In Angled Light
Selected Poems by Joan Joffe Hall

Joan Joffe Hall's third full-length poetry collection presents a life's worth of writing and reflects the author's feminist stance as well as her humanist concerns and Jewish heritage. The poems are by turns outraged, elegiac, lyrical, and comic.

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Stumbling into the Light
Poems by Edwina Trentham

Gorgeously and honestly depicting the author’s passionate and painful youth in Bermuda, the poems of Edwina Trentham’s first book show the compassionate fury and troubled love she felt toward those closest to her. Stumbling into the Light presents “a child who learns to make her way ‘alone in paradise’ into adulthood, where she finally ‘adds up’ the past so it will ‘let her go.’ ”

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Poems by Norah Pollard, daughter of Red Pollard, jockey for famed racehorse Seabiscuit, subject of a best-selling book by Laura Hillenbrand, a PBS documentary, and a movie. Many of the poems in this book provide a compelling portrayal of the complex man who was the poet’s father as well as the most renowned jockey of the 1930's.

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Learning the Angels
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

The fifth book of poems by award-winning poet Rennie McQuilkin. Depicting love's labors and delights, the collection moves from sensual delights to more problematic moments in the course of true and untrue love, arriving in the end at a sort of balancing.

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

Read more about this book and how to order it

This is more than a poetry collection: it is an archetypal tale of paradise lost and regained, or at least glimpsed again. Through the story of her descent into the hell of drug addiction and difficult ascent back to the world from which she’d dropped out, Jen Gates has given us a modern morality tale.

These are tough-minded poems quarried out of a life and a region full of hardship. They show a man and his neighbors — human, animal, vegetable and mineral — that endure and, more often than not, prevail. Quarry will give courage to its readers.

Ranging from her childhood, young adulthood, and marriage to her passionate involvement with teaching the young and the not so young to appreciate the joy of poetry, these new poems by Elizabeth Thomas are strikingly honest, direct and energetic, always instilled by enormous empathy and compassion.

In her first full-length poetry collection, Ellen Rachlin displays a wit, minimalism and passion for particulars reminiscent of Marianne Moore.  Always behind the reticence of these sometimes playful, sometimes anguished poems is a passion for honesty and for a life in which the sensual cohabits with the cerebral. In Rachlin’s verse, Marjory Wentworth finds “objects and landscapes [that] seem suddenly brilliant and suffused with meaning we had never considered.”

In this final volume of his OPENING KING DAVID series, Brad Davis once again celebrates the art of living in harmony with a higher power, whether we call it God, our Better Selves, or the Hope and Charity prescribed by David’s successor. Davis’ meditations on the Psalms (107-150) are, as ever, fierce, joyful, lyrical and witty. They constantly surprise with their unexpected turns of phrase and event.

This illuminated gift edition is devoted to a single subject: Night. It begins in the crepuscular “blue hour” of Civil Twilight, descends into the darkness of nightmare, then ascends to a realm of moon-lit magic and surreal beauty before ending with the risen colors of birdsong dawn.

In his first poetry collection, David K. Leff has created exquisite prose poems ranging from expressions of joy in the natural world to laments for “civilized” degeneracy. His reportorial eye and environmentalist’s knowledge have been conjoined with a philosopher’s wisdom and a poet’s passion for le mot juste. These are poems to savor with delight.

Written in a highly distinctive style, the latter-day sonnets in this volume are as modern as they are traditional, as witty as they are emotional. And their range is enormous: from the highly satirical to the utterly sensual, from absolute joy to philosophical despair.  As John Surowiecki says, they are an absolute delight.

In her second book, Lisa Sornberger presents poems whose exuberance and passion encounter a deep melancholy which the poet fights through in the pages of her book, arriving at a hard-won balancing of opposites. The result is a collection with enormous emotional torque.

This book is devoted to the premise that in the cultural and communal traditions of all peoples, be they Chinese, Jewish or Tibetean, there is what Yeats called a “ceremony of innocence” offering salvation from the “mere anarchy” loosed when the past is forgotten. In poems concerning the classical arts of creation, the value of remembrance, the havoc wrought by war and revolution, and the peace gained by ancient practices of meditation and devotion to the present, the author urges us to hear “the voice within the silence.” 

These poems revel in all the sensual pleasures life has to offer. They also lay bare the injustices afflicting too many of the poet’s fellow townspeople, who respond to the various wars waged against them with the fortitude of survivors and with a love for one another not shown by their persecutors. Susan Allison has done for Middletown, Connecticut, what Williams did for Paterson, New Jersey: she has seen past its pedestrian surface to its mythical underpinnings. She has written a book whose passion, honesty, and visceral style make it an important contribution to the world of poetry.

A compilation of poems written between 1969 and 2009, including about 15 new poems and much revision of earlier work. Ranging from verse steeped in the natural world, to love poems, to reminiscences of the poet’s youth during World War Two, to poems in which epiphanies do battle with the Grim Reaper, McQuilkin’s work comes down on the side of hope and faith, but not without a fight and not without humor. The book ends with a series of lyrics dedicated to the poet’s parents and a sense that after life’s cataracts and hurricanoes, ripeness is indeed all.

The poems in this third book by Norah Pollard display the wild joy and savage despair that mark her earlier books. The poet revels in the physicality of the animal world she finds in man and beast; she also suffers the anguish of loss and death, especially that of her beloved brother. Like her father, Seabiscuit’s jockey, Norah Pollard rides the wild currents of a world that takes her where it will, takes her dangerously and deleriously.

Younger and older readers alike will relish these poems, which are often written in a traditional style and arise from the very New England soil that has nurtured the poet, who operates a small horse farm. She sings of the natural world and farm life, of living in the present moment, of growing up unbridled. The book is enhanced by a series of lovely illustrations.

In this, her second poetry collection, Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers gives us work seasoned with her unique brand of humor and laced with rage, rue, nostalgia, and unstinting love. Much of that love springs from the marriage of her children and the advent of grandchildren, about whom the poet has no mixed feelings at all, simply sheer joy.

There is much pain and sorrow, much loss in these brilliant, energetically formal poems; but there is also a faith that in wilderness and in the young lie possibilities of preservation. Don Barkin’s work presents a metaphorical parallel as well, suggesting that although dark lakes of the spirit threaten to drown us and all our attachments, there is deep down in us, in the wilderness and forgotten innocence within, a countering mystery.

Jean Sands has written a book that chronicles one woman’s victory in a struggle for survival against all the odds. Beginning with poems about a childhood sometimes happy, sometimes threatened, the poet goes on to describe abuses, betrayals, and losses that she has been able to survive, displaying remarkable courage and understanding in the process. The book ends with a series of loving tributes to sons and friends. Its coda is a memorable song of triumph.

Alexandrina Sergio’s first full-length poetry collection presents a wide range of feeling, from depths of profound sorrow to heights of raucous humor. Marked by utter honesty, its ascents and descents are sheer and enormously invigorating. This is a book to cherish.

In his photographs and poems, Jake Anderson shows powers of empathy that remind one of Walker Evans and James Agee. It is no wonder that the homeless people he came to know during his time with them were willing to reveal so much in their faces and in the commentary each of them wrote. The author will donate 30% of all proceeds from the book to organizations supporting the homeless.

In her second book, Marilyn Johnston again focuses on family, but this time turns from the men of her family to the women, in particular to the way she and her mother have grown emotionally in their relationship to one another and in their own lives. Other women in the poet’s family also make important appearances in a book that will open the hearts of its readers.

In this collection distilled from a lifetime of poetizing, the author deftly and vividly describes his early life, his joy in the natural world, his darker meditations, his continuing delight in childhood pleasures, and his abiding love for the woman he married.

Nancy Daley’s finely wrought debut collection runs a gamut of emotions from delighting in love, to mourning its loss, to a hard-won letting go – with an assist from the Pacific – to feeling the stirrings of new departures, and in the end, new love.

These are poems that defy easy categorizing. They are full of high spirits and mischief, and they are haunted by the spectre of vacancy; they are by turns earthy and surreal, filled with the joy of the natural world and the possibilities of love, but also keenly aware of what gets lost. Always, however, they blaze with verbal pyrotechnics and wit. Be prepared for a wild ride.

As the title of Polly Brody's third book suggests, the poet portrays both the darkness of life and its heart-stirring beauty. Dire death and a variety of other cruelties are graphically described in Stirring Shadows, but equally vivid are the possibilities of love, redemption, mercy, and resurrection.

In her second book of poems, Peggy Sapphire again shows herself to be one of the most humane, honest, generous-hearted poets now writing, and one of the most spirited. In the End a Circle will give the rueful heart a change of mood.

Seth Steinzor has written a latter-day version of Dante's Inferno. In this, the first of his three-part transformation of the Divine Comedy, contemporary sinners are treated to contemporary variations on the torments of the original Nine Circles of Hell.

In her first poetry collection, Mollie Pilling draws upon her many years of living, journeying, and teaching in foreign lands. In these intelligent, visceral, sometimes rambunctious, sometimes heart-breaking poems, the author’s journeys are emotional as well as geographical. She glories in the joys of motherhood and all varieties of love, but she also mourns the losses that follow unleashings of the heart.

In this remarkable collation of poems by fellow classmates of Yale’s Class of 1955, Donald H. Werner has assembled and edited work showing that 1955 was a very good year for sending poets out into the world, at least in New Haven.

In his first book of poetry, Paul Scollan has distilled a lifetime of observation, some of it joyful, some of it rueful. We are treated to vivid characterization and description, an unflinching look at the worst life has to offer and an ebullient presentation of its shining moments. Scollan embodies Shakespeare’s definition of the poet as one who “gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” In this case, the local habitation and name are those of Meriden, Connecticut.

In this memoir depicting her days as the wife of an undercover CIA agent on Cyprus just before and during the bloody civil war between Cypriot Greeks and Turks, Arlene Swift Jones has written a page-turner that describes the beauty and barbarity of landscape, customs, and ethnic duality on an island that has long been regarded as the Jewel of the Mediterranean but descends into a paradise lost when hostilities begin in 1963.

In her third chapbook, Mary Leonard gives us the lowdown on life. Though it turns out to be less than savory at times, she shows its sweets as well as its sours. There is loss and yearning here, but there is also a rising into new life through the energy of color, zest, and most of all, love.

In her first book, Sherri Bedingfield’s transitions and transformations are many. How naturally she moves from joy to deep sorrow and back to hard-earned joy, which she finds in the world of nature and in the dance of love; and how seamlessly she shape-shifts from human to animal existence and back again.This is a poet deeply in tune with psychic and physical mysteries.

In her first book, Phyllis Beck Katz moves from poems reflecting on the troubles of childhood to poems expressing joy in the worlds of nature and art. The book has a dark underside, but in the end joy and hope prevail. The poems are elegantly spare and simple but richly reward multiple readings.

The sprightly wit and incisive satire of Bob Brooks’s first full-length book are a delight, all the more so when their philosophical underpinnings reveal themselves. There is a keen intelligence at work here and an equal measure of heart. Be prepared for double-takes, constant surprises, rare honesty, and startling images.

Jim Kelleher’s drama-in-verse can be read as a novel or performed on stage. In it, a homeless, presumably hopeless Viet Vet named Mick redeems himself with the help of St. Peter and a NYPD beat cop/Iraq vet. His failed wife and son, both in Heaven, also help. This book will change you.

In this remarkable collection of verse transforming well-known poems-of-the-past into versions that are at once raucous and heart-breaking, Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers will make you laugh and cry at the same time. Be prepared for the unexpected!

At the heart of these poems is yearning, the trope for which is desire for a permanent home. Such desire and an attendant yearning for amorous love are less fulfilled here than is the love between mother and daughter, mother and son. No matter how threatened by time, such love is a permanent “buoy in lapping distance.”

In his first poetry collection, Barry Zaret has unleashed a long-withheld torrent of gorgeous verse drawn from the riches of his Jewish heritage, his life as a cardiologist, his intense sorrows and equally intense joys, and his love of the natural world, especially his beloved Berkshires.

These spare, exquisitely phrased poems pull no punches, facing the realities of personal and extra-personal hardships unflinchingly. But they also find solace in the world of nature, and the book ends with celebrations of life-saving moments to be found in that world.

The poems in this marvelously various collection ring all the changes: from sorrow to elation, bitterness to acceptance of the semi-sweet joys life offers between bouts of weather. There is rue here, and raucous humor, love lost and found, and always a steadfast onwardness.

In this generous helping of poems from a lifetime of writing, we are offered both rue and joy, sorrow and laughter, and new beginnings at the end of things. What a savory book!

These exceptionally vivid poems stun us into fuller a livelihood of the heart. Here is all the pain and self-incrimination that strike those who feel deeply, but in the end it is love and a sense of the brotherhood among all living creatures, human and animal, that inform this book.

These new poems are extraordinarily passionate, sensual, honest, and heart-felt evocations from a life richly lived. They draw upon the author’s Jewish background, questioning intellect, love of family, and refusal to abide by conventional strictures. More than enduring, Myra Shapiro prevails.

These charming children’s books will make perfect gifts for young people at Thanksgiving or Christmas. The text and drawings are witty, unpredictable, and heart-warming.

The daughter of an army doctor serving with the 10th Mountain Division during World War Two has written a searingly honest and loving series of poems about her father’s post-traumatic return to civilian life and the winning courage he showed in his losing battle.

What an inspiring, heart-breaking, and heart-strengthening book this is! It is also a page-turner, as we follow the author’s attempts to locate and learn to know the sister from whom she was separated at the age of two.

The sense of grief and loss in these poems is countered by equally strong courage, love of life, and faith in the healing properties of the natural world. You will be stronger for immersing yourself in this book

Jonathan Gillman’s moving series of poems depicts his extraordinary father’s drift into dementia, the love that father evoked in his family, and the author’s turbulent relationship with him, followed by reconciliation and a sense of his own mortality. The world of music is a leitmotif throughout the book, which reads like a novel.

The delicate haiku in this volume are vivid in detail, fascinating in philosophy, accurate in science, and gorgeous in coloration. The same can be said for the full-color illustrations that illuminate the book. If you weren’t one before, you will be an aficionado of butterflies and moths when you put down the book.

In her wistful and joyous new book, Norah Pollard asks, “What else is there to write about but love and death?” And those are her subjects. But neither is what you might expect it to be. There is enormous vitality, joy, sadness, and wit in these poems. The poet is at the top of her game in this brilliant new collection.

In verse steeped in tradition but contemporary in its freedoms, we are presented with an argument between opposites: the losses and griefs of a world gone dark are set against the joys and triumphs of a world bathed in light.

These poems combine gusto and empathy with such passion that they seem to leap off the page. Sandy Sergio lavishes her love on the young, on creatures of the wild, and on all strangers in a strange land, but she never forgets that “there are tears for things.”

Nostalgia, wit, vivid detail, strong feeling, and the omnipresence of water (especially the Delaware River) make these remarkably clear and accessible poems a joy to read.

Although Tom Malluck's poems tell us he is a man acquainted with grief and aware of the destructive forces of the natural world, they also remind us of the healing properties of sea and shore, in this case those of the poet’s beloved Nantucket. The book is graced by nine exquisite photographs of the island.

In his new book of poems, McQuilkin describes a series of visitations from the natural world, the human world, and the Other World. Though the poet presents plenty of reasons to look askance at life, his poems are celebrations.

These poems offer a grand amalgam of joy and doubt, summer and winter, play and work. Most of all, they are love poems: love of childhood, of marriage, of self-discovery, of New England—its harsh but gorgeous winters, its boulders, its resurrection in spring, its wild life.

Vera Schwarcz has added this forceful and fascinating work to her ever-growing list of publications depicting the cultural landscape of contemporary China. Here, she has created stunning “renditions” of poems by a mid-20th Century dissident poet, Chen Yinke, and has added a group of her own poems in harmony with Chen Yinke’s. Like his, her poems show a degradation of culture and humanity, in this case through comparison of classic and modern Chinese logographs.

This lovely sequel to the author’s collection of butterfly haiku is another triumph, combining philosophy, botany, and poetry in ways that allow us to share the author’s emotional and intellectual joy in the wildflowers we all too often take for granted or know little about.

These are strong, honest poems that do not shy away from the pain life doles out, but face that pain with such philosophy, joie de vivre, and generosity of spirit that they have much to teach us.

These poems “ring the changes” from joy to sorrow to irony, but beneath such variety the world of nature remains a saving grace. There is a generous spirit creating the music in this most harmonious of books.

What a generous selection from the poet’s several books written over a long writing career, including “Water Ouzel,” which received national acclaim after appearing in The New Yorker. We are fortunate to have this compilation from one of the country’s foremost poets.

Like Frost, Jeanne Weston Cook has been one "acquainted with the night." But despite the sorrows darkening her book, she has been stunned by the illumination of the world’s beauty. In the end, her book is a Song of Joy.

Often ironic, sometimes sad, these poems consider love lost and found. In voices casual, lyric, witty or intense, they touch on war, death and sex in clear, dramatic language. Joan Houlihan calls the book “a stunning debut.”

These brilliant poems consider life’s emotional and physical migrations. The author counters the sometime perils of such migrations with the consolations of the natural world and memories of less unpredictable times.

These are the poems of a humanist who embraces all arts and sciences, one whose desire to know moves her closer to family both past and present, then expands outward to focus on the lives and work of artists and sages. Her world view excludes neither the terrors of war nor life’s manifold joys. This book is itself a manifold joy.

In the gorgeously honest, passionate and vivid poems of The Overgrown Copse, Jane D’Arista records her lifelong search for an Eden, a home—however temporary—and the mixed blessings that come with that search. In the end, joy trumps distress.

Joan Hofmann’s first chapbook looks loss squarely in the face but also depicts the restorative powers of the natural world in lush detail. At its heart is a hard-won joie de vivre.

Focusing on the twin holocausts of Multiple Sclerosis and the Final Solution of World War II, the poet shows that being doubly bereft has led to double blessing through her determination to survive and the very act of recording the past in poems that make this book such a blessing.

Seldom does a book as important as this one come along. Paul Petrie’s work is greatly admired by many of the country’s major poets and was published in leading journals and magazines, as well as in his eleven poetry collections. The work is astounding in its emotional depth, range of emotion, and variety of form.

Childhood joy, the delights of long marriage, moments of quiet reflection, the losses attendant on aging, and the life-saving gifts offered by the natural world and grandchildren—they are all here in a book that is in itself life-saving.

As the title suggests, these poems can be witty, irreverent, lots of fun. But they can also be nostalgic and lyrical. In short, this book – one that includes translations and a good many poems inspired by fly-fishing – is a work for all seasons by a poet whose intelligence matches her poetic sensibility. And she actually rhymes!

If ever there was a book which is pure epiphany, this is it! We are presented with the blessings of an island where motorcars are not allowed and where forebears, family, and all manner of islanders (dogs, horses, and bats not least of all) are intensely alive, whether past or present.

These poems take us on an expansive journey across ranges of emotional terrain spanning loss, love, nostalgia, and wonder. Danny Dover writes like a prospector, examining any crevice of human nature that might yield a glimpse of something rare and immutable.

These posthumous poems ask questions that many are afraid to ask and express an idealist’s dismay at the world’s destruction of ideals. But they are also in love with a world the poet was about to leave. Alex Kochkin was a philosopher who loved to tango.

The voices of the five high school poets appearing in this chapbook sparkle with fresh insights.

These poems take us from the tribulations and terrors of the poet’s early years through a series of losses that call forth her powers of empathy, finally arriving at “gusts and expectations of rapture.” This is indeed the record of a quickening.

Despite their courageous facing of dire fact, these poems open vistas filled with childhood delight and love. While passing through an Inferno portrayed in Dantean detail, they also demonstrate the restorative powers of travel, the ocean, and wild nature. The song of joy, muted at times, always returns.

In these beautifully crafted and deeply felt poems, Susan Moss tells of much that has been lost but also of all that remains a solace: the saving grace of memory, the world of nature, and the continuing presence of good friends, all that allows her to come in from the dark.

In this much-awaited first book, we are rewarded with poems which refuse to flinch at life’s inevitable disruptions but also revel in its manifold joys. How splendid to find such juxtaposition of honesty and empathy, head and heart, wit and sentiment, philosophy and sensuality!

In her third book, Katharine Carle presents us poems by turns raucous and religious, witty and lyrical, iconoclastic and philosophical. A tomboy become a devoted mother, she looks back to the past nostalgically but forges into her 85th year with “a joy, an exulting.” A continuing undercurrent in the book is the belief that though “we’re made of different colors…no one [is] below, no one above.”

In this generous collection of verse from a richly varied lifetime, Dr. Giosa looks facts squarely in the face, accepting with good grace and wit the brevity of life and primacy of nature, but also praising the glories of our brief residence on Earth. In poems both philosophical and visceral, richly allusive and down to earth, he values love above all else, decries the folly of egoism, and calls on us to seize the joys of the day.

The angels in this newest book by Lana Orphanides are both worldly and otherworldly: lovers, newborns and nereids as well as visitors from another sphere. The delights of “heavy, soft bellied earth,” with its sensual intoxications and local habitations (Greece, the Grand Canyon, Cornwall, Paris) are set against the omnipresence of an extraterrestrial dimension. Both are “what give the heart ease” in a book that is a universal celebration.

Joyful and anguished, witty and lyrical, passionate and philosophical, this second book is a romp, a descent into the Abyss, a flight into song, an outcry against the willful ways of the world, and a lover’s shout-out. Always, these poems have the utter honesty of one who knows by heart the depths and dancings of the human spirit.

These are poems culled from a life passionately lived. Their wisdom comes from a man who sees clearly the atrocities life visits upon us and still has faith and philosophical resolve enough to call life the greatest show on earth. Curt Plaskon sings praise songs in the face of disaster. Here, love is stronger than its Adversary.

Mims Butterworth tells of friendships with felons of several stripes, friendships based on her belief that felons share the hopes and fears common to all humanity. She makes a compelling case for reforms in our judicial system, informed in part by observation of prison systems in Central America, which she visited often.

In this terrifying, beautifully written, entirely unconventional history in verse, the senseless and brutal murder of the author’s beloved grandmother is depicted from many perspectives, sparing no one but also being entirely fair to the perpetrators and presenting a loving tribute to the author’s namesake.

These poems burst with love—for mountain and lake, for the joys and mysteries of childhood and early love, for friends and family members lost and for those who sustain the poet in his later years: children, grandchildren, and most of all the poet’s wife of many years, to whom the book is dedicated.

The poetic vignettes in this memoir of a warrior are the work of a man who fought and bled for his country, a country that betrayed him but which he continues to love as he loves his fellow marines, though he suffers from PTSD, which has made his life a bunker to defend against the continuing onslaughts of an invisible enemy.

What a courageous, sad, joyful, honest, and passionate book this is! The poet is Everyman in his experience of childhood's joys and dismays, young manhood's delights and tragedies, and the saving grace of love amidst the beauties of the natural world.

In these poems, we experience a chronicle of loss, deeply moving in its honesty and courage. Yet the poet continually delights in the sensory experiences of life, which leads naturally to poems of quiet joy and acceptance.

Honest, concise, witty, and heart-felt, these poems are as intelligent as they are humane. They move from delight through loss and grief to redemption, regaining delight and arriving in the end at a lovely raison d’être.

In a series of exceptionally honest, revealing, emotionally charged poems, we are taken from the joyful though sometimes troubled childhood of a young German girl through difficult trials as an adult and finally on to a balanced life combining writing, family and friends.

Like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, the poet’s hometown stands for more than itself. In all their vivid specificity, its people and places achieve mythical dimensions, though always in down-to-earth language. The same is true of all the unsung heroes in this set of entirely American praise songs, which depict the pain and joy of life in unvarnished terms.

Not shirking the heart of darkness, Michael Cervas still glories in ecstatic moments such as the vision of a “plain white van” on the Mass. Pike advertising 1-800-RENEWAL. He celebrates renewals of all kinds, his words aptly joined by gorgeous lotus photographs by Jane Tomasello Toner.

Having lived many lives, Tom Gannon sees with the eyes of a priest, journalist, attorney, and artist. He is a Renaissance poet journeying through a world that fascinates, appalls, and delights him. His long-awaited first book is rich in variety, wit, and passion.

Humanity, divinity, and wit underlie these “nature poems,” which belie the term, since their energy and occasional descents into darkness are not common in poems about the beings of wood and field the poet celebrates, along with friends living in harmony with nature. This is a field guide for life we should all carry with us.

The poet sees clearly the grime, the grief and danger of the world, but her vision is essentially a redemptive, celebratory one. Her poems are informed by moments of reunion and by childhood joys. We are offered epiphanies that find beauty in the midst of turmoil.

If you are not bi, you may want to be when you finish these beautifully bi-attitudinal poems ranging from battle frenzy (“ríastrad”) to gentleness, from hurt to courage, horror to humor, disillusion to hope for a better world.

These poems vividly depict a lowland place and its people in the farthest northwest corner of the country. As Kevin Craft writes, “The poems are informed by the determined if contested optimism of someone who knows the ground she walks on and its potential to yield both bounty and treachery.”

These poems ring all the changes, all the joys and sorrows of a life lived to the hilt. We are gifted with love poems, praise poems, ekphrastic poems and moving elegies. They are formal, they are free; they are very Italian, they are entirely American. They are a blessing.

The poems in this fine first book balance deftly on a high wire stretched between outlawing and “inlawing,” between distrust of establishmentarianism and a passionate defense of all those treated unfairly by circumstance.

Extremes of feeling permeate these poems, which run the gamut from sheer grief to pure joy. Happily, they move out of the darkness and into the light of full blown love.

In this new book, a fascinating foray into medical and scientific lore is combined with a highly charged, moving series of elegies which morph toward poems offering ways of prevailing over grief.

The early poems in Ankle Deep and Drowning express a sense of loss and yearning but are dispelled by a breakthrough of “the goodness of it all.” In the end, the poems in this exhilarating volume affirm the power of love and the “glorious abundance” of things.

These are courageous, finely wrought poems expressing anguish, love, and hope following the loss of a husband after many years of blessed marriage. They are imbued with faith in the natural world and belief in the importance of family.

These poems juxtapose opposites in startling ways: joy and sorrow, the new world of Connecticut and the old world of India, the life of a renowned pathologist and the life of a poet. The uncertainty sometimes described in the poems is belied by the self-assurance of their lines. Such clear, vivid work is a joy.

Margaret Rogers grew up in a large family in a small town on a prairie in Minnesota, lively and free-spirited. But in high school, God called her, and in 1963 she entered a convent to become Sister Zoë. And then she was called again. This is her story.

Though death is a constant and joy hard-earned in these poems, the joy they present is so gorgeous that we leave them as uplifted as the mountains and western expanses that inform this remarkable book.

Opposites cohabit happily in the poems of Just Above the Bone: the wild and the civilized, sorrow and joy, intellect and sensuality. Reading this cornucopia of poetry will leave you more aware, more in love with all the world has to offer.

This is a devastating and inspiring book that depicts the depths to which the human spirit can descend but also exalts the courage and humanity of that spirit in the reactions of many to the Salem witch hunt of 1692.

“This may be the most unusual and entertaining Lives of the Saints ever written.” – Eamon Grennan.

These poems pull no punches, delineating graphically life’s difficulties and losses but also savoring its saving graces. Delicious leavenings of humor and joie de vivre permeate this new book by an author who has lived life to the hilt.

By focusing on the history of the First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, CT, Marilyn Nelson presents not only ecclesiastical history but also a report on slavery and bigotry in a presumably enlightened part of the Union. Her dismay is leavened by generosity of spirit.

This is a sprightly excursion through life's foibles and joys, the dark and light of the world in which the author lives with extraordinary verve, insight, and exuberance.

How rich an experience it is to share the superbly presented jubilations, griefs, thrills and shocks of recognition in Ina Anderson’s journey into the space of a life lived to the hilt.

In their lively combination of wit and wisdom, these poems ring every change from jubilation to grief, with love for all of creation as an underlying continuum.

Showing how the cauldron of grief and despair can produce hard-earned joy wrought on the anvil of courage and faith, the poet has forged a book to inspire all who yearn to move past seemingly insurmountable losses.

Both domestic and fierce, accessible and resonant, Houses includes many poems that have the audacity to follow traditional patterns of rhyme and meter. Published in many of the country’s leading literary journals, these are poems you won’t want to miss.

This photo-illustrated book is in the great tradition of the odyssey, as presented by authors from Steinbeck to Kerouac. In their cross-country bicycle trek, the author and her sister endure all sorts of hardships and see both the best and the worst of the U.S.

This is a book that rings all the changes: from nostalgia to satire, from melancholy to joy, from the personal to the ekphrastic, from the traditional to the whimsical. It is as various and as fascinating as life itself.

Consisting of the author’s journal entries and later commentary, this is a harrowing report on people and conditions in 1938 Germany just prior to World War II, when the author spent a summer there, traveling on bicycle and foot.

Writing in a style that is straightforward and conversational, with an eye that captures every nuance and with a wit that doesn’t suffer foolishness, “Cora Ekwurtzel has written extraordinary poems about the metaphysics of ordinary life.”

These are beautifully wrought poems by a poet-musician whose music rings clearly in every line and whose energy informs his verse so fully that it all but leaps off the page.

These beautifully delicate poems are informed by a deftly conveyed sense of loss, but they also contain moments of delicious wit and sudden, unexpected illuminations of joyful light. They make us look more closely.

The sense of loss informing the elegies in Allen West’s new book is countered by the tenderness they express, the beauty of their lines, and the resilience with which the poet continues to sing, keeping night at bay. 

Ellen Rachlin’s new book is intriguing, ingenious, and deftly wrought, a delight to the mind and the spirit.

Dancing in Eurynome’s Shoes
Poems by James B. Mele

These poems are informed by a passion for the wild places and things of the world as well as high intelligence and appreciation of cultural history.  James Mele is a purely American poet unknown for far too long.

Close But Not Touching
Poems by Jean Sands

This posthumous collection of poems written after the publication of Gandy Dancing is wonderfully various, humane, and uninhibited.

Dogs
“Dog-poems” by Rennie McQuilkin with drawings by Don Nace

This is a poet’s and artist’s answer to Cats. The dogs of Dogs (each whimsically illustrated) sing many "Songs of Myself." But are these truly dogs, or all of us in disguise?

North of Eden
New & Collected Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

This is the author’s 15th poetry collection. Containing his best work from previous books,it demonstrates his love of the natural world and management of the worst life can throw
at us.

When You Can’t Do Any More
Poems by Barry L. Zaret

Barry L. Zaret's second poetry collection is again informed by his work as a cardiologist, his enormously generous spirit, his love of the arts, and his passion for the natural world.

Hope Is a Small Barn
Poems by Gregory LeStage

These are poems that refuse to accept easy answers to the all-important issues with which they deal but nevertheless harbor an essential optimism concerning the human condition.

Bodies Passing
Poems by Laura Altshul

This deft foray into the terrors and joys that are the essence of human experience is a gift to those hungering for honesty and compassion in a complex world. Here, zest and energy are joined to high intelligence and rare humanity.  

Ode to Numbers
Poems by Sarah Glaz

A fascinating mixture of poetry and mathematics in which each bespeaks the other. This is as passionate a book as it is erudite. Sarah Glaz moves naturally between the visceral world of strong emotions and the mathematical world of Commutative Rings.

Snow Raining on Glass
Poems by Lois Mathieu

By turns joyful, melancholy, angry, and hopeful, these are honest, vivid, sensual poems that are revelatory and replete with startling images.

Old is Not a Four-Letter Word
Poems by Alexandrnia Sergio

The poems in Alexandrina Sergio's Old Is Not a Four-Letter Word are as expansive of heart as they are witty and energetic.

How I Learned To Be White
Poems by Tricia Knoll

This book describes how the author’s ancestry, education, childhood and work experiences contributed to her understanding and condemnation of white privilege in a world where discrimination runs rampant.

Lizard Season
Poems by Norah Pollard

The stories contained in these new poems are so consistently and impressively compelling, and so wonderful in their narrative and emotional range, as to achieve a worldly, universal appeal and power.

Afterword
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

Selections from the daily poems written by CT Poet Laureate McQuilkin during 2016 and 2017.  They reflect a joyous gloaming in his late life, offering praise more often than disparagement and spiced with wit.

Lifelines
Poems by Linda Spock

Linda Spock’s gracious gathering of poems offers each of us a lifeline.  Here, in the midst of life’s challenges, much joyful solace is found. 

Fire in the Hand
Poems by Karen Torop

Torop’s poems tell us that we must pause, look beyond habit, in order to love the world in all its glorious contradictions. This is a stunning debut collection.

The Orchard House
Poems by Richard Shaw

The Orchard House is a transcendent book replete with lyric poems not just regarding the human interface with nature but something infinitely more.

The Readiness
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

With undaunted courage, insight and an always ready, irrepressibly generous humor even in the face of mortal illness, Rennie McQuilkin celebrates the radiant ongoingness of the natural and human worlds.

Strange Birds
Poems by Vicor Altshul

Strange Birds is a marvelous book of poems. The author is not afraid to offer up his own vulnerabilities so that the reader may gain insight into the human condition.

Spring Took the Long Way Around
Poems by Brooke Herter James

This is a beautiful collection, each poem resonant with the strum of country life. These are poems of gentle reverence, skirting on the “dark edges of... wildness,” the awareness of shadow giving each moment depth.

Forest Bathing: Shinrin-Yoku
Poems by Betsy Hughes

The sonnets of Betsy Hughes take us all over the world, from antiquity to now, from the horrors of mass shootings to the serenity of a forest.

Seabury Seasons
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

The author describes his new book as “A Book of Days Celebrating Local Heroes, Customs and Habitations at Seabury Life,” the retirement community where he now lives and works. Without overlooking its dark side, he focuses on the joy that makes old age in some ways the best of times.

Looking Out
Poems by Laura Altshul

Laura Altshul views the world with a discerning eye, finding art and metaphor in the sublime as well as in the everyday world.

Bagful of Bags
Poems by Paul Scollan

We rarely see poetry like this any more: gritty, direct, burdened by what’s genuine, what’s human, what counts.

Footnotes
Poems by Douglas Hyde

It is hard to say which calls to the poet more keenly: the details and wildness of the natural world or the workings of the heart as it reaches its core truth that “love is not loss.” This collection is an investigation of both landscapes.

Reportings
Poems by Tom Gannon

These are vivid, highly readable poems introducing you to a truly Renaissance man.

Simple Absence
Poems by Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely

Prepare yourself for a wild, even shocking ride through the poems and meditations of this roller coaster of a book depicting a multitude of moods and truths. Seldom has a poet pulled so few punches or mixed such whimsy and wit with such ultimate honesty.

Even Here
Poems by Michael Cervas

Each poem in this book is a rigorous act of examining a life that has been both singular and ordinary.  Honesty, intelligence, plain-spoken brilliance, and a generous heart have been harnessed to poems we readers will wish to read again and again. 

The Order of Things
new & selected poems by Katharine Carle

The Order of Things weaves Katharine’s wisdom with her tenderness and reverence for memories as touching as they are wise. These poems, both new and selected from earlier books, are both heartbreaking and joyous.

Moon Dance
Island poems by Susan Deborah King

Susan King brings an array of emotions to her verse chronicle of Great Cranberry Island, “this beautiful complicated place.” The people, places, and events she describes are extraordinarily vivid and depicted with a rare level of truthfulness and deep humanity.

On the Edge
Poems by Nancy Mattoon Kline

Nancy Kline’s poems speak to us compellingly of time, nature, love, and loss.  Often in traditional poetic forms, they ring all the changes from grief to delight to unexpected whimsy.

I Hear Their Voices Singing
Poems New & Selected by Cortney Davis

Cortney Davis’ vocation as a poet has allowed her to take liminal moments, or hours, with sick and dying patients and turn them into poems written with fearlessness, clarity, and compassion.

Coming Through
New Poems, 2019-2020, by Rennie McQuilkin

These poems comprise the fourth volume in a series of books whose poems are presented in chronological order. This new collection  looks for ways to prevail despite the multiple crises we face.

The Gate
Poems by Ann Marie Gearen

Poetry for the soul and senses, Ann Gearen’s The Gate is a collection that is accessible in its empathetic treatments of love, loss, and witness, but is multi-layered as well.

IN THE LILAC HOUR
Poems by John Muro

These deft and heartfelt poems trace our connections and disconnections to nature, community, and family while amplifying and celebrating life. 

The Rail Stop at Wassaic
Poems by Don Barkin

Like the poet’s previous book, this new volume is “both domestic and fierce, accessible and resonant."

Joe the Body Pro
Poems by John Gearen

John Gearen has a great ear.  He nails the unique voice of Joe the Body Pro — irreverent, wise, loyal, funny, moving.  Getting to know Joe is a delight.

Light on Water
Poems by John Gearen

Here are ideas that range widely: the experiences not of one life but of generations examined with appealing insight and unerring, spartan clarity.

Postcards Fron Montana
Photographs and Poems by Brooke Herter James

This beautiful hard cover gift book contains gorgeous color photos of Montana scenes, along with vivid poems based on the photos

Impaired: The Continuing Crisis for Vietnam Veterans
Poems by Michael f. Lepore

Michael F. Lepore deploys his poetic gifts in the service of chronicling the inexorable wreckage, emotional and physical, wrought by the Vietnam War, and by extension, by all wars.

Casting
Poems by Robert Claps

Robert Claps has the earned wisdom to find consolation in the small moments, the small victories that sustain us as we savor what we can while we can.

Solos: One Hundred Poems, 2017-2020
New poems by Al Basile

Al Basile’s poems have style, joy, and — above all — verve.

A House of Many Rooms
Poems by Barry L. Zaret

A House of Many Rooms is a glittering memory palace filled with treasures that capture, in splendid poetic words and images, “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Shall We Dance?
Poems by Susan K. Hagen

These “Poems of Desire and Meditation” are a treat for the heart and the mind. They are as lush as they are philosophical.

Animalian
Poems by Norah Pollard

Norah Pollard’s poems are dazzling in their honesty, their vigor, and their eloquent, always scrutable language. They will make their readers more alive.

Mianus Village
Poems by Jack T. Scully

These are nostalgic and vivid poems depicting the trials and triumphs of growing up in a VA housing project beside Connecticut’s Mianus River in the wake of World War II. 

My Oarsman
Poems by Geri Radacsi

The book describes the many joys of marital love interrupted by the author’s anguish dealing courageously with her husband's battle with cancer, and her grief at his death.

Eleven Sundry Flowers
Poems by Frank Mundo with illustrations by Keith Draws

A lyrical collection of sonnets written as love offerings over a period of eleven days and illuminated with gorgeous illustrations.

Emerging Views: Illuminations in Poetry and Painting
Marye Gail Harrison

Combining the author's poetry and painting, the book ranges from images and poems inspired by the Hubble Telescope to those arising from intimate moments and the beauty of nature. The voice is that of a philosopher.

The Shearing
Laura Altshul

Laura Altshul's The Shearing is a brave book. The eloquent poems in the book face Loss of all sorts head on, but through the good offices of Love, Courage, and the grace of Nature the message of the book is an uplifting one offering hope in a time of trouble.

Virtual Vacation
Photographs and Haiku by Mary Sullivan

This is a stunning collection of color photos from natural settings around the world, each with a haiku relating to it.

Not Always Sorrow
Poems by Barbara DiMauro

The poems in Not Always Sorrow are personal meditations, political commentary, dream sequences, or journeys into the ways of love. Always the poems are both accessible and original, moving from joy to sorrow and back to joy.

Mapping a Life
Poems by Susan T. Moss

In Mapping a Life, Susan Moss travels widely and passionately through man-made and natural terrain and through realms of the heart. In poems whose language is vigorous and vivid, she takes us with her every inch of the way.

The Sixth Sense of Loss
& Poems of Restoration by Betsy Hughes

The Sixth Sense of Loss depicts not only terrible grief at the loss of a spouse but also the restorative powers of the heart and the world of nature.

Ribbons of Light
Poems by Lois Mathieu

These poems take us past hardship and loss into a world where redemption and joy spread brilliant ribbons of light across the landscape of life.

Little Lives
Poems by Martha Readyoff

There is magic in these vivid and often fanciful poems, with their passionate concern for all that is vulnerable in the world, the little lives of children and all natural creatures.

Wild Earth
Poems by Cindy Ellen Hill

The gorgeous sonnets in this book embrace all of God’s creation and are as explosive in content as they are formal in structure.

The Rounding
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

These new poems face down the horrors of 2020-2021, focusing on ways to ride out the storm, finding salvation in the natural world, the arts, and care for others.

36 Views of Fuji
Poems by Kenton Wing Robinson

Robinson’s subject is love in all of its many forms: loves won, lost, blessed, and cursed; love, too, of friends, family, and this Earth.

The Wages of Love
Poems by Christie Max Williams

Winner of the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry, The Wages of Love ranges widely, delving into the mysteries of love, the complexities of relationship, the joy of family and parenting, and the splendor of the natural world.

The Unspoken of our Days
Poems by Nancy Manning

These poems describe the author's troubled childhood and love of her own child, travels, relationships, love of nature, and criticism of environmental and political disasters.

Pastoral Suite
Poems by John Muro

These new poems by John Muro are wide-ranging and dynamic in their vivid portrayals of the natural world from ocean to garden and in their focus on many of life’s joys and sorrows.

I’ll Take New Haven: Tales of Discovery and Rejuvenation
essays by Lary Bloom

Lary Bloom's I'll Take New Haven is a sprightly collection of essays depicting the author's transition from a suburban community to total immersion in New Haven, CT.

Wildcat on the Shoreline
poems by Lee A. Jacobus

While not discounting life’s perils, these poems are essentially songs of praise for nature, literature, loved ones, and distant places. Their eloquence and intelligence are a joy.

Enough Like Bone to Build On
poems by Catherine DeNunzio

The poems in this life-affirming and joyful book look the worst squarely in the face and rise above it into a realm of beauty and love.

another beginning
poems by Catlin Blackburn

These are painful and joyful poems of emotional distress and reintegration.

Navigating the Poet’s Sky
Poems by Karen J. Ciosek

How fortunate we are to encounter a book devoted exclusively to birds!

The Habit of Hope
Poems by Dawn E. Morrow

This is a stunning poetry collection in which the poet wears the habit of hope to fend off the assaults of the world. In the book’s insistence on the power of love we find faith and hope. 

Celestial Conversations
Poems by Barbara DiMauro

These are poems of illumination, appreciation and consolation found in the small moments of life sustained by love of the natural world.

Seventy-Two Labors
Poems by Susan KõDõ Efird

Seventy-Two Labors could easily be titled Seventy-Two Astonishments. In it, poet and Zen teacher Susan KõDõ Efird marshals the ordinary and extraordinary. Humor and gratitude, shattered innocence and reverence infuse the whole.

Armed to the Teeth
Poems by Ellen Hirning Schmidt

The poet faces life's perils courageously, and being armed with the powers of family, the natural world, and a strong heart full of love, emerges victorious.

What Glues Us Together
Poems by Nancy Manning

The poet pulls no punches, depicting the worst that life can hurl, both personally and globally, but she prevails against all odds through the powers of love, family, and the natural world.

At the Edge
Poems by Gail Moran Slater

In her new book, the poet finds many fulfilling consolations for the sadness at its heart: consolations of the natural world, works of art, mid-life love, and the joys of family.

Love in a Time of Lament: An Alzheimer’s Memoir
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

A collection of poems focused on the Alzheimer’s battle and eventual demise of the author’s belovèd wife, revealing that the farther away dementia takes her, the closer his bond with her becomes.

A Momentary Stay
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

While not shirking from the worst the modern world throws against us with its violence, its wars, and its racism, these poems offer a stay against the personal, political, and environmental perils that afflict us in these desperate times.

The Prevalence of Mystery
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

This late-life book of poems is a tribute to the author’s recently deceased wife and to the values of holding fast, following the lead of spiritual mentors, and celebrating the natural world. Behind it all is the prevalence of mystery.

Transformings
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

This newest poetry collection focuses on a variety of transformations occurring in both personal and public life. The poems avoid obscurity and welcome the reader to engage in poetic conversation, looking for hope in even the most desperate moments and finding much joy in life.

Making a Stand
Meditations by Joe Hall

A collection of meditations on farm life, family, and the joys of nature by a man who has spent his life working a tract of land farmed for generations by his forebears.

Eclipsings
Poems by Rennie McQuilkin

Eclipsings depicts a variety of eclipses both emotional and physical. Though they are sometimes dire, their darkness is offset by hope and love and joy.”