Holiday Buying Guide - Alice Fogel

Alice Fogel's suggestions:

Spillway #17 editor Susan Terris (Tebot Bach Press) is loosely on the theme of "Crossing Borders." This magazine shows the hand and eye of its editor (as opposed to journals that are arranged merely alphabetically, and whose poems could interchange their authors without anyone noticing) with a truly varied range of works that have depth and gravitas, and are genuinely interesting in craft and thought. Without being on some kind of poetic acid trip, these poems still wake you up to that elusive experience of being touched by something beyond the wall.

Inaudible Trumpeters by Elizabeth Robinson (Harbor Mountain Press, 2008). In this lovely book of poems, with her matching initials and last name, Elizabeth Robinson takes the titles and end words from works of the famous E. A. Robinson (1869-1935) and fills in her own original lines to make new, moving poems. They are totally worth it whether you find this structural relationship cool or not.

Cold Pluto by Mary Ruefle (Carnegie-Mellon, 1996). Pretty much all of Mary Ruefle's books are interesting, but this one just won't let go. Figures that it is not available, but you can get her new Selected from Wave Books.

Paradise Lost by John Milton (Penguin Classics). Even though this is basically 17th century soap opera, it is mind-blowing how accurately Milton gets men and women, sex and marriage, desire and fear. Lots of fun to read aloud at parties.

* * *

Alice Fogel's third book of poems, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller in 2008, and in 2009 Strange Terrain (a guide for nonpoet readers and teachers, as well as for poets) came out. A recipient of a fellowship from the NEA and five-time Pushcart nominee, her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, former Poet Laureate Robert Hass’s Poet’s Choice, TriQuarterly, Third Coast, Crazyhorse, Hotel Amerika, and No Tell Motel. A freelance proof reader and copy editor, she teaches writing for all ages and levels, and is a passionate hiker and backpacker. She is also an award-winning designer and creator of custom clothing, particularly from “upcycled” materials (www.lyriccouture.com). Alice will be the 2012 Writer in Residence at the Carl Sandburg homestead in Flat Rock, NC.

Holiday Buying Guide - Lucy Biederman

Lucy Biederman's suggestions:

For the daughter on your list: Granted by Mary Szybist (Alice James Books)
This book ROCKS. E.g., "When I Was a Spoon In My Mother's Kitchen": "I can think so clearly, / it's like dreaming."

For anyone reading this who doesn't already have it: The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (No Tell Books)
A poem in it by Noah Eli Gordon has THIS in it: "The perfect companion's a photograph of sand // Unexpanding, elegant universe / something something something the end" and a poem by Reb has THIS: "Love in a hand basket. / Hell in my heart," and the last poem in the book is absolutely amazing.

For the human on your list: It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup ed. Jerry Williams (Overlook)
The worst thing about this book is being seen with a book called "It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup," but I am seen with it ALL THE TIME because it includes so many excellent poems by contemporary poets I love (like J. Allyn Rosser, Amy Gerstler, Kevin Prufer).

For your post-avant-garde associates: American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics ed. by Claudia Rankine & Lisa Sewell (Wesleyan University Press)
I believe that everything is a construction except deals, and this book comes with a bonus CD. It also feature analytical essays and beautiful poems by writers like Susan Wheeler, Stacy Doris, and Myung Mi Kim.

For the 900 people you know who say, I just don't understand poetry: The Making of a Poem by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (Norton)
I love this book, because Strand and Boland do a really thorough but un-condescending job of explaining the various poetic forms, and their examples of the forms are wide-ranging and awesome, like for the "Open Forms" section, Sharon Olds's poem "The Language of the Brag": "I have done with you wanted to do, Walt Whitman, / Allen Ginsberg"

For the smarty-pants on your list: One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America by Dan Chiasson (U of Chicago Press)
Chiasson talks so freshly and intelligently about poets like Frank Bidart and Frank O'Hara that it almost‚ almost, makes me want to write a paper or something.


* * *

Lucy Biederman's life is like an episode of Queen for a Day, but still she buys small-press poetry books from independent sellers. Her chapbook The Other World is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Spring 2012.

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.

* * *

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.

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Kim Gek Lin Short

Kim Gek Lin Short's suggestions:

For the one who is in charge (in charge—really, really in charge): Adam Robison and Other Poems by Adam Robison (Narrow House, 2010)

For the academic in need of balls: Core Sample by Gordon Massman (Spork Press, 2010)

For the mother for the daughter: Killing Kanoko by Hiromi Ito (Action Books, 2010)

For Andy: Hot White Andy by Keston Sutherland (Barque Press, 2nd Edition, 2009)

For the unhappy minor with whom you’ve traded places: The Sorrows of Young Worthless by Brandon Holmquest (Truck Books, 2010)

For your Thelma or Louise: Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig (Beacon, 1971)

For the masses: Pluto: Never Forget by Christian Peet (Interbirth, 2010)

For the versions you love of her/him, so close and so far: Pigafetta Is My Wife by Joe Hall (Black Ocean, 2010)

For the uxorious (let this be a lesson to you, or not): I Smile Back by Amy Koppelman (Two Dollar Radio, 2008)

For the hipster/biddy in real life: Man’s Companions by Joanna Ruocco (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)

For the indecisive (and decisive): What Do You Want? by Marina Temkina (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

For the one who is hard to know: The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta, 2009)

* * *

Kim Gek Lin Short is the author of The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits, and the chapbooks Run and The Residents. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts' suggestions:

For the holidays, I would like to recommend four books that deserve a wider readership. I'm afraid these books, all from small presses, will get overlooked! But all are worth the extra effort to seek out.

Topping the list is the chapbook Conrad by Michael Gushue (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2010). This gem of a book follows our hero from his office, "fluoresced/by routine," to Barcelona, where he impersonates George Sanders, to visits to consult his guru. He remembers a teenage devotion to heavy metal bands, debates the merits of different kinds of bottled water. In 25 short poems, Conrad considers love, shopping, and drugs. Read this: you, too, will become a follower of Conradism, "a religion of Hope/because Hope is a thing with feathers."

Sounds Like Something I Would Say by Grace Cavalieri (Goss 123: Casa Menendez, 2010) is the author's sixteenth book of poems. In it, she develops a loopy, conversational style that is both intimate and engaged with the world. Some of the best poems remember her immigrant family and her young womanhood, when boys worked on crystal radios, her family sold "tomato pies" to WWII soldiers (a precursor to pizza), and she wore her first white suit with spectator heels.

My third choice is an anthology, Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, edited by Philip Clark and David Groff (Alyson Books, 2009). The editors include poems about living with AIDS, but also poems about love, fashion, movie idols, and many speak from an outrageous sense of self that is larger than life. Which is the point, of course: the words transcend the author's deaths, and the personalities of these writers, who died in the prime of their literary lives, continues to shine through. I am thrilled to have them together in these pages: Reinaldo Arenas, Joe Brainard, William Dickey, Tim Dlugos, Essex Hemphill, James Merrill, Paul Monette, Reginald Shepherd, and others.

One final book--self-consciously offered--my own little nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word Poetry in DC (Beltway Books, 2010). This book offers, in timeline form (from 1991 to the present), a look at the evolution of spoken word from an underground phenomena that took place in bars with mosh pits, or places where cops might rush into the bathrooms to find drugs--to its more established acceptance in such mainstream venues as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the White House. This little book surveys the major players, the venues, the publications, the major performances. Among major US cities where spoken word has blossomed, DC is notable for being the first to develop a youth slam team, and is still the only city to offer grants to support hip hop arts.

* * *

Kim Roberts is the editor of the acclaimed online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the print anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010). Her third book of poems, Animal Magnetism, won the Pearl Poetry Prize and will be published by Pearl Editions in January 2011. http://www.kimroberts.org

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Lucy Biederman

Lucy Biederman's suggestions:

(Food Themed)

For anybody who's ever driven through the suburbs or knows anyone who has: Necessary Stranger by Graham Foust Flood Editions, 2007). (My favorite-favorite-favorite; I would eat it like sugar plums.

Music Like Dirt by Frank Bidart (Quarternote Chapbook Series, Sarabande Books, 2002) tastes like dirt in a delicious way.

For that feeling of your mom cooking dinner downstairs during your childhood: It Is Daylight by Arda Collins (Yale, 2009). So amazing I have to quote from it: "God? you say, but not aloud. Since / there is no god, you have to be / both you and god. Yes. god says. You / turn over on the couch / and push your face into the dark. / Remember / when we went swimming? / The lakes, god says...".

For people who prefer sex to food no question: Harlot by Jill Alexander Essbaum (No Tell Books, 2007). Reading most things, you would think that men have a lock on desire; this book is one of the few things in the universe that tells the truth.

For people who like the inside part of the bread, not the crust: Nomina by Karen Volkman (BOA Editions, 2008). Like being lost inside the inside of the inside.

* * *

Lucy Biederman received an MFA from George Mason University. Her poems are forthcoming in Open City, The Apalachee Review, The Journal, and PMSpoemmeoirstory. You can find poems of hers that have appeared online here: http://lucybiederman.blogspot.com/.

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner's suggestions:

Hanukkah Gifting Guide

I realize that we're on the 4th night of Hanukkah, but here are eight new and amazing books by Jewish poets published in 2010. Both Jason Schneiderman and Julie Carr give us bone-wrenching elegies for their mothers. Jehanne Dubrow offers up poems about her experience as a Navy wife, and Melissa Stein writes of the natural world and a rural landscape infused with desire. Matthew Zapruder pens visceral and heart-rending lyric loveliness, in great contrast to Matthew Lippman's (also profound) hyper-kinetic and often humorous poems. Dora Malech's book is so new (November 29!) that I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I've heard great things about it from the folks in Ohio at CSU. And in honor of Hanukkah and tradition, I've included C.K. Williams' newest (his 17th! poetry collection), which is rife with exquisite imagery.

Order them for the remaining nights, or get them all for your favorite Jewish poet or reader for Christmas (Christmukkah? Hannumas?):

Striking Surface by Jason Schneiderman (Ashland Poetry Press)

Hot off the press: Say So by Dora Malech (Cleveland State University Press)

Stateside by Jehanne Dubrow (Northwestern University Press)

Rough Honey by Melissa Stein (American Poetry Review)

Sarah--Of Fragments and Lines by Julie Carr (Coffee House Press)

Come on all you Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon)

Monkey Bars by Matthew Lippman (Typecast)

And my one big-press pick:
Wait by C.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)


* * *

Erika Meitner is the author, most recently, of Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), and the forthcoming Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011). She teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Tech.

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner's suggestions:

For the mother with a Robert Redford crush, or avid People Magazine reader in your family--Kiki Petrosino spends the first half of Fort Red Border detailing her imaginary affair with the aforementioned celebrity:
Fort Red Border by Kiki Petrosino (Sarabande Books)

For the film buff (or catatonic) on your list--Jesse Lee Kercheval's gorgeous ode to silent film:
Cinema Muto by Jesse Lee Kercheval (Southern Illinois University Press)

For fans of Rachel Whiteread sculpture, disintegrating industrial spaces, motels, pawnshops, and empty parking lots--as perfect for your wayward brother who lives in Buffalo and hangs out in front of the 7-11 as it is for your soulful sister-in-law the landscape architect:
Sum of Every Lost Ship by Allison Titus (Cleveland State University Press)

For the vintage aficionados, visual artists, and people you know who like their text arty (think Jenny Holzer meets flea market explosion)--stunning, quirky, super-fun to look at and read:
Lake Antiquity by Brandon Downings (Fence Books)

For the marrieds or breeders in your life--a deadly honest look at the domestic sphere that's so compelling I read the entire thing while sitting in my car in the library parking lot:
Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

Impress your Jewish friends for Hanukkah by gifting them with Jehanne Dubrow's poems, composed in the voice of Ida, an imaginary Jewish poet living in Always Winter, Poland before World War II:
From the Fever World by Jehanne Dubrow (Washington Writers' Publishing House)

For a Hanukkah gift-pack (there are 8 nights, people), you might buy a nice notebook and some great pens, along with six Jewishly-authored books of poems: Zucker and Dubrow's mentioned above, along with:
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia Books)

Lost Alphabet by Lisa Olsteins (Copper Canyon Press)

The Book of Seventy by Alicia Ostriker (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Awayward by Jennifer Kronovet (BOA Editions)

* * *

Erika Meitner is the author of Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore (Anhinga Press, 2003), and the forthcoming collections Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011), and Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. She teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Tech. You can read more about her here.

Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Kim Gek Lin Short

Kim Gek Lin Short’s suggestions:

My holiday book recommendations are for (in some cases, by) nonpoets, as poetry is for all poeple. Here's just a few great books to consider.

For the shithole where you met the person you wish you asked their name:
Where I Stay by Andrew Zornoza (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2009)

For the one whose meaning cannot be symbolized:
Humanimal by Bhanu Kapil (Kelsey Street Press 2009)

For the family, it had a leak, we all got drowned in:
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler (Featherproof Books 2009)

For the wide-open the wind-chapped the nation it did not fit you:
Big American Trip Christian Peet (Shearsman 2009)

For the bewilderment, overhead, we heard them chant it:
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia 2009)

For the barbed the stung the scream when it left you:
With Deer by Aase Berg (Black Ocean 2009)

For the scars you hid in feathers:
The Book of Frank by CA Conrad (Chax Press 2009)

For the guilt, it changed its name, we cannot forget it:
The Failure Six by Shane Jones (Fugue State Press 2009)

For the map, inside your skin, you return to it:
Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants by Elena Georgiou (GenPop 2009)

For the fingerprints, you wiped them off, they reappear:
PERSONATIONSKIN by Karl Parker (No Tell Books, 2009)

For the scorch in the sky when it shows you:
Stars of the Night Commute by Ana Božičević (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2009)

For the whitespace:
To After That (Toaf) by Renee Gladman (Atelos Books)

* * *

Kim Gek Lin Short is the author of The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits (Tarpaulin Sky Press forthcoming), and the chapbooks The Residents (dancing girl press 2008) and Run (Rope-a-Dope Press forthcoming).

Poetry Holiday Shopping Guide - Scott Abels

Scott Abels' suggestions:

The Dream Songs by John Berryman, (a used copy of any edition).
For someone healthy in your life. Make sure they´re strong, and healthy, and tell them, read one sonnet a day for 77 days, and then it will be spring.

If, this year, you caught yourself saying you´re "at the age where all your friends are having babies" then give all your friends Macular Hole by Catherine Wagner (Fence, 2004).

Or, alternately, this Christmas send them an e-book they will appreciate.

* * *

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels currently lives and teaches on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. His poems can be found (or are forthcoming) in Lungfull!, Sixth Finch, No Tell Motel, Past Simple, Action, Yes, Sawbuck, Shampoo, Spooky Boyfriend, BlazeVOX, Word for /Word, and others. He has a little web presence at http://scottabels.blogspot.com/.

Poetry Holiday Shopping Guide - Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley's suggestions:

1) Just in time for the giving season, Doug Kearney's The Black Automaton will be released next month (Dec.) by Fence Books. If you (or your gift recipient) like(s) poems that do not sit in well-behaved rows of uniform font on the left margin, there will be plenty in this book to please you.

2) I just got my hands on Will Alexander's newest book, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (New Directions). You know you want to know what (Will Alexander will say) a loxodrome is. There's only one way to find out.

3) Not quite in time for the holidays, but right on time for belated holiday gift-giving, in January Duke Press will release Fred Moten's new collection, B Jenkins. Theory-heads: get ready -- you will love everything about this book, beginning with the table of contents. Everyone else: if you read poetry out loud, then you will also find a sweet spot in this volume.

4) Another January release to get pumped for is Camille T. Dungy's Suck on the Marrow, which is coming out of Red Hen Press. She will get all elegantly gritty on you and make you homesick for Virginia, even if you've never been there. I thought you knew.

5) This one is probably going to be far too late for the holidays altogether, nonetheless I am excited to note that Barbara Jane Reyes' next book, Diwata, will be coming out of BOA Editions in 2010. Reyes is known for speaking in tongues -- my way of referencing her unabashed multilingualism *and* her (in my opinion) divinely inspired truth-telling. Give yourself Christmas in July (or thereabouts) by making a note in your 2010 calendar now to buy her book as soon as it spins off the presses.

* * *

Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and 31 words * prose poems (Belladonna* Books, 2007). She co-edits jubilat and teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Kristi Maxwell

Kristi Maxwell's selections:

Stars of the Night Commute by Ana Božičević (Tarpaulin Sky)
"for people who should also read Claire Hero's Sing, Mongrel (Noemi Press)"

Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson (Coach House)
"for people who should also read Laura Sim's Stranger (Fence Books)"

In Ways Impossible To Fold by Michael Rerick (Marsh Hawk)
"for people who should also read Don Bogen's An Algebra (U of Chicago)"

I Have To Go Back To 1994 and Kill A Girl by Karyna McGlynn (Sarabande)
"for people who should also read Sachiko Murakami's The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks)"

A Nest This Size by Ann M. Fine (Shearsman)
"for people who should also read Dana Ward's Roseland (Editions Louis Wain)"

* * *

Kristi Maxwell is the author of Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press, 2008), Elsewhere & Wise (Dancing Girl Press, 2008), and Hush Sessions (Saturnalia Books, 2009). She is currently a PhD candidate in English & Comparative Lit at the University of Cincinnati, where she completed a graduate certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Neil de la Flor

Neil de la Flor's selections:

1. Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen by Maureen Seaton (Carnegie Mellon Press)
"For cave divers, volkswagen lovers, and queens of South Beach."

2. Weapons Grade by Terese Svoboda (The University of Arkansas Press)
"One day groundhogs will rule the world."

* * *

Neil de la Flor earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami. His first book of poetry, Almost Dorothy, won the 2009 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and will be published in 2010. His literary work has been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, Sentence, 42opus, Court Green and others. In 2006, Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press), a collaborative chapbook of triads co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass, was published. He currently lives in Miami and teaches at Miami Dade College and Nova Southeastern University. He can be reached at neildelaflor.com.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Scott Abels

Scott Abels' suggestions:

For your neighborhood masturbator: My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, Edited by Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan, 2008)

For the MBA in your life: Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006)

For the honey lover and big oil: The Georgics of Virgil. Any edition that can fit in their pocket.

* * *

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels has an MFA from Boise State University. His poems can be found online at Spooky Boyfriend, Past Simple, Sawbuck, No Tell Motel, Shampoo, and Action Yes. Currently, he lives and teaches in Honolulu.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Kim Gek Lin Short & Chris Collision

Kim Gek Lin Short & Chris Collision's suggestions:

Our holiday book recommendations are for the nonpoets on your list, as poetry is for all people. Here's just a few great books to consider:

For the classicist/lumberjack: Creation Myths, Mathias Svalina (New Michigan Press, 2007)

For the mystic/romantic/guy who can't afford the therapist he needs: The Real West Marginal Way, Richard Hugo (W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

For the historian/entomologist who habitually befriends low things: archy and mehitabel, don marquis (Doubleday, 1927)

For the statistician/pragmatist/diviner: The Weather, Lisa Robertson (new star books, 2007)

For the existentialist/Home Depot enthusiast: One Way No Exit, G.C. Waldrep (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008)

For the spoiled mind who needs a reason to quit/keep drinking: The Dream Songs, John Berryman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982).

For the vegetarian/activist who also dabbles in voodoo: Ready-to-Eat Individual, Frank Sherlock & Brett Evans (Lavender Ink, 2008)

For the ghost/essentialist who wants to come back as a film: The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations, Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press, 2007)

For the mopey excitable youth who forgets that to go for a walk is to fall in love: Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Thrift Edition), Walt Whitman (Dover Publications, 2007).

For the stuffed or haunted or reminisced or sublime: The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter, Paul McCormick (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008)

For the person you don't know but who is magically familiar: The Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 1998)

* * *

Kim Gek Lin Short lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. Her chapbook, The Residents, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. Other new work is forthcoming in journals such as Tarpaulin Sky, Drunken Boat, and SoMa.

Chris Collision just moved to Oakland, where he continues to specialize in beer, bikes, brunettes and coffee. He collaborates with KGLS at http://rowsselavy.blogspot.com, with D. D. Tinzeroes at http://dauntlesscomics.com, among others, and makes up for that by cooperating as little as possible with everybody else all the time.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Rauan Klassnik

Rauan Klassnik's suggestions:

My holiday book recommendations are for the boatload of contemporary poets mired in obscure and useless wizardry. Please stop patting each other on the back (in person and through the internet) and actually try to say something. In the meantime some meat and potatoes reading might be helpful:

The Essential Haiku (Buson, Basho, Issa) edited by Robert Hass

Dreaming the Miracle (Three French Prose Poets: Follain, Jacob, Ponge) (White Pine Press) I especially recommend the first two. Surreal-yes. Nonsense-no.

Jesus' Son (Harper Perennial) by Denis Johnson"

* * *

Rauan Klassnik tends goats in Chiapas. He also blogs at rauanklassnik.blogspot.com. Sometimes he believes in capital punishment, and he almost always thinks lamb tastes good. His first book, Holy Land, released April 2008 from Black Ocean. Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2009. In January/February, Ringing from Kitchen Press and, in the summer, Dreaming"from Scantily Clad Press.

Evie Shockley's Must Read List

Evie Shockley's choices:

This is my wholly incomplete list of books I want to read (or finish reading) that I can think of right off the top of my head while most of my "library" is in another state (of the U.S., not of being), in no particular order -

Zong!, by M. NourbeSe Phillip (Wesleyan UP) -- An amazing poet tackles the Zong Massacre (a Middle Passage horror) with the fragment.

Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt) -- If you are named for a kind of star, and you are a poet, you are destined to write about your life in terms of astronomy.

Hughson's Tavern, by Fred Moten (Leon Works) -- A poet who remembers vinyl records fondly and in context, not to mention with interesting line breaks.

Matadora, by Sarah Gambito (Alice James Books) -- The kind of graceful ferocity you'd expect from a woman who fights bulls successfully.

Irresponsibility, by Chris Vitiello (Ahsahta Press) -- This poet gives language no quarter, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

My Zorba, by Danielle Pafunda (Bloof Books) -- Poetry from a poet who is always surprised (thus surprising) and never boring, even when she's cutting (or biting) her nails.

* * *

Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a guest editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Adam Fieled

Adam Fieled recommendations:

-- Globe-trotting Australian poet David Prater hits us with his best shot in We Will Disappear (SOI3 Modern Poets), a book so heart-rending that it will tear down your battalions.

-- Juliet Cook's Gingerbread Girl (Trainwreck Press) will take you in to a kitchen that is Martha Stewart's worst nightmare, where sex is on the grill, and then is laid on ice.

-- Watch Skip Fox deconstruct deconstruction with a deconstructive deconstructor in For To (BlazeVox), which will leave you unstitched.

* * *

Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. He has released three books and three chaps, and is a PhD candidate and University Fellow at Temple University.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Donald Illich

Donald Illich's recommendations:

For the werewolves on your list: Shafer Hall, Never Cry Woof (No Tell Books)

For the Martians on your list (any poet at all must have this one): Jack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan)

For the formalists on your list who enjoy reading about Alaska: Ted Genoway, Anna, Washing (University of Georgia Press)

For anyone on your list who isn't perfect: Ron Padgett, How to be Perfect (Coffee House Press)

For anyone who's an American: Matthew Dickman, All American Poem (American Poetry Review)

For people who like their poems in short story form: Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

For Mom and Dad and anyone who's not into poetry and who will soon will be (or hippies): Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar (Mariner Books)

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Donald Illich was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it is just like you saw it in Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick, except different. He is slightly less smelly than he used to be since he got married in June. He publishes and writes poetry.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Jessy Randall

During November and December No Tell contributors will recommend poetry books that would make fabulous gifts. Here are Jessy Randall's recommendations:

Kenneth Koch, The Art of the Possible (Soft Skull): Poetry comics -- what's not to love?

Jordan Davis, Million Poems Review (Faux Press): out of print, but available secondhand (try bookfinder.com). I believe Jordan Davis is referencing Frank O'Hara here, who said if you want to know about art, look at a million paintings.

Margaret Atwood, The Door (Houghton Mifflin): The title poem is fantastic.

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Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, McSweeney's, and No Tell Motel, and she occasionally guest edits Snakeskin. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.