Over the course of four collections of poems, Alex Lemon has become known for his kinetic voice and sense of the dark absurd. Now this electrifying poet moves in a new direction—with a book-length sequence at once intensely vulnerable and thoroughly of our moment.Populated by visions and ghosts, Another Last Day follows its speaker on a search through a natural landscape turned on its edge, the landscape of today's America. In these poems, the moments of an ordinary day are...

"Dark narratives about femininity . . . Reddy channels the vibe and energy of Plath and Sexton, but it's her arresting language that's the real draw here." — Publishers WeeklyDouble Jinx follows the multiple transformations—both figurative and literal—that accompany adolescence and adulthood, particularly for young women. Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Ovid's Metamorphoses, the rewritten fairy tales in Anne Sexton's Tran...

"Alex Lemon is a brave, headlong writer, and he captures the life of the body with vivid and memorable intensity."—Mark DotyBrain surgery. Assault weapons in the bed of a pickup truck. Sophia Loren at the Oscars. Rilke, Rodin, and the craters of the moon. Recovery and disintegration. Monkeys stealing an egg outside a temple in Kathmandu. Brushing teeth bloody on long car rides under blue skies. Pain, ours and what we bring to others. Wildfires in southern Californi...

"To read this book is to meet a man who would climb the sky." —BOB HICOKIn his follow-up to Fancy Beasts, a book that "slice[d] straight through nerve and marrow on its way to the heart and mind of the matter" (Tracy K. Smith), Alex Lemon dazzles with his exuberance and candor. Whether in unrestrained descriptions of sensory overload or tender meditations on fatherhood and mortality, Lemon blurs the nebulous line between the personal and the pop-cultural. ...

A deeply imaginative collection by a beloved poet with the “ability to slice straight through nerve and marrow on his way to the heart and mind of the matter” (Tracy K. Smith).Having extensively detailed his experience with a traumatic brain injury, Alex Lemon writes with the remarkable ability to transform the depth of pain into brilliant light. His enthralling new collection charts a visual map of the sprawling mind, translating images that alight behind the eye....

California wildfires, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism—in Fancy Beasts, Alex Lemon takes on American media culture, the obscene foil for personal legacies of violence and violation.The poems of this collection are a workout: vigorous and raw, frenetic and fearless. Yet they are also composed and controlled, pared down and sculpted, with a disarming narrative simplicity and directness. Even when...

Lyrical and explosive, this debut book of poetry explores a young man's experiences as a brain surgery patient, plumbs the depths of our greatest fears: death, pain, and illness, and emerges to find eroticism, wild new hope, and the wisdom to see the world in a wholly new way.Lyrical and explosive, this debut book of poetry explores Alex Lemon’s experiences as a brain surgery patient. Mosquito blends autobiography and poetry, bearing witness to a young man’s journe...

These poems topics range from hate crimes to playgrounds, from international conflict to hometowns, from falling in love to the desperation of loneliness. Gibsons work seizes us by the collar and hauls us inside some of her darkest moments, then releases us out the other side. 

- Chin’s writings have been anthologized widely; most notably in The Outlaw Bible Of American Poetry (Thunder's Mouth), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon), The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (St. Martin's), and Chick For A Day (Simon & Schuster). - Expressions of loss and grief are timeless and speak to a broad audience

A daughter's narrative about life with and without her father, whose death plunges her into deep grief but gradually becomes her most compelling reason to hope.Like so many Christian women, Rebecca, her mother, and her two sisters love a man who does not walk beside them in faith. As his cancer returns after a year of remission, they face his last days. As the women in his life struggle to savor their final times together and let go, he finally reaches out to God, ...

"Laux writes gritty, tough, lyrical poems that depict the actual nature of life in the West today."—Philip LevineThe narrative poems in Dorianne Laux's fifth collection charge through the summer of love, where Vietnam casts a long shadow, and into the present day, where she compassionately paints the smoky bars, graffiti, and addiction of urban life. Laux is "continually engaging and, at her best, luminous" (San Diego Union-Tribune).from "To Kiss F...

A lovesick clown tries to explain his part in an unlikely love triangle, but is the tightrope walker of his dreams even listening? In a world where death-defying feats happen every night, the biggest dangers may be those caused by a broken heart. Equal parts slapstick and unrequited love, this story was selected by Richard Russo for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2010.