Iconoscope: New and Selected Poems by Peter Oresick University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016 $16.95 It’s rare to find a poet with such a laser focus on creating a lifelong legacy. From Definitions in 1990 to Warhol-o-rama (2008) and anthologies like For a Living (1995), Oresick devoted his life’s work to making, fostering, inspiring, and highlighting art for, …
Karankawa Poems by Iliana Rocha Pitt Poetry Press, 2015 $15.95 The most striking element of Iliana Rocha’s debut poetry collection Karankawa—in addition to its lavish Día de los Muertos-inspired Betty Boop cover by sculptor Michael Brown—is that it perfectly articulates the disorienting strangeness of grief. “I hear you died as beautifully / as a yellow …
Boy with Thorn Poems by Rickey Laurentiis Pitt Press, 2015 $15.95 “There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’t see / what the world sees seeing him.” In Rickey Laurentiis’ stunning debut collection, Boy with Thorn (winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize), readers are presented with an America where the questions are always …
Double Jinx by Nancy Reddy Milkweed Editions, 2015 $16.00 What if Eve told the story? That’s a question raised by Nancy Reddy’s poem, “Inventing the Body.” Exploring the discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus, the earliest known hominid, Reddy asks, “Did she feel / the tender humming jumplily, catfish, / the rapid flare as she lit / …
The Republics Poems by Nathalie Handal University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015 $15.95 After the Haitian earthquake of 2008, the poet Nathalie Handal revisited the country of her birth and its neighbor, the Dominican Republic. Faced with two vibrant cultures learning how to resituate themselves after this latest tragedy, Handal began to write a series of …
Mendeleev’s Mandala Poems by Jessica Goodfellow Mayapple Press, 2015 $15.95 mandala: from the Sanskrit for “circle,” a schematized representation of the cosmos chiefly characterized by a concentric configuration of geometric shapes; in common use, mandala has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a …
Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots Poems by Katherine Hoerth Lamar University Press, 2014 $15.00 The deities of ancient Greece are transplanted onto the Texan landscape in Katherine Hoerth’s Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots. Here, love and womanhood bud, flower, and fade on dusty back roads and along the Gulf of Mexico. Hoerth’s new mythology illustrates her speaker’s …
More Money Than God Poems by Richard Michelson Pitt Poetry Series, 2015 $15.95 Balanced on the threshold of misery and comedy, Richard Michelson’s More Money Than God is an examination of the intersections where personal tragedy and global suffering meet. In Michelson’s fourth collection, we find poems that seek resolution but settle for meaninglessness, all …