Marie Gauthier

I expect this will my last post on university presses, unless I discover I’ve missed something particularly glaring, because I really want to start focusing on small presses. But there are still a few exciting books to mention from the university presses:

University of Iowa Press

• Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections, edited by Arielle Greenberg & Rachel Zucker. May, paperback, $24.95. Includes Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel, Katie Ford on Jorie Graham, Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye. This is very exciting — I’d love to see the full table of contents.

Southern Illinois University Press

• A Murmuration of Starlings, by Jake Adam York. February, paperback, $14.95. This collection elegizes the martyrs of the civil rights movement.
• The Sphere of Birds, by Ciaran Berry. February, paperback, $14.95. I love the musicality of Berry’s poems: …the sky alters in seconds, shine to shower,/ and harsher truths hit home hour after hour–/ the sundew snagging flies, settling to eat,/ a fat gull’s fractured keen that cuts through stone.

Swallow Press (Ohio University Press)

• Azores, by David Yezzi. March, paperback, $12.95. A new book of poems by the executive editor of the New Criterion.

University of Chicago Press

• Still Here, Still Now, by Robert Pack. April, hardcover, $22.00. Described as “one of America’s most eminent nature poets,” this is a major new collection, clocking in at 128 pages.

Phoenix Poets Series

• Chameleon Hours, by Elise Partridge. April, paperback, $15.00. Sad rower pushed from shore,/ I’ll disappear like circles summoned/ by an oar’s dip. I want this book, too.
• Blessings for the Hands, by Matthew Schwartz. April, paperback, $14.00. Fireflies/ apparently stumbling.// I slapped one on my leg./ Its blood glowed. This looks promising.
• Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, by Connie Voisine. March, paperback, $14.00. There are some bodies that emerge/ into desire as a god/ rises from the sea, emotion and/ memory hand like dripping clothes…

University of Pittsburgh Press

Pitt Poetry Series

• The Endarkenment, by Jeffrey McDaniel. April, paperback, $14.00. The one & only poetry workshop I’ve attended was taught by McDaniel, and it was a very positive experience. He’s a dynamic reader also.

So there we are, done with the university presses for this season. I’ve skipped Yale & Harvard, and perhaps will have to make up for that, but for now, this will do. Don’t you think?