Poems of Puncture, the first book of poetry by Amanda McKittrick Ros, universally considered to be the best worst writer in the history of the English language, is here presented in its glorious entirety. Poems of Puncture contains many piercing verses spanning a broad range of themes, each clearly held great emotional importance to Amanda McKittrick Ros: a spa, her dog, her most beloved tree, and many poems devoted to people she didn't like, including "Largebones - The Lawyer" : Beneath me hear in stinking clumps, Lies Lawyer Largebones all in lumps ; A rotten mass of clockholed clay, Which grows more honeycombed each day. See how the rats have scratched his face ? Now so unlike the human race ; I very much regret I can't Assist them in their eager "bent." What the heck!?! Please Enjoy!

Puncture Beyond Emerald is a journey of the soul ... finding acceptance, seeking answers, admitting imperfections and acknowledging love and its alter ego hate. Just as it is realistic it is also a flirt with imagination. Come take a poetic ride in which you probably won't look back.

Poems about Vampires, vampirism and related creatures...Jean Jones writes regarding Scott Urban's poems, "how can a mature writer respond to the vampire myth which by its sheer repetition through pop culture has become a cliche in poetry and writing much less movies and T.V. show. It is almost impossible to go into this venue and not walk through trite expressions and empty cliches. What is there new to say about vampires? The connection between sex and death, sex and fear, fear and desire, etc. etc.? Well, thankfully, Scott Urban walks into the Count's castle, so to speak, most especially in "By Way of Reply," where one can almost literally hear "Bela Lugosi is Dead" by Bauhaus, and the quite undead Count writes a letter back to one of his latest victims, the person's blood drippling off his face, as he recounts the sorrows of his life; and in "Lamia," the poor narrator, like an Edgar Allan Poe character, both fears and desires after what will happen to him. Scott Urban writes of Bruce Whealton's work, "Whenever it seems as if the figure of the vampire has been finally laid to rest -- truly dead instead of undead -- a new take, a fresh interpretation comes along and shakes up the bat-drenched mythos. Anne Rice did it in the 1970s with Interview with a Vampire, Nancy Collins did it in the 1980s with Sunglasses After Dark, and Stephanie Meyer did it in the 2000s with the Twilight series. Nor is the vampire a stranger to the poetic arts; authors as wide-ranging and well-known as John Keats, Charles Baudelaire, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have all offered us poetic descriptions of life after the first death. Walking straight into this cobwebbed realm is North Carolina's Bruce Whealton. Bruce peels aside the flimsy faaade of society to reveal the corroded, crumbling underpinnings below. Perhaps not surprisingly, the vampire seems to be supremely adapted to survive in the barely-contained chaos we call modern life. All around us, we see structures and institutions we once thought eternal brought low in less than a day. But those who drain not just blood but souls, as we see in "Shelter" and "Amanda's Eyes," care nothing for the dissolution of civilization; in anything, they welcome the reversion to a more basic, primitive existence. Bruce even looks back in time, in "First Transgression" and "On the Run," to to an Edenic golden age, but to a primal conflict between the forces of evil and humanity's better nature -- if we can even claim that much of an advantage over the beasts. Here, in terse, emotion-packed lines, are both the seductive allure and rampant savagery of the vampire, significantly re-invented for our time. Read on -- while you still can.

Contemporary American poetry has plenty to offer new readers, and plenty more for those who already follow it. Yet its difficulty—and sheer variety—leaves many readers puzzled or overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephanie Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, Burt canvasses American poetry of the past four decades, from the headline-making urgency of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen to the stark pathos of Louise Glück, the limitless energy of Juan Felipe Herrera, and the erotic provocations of D. A. Powell. The Poem Is You: Sixty Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them is a guide to the diverse magnificences of American poetry today. It presents a wide range of poems selected by Burt for this volume, each accompanied by an original essay explaining how a given poem works, why it matters, and how the poem speaks to other parts of art and culture. Included here are some classroom classics (by Ashbery, Komunyakaa, Hass), less famous poems by very famous poets (Glück, Kay Ryan), and poems by prizewinning poets near the start of their careers (such as Brandon Som), and by others who are not—or not yet—well known. The Poem Is You will appeal to poets, teachers, and students, but it is intended especially for readers who want to learn more about contemporary American poetry but who have not known where or how to start. It describes what American poets have fashioned for one another, and what they can give us today.