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“Brenda Shaughnessy’s poems bristle with imperatives: ‘confuse me, spoon-feed me, stop the madness, decide.’ There are more direct orders in her first few pages than in six weeks of boot camp…Only Shaughnessy’s kidding. Or she is and she isn’t. If you just want to boss people around, you’re a control freak, but if you can joke about it, then your bossiness is leavened by a yeast that’s all too infrequent in contemporary poetry, that of humor.”—New York Times “Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy.”—Harvard Review “Brenda Shaughnessy . . . writes like the love-child of Mina Loy and Frank O’Hara.”—Exquisite Corpse "In its worried acceptance of contradiction, its absolute refusal of sentimentality and its acute awareness of time's 'scarce infinity,' this is a brilliant, beautiful and essential continuation of the metaphysical verse tradition." —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Human Dark with Sugar is both wonderfully inventive (studded with the strangenesses of ‘snownovas’ and ‘flukeprints’) and emotionally precise. Her ‘I’ is madly multidexterous—urgent, comic, mischievous—and the result is a new topography of the debates between heart and head.”—Matthea Harvey, a judge for the Laughlin Award "Seriously playful, sexy, sharp-edged, and absolutely commanding throughout....Here you'll meet an 'I' boldly ready to take on the world and just itching to give 'You' some smart directives. So listen up."—Library Journal In her second book, winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award, Brenda Shaughnessy taps into themes that have inspired era after era of poets. Love. Sex. Pain. The heavens. The loss of time. The weird miracle of perception. Part confessional, part New York School, and part just plain lover of the English language, Shaughnessy distills the big questions into sharp rhythms and alluring lyrics. “You’re a tool, moon. / Now, noon. There’s a hero.” Master of diverse dictions, she dwells here on quirky words, mouthfuls of consonance and assonance—anodyne, astrolabe, alizarin—then catches her readers up short with a string of powerful monosyllables. “I’ll take / a year of that. Just give it back to me.” In addition to its verbal play, Human Dark With Sugar demonstrates the poet’s ease in a variety of genres, from “Three Sorries” (in which the speaker concludes, “I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all”), to a sequence of prose poems on a lover’s body, to the discussion of a disturbing dream. In this caffeine jolt of a book, Shaughnessy confirms her status as a poet of intoxicating lines, pointed, poignant comments on love, and compelling abstract images —not the least of which is human dark with sugar. Brenda Shaughnessy was raised in California and is an MFA graduate of Columbia University. She is the poetry editor for Tin House and has taught at several colleges, including Eugene Lang College and Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Named to the Notable Books of the Year lists from The Kansas City Star and the Michigan Library Association. “Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him.”—The Times (London) “This is [Harrison’s] most robust, sure-footed, and blood-raising poetry collection to date.”—Booklist Jim Harrison—one of America’s most beloved writers—calls his poetry “the true bones of my life.” Although he is best known as a fiction writer, it is as a poet that Publishers Weekly famously called him an “untrammeled renegade genius.” Saving Daylight, Harrison’s tenth collection of poetry, is his first book of new poems in a decade. All of Harrison’s abundant passions for life are poured into suites, prose poems, letter-poems, and even lyrics for a mariachi band. The subjects and concerns are wide-ranging—from the heart-rending “Livingston Suite,” where a boy drowns in the local river and the body is discovered by the poet’s wife—to some of the most harrowing political poems of Harrison’s career. There is also a cast of creature characters—bears, dogs, birds, fish—as well as the woodlands, thickets, and occasional cities of Arizona, Montana, Michigan, France, and Mexico. “Imagination is my only possession,” Harrison once said. And Saving Daylight is an imagination in full, exuberant bloom. Jim Harrison is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His work has been translated into dozens of languages. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives in Montana and Arizona.

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– Marvin Bell one of the leading poets in America – long-time teacher at Iowa Writer’s Workshop, one of the country’s foremost writing programs – first poet laureate of Iowa (2000-2004) – Bell’s last book, Rampant, was very well reviewed, including cover feature in American Poetry Review and review in New York Times – includes several new “Dead Man” poems, for which Bell is both famous and infamous – most political book of Bell’s career – Bell's sixth book with Copper Canyon Press

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– Bass is co-author of million-seller Courage to Heal – Bass considered a pioneer in field of healing from child sexual abuse – Bass has a devoted following – The Human Line confronts many of the profound moral dilemmas of our time—all grounded in human-scale concerns – Bass is popular workshop leader and creative writing teacher – Bass poems have appeared in many national publications including The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., DoubleTake – Who can resist lines like: “A brain / firing one hundred billion neurons / is still bashing its own skull with big rocks.”

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– Name another American poet who also had a career as a race-car driver and was honored with a limited edition replica of his car—“Dan Gerber’s 1965 Shelby R-Model.” (Sorry, 2250 models sold out at $90 a pop.) – Dan Gerber is an ordained Zen priest – Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison’s book Braided Creek (Copper Canyon, 2003) is dedicated to Gerber – Gerber’s last book of poems won the Foreword magazine “Best Book of the Year” Award – Gerber's work has appeared in many national publications, including The New Yorker; Poetry; Playboy; Sports Illustrated; The Nation

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· Abani is a very popular speaker and presenter active on the reading circuit · Abani’s most recent novel, GraceLand (Picador), won several awards, was reviewed in scores of metro dailies, and was named a “Best Book of the Year” in San Francisco Chronicle and listed as a “Notable Book” in New York Times · Abani was a Barnes and Noble Discover Series Selection · Central section of Hands Washing Water is very imaginative Civil War correspondence (with a zinger for an ending)

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"Zapruder’s hip lyricism offers both the slippery comedy and a surprisingly grave, ultimately winning, commitment to real people, emotions, locales."—Publishers WeeklyMatthew Zapruder is a young poet reinvigorating American letters. In his second collection he engages love, mortality, and life in New York City after 9/11. The title piece, a prose-poem synopsis of an unwritten novel, turns all literary forms upon themselves with savvy and flair, while the elegy cycle «Twenty Poems for Noelle» is a compassionate song for a suffering friend. Noelle, somewhere in an apartmentsymphony number twolistens to you breathing.Broken glass in the street.What was once unglowing glows . . .The Pajamaist is an intimate book filled with sly wit and an ever-present, infectious openness to amazement. Zapruder's poems are urbane and constantly, curiously searching.

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– In suppport of his last book of poems, he was a guest on NPR's «Fresh Air» for a long interview – Arthur has become a well-known poet, winning prizes, getting reviewed in national magazines (The New Yorker), and serving on prize committees – Quipo is Copper Canyon's fourth book from Arthur Sze – Sze is a staff favorite

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– Budbill is very popular on NPR's Writer's Almanac, and Garrison Keillor has read his poems two dozen times – A continuation of the mountain hermit schtick from Moment to Moment–a schtick that clearly resonnates with readers as MTM is now in its fifth printing – If you love him, you love him. Booklist does. They selected Moment to Moment as one of the «Ten Best Books of the Year» – We receive more mail about Budbill than any other poet we publish

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– Copper Canyon has been invested in Jane Miller's work for nearly 20 years, and this is the fifth book we've published – In our «Weird Review Quotes» file, Jane has a doozy: «Reading Jane Miller's poetry is like channel-surfing on acid.» – Palace of Pearls was written in a fever-pitch of inspiration, over one summer–"the writing came fast, everyday," she says. What she doesn't say is that it's brilliant. – she got her MFA from Iowa and has taught at the prestigious University of Arizona program since 1987

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