Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection reminds us that the elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a work of loveIn Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection, we find, in the poet's words, that "the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world." For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, "a holding open." In Gizzi's voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. One of our foremost practitioners of the lyric, Gizzi here extends his mastery of the form. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a mode of love poetry as well. "This new poetry," Kamau Brathwaite has written about Gizzi, "taking such care of temperature - the time & details of the world - meaning the space(s) in which we live - defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. A way of writing about hope."[sample poem]Creely Songall that is lovelyin words, evenif gone to piecesall that is lovelygone, all of itfor love andautobiographyas if I werewriting thishello, listenthe plan isthe body andall of it for lovenow in piecesall that is lovelyechoes stillin life & deathstill memorygardens openonto windowslovely, the charmthat mirrorsall that was, allthat is, lovelyin a song

A contemporary artist is out to win a portrait prize by sketching a Che Guevara rebel from the old Australian colony in Paraguay. The artist’s brother is troubled by doubts about the rebel’s heroic identity and feels obliged to investigate.Set largely in South America, the novel explores divergent approaches to the truth in the wilds of Bolivia where Che sought to ignite a widespread revolution. The investigation ends in Sydney where Che’s ambitious dreams are still revered and the prize will soon be awarded. The counter-factual mysteries to be unravelled mirror South America’s own ingenious literary form, magic realism, a form reflecting the post-modern world’s richly-imagined but often bizarre perceptions.

mahogany is about the passing of time and unimaginable loss, strength, humor, and lovemahogany takes its name from the dark wood prized for its durability, workability, and elegant look, and from the Diana Ross movie, whose theme song asks if what lies ahead is what you really want. This book is the third in a trilogy, and like the first two books it is steeped in pop music. Each poem here takes its title from a line of a Diana Ross and The Supremes song, as well as songs from Diana Ross' solo career. Short lines flow down the page like postmodern psalms, connecting dailyness to timelessness, merging the historical and the beloved through reverence for family, music, and the life we actually live. mahogany is a lament for the passing of time and unimaginable loss, and at the same time it models the daily search for joy, and the deep shine that can arise from the darkest times.

The first months of London’s Great Plague of 1665 give no hope of any improvement, only an ominous warning of worse to come. Those who can are fleeing the city. Those who can’t – the poor, the old, and a dedicated few – must stay to face the growing danger. The ancient women of the parish of St Cyneswide and St Tibba, the Searchers, Viewers and Keepers, who have weathered the disappearance of one of their own, face further calls on their courage and resilience. The plot against the King simmers, supported by folk of fire and faith, dismissed by others as the work of fanatics. There are those who will stop at nothing and threaten the whole city. But … the parish still finds solace in singing; small children play their joyous, sometimes fractious, street games; and young people find each other. Volume 2 of Plague Searchers – Flee quick, go far – continues this gripping tale with its friendships and feuds, songs and psalms, plots and betrayals.

It is 1665 and London faces two deadly threats – the devastating plague, and dangerous rumblings of a rebellion against the King, Charles II. In the frontline of the plague, the ‘first responders’, are the ancient women of the parish: the Viewers, Keepers and Searchers, who must deal with the sick, the dying and the dead. Political and religious differences split the city. Some yearn for the days of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Commonwealth, others rejoice in the pleasure loving King’s return. A tale of friendships and feuds, songs and psalms, plots and betrayals, this exciting and original novel paints a rich picture of life – and death – in the perilous streets of plague-struck London.

In Auction, her first poetry collection in eight years, the poet, novelist, and playwright Quan Barry travels the globe in her signature quest into the existential nature of experience. These poems explore the inner landscapes of both the human and animal realms, revealing them to be points along the same spectrum. At the heart of the book lies an extended study of toxic storytelling as an element of warcraft, but Barry also contemplates the death of a Buddhist master, the plight of migrants both at home and abroad, the ethics of travel and consumption, and the larger question of how and why we construct a self in order to navigate the world.

Winner of the Starrett PrizeAnuradha Bhowmik’s life as a Bangladeshi-born American girl growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the United States gives shape to this debut collection. Brown Girl Chromatography interrogates issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in a post-9/11 America while navigating the poet’s millennial childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The poems follow Bhowmik as she learns about the cruelties in both American and Bangladeshi worlds without any guidance or instruction on how to survive these conflicting spheres. Any visible traces of her Bangladeshi life result in racial ridicule from her peers, while participating and assimilating into American culture is met with violence and abuse at home. As language and memory intersect, Bhowmik draws on pop culture and free association to examine her displacement from many angles and make meaning out of hurt.

A rebuttal to Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Every Form of Ruin posits the Erinyes’ fury as righteous, understanding Clytemnestra’s rageful response to loss, and refusing Iphigenia’s relegation to a footnoted sacrifice. A fierce and darkly funny examination of anger, these lyrical poems push back against silencing by playing witness to a world where the experiences of women, nonbinary, and femme-identifying people are too often ignored, their responses dismissed as hysterical. These poems are also investigations into the loneliness of midlife; the search for one’s own self when that self has given its life to service. Every Form of Ruin counters our culture’s erasure of women and resists the categorizations of maiden, mother, crone by blurring those distinctions through the creation of voices that are moved by rage and resistance.BLACK THUMBThe dogwood was threateningto swallow the back garden’s light,so I borrowed a chainsaw and gas.Its last berries a memory of red, the fruitbitter, tiny angry mangos in the mouthof its killer. Nights my son chooses his fatherto read him into silence, I practice not lovinganything. Less like learning than remembering.As a child, I studied how to be a child.I was given a doll to care forbut could never remember its name.I left her face down everywhere.

A History of the Women’s Antifascism Movement in Argentina that Contains Lessons for Opposing Fascism Today Argentine women’s long resistance to extreme rightists, tyranny, and militarism culminated in the Junta de la Victoria, or Victory Board, a group that organized in the aftermath of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in defiance of the neutralist and Axis-leaning government in Argentina. A sewing and knitting group that provided garments and supplies for the Allied armies in World War II, the Junta de la Victoria was a politically minded association that mobilized women in the fight against fascism. Without explicitly characterizing itself as feminist, the organization promoted women’s political rights and visibility and attracted forty-five thousand members. The Junta ushered diverse constituencies of Argentine women into political involvement in an unprecedented experiment in pluralism, coalition-building, and political struggle. Sandra McGee Deutsch uses this internationally minded but local group to examine larger questions surrounding the global conflict between democracy and fascism.

Elton Glaser’s ninth book of poems is haunted by the loss of his wife, each April bringing back the memory of her death. The opening line confesses the struggle to find a language for this grief: “I’m learning to speak in the accents of adieu.” As the book progresses through the seasons, it evokes the places that remind him of their times together, in the South of their youths, in the Midwest of their long marriage, and in their travels here and abroad. And yet there is also another strain that keeps breaking through, the particulars of joy in family and the natural world, grandsons and “swaggering lilies,” and a swan like “a sullen bride in her white finery.” With an irrepressible wit and a music that enlivens his lines in both celebration and elegy, Glaser never forgets that, as Wallace Stevens said, “Memory without passion would be better lost.”

During the first decade of the century, Evo Morales and other leftists took control of governments across Latin America. In the case of Bolivia, Morales was that country’s first Indigenous president and was elected following five years of popular insurrection after decades of neoliberal governance. Now We Are in Power makes the argument that the so-called Pink Tide should be understood as a passive revolution, a process that has two phases: a period of subaltern struggle from average citizens strong enough to culminate in a political crisis, which is followed by a time of reconciliation and transformation. Angus McNelly examines this movement as it unfolded and evaluates how passive revolution plays out over a prolonged crisis, ultimately demonstrating the inherent contradictions and complications of the process.

Small in Real Life invokes the myth and melancholy of Southern California glamor, of starry-eyed women and men striving for their own Hollywood shimmer and the seamy undersides and luxurious mystique of the Golden State. Exiled to a Malibu rehab, an alcoholic paparazzo spies on his celebrity friend for an online tabloid. Down to her last dollar, a Hollywood hanger-on steals designer handbags from her dying friend’s bungalow. Blinded by grief, an LA judge atones after condescending to a failed actress on a date. When hunger for power, fame, and love betrays the senses, the characters in these nine stories must reckon with false choices and their search for belonging with the wrong people. Small in Real Life offers an insider’s view of California and the golden promises of possibility and redemption that have long made the West glitter.

Stop Lying is Aaron Smith’s most personal and vulnerable work yet. Revolving around the death of Smith’s mother and how the poet, a gay man, faces his upbringing where his sexuality was viewed as sinful and unnatural, these poems plumb the complexities of what families say and choose not to say. How does one grieve when a relationship will forever remain unresolved? What does it mean to both regret and not regret one’s decisions? What if survival doesn’t look like what we're told it should? This is the story of a poet pushing through present-day grief and the shame of the past to find the buried truths, the ones that are hardest to tell. 

Amid the din of Russia’s patriotic sentiments and Instagram instants, is there any room left for the voice of a poet? Despite the many entertainments and distractions of modern life, Anzhelina Polonskaya’s spare but cutting poems in Take Me to Stavanger declare a wholehearted “Yes.” This bilingual Russian-English volume makes a refuge for the poet and her readers, plumbing the depths of contemporary melancholy and ennui. Beautifully crafted idiosyncratic dissections of a strong individual who refuses to go along with the currents of popular culture or political jingoism invite readers to slow down and pay attention.

That Ship Has Sailed synthesizes the serious and comic to address sex, love, loss, death, belief, the afterlife, and the past. The poems are honest and direct without sacrificing “the uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts” that Keats singles out in his notion of “negative capability,” alluded to in the title poem. Amplified by the poet’s work as a traditional Irish musician and composer, language is the adhesive that brings the work together across the avant-garde to traditional forms and meters.

The twelfth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall contains 326 letters and covers the fifteen months of Tyndall’s life from March 1871 through May 1872, a time when he was a central figure in the field and had a substantial reputation in both the UK and the US. It begins just before the publication of Fragments of Science in April and Hours of Exercise in May. It includes a number of small but public disputes about science. Tyndall had a number of visits from friends and dignitaries, and he traveled to Switzerland, Ireland, and the countryside for scrambles. He was dealing with family issues out of Ireland, which were troublesome for him. He was busy administering the Royal Institution and the Royal Society; he was also working as the scientific consultant to Trinity House, which was involved in overseeing lighthouses in the United Kingdom, of which Ireland was a part at this time. Unlike other volumes, this one is not defined as much by one or two major projects or events for Tyndall, but instead includes a number of smaller projects and issues for him personally and professionally. As a leading man of science, and preoccupied with the work required for Trinity House, he had little time for socializing or research and began to refuse both social and professional invitations. Although well established, he remained concerned with his image, which manifests in a number of ways throughout this period.