Poetry. "There is a quiet self-possession and maturity of vision in this volume that characterizes all of its poems; yet at the same time they range widely, addressing subjects as various as Neolithic customs, Whitman's career as a Civil War nurse, the physiology of cetaceans, and a Muslim's stealthy visit to an adult bookstore. The author is also capable of writing sly accounts of family history and a Cold War childhood that seem archetypal rather than generic, that show evidence of a strong social conscience that never devolves to cant. TRACTION is an altogether impressive book of great tonal and formal range"—David Wojahn.

Traction

Literature & Fiction

Makofske, Mary

Poetry

Ashland Poetry Press

Poetry. "In Robert Grunst's poems the city's forgotten signs rise from memory into midday light. BLUE ORANGE conveys the luster of words, revealing both an older and brightened sense of the world. These poems are at once both shrewd and true."—Stephen Kuusisto

Blue Orange

Grunst, Robert

History & Criticism

Curses Omens Prayers

Sylvester, William

Winner of the 1998 Richard Snyder Publication Prize, this is the sixteenth book of poems by the 1994 winner of the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Prize. Formally accomplished, with a sure sense of subject matter, David Ray is one of our more important living poets. He lived and taught for years in Kansas City, and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. ""David Ray's poetry has always been radiant even though personal tragedy has suffused it."" --Studs Terkel ""His writing is clean, clear, economical, and poetically attractive. But what is possibly more important is his contribution in the area of substance."" --Hayden Carruth.

Demons in the Diner

Ray, David

Poetry. Jan Lee Ande's INSTRUCTIONS FOR WALKING ON WATER is the year 2000 winner of the Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including New Letters, Image, Notre Dame Review, Mississippi Review, Nimrod, and Poetry International. Ande lives in La Jolla, California, and teachers at The Union Institute. "Jane Ande's well-crafted poems are like a fresh mountain stream that springs from ancient sources. They are animated by a deep reverence for the world, by a sense of mystic awe, by a feeling of transcendental plenitude. They put us in the presence of great mysteries"--Edward Hirsch.

Instructions for Walking on Water

Ande, Jan Lee

Poetry. This is the first collection of poems by a poet who received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and who grew up on Army posts, mainly in the South. One of the strongest poems in the collection, "Major Lewis," tracks the author's intergenerational family's tie to the army, all the way to Vietnam and back to the reverberations of that war in the author's domestic life. "Those readers reared in military families will be astounded at the chords (Lunday) strikes, and the echoes of their own lives they will find in the particulars of his"--Mary Edwards Wertsch. "Robert Lunday has combined a narrative impulse, a desire to tell the story, with an intense lyrical imagination, and the result is MAD FLIGHTS"--Thomas Lux.

Mad Flights

Lunday, Robert

Poetry. "This is a beautiful, bitter book. Her poems, compelling histories, local testimonies, handfuls of bees frozen, then alive, stinging like love, or the furious assaults of atomic radiation, hold our attention because, like a sharper's three shells with one pea, they reveal secrets within our grasp, which are yet never quite possessed. Poetry ought to shake us, convince us, test us. This poetry does. I love it" --Dave Smith, Editor of The Southern Review. Corrinne Clegg Hales is the author of one prior book of poetry, Underground, and two chapbooks, Out of this Place, and January Fire which is the winner of the Devil's Millhopper Chapbook Prize. She has also recieved two NEA Fellowship Grants and the River Styx International Poetry Prize and is currently the Co-Coordinator of the M.F.A. Program at California State University, Fresno.

Separate Escapes

Hales, Corrinne

Poetry. "His lines are witnesses of tremendous density and speed of the more ever powerful NOW in human history. As technology had to adapt to the godhead's voracious needs, so the poets have to eat exactly the same spot with even higher lucidity, more intelligence and compassion to mourn, to understand and to redeem. Richard Jackson does it with more inclusiveness than anybody else I know. His writing helps us to make sense. It protects us against suffocation. It bathes our lives"—Tomaž Šalamun.

Unauthorized Autobiography: New and Selected Poems

Jackson, Richard

Poetry. In these poems and sequences, Simon Mundy uses a lyrical impressionism to explore people and places that are just out of reach or left behind. There is humor in his warm observation and sometimes a poignant celebration of beauty and anger at its loss. AFTER THE GAMES is Simon Mundy's third book of poems. Simon Mundy has also written several books on musicians--among them biographies of Elgar, Purcell and Tchaikovsky.

Arson & Prophets

Withiam, Scott

Poetry. Finalist for the 2005 National Book Award, THE MOMENT'S EQUATION also won the 2003 Richard Snyder Publication Prize. This is Vern Rutsala's eleventh collection of poetry. "There is one way in particular in which Vern Rutsala could and in my view should be an example to us all, an example of how to put to maximum use the simplest things in our lives"-Donald Justice.

The Moment's Equation

Rutsala, Vern

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Books by Ashland Poetry Press