With an ironic swish of the skirt, Elaina M. Ellis has delivered a sweetly strange first collection of poems. Reinventing femininity with each teasing line-break, Ellis pulls sexuality from form, and vulnerability from meter. By turns playful, blunt, and prayerful, Write About an Empty Birdcage documents the painful end of a romantic relationship; revels in the budding of new desire; and ultimately allows hope to climb quietly in through the back window. The poems which explicitly explore identity -- femaleness, Jewishness, queerness -- do so with a critique of power that blends humor, bloodied confession, and a reverence for tension. Ellis is a new poet to watch out for, neither belonging to the full-open swing of spoken word, nor to the inaccessibility of academia: the sonnet is a torch song, the prose poem is a fist. Here you find all the fleshy reveal of the truth, without the ease of nakedness. Write About an Empty Birdcage is a book of poetry that is worth the work of undressing. Elaina M. Ellis has a voice that cuts through wool. Rich in sound and sense, meaning and madness, she signals and signifies. Her imagery comes from a place of truth and her people sweat and breathe. Hers is a talent that can set the world on fire. -Jenny Factor, Antioch University Los Angeles

This essential handbook, revised and updated for 2010, provides everything you need to know about deciding where and how to apply to the best graduate creative writing programs for you. -The top programs in the United States. -How to decide where to apply. -Advice on preparing your application. -A look at PhD programs in writing. -Tips on becoming a teaching assistant. -How to get the most out of your MFA experience. A collection of articles edited by the staff of Poets & Writers Magazine, this handy resource includes straightforward advice from professionals in the literary field, additional resources to help you choose the best programs to apply to, and an application tracker to keep you organized throughout the process.

Acclaimed modern pantomime master, Dick Richards, releases his first full-length collection of the pantomimery moves that made him famous. Once a staple as a featured performer on various cruise ships the now-unemployed Dick Richards releases his most secret and creative pantomime moves in this step-by-step award-winning collection.

Popular in queer communities, anti-war organizations, college campuses and women/gender studies programs, Andrea Gibson's second book of poems, The Madness Vase's topics range from hate crimes to playgrounds, from international conflict to hometowns, from falling in love to the desperation of loneliness. Gibson's work seizes us by the collar and hauls us inside some of her darkest moments, then releases out the other side. Moments later, we find ourselves inhaling words that fill us with light. Their luminous imagery is a buoy that allows us to resurface from their world, clutching new possibilities of our own, and linger in our psyches and entreat us to action. They challenge us to grow into our own skin. By the time you finish reading The Madness Vase, you too will believe, "Folks like us/We've got shoulder blades that rust in the rain/But they are still G-sharp/Whenever our spinal chords are tuned to the key of redemption/So go ahead world/Pick us/To make things better."

C.R. Avery's audaciously charismatic second book, 38 Bar Blues, is a tome of poetry loaded with bar stool musicality and brass knuckle poetry. Welcome to a clear glimpse into a motel 50 miles outside of town, a window into the life of a modern troubadour and the courage of a young father trying to keep the highway of diamonds shining while singing the song of innocence. C.R. Avery's writing flows like a Tennessee Williams stage play, from haiku-size poems to longer erotic tales that sink the reader deeper into backstage smoke of Avery’s worlds. 38 Bar Blues is like a Bob Dylan setlist; a play constructed like a Charlie Chaplain silent film; a book built to make the reader laugh and cry. It all comes out as true music. 38 Bar Blues is the perfectly crafted journal of a living legend. Enter the back-room of an old Italian cafe, where dirty dirty politics, outlaw love, and outrageous beauty are all in the cards.

Hello teachers! We know you work hard. Besides ninjas, you have the hardest job in the world. Between the teaching, the testing, the grading, and the nurturing it’s difficult to seek out new materials for your classroom. We are here to help. As poets and teachers, we know the power of the spoken word in the classroom. All you have to do is attend a youth slam or find a clip of one online and you will see the positive impact modern poetry has on our young people. It is able to engage students from any background in a way that classical poetry simply cannot touch. A complaint we’ve heard from many teachers is that they would love to use spoken word in their classrooms but they are afraid of getting in trouble with rough language and themes. So behold! We asked some of the best contemporary spoken word and slam poets to give us poems that would be appropriate for the classroom. This means you will not have to sift through this book with a highlighter to try and find the F’s and the S’s and the B’s and the Z’s. We’ve provided poems from national slam champs, world slam champs, fellow teachers, and poets we feel are the best of what’s around. We’ve also included some amazing lessons in its companion book for the teacher, sold separately.

Over The Anvil We Stretch contains swampy, powerful poems that are as exciting as the pocket knife you got for your birthday, the three legged frog on the lawn and the jar of marbles your mother kept in the kitchen. Mojgani's poems are the sound of the river and the stars burning above. He manages to capture the axe in the stump with blood still on the handle. Anis Mojgani has drawn a map of the country in the shape of his wild surreal poems. These are memories of a life, captured through the blue green filter of the bayou. Mojgani's latest poems are tinged with the sound of crickets spying on us in the darkness. They move forward honestly, brutally and sweetly. The reader will be led into briar patches as well as the moonlight just on the other side. Anvil is a book of poetic truth, packed with humor and insight. It is a juggling act of the epic and the intimate. I read it and it echoes. Shut up so I can hear more. -David Gordon Green, filmmaker, All the Real Girls and The Pineapple Express Anis Mojgani, Andrea Gibson, and other young poets of their talent are the future of American poetry and frankly, that fills me with joy! --Thomas Lux, Guggenheim Fellow & recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book Split Horizons He’s probably the best poetry slammer alive. The intellect, optimism and humility with which he speaks feel like proof of the relevance of “spoken word” as a genre. He processes the world in slices of beauty, frustration and sympathy... -Willamette Week Newspaper