In the tradition of T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, but also fiercely original, these five verse plays mix autobiography and history, myths and ghosts, fantasy and comedy in thematic dramatizations of alienation, loneliness, Faustian bargains, and American materialism by a major American poet of the twentieth century.

With both ardor and sensuality, Darling Vulgarity challenges us to embrace humanity’s imperfections while urging us toward new spiritual realities. And then, sometimes, the poems are just plain sexy. Or, as Nat Hardy wrote, “Waters’ meditative and confessional forays into the sexual sublime are both disturbing and artfully passionate.” Darling Vulgarity also includes poems based on Waters’ true literary experiences with such notables as Raymond Carver, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Lowell.

"In the current literary scene, one of the most heartening influences is the work of Naomi Shihab Nye. Her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life."— William Stafford Dusk where is the name no one answered to gone off to live by itself beneath the pine trees separating the houses without a friend or a bed without a father to tell it stories how hard was the path it walked on all those years belonging to none of our struggles drifting under the calendar page elusive as residue when someone said how have you been it was strangely that name that tried to answer Naomi Shihab Nye has spent thirty-five years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and inspire students of all ages. In her newest collection Transfer she draws on her Palestinian American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her extensive travel experiences to create a poetry collection that attests to our shared humanity. Among her awards, Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and four Pushcart prizes. In January 2010, she was elected to the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

Dramatically urgent from the get-go, many of Jacqueline Osherow's poems approach inconsistencies and mysteries in Biblical texts. From traditional poetic forms (sonnet, terza rima, villanelle, sestina, acrostic, loose ottava rima) to an austere free verse, Osherow mixes humor and seriousness while maintaining a conversational tone. These poems deal with Jewish tradition and the land of Israel in revelatory new ways. Jacqueline Osherow is the author of four previous poetry collections. Her work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Best American Poetry (1995 and 1998) and The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women. Awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. She is a distinguished professor of English at the University of Utah.

Dorianne Laux’s long-awaited third book of poetry follows her collection, What We Carry, a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In Smoke, Laux revisits familiar themes of family, working class lives and the pleasures of the body in poetry that is vital and artfully crafted—poetry that "gets hard in the face of aloofness," in the words of one reviewer. In Smoke, as in her previous work, Laux weaves the warp and woof of ordinary lives into extraordinary and complex tapestries. In "The Shipfitter’s Wife," a woman recalls her husband’s homecoming at the end of his work day: Then I’d open his clothes and take the whole day inside me—the ship’s gray sides, the miles of copper pipe, the voice of the foreman clanging off the hull’s silver ribs. Spark of lead kissing metal. The clamp, the winch, the white fire of the torch, the whistle, and the long drive home. And in the title poem, Laux muses on her own guilty pleasures: Who would want to give it up, the coal a cat’s eye in the dark room, no one there but you and your smoke, the window cracked to street sounds, the distant cries of living things. Alone, you are almost safe . . . With her keen ear and attentive eye, Dorianne Laux offers us a universe with which we are familiar, but gives it to us fresh. Dorianne Laux is the author of two previous collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Ltd., and is co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Joys of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1997), chosen as an alternate selection by several bookclubs. Laux was the judge for the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Contest, and is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. Laux lives in Eugene, Oregon.

For over twenty years Sean Thomas Dougherty has negotiated between modernist and avant-garde writing and more populist traditions that extend back to Walt Whitman. His subject matter ranges from basketball to Bjork, from blue collar workers to Biggie Smalls, from Luciano Pavarotti to women waiting at a diner outside a prison in Upstate New York. Selecting from the best of eight previous collections, this New and Selected reveals the powerful arc and development of Dougherty's writing and establishes him as a voice of dissent for the future. A former Fulbright fellow, Sean Thomas Dougherty works at Gold Crown Billiards in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry A landmark collection by National Book Award-winning poet Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 includes the four poetry collections that launched Clifton’s career—Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, and Two-Headed Woman—as well as her haunting prose memoir, Generations. In honor of the 30th anniversary of Lucille Clifton's Pulitzer Prize-nominated poetry collection and memoir, Good Woman is now available for the first time as a deluxe eBook edition. Enhanced with previously unpublished photographs from the Lucille Clifton Estate and a special foreword by Aracelis Girmay, this eBook is a must-have for longtime Clifton fans and newcomers alike.