POETRY, PROSE POETRY, CROSS-GENRE Vyt Bakaitis, Editor breathinG free/GyVas atodusis: poems from the lithuanian 978-1-881471-91-2, $24.95, cloth, 520 pp. SPUYTEN DUYVIL 2001
Poetry. Northeast European Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Lithuanian and selected by Vyt Bakaitis. BREATHING FREE offers a generous selection of the best twentieth-century, contemporary Lithuanian verse, with strong preliminary excerpts from two earlier classics, presented in a reliable bilingual format with fresh, sturdy versions in eminently readable English. An extended preface locates the poetry in a broader cultural, historical context; endnotes offer capsule bios and compact interpretations of fifty-three poets. Jonathan Ball ex machina 978-1-897388-48-8, $18, paper, 80 pp. BOOK THUG 2009
Poetry. A long poem at the fringes of the Canadian tradition, EX MACHINA is a latticework of poetic and philosophical statements concerning the symbiosis of humans, books, and machines. A series of three intertwining sequences, the reader is encouraged to move back and forth from statement to statement, seeking development but meeting frustration. The reader thus becomes a larval stage in the poem’s development, forging connections between its disparate parts during the course of this mental processing, as the text evolves over multiple readings.
achieved.” Polina Barskova this lamentable city 978-1-932195-83-5, $11.95, paper, 48 pp. TUPELO PRESS 2010
Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky. Polina Barskova’s poems are a zesty paradoxical concoction: bawdy and erudite, elegant and raw, subtle and brazen. As Ilya Kaminsky attests in his introduction to THIS LAMENTABLE CITY, “Barskova is an elegiac poet who brings to her American readers a language formally inventive, worldly and humorous. One of her strengths is her ability to bring together strikingly erotic, sensual images...with a deep sense of history and culture.... In Russian, Barskova is a master of meter, rhyme, and alliteration, and...(w)hat comes across in English is the tonality of the poems, the clarity of her vocal play and images, her intricacy of address.” Though her prize-winning books of poetry in Russian have earned an international reputation, and individual poems have appeared in prestigious journals and anthologies—for instance, in Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive, 2008) and An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (Iowa, 2005)— this is the first book of Barskova’s poems to be published in translation, in a handsome dual-language edition. John Barton hymn 978-1-894078-76-4, $19, paper, 144 pp. BRICK BOOKS 2009
Michael Ball, Editor the i. e. reader 978-0-9793901-2-8, $22, paper, 152 pp. NARROW HOUSE 2010
Poetry. A collection of contemporary poetry selected from authors who’ve read at the Baltimore-based i.e. reading series since 2005. Spanning generations, schools, and regions, additional contributors include Elena Alexander, Bruce Andrews, Sandra Beasley, Lauren Bender, Bill Berkson, Miles Champion, Norma Cole, Bruce Covey, Tina Darragh, Ben Doller, Sandra Doller, Buck Downs, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Cathy Eisenhower, Heather Fuller, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Peter Gizzi, Adam Good, K. Lorraine Graham, Jessica Grim, P. Inman, Bonnie Jones, Beth Joselow, Michael Kelleher, Amy King, Doug Lang, Katy Lederer, Reb Livingston, M. Magnus, Tom Mandel, Chris Mason, Kristi Mexwell, Megan McShea, Anna Moschovakis, Gina Myers, Chris Nealon, Mel Nichols, Aldon Nielsen, Tom Orange, Bob Perelman, Simon Pettet, Tom Raworth, Adam Robinson, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Ric Royer, Ken Rumble, Justin Sirois, Maureen Thorson, Chris Toll, Edwin Torres, Les Wade, Ryan Walker, Mark Wallace, Terence Winch, Rupert Wondolowski, and Geoffrey Young. Tony Barnstone tonGue of war: from pearl harbor to naGasaKi 978-1-886157-71-2, $14.95, paper, 126 pp. BKMK PRESS, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY 2009
Poetry. This book won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by B. H. Fairchild, who writes in his foreword, “TONGUE OF WAR is one of the most distinctive manuscripts I have ever judged for a book prize (and it is a book rather than simply a collection).” Barnstone writes that he intends TONGUE OF WAR as “a love letter to the World War II generation.” But he explains, “I see the sequence as a history in verse in which I allow the readers to inhabit multiple and warring perspectives on the War in the Pacific, including the Pearl Harbor attack, Hiroshima, and the conflict in between.” Pulitzer-prizewinning writer Robert Olen Butler writes that “Barnstone has revealed humankind’s capacity both for evil and for redemption with a power that few writers have ever
Poetry. LGBT Studies. Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes—from Belfast to the clear-cuts of Vancouver Island, from the subterranean heat of Jules Verne’s Iceland to the ventriloquism of the Alberta Rockies’ echoing eastern slopes—John Barton documents the path of the male body in an increasingly unstable, supposedly tolerant contemporary world. HYMN stokes the fires of homoerotic romantic love with its polar extremes of intimacy and solitude. Maisha Baton sKetches 978-0-9816693-9-7, $11.95, paper, 54 pp. WEST END PRESS 2009
Poetry. African American Studies. These poems reflect years of observation: checking out the street, listening to talkers, getting inside the heads of family members, and locating an aesthetic in the work of others. Maisha Baton casts a wise eye on a chaotic world where the human is sometimes obscured.
John Beer the waste land and other poems 978-0-9822376-4-9, $14, paper, 128 pp. CANARIUM BOOKS 2010
Poetry. John Beer’s first collection, THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS, employs the wit of a philosopher and the ear of a poet to stage ways of reading that are political, personal, and theoretical. The speaker of these poems also brings humor to the dissecting table, to prod the legacies of great works of the imagination while balancing irony and affection.
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