An anthology of 144 "extreme" formal poems by 36 contemporary poets, many of them multi-award winners. The poets included are: Alexander Pepple; B. Fulton Jennes; Barbara Loots; Benjamin S. Grossberg; Beth Houston; Bruce Bennett; C. B. Anderson; Catherine Chandler; Chris O'Carroll; Claudia Gary; D. R. Goodman; David Anthony; David Stephenson; Debra Wierenga; Duncan Gillies MacLaurin; Elizabeth Spencer Spragins; Eric Meub; Gail White; Jane Blanchard; JD Michael; Jean L. Kreiling; Jerome Betts; John J. Brugaletta; Joseph S. Salemi; Kevin Durkin; Kyle Potvin; Leslie Monsour; Maryann Corbett; Max Gutmann; Nicole Caruso Garcia; Robin Helweg-Larsen; Susan de Sola; Susan Jarvis Bryant; Ted Charnley; Tim Taylor; Wendy Sloan

An anthology of nearly 200 true-to-form sonnets by over forty poets, many of them multi-award winners. The poets included are: David Gwilym Anthony; Lisa Barnett; Bruce Bennett; Jerome Betts; Jane Blanchard; John J. Brugaletta; Mike Carson; Jared Carter; Cheryl Carty; Ted Charnley; Patrick Daly; Diane Elayne Dees; Susan de Sola; Kevin Durkin; Nicole Caruso Garcia; Claudia Gary; Mel Goldberg; Midge Goldberg; D. R. Goodman; Benjamin S. Grossberg; Max Gutmann; Beth Houston; Mark Jarman; A.M. Juster; Jean L. Kreiling; Duncan Gillies MacLaurin; Peter Meinke; Eric Meub; Leslie Monsour; Chris O'Carroll; Alexander Pepple; Kyle Potvin; Katherine Quevedo; Joseph Salemi; Wendy Sloan; Elizabeth Spencer Spragins; David Stephenson; Carol A. Taylor; Tim Taylor; Gail White; Debra Wierenga; and Thomas Zimmerman

Positioning contemporary Deism as the Golden Mean between atheist-materialist Darwinism and religious fundamentalism, Beth Houston convincingly argues that exquisitely designed Creation categorically necessitates a transcending Intelligent Designer that is immanently engaged in the perpetual process of creating novelty sustained within the secure margins of natural laws. To clear the way for new Deism, Houston's explication, sprinkled with satire, demystifies Charles Darwin and deconstructs Darwinism/neo-Darwinism on the one hand, and on the other continues her demolition of biblical literalism with an incisive critique of the modern quest for the historical Jesus. To stress her point that embracing truth is imperative for our survival, Houston delineates dangers of both Darwinian and fundamentalist myths and superstitions, exposing how separately and together they perpetuate dangerous elitist agendas that range from exploitation and war instigated by corporate oligarchs to misogynist/homophobic gang rape and other expressions of bigotry. As a counterpoint to her analysis of brute selfishness, Houston affirms Nature's practical and spiritual benefits and challenges us to protect our life, liberty, happiness, and truth by contributing to authentic democracy, environmental stewardship, and nurturance of our creative, spiritual, and ethical sensibilities. Houston represents a version of Deism rooted in common sense, which she defines as the consensus of all our faculties, including reason, conscience, intuition, experience, volition, and the aesthetic. Unlike some Deists writing today, Houston affirms aspects of religion untainted by greed and hubris that express humanity's natural desire for God, truth, and the Good. Deism reveres the Creator of Nature, the Natural God, whose truth and spiritual Presence, independent of priestly mediation, are democratically available to all.

"The (Soma)tic Exercises are innovative and crucial to our art form. . . . Conrad must be one of the most original practitioners of poetry forging new territory."—The Rumpus "There was a time some of us believed poetry and poets could save the world; CAConrad never stopped believing it."—The Huffington Post From "M.I.A. ESCALATOR": The ultrasound machine gives the parents the ability to talk to the unborn by their gender, taking the intersexed nine-month conversation away from the child. The opportunities limit us in our new world. Encourage parents to not know, encourage parents to allow anticipation on either end. Escalators are a nice ride, slowly rising and falling, writing while riding, notes for the poem, meeting new people at either end, "Excuse me, EXCUSE ME. . . ." My escalator notes became a poem. CAConrad's ECODEVIANCE contains twenty-three new (Soma)tic writing exercises and their resulting poems, in which he pushes his political and ecological efforts even further. These exercises, unorthodox steps in the writing process, work to break the reader and writer out of the quotidian and into a more politically and physically aware present. In performing these rituals, CAConrad looks through a sharper lens and confirms the necessity of poetry and politics. CAConrad is the author of several books of poetry and essays. A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.

"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

The complete Dream Songs--hypnotic, seductive, masterful--as thrilling to read now as they ever were John Berryman's The Dream Songs are perhaps the funniest, saddest, most intricately wrought cycle of oems by an American in the twentieth century. They are also, more simply, the vibrantly sketched adventures of a uniquely American antihero named Henry. Henry falls in and out of love, and is in and out of the hospital; he sings of joy and desire, and of beings at odds with the world. He is lustful; he is depressed. And while Henry is breaking down and cracking up and patching himself together again, Berryman is doing the same thing to the English language, crafting electric verses that defy grammar but resound with an intuitive truth: "if he had a hundred years," Henry despairs in "Dream Song 29," "& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time / Henry could not make good." This volume collects both 77 Dream Songs, which won Berryman the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, and their continuation, His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, which was awarded the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize in 1969. The Dream Songs are witty and wild, an account of madness shot through with searing insight, winking word play, and moments of pure, soaring elation. This is a brilliantly sustained and profoundly moving performance that has not yet-and may never be-equaled.

Poetry. Women's Studies. This masterful debut reveals for each reader new depths of nature, self, family, and world by opening our tiniest and most intimate perceptions. Colburn's poetics balances image with absence, silence with sound. These elegant poems take on the questions of our day: can we have our sweet domestic lives when the life of the planet hangs in the balance? What does it mean to create and nurture a new human being in this perilous age?