Samuel Amadon in Coldfront

SPD's AWP BAD POEM CONTEST

Hat tip to bad-poem hat-tricker Samuel Amadon, whose new book Like a Sea, published by the University of Iowa Press, is reviewed today by PJ Gallo in Coldfront Magazine.

Rumored Islands by Robert Farnsworth

COMING SOON!

RUMORED ISLANDS Robert Farnsworth $14 | paper | 88 pp. Harbor Mountain Press Poetry. Robert Farnsworth's first two books were published by Wesleyan University Press. Twenty years later, Harbor Mountain Press brings out Farnsworth's next: fine narrative poems made of patina and salt, family memory and youthful outlook, reality and regret.  LINK "More than 20 years after his last book, Farnsworth (Honest Water) returns with poems of wonder and shame, loneliness and 'the strange, sun-spun fabric of the world.' In carefully sculpted lines, alternately lyrical and narrative, cultured and stripped down, he offers poems that arrive unannounced and track the unexpected turns life takes, the way an unanticipated moment can become part of a story we were meant to hear. He captures the long sigh of a stoplight, thoughts from Westminster Bridge, finding someone drowned staring up from the bottom of a pond, and the complicated distances and intimacies of family life—fathers and sons, husbands and wive—with grace and muscular music. Farnsworth knows his way around a stanza and is capable of lines that both surprise and seem inevitable, whether he's 'full of the melancholy/ pleasure of being far away from home' or stating that 'The past should always be/ this allusive gift.' Near the end of the book comes 'At Sea,' a tender, restrained and stunning poem in which, four years after his father's death, Farnsworth begins to find him. Rather than ask forgiveness—presumably for the many unnamed separations between a father and a son—the writer acknowledges, 'I recognize the things I know that you'd have loved.'" —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Divine Music by Suruchi Mohan

New review of Suruchi Mohan's
DIVINE MUSIC (Bayeux Arts)
in Booklist.

Walt Martin writes SPD a letter...

"If I were to read A Helen Adam Reader a thousand times, I'd experience a thousand joys and an equal number of revelations. I chanced ("chanced" ?) to read Krirstin's wondrously perceptive introduction (which was pen-painted with a most refreshing artistic elegance - and in critique challenging academic acumen as well) while researching Nurse Cora Millay. The content of the authors compilation is an obvious labor of love, if not a sort of spiritual obligation (perhaps both); it's brilliantly presented, ever so readable, opens so very many doors, and is some far distance beyond being a simply thrilling and captivating read. Were it not for Kristin Prevallet's sterling effort, I would never have come to know the insightful magic of the incomparable Helen Adam... I'm thankful beyond words for being afforded the opportunity to "discover" the enchanted universe of Helen Adam, whom I'd have completely missed were it not for Kristin Prevallet's wonderful gift to the literary world...Thanks are certainly due from so very many diverse quarters!

--satisfied customer and friend of SPD, Walt Martin

you can order your copy of A Helen Adam Reader HERE

Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda Shaughnessy's
recent second book,
Human Dark with Sugar
(Copper Canyon Press),
reviewed in this Sunday's
New York Times.

One of a Kind by Jack Micheline
(Ugly Duckling Presse)
reviewed by Patrick Dunagan
in
the San Francisco Chronicle.

Khirbet Khizeh reviewed in the new issue of The New Republic!

READ IT HERE!

available now from Ibis Editions

NEW RAIN TAXI
FALL 08 PRINT EDITION

Essential as ever, as ever chockful of SPD books. Featuring interviews with David Hajdu and Gordon Ball, plus a special feature on Frank Stanford, the VACUM Attachment, and reviews of books by Toni Morrison, James Tate, Bobbie Lousie Hawkins, Lisa Jarnot, Paul Auster, and much more! FULL-PAGE SPECIAL ON SPD BEST-SELLERS