"This is a poet of importance, a poet who knows this western American landscape and renders its hidden stories and details--ranch life, work, horses, trails, red-tail hawks--in absolutely gorgeous language, weaving a complex portrait of place that is by turns elegiac and starkly realistic. Poem after poem consists of rich, beautiful language, unerringly sophisticated and surprising at every turn. It would be a disservice to say this poet has arrived; judging from the brilliance of this book, Michael Bowden arrived a long time ago, and we are only now catching up." Amy Miller, Final judge & previous Louis Award Winner for The Trouble with New England Girls "Common Uproar is an exquisitely crafted collection. Bowden gathers many seasons of careful, empathetic observations into poems polished like Bisbee turquoise. Often on the borderlands, he navigates the flow of truth through a lifetime, examining places where memories become dreams and bodies vanish into the desert. The reader is left with the glorious sensation of 'understanding almost' everyday moments of haunting beauty before they disappear, quick on the wing." Megan Baxter, author of The Coolest Monsters "Bowden's poems regard memory, family, the natural world--classic poetic subjects--but handle them with such quiet authority, such vivid delicacy, they shine." Jefferson Carter, author of Birkenstock Blues

Common Uproar (Concrete Wolf Louis Award)

Literature & Fiction

Bowden, Michael

Poetry

Concrete Wolf

In Such Short Supply, Michelle Brooks presents a captivating portrayal of growing up in a hostile world where the threats are everywhere, usually just out of sight. In her poem, "Can you See It?" a friend’s delusional grandmother believes she is surrounded by rats. Although the rats are imagined, the threat is quite real. Brooks says, "… For a moment, I know what it’s like to be her, emaciated and crazy, seen by everyone with pity and disbelief." This is the tone for much of the collection. Brooks examines threats of every order: chiggers, fear of loss, snakes, the evil eye, cancer, and rape, among others. Brooks seems to ask, what is the solution to living in fear of everything? The search for solutions leads, with questionable results, to Jesus and Mary, lots of pills, and perhaps a realization that while nothing may work well enough, you always have options to examine.

Such Short Supply

Michelle Brooks

Jessica Goodfellow s poetry is eye-opening. A Pilgrim s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland carries the reader along on an adventure of provocative thoughts. Physics, Mathematics, and the Bible are all examined and re-defined in human terms through original and distinctive language. This collection will leave you craving more from this uniquely captivating poet.--Lana Hechtman Ayers, Chapbook Series Editor and author of Love is a Weed.

A Pilgrim's Guide To Chaos In The Heartland (Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series)

Goodfellow, Jessica

As Janet Norman Knox advises us about her lyrical heroine: "She knows where dragons live. / Some migratory, others resident. / She visits their nests." The nests of verbal beauty on the pages of this book will stay with readers for a long time. This is true poetry, exciting and imaginative in its scope, muscular and memorable in its verbal music. It is memorable because it is dares to go places we haven't heard of, and do so with grace that is wild, yes, but also heart-rendering. There is much play in this sequence of poems, all of it earned and felt through, delivered with precision and clarity. I love her poems.-- Ilya Kaminsky

Eastlake Cleaners When Quality & Price Count [a romance]

Janet Norman Knox

From its opening lines, "I think I'm all right again / I said, after two glasses // of red ..." to the very last image "...He ruffles & / I dig my feet into the dents he made," Erin Malone's What Sound Does It Make captivates with lyrical language and acute personal truth. These are poems of intense concentration and deeply focused emotion. Motherhood is the chiaroscuro geography through which the speaker naviagtes. This journey of self through other and self toward other is heroic, germane, and poignant.

What Sound Does It Make

Erin Malone

In the lava flows of Vesuvius and on the slopes of the volcanic range of Oregon, Chuck Carlise maps out the history of personal loss in such evocative detail and with such tender regard for the fragility of the present, that we, too, are caught unaware and overwhelmed by the nervous erasure of grief. What does one unearth from such a Pompeii? Objects of beauty, shards of hope. Obsidian. Paintings on the brothel walls. A bouquet of lace. Reminders of the way in which memory endures. An unbroken field of blue. -D. A. Powell, Kingsley Tuft Award Winner for Chronic: Poems

A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs

Carlise, Chuck

“In one of the most powerful poems in this collection of powerful poems, a young widow at the after-funeral reception for her deceased husband speaks of ‘undigested grief.’ The nearly insurmountable charge at the core of these poems is to confront and attempt to digest such grief. M’s penetrating voice is both authentic and unforgettable as she maps the unwelcome territory through which she must journey To That Mythic Country Called Closure.” ~ Andrea Hollander, author of Landscape with Female Figure,  Woman in the Painting, The Other Life, and House Without a Dreamer

To That Mythic Country Called Closure

(Prologue) is a masterwork of poetic form and memory. Childhood, summer, friendship, and first loss are among the themes touched upon in this smart, passionate chapbook collection.

(Prologue) (Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Series)

Tomasko, Jeanie

“Timons Esaias is a prankster, a comedian, and a magician. But his sleight of hand, misdirection, jokes, and science fiction metaphors – entertaining as they are – are only camouflage disguising his deadly seriousness. His poetry urges us to face the truth before the world ends, and his tone is one of profound disappointment that most of us are not much interested in this urgent mission: ‘Just lie, and stick to it,/and physics,/responsibility, even fact, can take no hold.’ Esaias’ poems are funny, profound, and necessary.” —Michael Simms, founder of Vox Populi and Autumn House Press “I first encountered the satirical essays of Timons Esaias in 1996-97 in a small newspaper called The Observer and have since followed his work in various genres, admiring his wit and erudition, his seriousness and humor. Finally we have this healthy collection of his poems, Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek. It should be read whole, then kept on hand for a quick lift on a gray afternoon.” —Michael Wurster, author of The British Detective  

Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek (Concrete Wolf Louis Award)

Esaias, Timons

Humor & Satire

"From the first words in Hold This, Martin invites us into a universe of yearning and transformation, as the boy narrator shimmers into the body of a bird whose feet are 'letters' and whose wings allow him to ascend the mysterious reaches of a broad sky. Here, love and death contend within the confining frame of time. Mirrors may be both glass to reflect our questions, our desires, our fallibilities, and doors opening into a new vision of the world in which we are lucky enough to live. Full of feeling, but never sentimental, Martin beckons us to consider the deep questions even while lightening his lines with wordplay and humor ('The gods can be so sloppy sometimes'). A master at both understatement and richly observed detail of the human and natural world, Martin invites us into 'the smoky/back room of [the] heart' where love may or may not meet its match, and where loss and death prompt existential questions couched in the most accessible of terms ('He has the look of a man who's trying to forget things before they happen'). 'Hold this, ' he says: and we are lucky to open this book, to feast on these poems, to allow them into our hands and hearts."--Judith Montgomery, author of Passion, Red Jess and Pulse &amp; Constellation

Hold This (Louis Award)

Martin,John.

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Books by Concrete Wolf