Celebrating 40 Years New Titles & Selected Backlist Spring...

Graywolf Press

New Titles & Selected BacklistSpring 2014

Celebrating 40 Years

We’re feeling celebratory here, as we mark Graywolf’s fortieth anniversary of independent pub-

lishing. We have come a long way since the early days of our letterpress poetry chapbooks. In

particular, it has been very gratifying over the last decade to see the success of our titles across all genres:

• Infiction:Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson was a New York Times Book of the Year for 2007,

Salvatore Scibona’s The EndwasafinalistforaNationalBookAwardin2008,andKevinBarry’s

exuberant City of BohanewontheInternationalIMPACDublinLiteraryAwardin2013.

• Inpoetry:MaryJoBang’sElegywontheNationalBookCriticsCircleAwardforpoetryin2007

andD.A.Powellwonitin2013forUseless Landscape.ElizabethAlexanderreadatPresident

Obama’sinaugurationin2009,TomasTranströmerwontheNobelPrizein2011,andTracyK.

SmithwonthePulitzerPrizein2012forLife on Mars.

• Innonfiction:Again,wehavetwoNationalBookCriticsCirclewinners—Eula Biss in 2009 for

Notes from No Man’s LandandGeoffDyerin2011forOtherwise Known as the Human Condition. In

addition,DeborahBaker’sThe ConvertwasafinalistforaNationalBookAwardin2011.

Asoneagentrecentlyremarked,Graywolfispunchingaboveitsweight.Outofthethirtytitleswe

publishedin2012,fourwerelistedintheNew York Times one hundred notable books of the year: Steve

Stern’s The Book of Mischief,KevinYoung’sThe Grey Album,DanielSada’sAlmost Never,andKevinBarry’s

City of Bohane.

DuringthistimewelaunchedournonfictionprizetoattractbookssuchasEulaBiss’sextraordinary

Notes from No Man’s Land, and we have also been building our list of craft books, the Art of series,

editedbyCharlesBaxter.Thiscatalogannouncesthetenthinthisverypopularseries.Ourinternational

listhasbeengrowing,too,withwritersfromScandinavia,Kenya,Germany,France,Mexico,Britain,

and Ireland. I’m also delighted by the number of writers who have published multiple books with us:

ElizabethAlexander,RobertBoswell,PercivalEverett,NickFlynn,TessGallagher,AlbertGoldbarth,

AlysonHagy,MattheaHarvey,TonyHoagland,JessicaFrancisKane,andJ.RobertLennon.Weareso

proud to have these singular writers—and many more—in the Graywolf stable (or should that be den?).

The whole team here joins me in sending forty thousand thanks to everyone who supports Graywolf

through generous donations, which give us the freedom to take risks that perhaps other publishers can-

not.Andanotherfortythousandthankstoallthosewhowrite,buy,review,teach,andreadGraywolf’s

books: you are our lifeblood.

—Fiona McCrae Director and Publisher

Now in paperback, “an achingly gorgeous

heartbreaker” about the families on one street

during the buildup to Sri Lanka’s civil war ( t h e b o s t o n g l o b e )

“A lovely portrait of Sri Lanka in the lead-up to the country’s civil war.”

n p r

“A rich sensory novel. . . . Freeman never strays far from the

neighborhood’s youngest inhabitants. They are wondrous to behold,

with their intelligence, imagination and innocence. I don’t know that

I’ve seen children more opulently depicted in fiction since Dickens.”

t h e n e w y o r k t i m e s b o o k r e v i e w

“Piercingly intelligent and shatter-your-heart profound, Ru Freeman’s

OnSalMalLane is as luminous as it is wrenching, as fierce as it is

generous. This is a riveting, important, beauty of a book.”

c h e r y l s t r a y e d ,author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fiction, 424 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback (978-1-55597-676-7), $16.00, May / Ebook Available

“The menacing backdrop of inevitable war illuminates

Freeman’sdepictionofchildhoodinnocenceandeverydaylife

in this well-written, heart-wrenching novel.”—USA Today

“Freeman’spowerfulsecondnovelfocusesonordinarychildren

living their lives as war clouds build.”—People, “Great Reads”

“On Sal Mal Lane succeeds, gathering gravitas and emotional

depth....Freemanmakesitachoicereadingdestination.”

—Newsday

“Itthrumswithvitality.Onthisonestreetwecanfindlife

in all its joy and pain, life lived by people who are so alive.”

—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“[Freeman’s]individualcharactersarenuancedandrichlywrit-

ten—you wish you could stay on their peaceful lane forever,

but of course you can’t, and neither can they.”—Oprah.com,

“Book of the Week”

Ru Freeman is the author of ADisobedientGirl, a finalist for the DSC Prize for

South Asian Literature that has been translated into seven languages. An activist and

journalist whose work appears internationally, she calls both Sri Lanka and America home.

Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Barer literary

ThisbookismadepossiblethroughapartnershipwiththeCollegeof St. Benedict, and honors the legacy of S. Mariella Gable, a distinguished teacherattheCollege.

o n s a l M a l l a n eA N o v e l

r u f r e e M A N

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Hill

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Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of the novel RailsUnderMy

Back, the story collection HoldingPattern, and two collections of

poetry. Raised in Chicago and now living in New York, he teaches at

Queens College and in the Writing Program at the New School.

Praise for Holding Pattern:

“Imaginative, empathic, brave and beautifully told, these are

astonishing and transcendent stories.”—Chicago Tribune

“[Allen’s]considerablepoeticgiftsofobservancehelpkeep

aloft stories that might crash and burn in lesser hands.”

—Paste Magazine

“TheprodigiouslytalentedJefferyRenardAlleniswithout

question one of our most important writers.”—Junot Díaz

“JefferyRenardAllen’spoeticvisionisstunning,tragic,

wildlyfunnyandmostofallalive.Heis...therarewriter

who borrows from no one and doesn’t pander to anyone.”

—Mary Gaitskill

A N o t e f r o m t h e A u t h o r

Ifirst learnedofBlindTominthepagesofOliverSacks’s

An Anthropologist on Mars. To illustrate the phenomenon of

the autistic savant, Sacks recounts the life of Tom Wiggins,

bornaslaveinGeorgiain1849.Beforehewastenyearsold,

TombecamethefirstAfricanAmericantoperformatthe

WhiteHouse,andhewentontohaveasuccessful,decades-

long career that took him to stages around the world. I was

taken by Tom’s ability to play and sing three songs at once,

each in a different key; by his abstract compositions that

mimicked the sound of natural and man-made phenomena

such as rainwater and sewing machines; by his ability to

reproduce any melody or composition he heard; and by his

prodigious memory.

AlthoughBlindTomwasperhapsthemostfamousstage

pianist of his era and highly regarded by contemporary

reviewers andwell-knownpublicfigures—notablyUlysses

Grant, Mark Twain, and Willa Cather—by the twentieth

century he had largely disappeared from history, victim of

thesavantlabel.JustwhowasthisBlindTom?Washeamusi-

calgeniuswhohadbeenforcedtogiveconcertstobenefit

theConfederatecause,orwashe,asone

chronicler wrote, “fortunate because

his blindness and idiocy did not

allow him to know that he was

eitheraNegrooraslave”?

These were not questions

that a novel had to answer.

Indeed, my imagination flour-

ished in the spaces between

the skeletal facts of Tom’s

life. My greatest challenge

was finding my own story

in Tom’s and constructing

an engaging narrative that

would do more than reflect

the historical record. That

process took over nine years

of trial and error, of failure and

triumph. But I am all the better for

it, for Tom.

A contemporary American masterpiece about

music, race, an unforgettable man, and an

unreal America during the Civil War era

Praise for Rails Under My Back:

A NewYorkTimes Notable Book

“Powerful stuff.”

e s q u i r e

“[Allen’s] language . . . demonstrates extraordinary poise. . . .

Besides Joyce and Faulkner, other 20th-century novelists whose

work Allen’s calls to mind are Dos Passos, Ellison and Henry

Roth—an indication of the remarkable literary company

in which this novel may be seen to move.”

t h e n e w y o r k t i m e s b o o k r e v i e w

“Big, ambitious, picaresque, and beautiful.”

s a n f r a n c i s c o c h r o n i c l e

“A novel of immense power.”

e l l e

Fiction, 608 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-680-4), $20.00, June / Ebook Available

AttheheartofthisremarkablenovelisThomasGreene

Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical

genius who performed under the name Blind Tom.

Song of the Shank opensin1866asTomandhisguardian,

Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment

intheCityintheaftermathofriotsthathaddriventhemaway

a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the myste-

rious island of Edgemere—inhabitedsolelybyAfricansettlers

and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to

reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother.

AsthenovelrangesfromTom’sboyhoodtotheheightsofhis

performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by oppor-

tunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and

militantprophets.Inhissymphonicnovel,Allenblendshistory

and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man

who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

Brit., audio: Graywolf Press

trans., 1st ser., dram.: cynthia cannell literary Agency

Alsoavailable:

Holding Pattern,Fiction,Paperback(978-1-55597-509-8),$15.00

s o n g o f t h e s h a n kA N o v e l

J e f f e r y r e N A r d A l l e N

“A short, brilliant novel, The Search offers more

in 150 pages than most books twice that length.”t h e g u a r d i a n

“So it’s farewell my lovely and we’re off, on a package tour

through gumshoe thriller, film noir, road movie . . . and chivalric

romance. . . . An ambitious, stylish novel.”

i n d e p e n d e n t o n s u n d a y

“If any British writer can try on the mantle of Calvino, Dyer can.

He has a poet’s gift with metaphor as well as an ability to

grasp ideas, hold them, pass them on.”

n e w s t a t e s m a n

“As elegant as a mathematical theorem correctly expressed.”

t h e s u n d a y t i m e s

“Dyer injects an almost magical randomness into what ought

to be the most conventional of tales, and gives us Surrealism where

we might have expected Dirty Realism. . . . Its after-image

is hard to erase.”

t h e s p e c t a t o r

Fiction, 176 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-678-1), $16.00, May / Ebook Available

WalkermeetsRachelataglamorouspartybytheBay.When

she turns up at his apartment two days later, there is a hint of

erotic promise in the air. But it isn’t Walker she wants—at least

notyet.Herhusband,Malory,hasgonemissing,andshewants

Walkertofindhim.

So begins Walker’s quest, as well as this beautiful novel that

takes our hard-boiled knight across the vast landscape of an imagi-

narymiddleAmericathatbeginssubtlytomorphintosomething

stranger.Walker’ssearchintensifies,andsoonitseemsthatsome-

body else is searching for him. In this, his second novel, Geoff

Dyerconcoctsasophisticatedandenthrallingnarrativepuzzle.

Brit., trans., audio, dram.: the wylie Agency

Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and several genre-defying books, includ-

ing OtherwiseKnownastheHumanCondition, winner of the National Book

Critics Circle Award; OutofSheerRage; and JeffinVenice,DeathinVaranasi.

He lives in London.

t h e s e a r c hA N o v e l

G e o f f d y e r

© M

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G E O F F DY E R ’ S F I R S T T WO N OV E L S , N E V E R B E F O R E P U B L I S H E D I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S

The first novel, in revised form, from

“possibly the best living writer in Britain”( t h e d a i l y t e l e g r a p h )

Praise for The Colour of Memory:

“Of all the hyped novels of 1980s London,

it remains one of the most genuine.”

n e w s t a t e s m a n

“Dyer writes crisp, Martin Amis-inflected prose, full of acute

perceptions and neat phrases. . . . The book abounds in colourful

descriptions of familiar aspects of London life.”

t i m e s l i t e r a r y s u p p l e m e n t

Praise for Geoff Dyer:

“What I find most remarkable about Dyer [is] his tone. Its simplicity,

its classlessness, its accessibility and yet its erudition—the

combination is a trick few British writers ever pull off. . . . [Dyer’s

humor is] what separates him from Berger and Lawrence and Sontag.”

z a d i e s m i t h , h a r p e r's m a g a z i n e

Fiction, 288 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-677-4), $16.00, May / Ebook Available

Also available, winner of the NBCC Award

Otherwise Known as the Human ConditionNonfiction, 432 pages, Paperback (978-1-55597-579-1), $18.00

In The Colour of Memory, six friends plot a nomadic course

through their mid-twenties as they scratch out an existence in

near-destituteconditionsin1980sSouthLondon.Theywile

away their hours drinking cheap beer, landing jobs and quickly

squandering them, smoking weed, dodging muggings, listen-

ingtoColtrane,findingandlosingafacsimileoflove,collecting

unemployment, and discussing politics in the way of the besotted

young—as if they were employed only by the lives they chose.

In his vivid evocation of council flats and pubs, of a life lived

intheteethofromanticideals,Dyerprovidesashockingly

relevantsnapshotofadifferentLostGeneration.

Brit., trans., audio, dram.: the wylie Agency

t h e c o l o u r o f M e m o r yA N o v e l

G e o f f d y e r

G E O F F DY E R ’ S F I R S T T WO N OV E L S , N E V E R B E F O R E P U B L I S H E D I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S

An enthralling, internationally best-selling

portrait of an East German family through the

long years of communism and its aftermath

“Mr. Ruge’s novel is a pulsing, vibrant, thrillingly alive work,

full of formal inventiveness, remarkable empathy and, above all,

mordant and insightful wit. . . . You can see that from the ruins

of the former Eastern bloc something has emerged with the power

to survive and outlast the world from which it came: the art

represented by Mr. Ruge’s book, which has torn down the wall

between Russian epic and the Great American Novel.”

t h e n e w y o r k t i m e s

Fiction, 344 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback (978-1-55597-679-8), $16.00, June / Ebook Available

Inthisremarkablyintimateandvividnovel,EugenRugemaster-

fully brings to life a country that is vanishing into memory and

history.

“Animportant,highlyaccomplisheddebutnovel....This

splendid, beautifully translated novel becomes richer as it

acquires a logic of its own. . . . We must be even more grateful

forRuge’svisionandtalent...outofthatgloomybleakplace

and time, he has given us such a unique and evocative novel.”

—The Boston Globe

“Powerful...Rugehasmanagedtoweavethepersonalinto

the political in a book that functions as an ethnography of a lost

time as much as it does a novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle

In 2011, Eugen Ruge came to international acclaim when he won the German Book

Prize for InTimesofFadingLight, his debut novel, which went on to be translated

into more than twenty languages.

Audio: HighBridge

Brit.: faber and faber ltd

trans., dram.: rowohlt verlag GmbH

I n t i m e s o f f a d i n g l i g h tA N o v e l

e u G e N r u G e

t r A N s l A t e d f r o M t H e G e r M A N B y A N t H e A B e l l

A l A N N A N t r A N s l A t I o N s e l e c t I o N

Fiction, 384 pages, 5½ x 8¼, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-674-3), $16.00, July / Ebook Available

OntheCanadiansideofNiagaraFalls,lifebeyondthetourist

tradeisn’teasy.LocalslikeDuncanDiggsandOwenStuckey

havefewchancestoleave.ForDuncan,thatmeansshiftwork

onaproductionline.ForOwen,itmeanspinningitallon

a shot at college basketball. But they should know better;

they’vebeenunluckybefore.Asboys,theywereabducted

and abandoned in the woods. Though they made it out alive,

the memory of that time won’t fade. Over the years they drift

apart,butwhenDuncanisdrawnintoachaoticworldofbare-

knucklefightingandothershadydealings,Owen,nowacop,

can’t look the other way any longer. Together, they’ll be forced

to survive the wilderness once more as their friendship is

pushed to the limit in this white-hot novel by a rising star.

Craig Davidson is the author of RustandBone, which was made into a criti-

cally acclaimed film; SarahCourt; and TheFighter. He is a graduate of the

Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, and the

Washington Post. He lives in Toronto.

1st ser., audio: Graywolf Press

Brit., trans., dram.: william Morris endeavor entertainment

c a t a r a c t c i t yA N o v e l

c r A I G d A v I d s o N

A searing novel about two friends

on opposite sides of the law, from the author of

RustandBone, “a writer of immense power” ( p e t e r s t r a u b )

Praise for Craig Davidson:

“Davidson smudges the line between comedy and horror,

cruelty and mercy. His remarkable stories are challenging

and upsetting. Don’t look for comfort here.”

c h u c k p a l a h n i u k

“Craig Davidson’s sentences flash like punches,

clean and fast and brutally beautiful, and within a few pages

you’ll find yourself off-balance and cornered, unable to defend

yourself, bruised by this gripping, dangerous knockout of

a novel about a town and a friendship divided.”

b e n j a m i n p e r c y

“Craig Davidson asks—and answers—some big,

uncomfortable questions about the nature of our humanity.”

i r v i n e w e l s h

A captivating meditation on education from the

author of TheYellow-LightedBookshop

Praise for The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop:

“A delectable feast for the reader. . . . I cannot remember

when I have read a book with such delight.”

p a u l y a m a z a k i ,CityLightsBookstore

“A rousing new tome for book lovers . . .

TheYellow-LightedBookshop mixes enthusiastic personal

reading recollections with informative passages.”

t i m e o u t n e w y o r k

“A fascinating, detailed account of how bookselling has come to be

what it is, with detours to Alexandria, classical Rome, and sixth-

century China, among other places. It’s an intimate book about

what he calls (aptly) the ‘erotic space of reading.’”

s a n f r a n c i s c o w e e k l y

Nonfiction, 224 pages, 5 x 7, Hardcover (978-1-55597-683-5), $23.00, August / Ebook Available

LewisBuzbeelooksbackoveralifetimeofexperiencesin

schools and classrooms, from kindergarten to college, and

beyond.Heoffersfascinatinghistoriesofthekeyideasinform-

ing educational practice over the centuries, which have shaped

everything from class size to the layout of desks and chairs.

Buzbee deftly weaves his own biography into this overview,

approaching his subject as a student, a father, and a teacher.

In so doing, he offers a moving personal testament to how he,

“an average student” in danger of flunking out of high school,

becamethefirstinhisfamilytograduatefromcollege.He

creditshissuccesstothewell-fundedCaliforniapublicschool

system and bemoans the terrible price that state is paying as the

resultoffundingbeingcutfromtoday’sbudgets.ForBuzbee,

the blackboard is a precious window into the wider world,

which we ignore at our peril.

Lewis Buzbee is the author of Steinbeck’sGhost,AftertheGoldRush, and

Fliegelman’sDesire. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press

Alsoavailable:

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop,Biography&Autobiography,Paperback(978-1-55597-510-4),$15.00

B l a c k b o a rdA P e r s o n a l H i s t o r y o f t h e C l a s s r o o m

l e w I s B u z B e e

the Art of time in MemoirThen, Again

s v e N B I r K e r t s

208 pages, Paperback

978-1-55597-489-3, $12.00

the Art of subtextBeyond Plot

c H A r l e s B A x t e r


978-1-55597-473-2, $12.00

the Art of time in fictionAs Long as It Takes

J o A N s I l B e r


978-1-55597-530-2, $12.00

the Art of recklessnessPoetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction

d e A N y o u N G


978-1-55597-562-3, $12.00

the Art of the Poetic lineJ A M e s l o N G e N B A c H


978-1-55597-488-6, $12.00

the Art of descriptionWorld into Word

M A r K d o t y


978-1-55597-563-0, $12.00

the Art of syntaxRhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song

e l l e N B r y A N t v o I G t


978-1-55597-531-9, $12.00

the Art of IntimacyThe Space Between

s t A c e y d ’ e r A s M o


978-1-55597-647-7, $12.00

the Art of AttentionA Poet’s Eye

d o N A l d r e v e l l


978-1-55597-474-9, $12.00

Each book in the Art of series examines a singular,

but often assumed or neglected, craft issue facing the

contemporarywriteroffiction,nonfiction,orpoetry.

The series aims to restore the art of criticism while

illuminating the art of writing.

t h e A r t o f s e r i e s

s e r I e s e d I t o r : c H A r l e s B A x t e r

Award-winning poet Carl Phillips’s

invaluable essays on poetry, the tenth volume

in the celebrated Artofseries of books

Praise for Carl Phillips’s Coin of the Realm:

“Whether he is writing about George Herbert, Sylvia Plath, or Langston

Hughes, whether he is making a case for beauty, or thinking about the

nature of race and gender, myth and fable, in American poetry, Carl

Phillips’s prose is intriguing, learned, and unconventional, filled with

insights and surprises, brightened by luminosities.”

e d w a r d h i r s c h

“Readers of Carl Phillips’s poetry will have some preparation for the

pleasures and insights of this volume, particularly in its subtlety,

originality, and historical range. . . . Incisive essays on George

Herbert, the Psalms, the place of race and identity in habits of

perception and reading, and the author’s growth as a writer are

unified by central questions of beauty and ethics that will be of

interest to anyone who cares about literature.”

s u s a n s t e w a r t

Nonfiction, 136 pages, 5 x 7, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-681-1), $12.00, August / Ebook Available

Insixinsightfulessays,CarlPhillipsmeditatesonthecraft

of poetry, its capacity for making a space for possibility and

inquiry.Whatdoesitmeantogiveshapelessnessaform?How

can a poem at once explore the natural world and the inner

world? Phillips demonstrates the restless qualities of the imagi-

nationbyreadingandexaminingpoemsbyAshbery,Bogan,

Frost,Niedecker,Shakespeare,andothers,andbyconsidering

other art forms, such as photography and the blues. The Art

of Daring is a lyrical, persuasive argument for the many ways

that writing and living are acts of risk. “I think it’s largely

the conundrum of being human that makes us keep making,”

Phillips writes. “I think it has something to do with revision—

how, not only is the world in constant revision, but each of us

is, as well.”

Carl Phillips is the author of a dozen books of poetry, including Silverchest and

DoubleShadow, and a collection of essays, CoinoftheRealm:Essaysonthe

ArtandLifeofPoetry. He teaches at Washington University in Saint Louis.

Brit., trans., 1st ser., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press

Alsoavailable:

Coin of the Realm,LiteraryCriticism,Paperback (978-1-55597-401-5),$15.00

t h e A r t o f d a r i n gR i s k , R e s t l e s s n e s s , I m a g i n a t i o n

c A r l P H I l l I P s

A brilliant combination of poetry and visual

artwork by Matthea Harvey, whose vision is

“nothing short of blazingly original”( t i m e o u t n e w y o r k )

She didn’t even know she had a name until one day she heard

the human explaining to another one, “Oh that’s just the

backyard mermaid.” “Backyard Mermaid,” she murmured,

as if in prayer. On days when there’s no sprinkler to comb

through her curls, no rain pouring in glorious torrents from

the gutters, no dew in the grass for her to nuzzle with her

nose, not even a mud puddle in the kiddie pool, she won-

ders how much longer she can bear this life. The front yard

thud of the newspaper every morning. Singing songs to the

unresponsive push mower in the garage. Wriggling under

fence after fence to reach the house four down which has an

aquarium in the back window. She wants to get lost in that

sad glowing square of blue. Don’t you?

—from “The Backyard Mermaid”

Poetry, 160 pages, 7 x 10, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-684-2), $25.00, August

Prose poems introduce deeply untraditional mermaids along-

sidemer-toolsilhouettes.AtextbyRayBradburyiserasedinto

a melancholy meeting with a Martian. The Michelin Man is

possessedbyWilliamShakespeare.AntonioMeucci’sinvention

of the telephone is chronicled next to embroidered images of

his real and imagined patents. If the Tabloids Are True What Are

You?combinesHarvey’saward-winningpoetrywithherfasci-

nating visual artwork into a true hybrid book, an amazing and

beautiful work by one of our most ingenious creative artists.

“ThepoemsofMattheaHarveyareeffortlesslyandutterly

original. They thrive on implication; their disclosures are so

odd, so riveting and so playful at times that one may forget how

intricately imagined and deftly articulated they are.”

—Paul Muldoon

Matthea Harvey is the author of four books of poetry, including SadLittle

BreathingMachine,ModernLife, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and

a NewYorkTimes Notable Book, and OfLamb, an illustrated erasure.

Brit., trans., audio, dram.: Graywolf Press

1st ser.: Author c/o Graywolf Press

Alsoavailable:

Modern Life,Poetry,Paperback(978-1-55597-480-0),$15.00

I f t h e ta b l o i d s A r e tr u e w h a t A r e yo u ?P o e m s a n d I m a g e s

M A t t H e A H A r v e y

“Hamilton is able to sustain a complex

narrative through stripped-down poems . . .

leavened by a wry humor.”t h e n e w y o r k t i m e s b o o k r e v i e w

I wanted to read an essay in your wrist.

The afternoon seemed endless. Out the window,

a lane to the right was bending away,

taking with it the figure moving down it.

Alone for a quarter of an hour,

looking in, plotting the argument,

all the marks of lucidity

and brevity in that attempt,

that benefit of rhetoric:

the true but unlikely moment.

—from “Summered”

Poetry, 72 pages, 6 x 9, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-675-0), $16.00, May

Corridor,SaskiaHamilton’sthirdcollection,isastudyofmotion

and time. Its glanced landscapes, its lives seen in passing, ren-

der the immeasurable in broken narratives. These poems are

succinct in order to travel quickly—they have unexpected dis-

tances within their reach. They are dauntless and alert in their

apprehension of the natural kingdom at the frontier of so many

unnaturalones.Andtheyinhabittherealmofcontemplation

which,forHamilton,ischargedwitheros.

“Hamilton’swritinghasbeencalledspareanddelicate,but

neither of these quite gets at the effect of her poems, which

are delicate only in the way a suspension bridge is: neither is

marked by unnecessary ornament or fragility, and it would be

a mistake to regard either as anything other than rigorously

tough.”—Raymond McDaniel, Boston Review

Saskia Hamilton is the author of two poetry books, AsforDream and Divide

These; editor of TheLettersofRobertLowell; and co-editor of Words in

Air:TheCompleteCorrespondencebetweenElizabethBishopandRobert

Lowell. She teaches at Barnard College.



Alsoavailable:

As for Dream,Poetry,Paperback(978-1-55597-316-2),$12.95

Divide These,Poetry,Paperback(978-1-55597-422-0),$14.00

c o r r i d o rP o e m s

s A s K I A H A M I l t o N

The new poetry collection by Fanny Howe, whose

“body of work seems larger, stranger, and more

permanent with each new book she publishes.”r u t h l i l l y p o e t r y p r i z e c i t a t i o n

People want to be poets for reasons that have little to do

with language.

It’s the life of the poet that they want.

Even the glow of loneliness and humiliation.

To walk in the gutter with a bottle of wine.

Some people’s lives are more poetic than a poem,

and Francis is certainly one of these.

I know, because he walked beside me for that short time

whether you believe it or not.

—from “Outremer”

Poetry, 80 pages, 5 x 7, Paperback Original (978-1-55597-682-8), $16.00, July

FannyHowe’spoetryisknownforitslyricism,fragmentation,

experimentation, religious engagement, and commitment

to social justice. In Second Childhood , the observing poet is an

impersonalfigurewhoaccompaniesHoweinherencounters

with chance and mystery. She is not one age or the other, in

onetimeoranother.Shewrites,“Thefirstquestioninthe

Catechismis:/Whatwashumanitybornfor?/To be happy is

the correct answer.”

“OneoftheboldestlyricpoetsintheUnitedStates.”

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

“WecannotdowithoutFannyHowe.”— The Nation

Fanny Howe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, includ-

ing ComeandSee,TheLyrics, and TheWinterSun:NotesonaVocation.

She received the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. She lives in

Massachusetts.



Alsoavailable:

The Lyrics,Poetry,Paperback(978-1-55597-472-5),$14.00

Come and See,Poetry,Paperback(978-1-55597-586-9),$15.00

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