Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Timothy Bradford

Timothy Bradford's suggestions:

Big Bright Sun by Nate Pritts (BlazeVOX [books], 2010)
For everyone with a “grey heart” who notices those “isolate flecks everywhere,” for those who “hurt like a smudge of yellow next to a red square,” for your friendly local ornithologists, botanists, astrologers, astrologists, sun, sky and fire worshippers, and for romantic autoconversationalist human beings everywhere.

Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions, 2010)
For people fascinated by eyeballs and the digestive process, for anyone who has nightmares about hamburgers, for friends who desire a scientific cross-section cutter for the universe, for those who muse on “the confluence of texture” and “the pain of seeing something beautiful,” for fighters, contact improvisationalists, pantheists, animists and scientists.

Admission by Jerry Williams (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010)
For anyone who’s romanticized the Russian Revolution, worked in a cardboard box factory, or driven cars with no reverse for you; for friends with father issues, a love of contemporary art galleries, and/or a love of Las Vegas; for anyone who suspects dentists, ukulele players, snow and the moon are terrorists; for anyone who’s decided “I will keep this life.”

The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LCC, 2010)
For cunning philosophers, animal lovers, bloggers, tennis players, and defenestrationists; for transcendental sadomasochists; for anyone with scars and scares or cars and cares; for anyone who’s survived the island with a modicum of sanity and sand in the shoes; for friends who wonder why words and the world don’t every really match but keep loving them still.

It’s Not You, It’s Me: The Poetry of Breakup edited by Jerry Williams (The Overlook Press, 2010)
(A cento.) Many are making love. There is always the desire. Let separate cars be our disguise. I want to tell you why husbands stop loving wives. Time will stop here. Annie knew this. Weren’t there other lovers who left no trace? We sit at the kitchen table waiting for some opening. No depth there for dreaming. It’s been six months since we made love. Yes, I meant goodbye when I said it. Wish the lights would go back on, wish it was spring already.

Runoff by Clay Matthews. (BlazeVOX [books], 2009)
For Whitmanesque meteorologist lovers of all four seasons.

The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza by Eugene Ostashevsky (Ugly Duckling Press, 2008)
For hip-hoppopotamus manic surreal superhero philosophers.

Body Clock by Eleni Sikelianos (Coffee House Press, 2008)
For the pregnant or soon-to-be pregnant with light and/or time and/or biology and/or child.

Harlot by Jill Alexander Essbaum (No Tell Books, 2007)
For mannered but not mild nymphologomaniacs of either gender.

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Timothy Bradford’s poetry has most recently appeared in No Tell Motel, Upstairs at Duroc, ecopoetics, Drunken Boat and the anthology Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me (Mongrel Empire Press). His first book of poetry, Nomads with Samsonite, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX [books] in early 2011. From 2007 to 2009, he was an associate foreign researcher with the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris while working on a novel. Currently, he teaches English composition at the University of Central Oklahoma. He lives with his wife and two sons and an ever-changing menagerie just outside of Oklahoma City.