Fiftieth Anniversary Edition"Gunslinger is a fundamental American masterpiece."---Thomas McGuaneThis fiftieth anniversary edition commemorates Edward Dorn’s masterpiece, Gunslinger, a comic, anti-epic critique of American capitalism that still resonates today. Set in the American West, the Gunslinger, his talking horse Claude Lévi-Strauss, a saloon madam named Lil, and the narrator called “I” set out in search of the billionaire Howard Hughes. As they trav...

An essential anthology of an innovative American poetEdward Dorn was not only one of Americas finest poets but a rare critical intelligence and commentator. He was a student of Charles Olson, who helped him to see the American West as a site for his quest for self-knowledge; at the core of his work is a deep sense of place and the people who occupy it, underpinned by a wry ironic dissent. It was Dorns comic-epic masterpiece, Gunslinger, which began appea...

Shortlisted for the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and longlisted for the 2006 ReLit Awards. A Globe 100 title in 2005.Evade your eye. Try to see as others dowhat is desired or refused. What went wrong.Or right, then wrong. Objectively, what hangs.Pull yourself together. Years are neither kindnor cruel. You drag on. The girl is gone.Consider that it might be time to call ina professional. Blood is fearless, runs...

“Esolen signals with this book his presence in the top rank of authors of cultural criticism.” —American SpectatorPlay dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly fu...

In Anthony Carelli's remarkable debut, Carnations, the poems attempt to reanimate dead metaphors as blossoms: wild and lovely but also fleeting, mortal, and averse to the touch. Here, the poems are carnations, not only flowers, but also body-making words. Nodding to influences as varied as George Herbert, Francis Ponge, Fernando Pessoa, and D. H. Lawrence, Carelli asserts that the poet’s materials—words, objects, phenomena—are sacred, wilting in the moment, yet perennially renewed...

There is a part of Mexico, the west-central area encompassing the state of Jalisco and its capital, Guadalajara, which is the cradle of many significant cultural traditions that most of us associate with that great country: mariachi music, tequila and charreada (rodeos) to name a few. And Jalisco is Michael Hogan's intellectual inspiration for this bird's eye view of Mexico and elsewhere.Hogan writes with deep affection for his adopted country, mixed with an insider's keen interest ...

Poetry that explores how accidental voyeurism can force reconsideration and reconciliationWhite⋅out: n. a surface condition … in which no object casts a shadow, the horizon cannot be seen, and only dark objects are discernible …Whiteout: when the heavy weather of daily life establishes the measure of the measureless; when the predatory nature of the accidental conjures cowboys and the comatose; when the sickly sweet pop of life underfoot contrasts the televised ima...

"Trust Rich, a clarion poet of conscience, to get the fractured timbre of the times just right."--Booklist, starred reviewIn this new collection Adrienne Rich confronts dislocations and upheavals in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The title poem, in a young schoolteacher's voice, evokes the lessons that children ("Not of course here") learn amid violence and hatred, "when the whole town flinches / blood on the undersole thic...

The National Book Award finalist. " Limón's poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book." — The MillionsBright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately "disorderly, and marvelous, and ours."A book of bravado and introsp...

A mix of fiction and essays by the author described as "the Thoreau of the American West" (Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post).Edward Abbey himself compiled this volume representing some of his greatest work—including selections from such novels as The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and Black Sun, as well as a number of expressive and acerbic essays.Renowned for inspiring modern environmentalists—though his intere...

"As always with a Bob Hicok book, fascinating and a book you sort of can’t help but pick up and suddenly, two hours later, find yourself having read straight through. I can think of just about no contemporary poets who publish such consistently great work."—Corduroy Books

This is a collection of intimate poems, originally titled My-ku. They were intended as a study in constrained free-verse associative thought, and of course they grew. Cycling, diving, life ... explored in four lines. These works were written between 2009 and 2012 in Victoria, B.C., Canada.