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Peter Waldor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, including Door to a Noisy Room which won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, Who Touches Everything, which won the National Jewish Book Award and Gate Posts with No Gate, which is a collaboration with a group of visual artists. He is also the author of a book of essays, Seven Quilts. Waldor was the Poet Laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Fungi Magazine and Mothering Magazine. He lives in Trout Lake, Colorado.

A poet knows no boundaries, he is a citizen of the world. Peter Waldor is such a poet who has incorporated his travels and journeys through different countries as essential components of his poetry. He has penned his poems in an easy flowing rhythm. You Alone Know takes place in the Thar Desert of India with its dusty, sandy ruggedness and people who are a part of the desert life. Readers will perceive a high-pitched music of love, blooming sexuality and desire in these poems. Waldor writes in an easy way but weaves in deep philosophy in the warps of the lines of his poems. He delves in the daily lives of people and presents a complex and attractive portrayal of life in the colors of his searching views. He reaches a deep poetic truth through his journey and takes his readers on this ride to achieve a synthesis of myriad feelings. -Ladly Mukhopadhaya, filmmaker and author

Jeffrey Johannes's tender chapbook, Coffee Quiet, resonates with the meditative moments of morning fog and sunlight rising beyond the brim of his china cup in spare poems that evoke what he sees in those hours: birth, death, love, loss. Johannes brings an artist's eye and a poet's empathy and metaphor: a Luna moth sleeping like an oriental kite or a white deer glowing in moonlight; the moment when bystanders herd tiny turtles loosed from a market stall; a wish for the sun to warm Earth's "millions of wounded miles." These are poems to read and reread in your own quiet and gratitude.-Robin Chapman, poet and author of Six True Things, The Only Home We Know, and Panic SeasonAnyone on the lookout for a stunning collection of poems that offer insights, affectionate glimpses of nature, plenty of high spirits, and a side order of tart wit - needs to search no further: Jeffrey Johannes's skillfully crafted new chapbook, Coffee Quiet, is your book. Its wry humor is clearly demonstrated in a poem straightforwardly titled "Go to Our Rooms," in which we all are cheerfully ordered to do just that "while Earth / sighs with relief." Others in the collection are far more reflective and thoughtful, however, and filled with a poet's sense of genuine wonder. You will be left with the firm conviction that "acts of kindness / appear like moths / circling our porch lights / drawn to the light." Of course they do! -Marilyn L. Taylor, former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and winner of the Margaret Reid Award for verse in formsCinematographers call it the golden hour, a period of day just before sunset and shortly after sunrise when the light turns soft and the world glows serene. Jeffrey Johannes's poems evoke this time, one of warmth and awe. Phrase by exquisite phrase, each poem in this collection elicits wonder. In "The Beauty of Physics," he writes of "the ephemeral beige/of cedar waxwings flying." In "Accept the Miracles," he conjures images in words of "those among/ the faithful who have seen the face of Allah in an open avocado." Jeffrey's poems gather the burnished light that bridges night and day and transforms it into sacrament, a sacrament called Coffee Quiet. -John Bloner, Jr., Editor/Publisher, Moss Piglet

Peter Waldor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, including Door to a Noisy Room which won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, Who Touches Everything, which won the National Jewish Book Award and Gate Posts with No Gate, which is a collaboration with a group of visual artists. He is also the author of a book of essays, Seven Quilts. Waldor was the Poet Laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Fungi Magazine and Mothering Magazine. He lives in Trout Lake, Colorado.

The terms meditation and contemplation highlight distinct yet interconnected cognitive activities, both of which are beautifully stimulated by Peter Waldor's compilation of 14 poetically embodied Meditation Prompts. These poems are intriguing, challenging, and perhaps even disorienting: Is this poem a shared mind wandering, a guided journey into impermanence, a potential transcendence of self, or an Asubha or Chöd practice? I invite the reader to contemplate his seemingly random turns, as they are not random, but like symbols in a dream, can be unpacked to bring about a new perspective or sudden insight on an old problem (one you may not even know you had). Read each poem for the simple joy of its journey and also allow it to serve as a refreshing counterpoint to the well-trodden practices available in most meditation texts. -Dr Doug Tataryn, Creator Bio-Emotive Framework

Waldor's captivating poems transport us into a realm where nature has majesty as well as solitude. Denizens of the mountains and forest, even fungi, take on a magical significance. Waldor reminds us that wonders await when we pause, observe, and immerse ourselves in nature.-Britt Bunyard, Publisher, Fungi Magazine

Peter Waldor's Beginning Polyamory wears its sexual politics-and preferences-on its sleeve. Part personal ars erotica, part convivial confessional, each poem declares a desire for what is present only to discover something else.-Vanessa Norton

Each of the lines is "inter-temporally inter-subjective." You switch the viewing points of the shared situation from one side to the other, from the subject to the object and the familiar wisdom immediately feels old and stale and flawed. God is dethroned. God's POV is dethroned and the objects and places are enthroned; they shatter the stability of the truth from God's nowhere place. In the arc of a narrative the times before and later are switched in feeling the scene and again the narrative's plot is re-configured. The ends become the means and the means become the ends, and the maze of the situation is opened up to new plotting-the creation of new possibilities of identity and new historical futures. -Alok Srivastava, Founder, Playful Dyads

I liked my career in biochemical oncology, but the nomenclature bored me, lackingthe spice of common names and not conveyingthe architecture of discovery and wonder. Therefore, Edward Nudelman became a poet. One of the great pleasures of this collection is seeing the natural world as inflected by his scientist's mind and poet's heart. The result is a poetry unlike anything I've read before. Nudelman's "architecture of discovery and wonder" reveals, again and again the miraculous and revelatory in the ordinary world around us. He shows us what we've missed. And isn't that why we came to poetry in the first place? Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives is one of the freshest, most bracingly intelligent books I've read in a very long time. George BilgereGeorge Bilgere has published six collections of poetry, including The White Museum (2010), which was awarded the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Haywire (2006), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award; and The Good Kiss (2002), which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award. Mixing the nomenclature of science with poignant metaphors drawn from the natural world, personal experience and acute observation, Edward Nudelman's Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives is lit by wings, by fish, by lizards, by trout, by blackbirds and all manner of beings. A biochemical oncologist, Nudelman's clinical vocabulary makes a contrapuntal contrast with his accessible imagery as he dives deep into an exploration of the nature of the universe and the complex world around him. Nudelman's imagery is infused with beauty. In "Unhinged," he writes, "Morning sun blisters through a window-alpine/rivers fill with trout-the current, a rippling arrow." Nudelman is at his finest in lines like, "Archimedes grabbed/a lever, and the Earth/moved an inch off center./Gravity has you by your feet/but your heart remains/a secret in the sway/of cloud and pillar." I greatly admire his deft use of music in lines like, "I've strummed a palm leaf to silence/my mind's electronic hissing, jettisoned/trigonometry in favor of a few visions/describing the lure of commonplace." This unique book of poems strikes all the right chords, making an important addition to any library. Pamela UschukPamela Uschuk's seven poetry collections include Crazy Love (American Book Award), Blood Flower, and Refugee. Translated into twelve languages, her work appears widely in Poetry, Ploughshares, and other journals. Awards include National League of American PEN Women, prizes from Ascent, New Millenium, & Amnesty International. She is the Editor of Cutthroat Poetry Journal.

The "slobber, lick, smack/lust-gush-gimme" poems in the wonderfully titled Ishmael's Violets by Vivian Eyre sink down down down into the maw and the awe of the marine, whale foremost and last. "Come closer," beckons the sea. "Catalog of Acceptances," "Aquarium" and the sonnet "The Visible Invisibility of Danger" are outstanding in a book chockful of real empathy in murky waters, extending to Fudgie, the ice cream whale who is devoured at Dad's party. A collection to take beachward to await the leviathan-only to discover that he's not coming for you, you're the one who is moved.-Terese Svoboda, author of Dog on Fire and Theatrix: Poetry PlaysFrom the opening line, "Lately I've been practicing to stay," in her stunning collection, Ishmael's Violets, Vivian Eyre plunges us into deep water, deftly balancing hopewith threat. Eyre navigates questions of our capacity for coexistence with other creatures as we voyage with endangered whales, orca marine parks, cold-stunned sea turtles, her own beach musings, the last wish of Rachel Carson, and into the depths of the human heart. "How wide is the circumference of loss" speaks to a mother whale circling the sea while pushing her dead calf, and to larger questions of grief and decimation. Her voice a velvet hammer, Vivian Eyre propels us lyrically and unflinchingly, refusing to screen off the vanishing, urging us to think and to reclaim.-Wendy Drexler, author of Notes from the Column of Memory and Before There Was BeforeIshmael's Violets by Vivian Eyre is an ode to the sea and its majestic creatures-from whales to lobsters to Harpies-and a vivid tableau of maritime life. More importantly, it is also a call to arms. Whether invoking Melville, addressing Rachel Carson, or referencing seafaring history, Eyre's poems-peopled, palpable, vivid, and rich with music-evoke not only coastal culture in all its iterations but catalogue the implications of our heavy human hand. Through ardent observation, Eyre animates and advocates for our interconnectedness with the natural world and our responsibility to caring for it. Compassionate and urgent, Ishmael's Violets is eco-poetry activism at its best.-Tina Cane, author of Body of Work and Year of the Murder Hornet

There is so much to feel and to learn about in this collection: a hotel monkey, an Alaskan moose, and a "tribunal of cows whose heads hang like lanterns" are just some of the vital animals that saunter across the pages of In the Spaces Between Us. The living world in Higgins Leach's hands feels expansive; and in exquisite poem after exquisite poem, she guides us over wild landscapes, through family histories and gently, into "what the dark reveals." However, it is the poet's consciousness that I am most drawn to; a consciousness that continually searches, questions, and is always, always profoundly humane.-Susan Rich, author of Blue AtlasCalm and open. That's how I feel reading these finely crafted poems of tree canopies, family dinners, rejuvenated shelter dogs, and neighbors "braided to each other / like radiant light between the leaves." In the spaces between us is love, connection, and leaps of understanding. How can we care for each other? This central question guides Higgins Leach. With her, we face failing glaciers, death. We also turn again and again with a spirit of hope to take in the sacred, the ineffable. When a child looks up and finds "without effort, I am more than I am," we do too.-Deborah Bacharach, author of Shake & TremorYvonne Higgins Leach fills In the Spaces Between Us with a lyrical, everyday grace, speaking of home, nature and family; animals wild, sheltered and abandoned; and with a compassionate heart that feels our shared predicament. Her keenly observed awareness of the "invisible obedience of the moon" pulls us along the tides, lapping at her island home, emanations from the departed, and the perplexities of an examined life. A quiet, ebullient joy to read, this collection is as gently paradoxical as life moving through time, place, and yes, those spaces in between.-Susan Lynch, Vashon Island Poet Laureate (2019-2021) and author of Into the All Empty

Constance Brewer writes in Prayer Gardening, "my eyes adjust to nuance," and my eyes do too, as a reader of this evocative chapbook that explores daily life with fresh eyes. These are poems of gratitude, in Kathleen Cassen Mickelson's words, for the landscape "in which I love everything/the traffic, the gas pumps/the bus bench, the library...," while also acknowledging "the hunger beneath every song." The interplay between the two poets immerses us in family relationships, encounters with the natural world, and most of all, a mature understanding of the contradictions in all of our lives, for "What is love but a failed picture of the moon."-Joanne Durham, author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl and On Shifting ShoalsThe earth-toned poems in Prayer Gardening by Constance Brewer and Kathleen Cassen Mickelson burble along the riverbank, lace themselves among the trees, tease us through seasons, give us glimpses of dreams, the yeasty smell of bread rising, the moon, angels, and even origami. And, oh, the birds-glorious, full-throated, "each voice as one small part of a choir," (KCM) "light arrowing down/ to anoint... with purpose" (CB). Though there are two distinct voices here, one cannot help but deduce they are both channeling the same dazzling earth-centric deity.-Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, author of Alone in the House of My HeartPrayer Gardening sparkles with birds, stars, and snowflakes. In these pages we feel touch "sweep my soul/back into my body" and "hear the hunger beneath every song." Constance Brewer and Kathleen Cassen Mickelson's words call us to "whisper thanks for this breath," reminding us to fully inhabit our lives-as the best poetry always does. -Laura Grace Weldon, 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year, author of Portals

The reality of life on (and off) the high seas during the Golden Age of Piracy comes alive in this finely crafted collection of swashbuckling sonnets. While each can easily stand alone, together these sonnets form a novel in verse that crests as dramatically an ocean wave. And like any great novel, Hell at Cock's Crow is impossible to put down. The reader quickly becomes immersed in the colorful and often brutal world Robert Cooperman portrays, eager to learn the fates of characters ranging from the swaggering captain whose piracy has unexpectedly noble origins, the murderous cook, and the reluctant novice marauder to their equally scheming, plundering, lust-filled, and lost female shipmates. Enjoy this salty, imaginative, memorable book.-Lynda La Rocca, winner of the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest and author of Unbroken Part a story of crime and justice, part seafaring yarn-complete mayhem-the five and a half dozen sonnets that make up Hell at Cock's Crow spin a tale worthy of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. The morally ambiguous pirate captain, James Raven, a ruthless rapist driven by greed but a would-be Robin Hood to the enslaved, and his even bigger-than-life consort, the "New Christian" Miranda Iglesias on one side, Kathleen Munro and her lover Billy Butcher, for a time wavering members of Raven's crew, on the other, the tension mounts, and nobody, really, comes out of it unblemished. The rhythm of the Shakespearian sonnets, ABBACDDCEFFEGG, mimics the rolling sea and carries the rollicking tale to its shore. -Charles Rammelkamp, author of Ugler Lee

This is a rare creation of song and scar, of vulnerability and both emotional and structural complexity. In Kirkpatrick-Vrenios' new collection Concerto for an Empty Frame, the outer and inner, conceptual and human worlds mingle in accessible yet complex ways. Brimming with meditations on family, biology, mathematics, landscape, and personal identity, all woven through the language of classical music, these vibrant poems remain grounded in a universal familiarity that opens us up to something greater. If one of the aims of poetry is to condense our vast, contradictory, and beautifully human world into the briefest of songs, Concerto for an Empty Frame stands as a testament to its possibility.--John Sibley Williams, author of SkyscapeI had the privilege of being present during the birth of Vrenios' brilliant new book of poems, Concerto for an Empty Frame, and what a magical birth! Elizabeth melds these gorgeous poems into a concerto (using her considerable musical prowess) and is a woman on fire-a maestro at work. You can feel her passion singing through each movement of a heroine's journey, a modern quest we embark on in a white Valiant after the opera. With poems "Con fuoco," "Furioso," and "Lacrimoso," Vrenios deftly guides us through the initiation stage of this epic, to our heroine's darkest nights of the soul-the shock and grief of a son lost to the tragic bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and ultimately, to our heroine's homecoming. I emerged, blinking at the return of light, forever changed. Avanti! Avanti! --Kim Noriega, author of Name MeElizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios' new poetry collection is like listening to a powerful concerto by Mozart or Beethoven presented in the form of a musical score, complete with Italian notation. Even her definitions are poems, such as her definition of "concerto: ""Mus: One thousand yellow finches lift off a late summer river all at once."The three movements of her concerto lead us through the breakup of her marriage, the loss of her son in a terrorist bombing, and finally a stepping away from grief, as "Blue startles the air open like an egg." Concerto for an Empty Frame is a brilliant work.--Maureen Eppstein. Author of Horizon Line

The poems in Margaret Kean's Cleaving the Clouds are simply beautiful. The work here is grief work, but I can't help imagining beauty on top of death, in layers, like Mark Doty's quote, There are buried cities/one beneath the other. These are lyrically resonate poems that refuse to filter out the natural beauty of the world in the midst of grief-there are white cockatoos, carillon bells, jack rabbits, and barren trees. As if to say, grief with its arms crossed, stubbornly remains in this world, entangled with the beauty within the world.-Victoria Chang, author of OBIT In Cleaving the Clouds, Margaret Kean deftly explores the many facets of a 'grief [that] keeps interrupting.' Her poems 'speak in gentle voices, ' strong yet quiet, reverent yet contemplative. They weave the spiritual and the mundane into images rich with sensory observations as the speaker navigates the loss of her loved ones. Kean delves into the deepest recesses of raw human emotions, inviting us to reflect on our own mortality, to sit with 'the impossibility of our yearning.' From the hummingbird that thumps against glass, to the warmth of a candle flame, and the breaths we all share, these poems ask us to pause and process, to partake in the sacred act of honoring the lives of those we've loved and lost.-Leonora Simonovis, author of Study of the Raft Margaret Kean's inaugural collection, Cleaving the Clouds, stuns with its truths about grief and death. Kean's poems explore grief as a mental wilderness inhabited by a lone coyote'sprimordial howl at dawn. Harnessing the power of that inhuman howl gives Kean the strength to witness and record both of her parents' illnesses and deaths. She shares raw but tender final interactions with each parent-her mother's last thirst for air, her father, bereft of speech. Like lightning splitting dark clouds, Kean's talent emerges like a magician [who] weaves flames with her fingers. Cleaving the Clouds is an open-eyed, brave tribute to art as redemption in the face of loss.-Julia Caroline Knowlton, author of Life of the Mind

Irritate an oyster and you get a pearl. Irritate a poet-and there have been a lot of irritations-and you get a poem-sometimes, a pearl. And I'm here to say I really like Nancy Dillingham's new string of pearls-pearls scattered on a mirror, beauty and pain reflected, magnified; alternately light and dark, intensified.Reading Dillingham's poems, I felt like I was in a house of mirrors, one poem reflecting another-a Proustian moment.-Parks Lanier, Appalachian Georgics and Collected PoemsEvanescence of Spring is an enjoyable and entertaining read. The poems are topical and passionate, filled with sharp energy. I especially like "In Search of Lost Time," a poignant poem that triggers the imagination and lingers in the mind. It's a beauty. Dillingham's energy is ever-present in this collection-one that will touch readers on many different levels.-Julia Nunnally Duncan, author of A Neighborhood ChangesI especially like the wry humor, which keeps the spring coming.-Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2015-2018

"Come to me / when you have wrestled / with the angel / no one else can see..." Has there ever been a more welcoming invitation to a book? I soon gave up trying to mark favorite and most powerful phrases. Mary McCarthy knows that every line, like every life experience, is essential to the whole.I've admired McCarthy as an ekphrastic poet for years, so I'm delighted to find she's just as eloquent (and bravely vulnerable) in sharing her struggles through depression. How to Become Invisible is more than good reading. It can be life changing for those wanting to become visible again.-Alarie Tennille, author of Three A.M. at the Museum and Running CounterclockwiseThis is a superb collection of poems that a detail personal account of experiencing bipolar disorder. Both depression and mania are vividly described, as well as the details of electroshock treatment. "You can't prepare for a catastrophe," the speaker states. Neither can you prepare for the startling drama of these poems.-Oriana Ivy, author of How to Jump From a Moving Train and Paradise AnonymousIn her hard-hitting new collection, How to Become Invisible (Kelsay, 2023), Mary McCarthy takes the role of Dante's Virgil, guiding us through the hell of bipolar disorder, where every ordinary object conceals a wealth of dark meaning, and the current moment "will always be an unexpected stranger/coming at you quick/as a bullet/you must catch in your teeth" (Challenges). However, while Virgil's path leads toward paradise, this dead-end road does not. The enforced normality of medication and shock treatment renders patients' minds "clean as a stone" (ECT The Curing), monochromatic and anonymous, nothing the speaker can recognize as "normal." At the last, our guide looks backward at the intensity of madness, enticing us to rejoin her "when [we too] have wrestled/with the angel/no one else can see" (Invitation). -Robbi Nester, author of Balance (White Violet, 2012), A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019), http: //www.robbinester.net

David Evans Jr. was born in Iowa and grew up in South Dakota. He studied at the University of Iowa. He lives in southern Illinois with his wife Lisa Marlow and teaches writing and literature at John A. Logan College.

Sibanda is a Bulawayo-born poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has a passion for themes and topics around conservation, nature, development and justice. He believes that he is a poet in prose, and hence he has never looked back since building and marching into the very first poetry pharmacy in the world, where poetry ... and poetry and poetics are the most tonic threesome prescriptions! Sibanda has received the following nominations: the National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA), the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize, the Best of the Net Prose and the Pushcart Prize. Sibanda`s book Notes, Themes, Things And Other Things: Confronting Controversies, Contradictions And Indoctrinations was considered for The 2019 Restless Book Prize for New Immigrant Writing in Nonfiction. Ndaba`s book titled Cabinet Meetings: Of Big And Small Preys was considered for The Graywolf Press Africa Prize 2018. Sibanda is a three-time Pushcart nominee. He can be spotted landscaping, lurking, lounging and even lost on various and many media networks.

This brilliant collection speaks candidly about living in the final stretch of one's time. Rose writes about aging, the pending inevitable, the changing world, friendship and family, the meaning of home. She meanders down memory lane, from Peru to Paris to Spain to Germany. These gorgeous poems speak about regrets and losses with rare honesty. In a way, this collection from a prolific and gifted writer is her love letter to us, something for us to keep, to keep her close. This is a writer who knows that the darkness and most painful parts of life hold as much wealth as the sweetest. And this is her magnum opus.-Lorette C. Luzajic, editor, The Ekphrastic Review, author, The Rope Artist, Winter in JuneIn Life Stuff Boehm shows the reader a life full of movement and experience, a life in which she has been "showered with riches" and "hurt beyond measure." She shows us war from the wide-eyed perspective of an observant child who doesn't fully see the deprivations brought on by war. Her world "smells of summer and wounded earth." Later, the poet wonders whether the future will remember us, whether "the mountains still echo our voices...water... remember our form...air (which) formerly made room for us." These are poems of someone who faces the future with the same curious eyes that observed the painful and beautiful world of her childhood.-Tamara Madison, author of Along the Fault Line and Morpheus Dips His Oar tamaramadisonpoetry.comRose Mary Boehm's Life Stuff is, literally, a summing up of a long, productive, often peripatetic life. From surviving WWII in Germany to a first marriage and a move to the UK, and later a relocation to Peru, her poems span decades of experiences most of us can only imagine. At one point she promises not to burden her children with stories unless they ask. They must have asked because here they are as poems and what a tale they tell!-Alan Catlin, author of How Will the Heart EndureLife Stuff-a fitting title for Boehm, who's a great hoarder of life. Leaving behind the terror, uncertainty, and hunger of her childhood in Nazi Germany, Boehm forged a new life in a new country with a new language, culture, geography, and climate again, again, and again. She embraces the best of each life, learns from the worst, and distills it to share with readers. We should all take her advice to "Sing, dance, drink, write poetry, weave... /Make God think that He did well. /Anything to prevent Him from thinking/ He must start all over again."-Alarie Tennille, author of Three A.M. at the Museum

What a glorious grab bag Charles Rammelkamp's latest, See What I Mean, is. Mixing mostly poetry with some flash fiction pieces, the collection takes us on a tour from the miserable life of Beethoven's nephew Karl, to the expedition that found the frozen remains of Robert Falcon Scott on the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf, to the horrors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot when whites ripped through Greenwood, the Black section of town (from the point of view of a Black high school teacher, telling the horrible tale to his class and particularly to one disbelieving student), to the 21st century world of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and yoga, all observed with Rammelkamp's ironic eye and well-turned phrase. -Robert Cooperman, A Nightmare on Horseback (Kelsay Books) and Bearing the Body of Hector Home (FutureCycle Press)From the life and times of Peter Roget (father of the thesaurus) and Beethoven family drama, to recent pandemic restrictions and modern-day politics, See What I Mean? has it all: life and death; love and hate; war and peace; the guilt of privilege and the release of yoga-even mutating cooties! Spend some time with Charles Rammelkamp's latest collection and you'll ... see what I mean.-Eric D. Goodman, author of Wrecks & Ruins and Tracks: A Novel in StoriesThe title of Charles Rammelkamp's new poetry collection, See What I Mean? taps the reader on the shoulder and reels us in as participants in the harrowing social issues of our time-because these poems speak to us so fluently and are relatable. And we definitely see what Rammelkamp means. Who hasn't suffered from the repercussions of the coronavirus? A computer virus? Witnessed racism? The subject matter is hard hitting at times, addressing the reality of text message bullying and teen suicide, as in "Like Romeo and Juliet, Only Tragic," or rape, in "Twitterpated." These poems are meted out as one raw moment after the next, to remind us what this world is, and what we face as human beings grappling to understand what drives us to behave as we do.-Jennifer Juneau, author of More Than Moon and UberChef USA

M.B. McLatchey's Smiling at the Executioner is a brilliant collection of poems inspired by the Stoic philosophy, but don't let that stop you from enjoying these poems, which know how to live on their own, to take root in your heart. These are the kind of poems you hope you can remember to quote when in moments of uncertainty. McLatchey is not some one-trick theme artist who will sing you "I get knocked down, but I get up again"-NO!-she's the one who will serve you images, sounds, and textures that make you want to read this book aloud. She will bring you the taste of bread, the promises of olives, the singing of hunger, and the love of desire.-J.P. Dancing Bear, editor of Verse DailyM.B. McLatchey pens these perspicacious, wise, and musically intelligent poems with a sincere gratitude for being alive in an era when "our histories are shadows on a wall; our memories rote lessons that flicker and mutate." These masterfully crafted poems are an antidote to our complicated age of technology, machine-enforced intelligence, and screen-based isolation. They applaud every moment of humanity, from folding a fitted sheet to drawing a bath, for knowing "what we were, how to retrieve our former selves," and for putting the necessary spirit back into spirituality.-Jen Karetnick, Founder and Managing Editor of SWWIM, author of Inheritance with a High Error Rate, winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book AwardSmiling at the Executioner is a philosophical exploration of survival, love, marriage, men, family-and words-inspired by the Stoic mind, using image and metaphor from ancient and contemporary myth. Like an ancient story, this book is so rich it is hard to pick and choose-each poem a meditation on the Stoic desire to keep loving one another, and to persevere. When writing of forgiveness, McLatchey writes, "not a sinner's crawl; a purging of the stench /of an unkept stall; a never forgotten love, /Penelope's woven-and unwoven-shawl." -Lee (Lori) Desrosiers, Managing Editor/Publisher of Naugatuck River Review, author of Keeping Planes in the Air, Salmon Poetry

Like all of us, like George Armstrong Custer himself in fact, Timothy Tarkelly is perfectly flawed, but his poems aren't. The pieces in A Horse Called Victory offer a fascinating look into the now fading landscape of a scene once known as modern cultural myth and while the country changes a little bit more every time we close our eyes these days, our hopes, dreams, and fears remain largely the same and they are all thankfully on display in this spellbinding collection. What do I love about Tarkelly's poems? Everything. Pick up this book.-John Dorsey, Author of Pocatello Wildflower, Crisis Chronicles PressWhat happens in A Horse Called Victory is what happens off-screen while you watch a Western: people scrambling to live (or, perhaps, trying not to die), while eerie, half-empty spaces vie for attention. What happens is also what keeps us from wanting to time-travel: the honesty about how life was then, with the tomahawks and rifles and outlaws. A great effort by Tarkelly.-Caitlin Johnson, author of Delta, Stubborn Mule PressTim Tarkelly's storytelling skills are on vivid display in A Horse Called Victory. His exploration of the legendary characters whose stories are woven into the history of the American West centers on timeless themes, such as the gross overreach of human aspiration. This book is a must-read for anyone who ponders the ambiguities of frontierism.-Dawne Leiker, author of What Remains, Spartan Press

"[W]e lose our children from the moment they are born." So writes Carolyn Light Bell in her intimate preface to The Joshua Poems, which bear out this sentiment. The opening piece depicts a child "squirm[ing] / fresh from [the] womb," and the closing depicts acceptance at his death ("We finally yield to the soil, soft as pears"). This book illustrates the complexity of parenthood, its inevitable relation to loss, the essential unknowability of other minds, and the grief we face as the people we love change through time. Readers will be enriched from having encountered this carefully crafted and downright gorgeous book.-John James, author, The Milk HoursCarolyn Light Bell's courageous collection tells of her youngest, gifted child, who fell "through the rungs/of [his] life." His loss came like "some strange package left at our front door/neither of us wanted to pick up." All who have suffered deep loss or been touched by suicide will want The Joshua Poems to be in their hands, their hearts.-Elizabeth Weir, poet, When Our world Was WholeIn exquisite, lyrical language, poet Carolyn Light Bell brings the reader into her daily struggle through the darkness of grief to live fully after her son Josh's suicide, "the nightmare of nightmares...an all the time thing that doesn't go away," yet she concludes with hope and understanding, where "grief and joy are borne as one." Each poem pierces the heart.--Meryll Levine Page, author, Jewish LuckThe Joshua Poems is a mother's book about life and death and the child we deliver from one place to the next, the space where they were, the life that continues even when parts of it end, the living and dying we do each day in remembrance and in love.-Kao Kalia Yang, author, The Late Homecomer, The Song PoetJoshua, the beloved son of the poet and namesake of this tender, brave collection of poems, is portrayed as a remarkable young man, whose mental illness led to suicide. Carolyn Light Bell's writing, as Whitman's in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" emanates love and grief. Borrowing Bell's words from her book, these poems "lift and carry" those of us who've experienced grave loss, yet found "hope and courage" to continue living with grace.-Margaret Hasse, poet, Summoned and other collections

What We Learn From Birds is more than a stunning debut of poems; it is a collection of a woman's many selves-punk librarian, scorned lover, gentle mother, glitter-clawed bitch, worried daughter, hopeful dreamer. What We Learn From Birds is the kind of book that knocks on the right doors of your heart. You can't help but let it in.-Julia Schneider, Founder and Director of Narrative RxIt may be true that we "wreck ourselves /with the relentless wanting of things." But, simultaneously hard-edged and sensual, self-scouring and resilient, Gillian Freebody's poems make room for love-wild, inspired, transformative-even in this life of pain. This is a book to celebrate and to learn from.-Richie Hofmann, author of A Hundred Lovers

In the striking and profoundly tender collection, The Life You Gave Me, Claire Drucker skillfully probes what it means to be a daughter, a mother, and an occupant of a climate in crisis. There is devastating loss and grief in lines such as, "What am I left holding? Who am I now?" and also a buoying of something sweeter: "jade hues," "apple heaven on our lips," "shared comfort of cool, sun-kissed skin." I keep returning to these poems, moved by the way they chart the terrain of love, identity, and renewal. This is a capacious and wise book that reckons with the indelible nature of ancestry, the fragility of a fractured democracy, and the community and meaning found when "we lean in with love, for any kind/of freedom."-Emily Jern-Miller, author of You Are Not a Bird The poems in Claire Drucker's collection The Life You Gave Me offer readers "a new kind of stillness, /a new kind of alive." The poet's voice calls us to attention with compassion and deep tenderness for a world ravaged by fire and floods, splintered by politics and pandemic, braving grief and love and loss. Through all, the poet reaches back in time to the Holocaust memories of immigrant grandparents and forward to the immanent devastation of our planetary home. But always the force of language roots us in the miraculous now, with "change, /that sly beast, /always the only//hook we can hang our coats on."-Terry Ehret, author of Lucky Break and Night Sky JourneyClaire's Drucker's poetry collection The Life You Gave Me is a love letter to three beloveds: her late mother, her daughter, and the natural world. Each poem sizzles with precise, well-considered language and sensory images that made me sigh and moan by turns. Her subjects span the fraught relationship with her mother, wildfires, visits to the beach, Covid life, and more. In the poem "Apple Juicing," she writes, "even the wasps are doing what they should, / their legs sticky with sugar, languid/ and drowning in the garnet liquid." This is a work of depth, beauty, and many moods, one to savor and reread.-Sandra Anfang, author of Finishing School (Kelsay Books, 2023)

Weeping in the Promised Land is, on one hand, a meditation on our troubled, fractured nation at this deeply contentious, historic inflection point, and, on the other, a deeply personal evocation of her troubled personal relationships. This wide-ranging collection progresses beyond politics and a seemingly perpetual chaos, to a more settled, satisfying existence. Ekphrastic poems celebrate nature, laying the groundwork for a place of contentment: gardening, daily scenic walks and, ultimately, the reflective work of writing.-Alan Catlin poet, Exterminating AngelsPart the autobiography of a woman in contemporary America, part social commentary, Jennifer Lagier's lyrical collection is a powerful reminder that we live in fraught times. Lagier addresses a catalogue of calamities: the insanity of guns in the United States-"Nothing is Normal Here," indeed-climate change, Ukraine, the underlying patriarchy. She writes in the title poem: "As America tears itself in two, / I find myself terrified, / too dispirited to mingle / despite pandemic's easing."But there are also breathtaking pictures of nature-blackbirds, wild turkeys, the Pacific Ocean-and the acknowledgment of love that, though not loud, is life-sustaining/ Lagier writes in "Unspoken" "At night, we fit together like lips / protecting a secret, proclaim infinite love / in intimate silence."-Charles Rammelkamp, author of The Field of Happiness, A Magician Among the Spirits, and Transcendence Weeping in the Promised Land is a passionate, thoughtful collection of poetry abundant in carefully detailed imagery. Powered by propulsive verbs in parallel structure and deliberate asyndeton, these poems by Jennifer Lagier bring a forceful conscience to bear on memory, politics, and art. Perspectives of experience, perseverance, and determination reveal the poet's commitment to truth in verses that reflect tenderness and fury, gratitude and strength.-Linda Scheller, author of Fierce Light and Wind & Children

With Metes and Bounds, her sixth collection in seven years, Jane Blanchard extends her admirable consistency. Whether in sonnets, quatrains, or couplets, epigrams, sestinas, or terza rima, she artfully manages meter and rhyme while ingeniously keeping her lines conversational. Her subjects are diverse-religion, marriage, art, people-watching on a cruise-and her portrayal of illness is especially poignant. Metes and Bounds gives resounding proof that Blanchard is not only a prolific formalist poet but also one of our best.-Matthew Brennan, author of Snow in New York: New and Selected PoemsJane Blanchard's lovely, bittersweet poems, in her latest collection, meditate on the mystery of pleasure and pain and their everyday side-by-side existence. As noted in "Camellias," "buds / . . . bloom one day and fall the next." In "The Kahler Grand Hotel," a Southern accent in a restaurant near the Mayo Clinic makes for a gently humorous glitch in the ordering process; this, against a possibly quite-threatening medical backdrop. And in the brief "sub rosa," in the midst of blood tests and bone scans, "the mind remains / the marriage thrives / the memory of love survives." There is technical mastery here and a good deal of music. And meaning, too, implied by the "metes" and "bounds" of the book's title: the sorrows of the world are not without limits known to faith. "You trust," as another poem says, "that God can sort all of it out."-Charles Hughes, author of Cave Art and The Evening Sky

Judith Prest's luminous book about families opens quite simply: Wherever I go/I bring a crowd along. Grafted Tree follows the treasure map of her rich experience in only the way this gifted poet can do. The reader takes us on a journey with her through the well-remembered stories of her life and newly unveiled secrets she has recently discovered.Written by a poet at her peak, Grafted Tree above all will resonate as a love letter to all kinds of family experience, written with understanding, compassion, and truth. As she writes in the book's concluding poem, I carry their history; /it has shaped mine/ My breath, my spirit/a bridge where/ they stand now/They wave to me/through the mist. -Jan Marin Tramontano, Poet and Novelist, Author of The Me I Was with YouGrafted Tree is a book about transformation, memory and love. Judith Prest takes us through her deep understanding of adoption, marriage and identity as a wife, mother and what it means to be a sister to newfound brothers. There is a longing for wholeness, for cure, for the compassion it takes to heal not only herself, but the world. And she succeeds in bringing these poems to fruition not only for herself, but for us as well.-June Gould, Ph.D., Author of The Writer in All of Us, E.P. Dutton. She is also a long-time workshop leader for The International Women's Writing Guild, and a published poet and novelist.Judith Prest brilliantly maps her poetic genealogy in her third book, Grafted Tree. Her writing offers familial depth in a diverse selection of form and emotion as she explores each surprising and glorious branch of Grafted Tree. -Suzanne S. Rancourt, Author of Billboard in the Clouds, murmurs at the gate, Old Stones, New Roads, and Songs of Archilochus

Karen Petersen is an elemental poet. She has the ability to lose herself in her subject matter with disarming honesty, unveiling an in-dwelling, naked luminescence in which form and meaning coalesce. With blade-sharp freshness, Trembling does what poetry should do.-Annie Finch, author of Spells: New and Selected Poems