Dark poems struggling to reconcile a haunting loss and troubled presentSelected by Kate Daniels as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Driving through the Country before You Are Born is the first collection of poetry from Ray McManus. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. The volume chronicles his attempt to gl...

Renowned writers add context and depth to inspiring historical imagesFound Anew is an anthology of new poetry and prose from writers with strong ties to the Palmetto State that creatively engages with historical photographs found in the digital collections of the University of South Carolina's South Caroliniana Library. In their eclectic approach to ekphrasis—textual response to the visual—editors R. Mac Jones and Ray McManus have recruited an impressive g...

For fans of Americana music and a beer after mowing the lawn, The Last Saturday in America confronts the long shadow of Southern masculinity.The Last Saturday in America is set in a nation on the precipice of great change. Through examinations of suburban neighbors, bullies, gun violence, and vasectomy appointments, Ray McManus draws a portrait of American masculinity in the face of political division, pandemic, and cultural warfare. McManus’s speaker is caught bet...

Why He Doesn't Sleep: The Selected Poems of Stephen Gardner collects the best poetry of an underappreciated writer, an extremely popular professor whose teaching inspired many students to become serious poets themselves. Gardner was known to invest himself in helping others more than in his own work, and so this overdue collection offers exposure to an interesting, variegated, and genuinely passionate writer.GOING HOMEDown the road, lying with my f...

Praise for Saeed Jones:"Jones is the kind of writer who's more than wanted: he's desperately needed."—FlavorWire"I get shout-happy when I read these poems; they are the gospel; they are the good news of the sustaining power of imagination, tenderness, and outright joy."—D. A. Powell"Prelude to Bruise works its tempestuous mojo just under the skin, wreaking a sweet havoc and rearranging the pulse. These poem...

A young bridge painter is awakened from the hum of daily routine by a face-to-face encounter with a woman in free fall."The Bridge" is a story from Daniel Orozco's critically acclaimed collection Orientation, which leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an...

Booth's eighth poetry collection, with its evocations of compassion, tenderness and invading darkness, implies that redemption will come only from having loved well and wisely. Publishers Weekly remarked, "Booth is a traveler keenly, almost mystically, aware that 'how you get there is where you'll arrive.' "

the book Love Opens the Valley of Emptiness is in six books. book one dan is introducing free to the public, in four parts. here is part two, part one was released last week and is about 5 pagers below part two. dan will be releasing a book about every 10 days. each part of book one, here, consist of eleven poems each. 44 poems in all contained in book one.books 2-6 each will contain over 3500 words of poetry all by dan ferguson as well. dan has been writing sense his early teens. h...

"At the edge of the world, you'll want to have this book. The final lines of Adam Clay's poem, 'Scientific Method,' have been haunting me for weeks." — Iowa Press-CitizenThe distilled, haunting, and subtly complex poems in Adam Clay's A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World often arrive at that moment when solitude slips into separation, when a person suddenly realizes he can barely see the place he set out from however long ago. He now sees he must...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the ide...

**"Take your time with these poems, and return to them often.” —The Washington PostThe New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean VuongHow else do we return to ourselves but to foldThe page so it points to the good partIn this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sit...

this collection of poems is residue from my encounters during the 20 years from (1964-1985). ok, 21.people, places, events seen sometimes wryly, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes playfully and sometimes darkly.