial chauffeur, therapist, straight-man and witness, always with retrospective self-awareness, insight and bittersweet gratitude.—Phillip Lopate |
CLAUDIA CARLSON: My Chocolate Sarcophagus
The twenty-three poems in Claudia Carlson’s Chocolate Sarcophagus combine raw courage and absolute beauty. Powerful, poignant, ecstatically lyrical, and beautifully crafted, they present us with an unflinching contemplation of mortality that never descends into sentimentality. In these poems, Carlson brings us an important message from the edge of life. —Mary Mackey |
THOMAS FINK: Selected Poems & Poetic Series
“Fresh marvelously exuberant lyric wildness…. Of special interest: a set of ‘Yinglish” poems that bring the syntax of the Yiddish into the American lyric.” –Charles Bernstein
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EILEEN R. TABIOS: The Connoisseur of Alleys
Eileen R. Tabios is arguably the most prolific and inventive experimental writer in the U.S. —Vince Gotera
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PAUL PINES: Charlotte Songs
The great themes—like Love, Death and Family— have inspired masterpieces and, alas, Hallmark Cards. In Charlotte Songs, Paul Pines celebrates his daughter. But, if you want the Hallmark Card version of fatherhood, you’ve come to the wrong place. Pines gives us the full paradox of living with his child as she grows from toddler to young woman. Inventive, humorous, baffling and poignant. —Dalt Wonk |
