LITMIR.BIZ

The Dead Man, Marvin Bell’s brilliant poetic invention, is an overarching consciousness, alive and dead at once, defeating time. Mystical and anonymous, The Dead Man offers searing insight into the joys, as well as the catastrophes, of fluctuating cultural and political moments. Incarnate draws from all of Bell’s previous collections where The Dead Man appeared, and adds an abundant cache of new poems that resonate with “the dark matter and sticky stuff” of life. As David St. John writes in his introduction, “No voice in our poetry has spoken with more eloquence and wisdom of the daily spiritual, political and psychological erosion in our lives; no poet has gathered our American experience with a more capacious tenderness—all the while naming and celebrating our persistent hopes and enduring human desires….Remarkable for its eclectic and culturally diverse vision, Incarnate embodies a vivid world of poetic reflection unlike anything else in American poetry.”

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"Ms. Stein reminds us that there is no honey—rough, or otherwise—without the sting." —<em>The New York Times</em></p>


<p>In this lush, disturbing second collection from Melissa Stein, exquisite images are salvaged from harm and survival. Set against the natural world’s violence—both ordinary and sublime—pain shines jewel-like out of these poems, illuminating what lovers and families conceal. Stein uses her gifts for persona and lyric richness to build worlds that are vivid, intricate, tough, sexy, and raw: «over and over // life slapping you in the face / till you’re newly burnished / flat-out gasping and awake.» Breathless with risk and redemption, <em>Terrible blooms</em> shows how loss claims us and what we reclaim.</p>


<p>"[Melissa Stein’s] sentences are beautifully choreographed; they start and stop the motion of her poems with a nearly invisible, effortless authority." —Mark Doty</p><p>"[Stein’s] electric apprehensions throb with this nearly preverbal knowing. They are rough as a hound’s tongue. . . . Stein is a new poet of the first order." —Molly Peacock</p>


<p>


<strong>Quarry</strong></p>


<p>


As you slept <br>






I was thinking about the quarry,<br>






about light going deeper<br>






into earth, into rock, the hurt<br>






of light hitting layers<br>






that should be hidden,<br>






that should be buried,<br>






and how when it rained<br>






for a long time that absence filled<br>






with suffering, and we swam.<br>


</p>


<p><strong>Melissa Stein</strong>’s debut collection <em>Rough Honey</em> won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of California at Davis, and is a freelance editor and writer in San Francisco.</p>

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"Nezhukumatathil’s poems contain elegant twists of a very sharp knife. She writes about the natural world and how we live in it, filling each poem, each page with a true sense of wonder." —Roxane Gay “Cultural strands are woven into the DNA of her strange, lush… poems. Aphorisms…from another dimension.” — The New York Times “With unparalleled ease, she’s able to weave each intriguing detail into a nuanced, thought-provoking poem that also reads like a startling modern-day fable.” — The Poetry Foundation “How wonderful to watch a writer who was already among the best young poets get even better!” —Terrance Hayes With inquisitive flair, Aimee Nezhukumatathil creates a thorough registry of the earth’s wonderful and terrible magic. In her fourth collection of poetry, she studies forms of love as diverse and abundant as the ocean itself. She brings to life a father penguin, a C-section scar, and the Niagara Falls with a powerful force of reverence for life and living things. With an encyclopedic range of subjects and unmatched sincerity, Oceanic speaks to each reader as a cooperative part of the earth, an extraordinary neighborhood to which we all belong. From “Starfish and Coffee”: And that’s how you feel after tumblinglike sea stars on the ocean floor over each other.A night where it doesn’t matterwhich are arms or which are legsor what radiates and how—only your centers stuck together. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four collections of poetry. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the prestigious Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, Nezhukumatathil teaches creative writing and environmental literature in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.

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“Kooser . . . must be the most accessible and enjoyable major poet in America. His lines are so clear and simple.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Nothing escapes him; everything is illuminated.” — Library Journal “Will one day rank alongside of Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams.” — Minneapolis Tribune “Kooser’s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift.” — The Bloomsbury Review Four decades of poetry—and a generous selection of new work—make up this extraordinary collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser’s poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser’s language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, “Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance.” From “March 2”: Patchy clouds and windy.All morningour house has been flashing in and out of shadelike a signal, and far across the waves of grassa neighbor’s house has answered,offering help. Ted Kooser is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Delights & Shadows , which won the Pulitzer Prize. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States, and is a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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In the bold tradition of the “Misty Poets,” Ha Jin confronts China’s fraught political history while paying tribute to its rich culture and landscape. The poems of A Distant Center speak in a voice that is steady and direct, balancing contemplative longing with sober warnings from a writer who has confronted the traumas of censorship and state violence. With unadorned language and epigrammatic wit, Jin conjures scenes that encompass the personal, historical, romantic, and environmental, interrogating conceptions of foreignness and national identity as they appear and seep into everyday interactions and being. These are poems that offer solace in times of political reaction and uncertainty. Jin’s voice is wise, comforting, and imploring; his words are necessary and his lessons are invaluable. Question your place in the world—do not be complacent—look for strength and hope in every nook: “Keep in mind the meaning of / your existence: wherever you land, / your footprints will become milestones.”

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Jenny George’s debut showcases an astonishing poetic talent, a new voice that is intensely focused, patient, and empathic. The Dream of Reason explores the paradoxical relationships between humans and the animals we imagine, keep, fear, and consume. Titled after Goya’s grotesque bestiary, George’s own dreamscape is populated by purring moths, bats that crawl like goblins, and livestock—especially pigs, whose spirit and slaughter inform a central series of portraits. The poems invite moments of stark realism into a spacious, lucid realm just outside of time—finding revelation in stillness, intimacy in violence, and vision in language that lifts from the dark. From “Threshold Gods”: I saw a bat in a dream and then later that weekI saw a real bat, crawling on its elbowsacross the porch like a goblin.It was early evening. I want to ask about death.But first I want to ask about flying. Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a foundation for Buddhist-based social justice. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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“[Bottoms] makes astounding leaps of both faith and doubt, and does so with insight, honesty, and flashes of anger—all characteristic elements of his work.” — The Southern Review “One finds here what one expects in a book of good Southern poems: clear narratives . . . evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise.” — Library Journal “Bottoms’ poems do what the best poems have always done: They compel us to reread them. They linger in our minds. They alter our perception of the world.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution David Bottoms explores otherness, the death of parents, and private spirituality. Images of rural Georgia confront the changing landscape of his memories where he searches for refuge in quiet places of prayer. Rooted in nature, Bottoms’ poetry affirms the “tenuous ways tenderness seeps into the world” and the loneliness inherent in memory. Memory is “smoke off a damp fire” as Bottoms explores absence, a contemplative inner life, and changing landscapes. From “An Absence”: Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,those moments you turn your head –the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,or the print by the pond suggests the fox.Near the end, though, only one thing matters,and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly. David Bottoms is the author of eight books of poetry and has received the Walt Whitman Award, fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and served as Poet Laureate of Georgia for twelve years. He currently holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English at Georgia State University.

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–Ex-punk rock chola and mother of five-McKibbens founded The Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat, an annual writing retreat in the US open exclusively to women of color. – She has an dynamic and large social media presence and a killer website: rachelmckibbens.com/-McKibbens is a member of Latinas Unidas and co-curates the critically-acclaimed monthly reading series Poetry and Pie Night in upstate New York.-According to her website, she is currently working on a memoir about growing up as a child misogynist.-For four years, McKibbens taught poetry through the Healing Arts Program at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. She continues to teach poetry and creative writing and give lectures across the country as an advocate for mental health awareness, gender-equality and victims of violence and domestic abuse.

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John Freeman's first poetry collection charts the impact of place on human experience. In Beirut, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Rome, and the foothills of a childhood hometown, Freeman navigates legacies of ruin and construction, illness and memory. Warm, mournful, and distinctly urban, Maps offers a compassionate perspective from the experience of one American embroiled in empire. From «You Are Here:» The city grindsits molars at night, carefully minedexplosions boring cavities beneathManhattan, while other linesride all hours in yellow light, glidingto stops at the zebra-painted beamhalfway down each platform,conductor always pointing up, as ifto say, yes, you are here. "At the intersection of art and heart, this magnificent sheaf of voyages leads us through the di fficult and picturesque atlas of a life.... This is an enduring and rapturous account of a life’s journey to plumb the depths of the known in order to reveal the hidden and unknown." —D.A. Powell "What is mapped here, in John Freeman’s exquisite and robust poetry debut, are the territories of loss, pain, violence, and reckoning that make up a life. And also those of love, remembrance, and unabashed passion that make that same life livable. Maps is a consolation and a delight." —­Tracy K. Smith "John Freeman’s astonishing book of poems shows us first an America that could once and sometimes still be experienced in a vacuum, removed from the brutal struggles that are the daily life of much of the world. Then he takes us into that world, where human tenderness is martyred and buried, day after day. In Freeman’s hands the most minimal scenes, the smallest gestures, record our persistence and fragility. Disconsolate, loving, burdened by memory, undeceived but somehow still doggedly hopeful, these poems help us to see a world we’re just beginning to map." —Mark Doty John Freeman is an American writer and literary critic. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s , a literary biannual, and author of two books of nonfiction, The Tyranny of E-mail and How to Read a Novelist . He has also edited two anthologies of writing on inequality, Tales of Two Cities and Tales of Two Americas . The former editor of Granta , he lives in New York, where he teaches at The New School and is writer-in-residence at New York University. The executive editor at LitHub, he has published poems in Zyzzyva , The New Yorker , The Paris Review , and The Nation . His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

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“Olstein places the mystical next to the mundane. . . . She explodes theories of cause and effect and expands our notions of logic, symbolism, and the territory between dreams and waking experience.” — The Growler Poetry Review In her fourth book—a gorgeous call-to-arms in the face of our current social and political conditions—Lisa Olstein employs her signature wit, wordplay, candor, and absurdity in poems that are her most personal—and political—to date. Like a brilliant dinner conversation that ranges from animated discussions of politics, philosophy, and religion to intimate considerations of motherhood, friendship, and eros, Olstein’s voice is immediately approachable yet uncomfortably at home in the American empire. From “Essay Means to Try”: Already during these two weeks of cryingI’ve purchased seven books each of whichfelt important to own and taken one hundredand forty vitamins and filled three prescriptions,none to help with the crying. I’ve waitedpatiently or impatiently in countless lines,Whistle, sometimes crying . . .Crying is how we enter the world, Whistle.We all come by sea, we all comeby storm, we all tear apart and are torn. Lisa Olstein is the author of four books of poetry and earned an MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches at the Michener Center at the University of Texas and lives in Austin, Texas.

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