In her third collection of poetry, Viper Rum, Mary Karr delves into autobiographical subject matter; various beloveds are birthed and buried in these touching lyrics, some of which, as the title suggests, deal with drink: I cast back to those last years I drank, alone nights at the kitchen sink, bathrobed, my head hatching snakes, while my baby slept in his upstairs cage and my marriage choked to death Precise and surprising, Karr's poems "take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own" (Poetry). Also included is Karr's controversial and prize-winning essay "Against Decoration," in which she took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days-the "new formalism" that elevates form to an end itself.

Between Human and Divine is the first collection of scholarly essays published on a wide variety of contemporary (post 1980) Catholic literary works and artists. Its aim is to introduce readers to recent and emerging writers and texts in the tradition.

Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry A lively collection from one of America's most celebrated contemporary poets Denise Levertov has called acclaimed poet Pattiann Rogers "a visionary of reality, perceiving the material world with such intensity of response that impulse, intention, meaning, interconnections beyond the skin of appearance are revealed." In her new collection, Rogers takes the reader on an exploration of human endeavor. Full of color and action, wonder and fear, these poems investigate, reflect upon, and create experiences relative to music, art, and theater, as well as to the universe and its creatures, large and small. They are distinguished by the penetrating vision and avid imagination that have made Rogers one of today's most outstanding poets.

It was first published twenty years ago. Karr's comic childhood in an east Texas oil town brings us characters as darkly hilarious as any of J. D. Salinger's--a hard-drinking daddy, a sister who can talk down the sheriff at age twelve, and an oft-married mother whose accumulated secrets threaten to destroy them all. Now with a new foreword by Lena Dunham this unsentimental and profoundly moving account of an apocalyptic childhood is as "funny, lively, and un-put-downable" (USA Today) today as it ever was. . ."--

An “astounding” (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems – Winner of the National Poetry Series Competition In this ­­­powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madness attempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax’s innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it.

A poetry handbook rooted in theory, history, and philosophy

New from Debora Greger??a special poet in every sense? (Poetry) In her eighth book of poetry, Debora Greger travels not just the present but the past, looking for some strange place to call home. She takes a taxi to Stonehenge. She writes letters to Li Po and Tu Fu, Shakespeare and Jane Austen, always seeking out the beast that is man and the beast that is woman. She explores both the remoteness of the past (those radioactive fifties that were her childhood), and the weight of it?or, better, the responsibility of it. These modern traveler?s tales?musing, insistent, marvelous?place one woman?s collection of pasts into a world inhabited by Horace, Chekhov, the bank vault of England, and the giant octopus of Puget Sound.