This Week at No Tell Motel

Paige Taggart tells fifty-two men that she loves them this week at No Tell Motel.

Featured Poet Rebecca Loudon in the new Galatea Resurrects

Tom Beckett interviews Rebecca Loudon & 3 poems

Poems begin for me from practice. When I am practicing my violin, when I am practicing drawing, when I am practicing writing. I used to write every day in notebooks. Not just poems, but anything I thought of. Then I switched to my blog to continue my daily writing practice. I believe that the mastery of any art comes from mastery of practice. It’s kind of weird. I don’t think many poets think in terms of daily practice. Maybe it’s from spending a lifetime as a musician. But we have these muscles, not even muscles—tissue, tissue memory. Practice strengthens that tissue memory. When I practice Bach every day then it’s my tissue memory that can perform Bach, not my fingers, not my brain. My brain just gets in the way of things, slows me down. It’s the same with writing. I’ve learned to have a notebook by my side pretty much all the time to jot down ideas. This is practice. This and reading.

John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews Loudon's Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home and Cadaver Dogs

Rebecca Loudon reviews Aase Berg's With Deer

Bestest Poetry Books of 2009

Titles selected more than once by No Tells contributors:

(5) Stars of the Night Commute, by Ana Božičević (Tarpaulin Sky)

(3) The Book of Frank by CA Conrad (Chax Press)

(3) The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (Copper Canyon)

(3) The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)

(3) Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

(3) Ohio Violence by Alison Stine (University of North Texas Press)

(2) Areas of Fog by Joseph Massey (Shearsman Books)

(2) Censory Impulse by Erica Kaufman (Factory School)

(2) Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler (Penguin)

(2) Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey)

(2) A Million in Prizes by Justin Marks (New Issues Press)

(2) No Theater by Chris Tonelli (Brave Men Press)

(2) Saint Nobody by Amy Lemmon (Red Hen Press)

(2) Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)

(2) Skirmish by Dobby Gibson (Graywolf Press)

(2) Sunny Wednesday by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books)

(2) Temporary Bunk by Lori Anderson Moseman (Skank Books)

(2) A Toast in the House of Friends by Akilah Oliver (Coffee House)

(2) Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (Octopus Books)

(2) Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (Alice James Books)

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Jenn Koiter

Jenn Koiter's selections:

This Awkward Art by Conrad Hilberry and Jane Hilberry (Mayapple Press)
A father and daughter juxtapose poems that address the subjects they share: his grandson/her nephew, snow, Vermeer, the childhood death of her sister/his daughter. It may sound gimmicky, but, given that they are both darn good poets, it actually works, and works well. Loved this book.

Incident Light by H. L. Hix (Etruscan Press)
In his first published book in well over a month (I jest, of course! Though I am starting to consider Hix the Joyce Carol Oates of poetry publishing), Hix writes about an artist friend who learned when she was 49 that the man who raised her was not her biological father. It's eerie and gorgeous, with language as precise as we've come to expect from Hix. Mythologizing the ordinary. Dig it.

* * *

Jenn Koiter lives in Wyoming, and she is planning to start her own conspiracy theory in which Candy Jones does, too. Probably with the witness protection program, in Lusk.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Martha Silano

Martha Silano's selections:

National Anthem by Kevin Prufer (Four Way Books)
So many books released this year with National, Republic, and American in the title, but Prufer’s rises above with its post-apocalyptic gems about America’s darkest hour ; they’re smart, lyrical, and almost always left me going “sheesh, how did he pull that off?”

Speaking of books with American in the title, Kary Wayson’s American Husband (Ohio State University Press) is a long-awaited miracle. Gaaawd, I have loved Ms. Wayson’s work for over ten years and am so, so happy to see she finally has a book we can all have and hold. Even at her dreariest (“My umbrella isn't in case but the cause
of the rain
coming down, and my soul is a shovel buried in the flowers”) all order of lyrical-masterful-rain-spattered-tulip springtime flows from her pen.

Lucia Perillo’s Inseminating the Elephant (Cooper Canyon) because Perillo gives MS the finger and makes us laugh at the same time.

Rachel Zucker’s Museum of Accidents (Wesleyan) because poems like “Lines to Stave Off Suicide” remind us what it felt like to be a country paralyzed with fear and grief.

* * *

Martha Silano's books are Blue Positive (Steel Toe 2006) and What the Truth Tastes Like (Nightshade 1999). New work is just out or forthcoming in The Journal, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, The Best American Poetry 2009, and Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days. Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, WA.

This Week at No Tell Motel

Reb Livingston cremates the hemlouts and stresses everyone out this week at No Tell Motel.

Best Books of Poetry of 2009 - Deborah Ager

Deborah Ager's selections:

Saint Nobody by Amy Lemmon (Red Hen Press)

Now You're the Enemy by James Allen Hall (University of Arkansas Press)

0°, 0° by Amit Majmudar (Northwestern University Press)

The Hardship Post by Jehanne Dubrow (Three Candles Press)

Answering the Ruins by Gregory Fraser (Northwestern University Press)

* * *

Deborah Ager is publisher of 32 Poems Magazine. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, New Letters, New England Review, New South and other "new" places. Her book is entitled Midnight Voices.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Deborah Poe

Deborah Poe's selections:

The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta Press)

Temporary Bunk by Lori Anderson Moseman (Skank Books)

Building Codes by Belle Gironda (Stockport Flats Press, Meander Scar Series)

Bone Light by Orlando White (Red Hen Press)

Censory Impulse by Erica Kaufman (Factory School)

Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey)

Chapbooks

The Saint's Notebook by Kate Schapira (Chapbook, Flying Guillotine Press)

Prairies by Natalie Knight (E-chap, Scantily Clad Press)

* * *

Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections Elements (Stockport Flats 2010) and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords 2008). Deborah’s writing is forthcoming or has appeared recently in Colorado Review, Sidebrow, Ploughshares, Filter Literary Journal and Denver Quarterly. For more, visit http://deborahpoe.com.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Cati Porter

Cati Porter's selections:

Bling and Fringe (The L.A. Poems), a collaborative book of poems by Molly Bendall & Gail Wronsky (What Books Press)

Under the Quick by Molly Bendall (Parlor Press)

The Heart's Traffic by Ching-In Chen (Red Hen Press)

FAQ by Ben Doller (Ahsahta Press)

Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press)

* * *

Cati Porter edits the online journal Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and is the author of two collections of poetry, Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008) and small fruit songs (Pudding House 2008). She lives in Riverside, California, with her husband and two young sons.

This Week at No Tell Motel

Deborah Poe draws back the signs this week at No Tell Motel.

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.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Gary L. McDowell

Gary L. McDowell's selections:

Divination Machine by F. Daniel Rzicznek (Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions)

How to Live on Bread and Music by Jennifer K. Sweeney (Perugia Press)

Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

Ohio Violence by Alison Stine (UNT Press)

Circus by Michael Robins (Flying Guillotine Press)

Mistaken for Song by Tara Bray (Persea Books)

Light Here, Light There by Alexander Long (C & R Press)

* * *

Gary L. McDowell is the author of They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009) and co-editor, with F. Daniel Rzicznek, of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, and Quarterly West. He's pursuing his Ph.D in American Literature at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan where he lives with his wife and young son, Auden.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Tiffany Midge

Tiffany Midge's selections:

On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year by Lee Ann Roripaugh (Southern Illinois University Press)

Face by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press)

Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler (Penguin)

Dark Thirty by Santee Frazier (University of Arizona Press)

Flood Song by Sherwin Bitsui (Copper Canyon)

* * *

Tiffany Midge is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. She is the recipient of the Diane Decorah Poetry Award from The Native Writers Circle of the Americas for her collection, Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of a Mixed-Up Halfbreed published by Greenfield Review Press. The chapbook, Guiding the Stars to Their Campfire, Driving the Salmon to Their Beds, was published in 2005 by Gazoobi Tales.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Brandon Shimoda

Brandon Shimoda's selections:

... if by BEST is meant those books of poetry that inflame both conscious and subconscious mind to such a point that not only the poetry, as fluid summons, but I, as fluid respondent, both obese and fall away at once, then these few books have provided such something, for whatever and individual reason (in no particular order):


The Shape is Space by Karena Youtz (Privity Press)
Privity Press is in Boise. This book actually came out towards the end of 2008, though it is STILL one of the best of 2009, not to mention 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013...

INRI by Raul Zurita (Marick Press)
A tremendous fortune that Zurita's works continue to be brought into English. Among the bravest most critically fierce and imaginative RESPONSES and continuing acts of poetic RESISTANCE of the latter 20th 21st or any century.

The Desert by Jen Bervin (Granary Books)
The machine-sewn edition is astoundingly beautiful (and $4000), though the edition I spent time with was a borrowed reading copy -- which, even still, found me within the surprise that erasing the desert would give spring to the most mesmerizing blue-bladed meadow.

Kiss a Bomb Tattoo by Hoa Nguyen (effing press)
Nguyen's new book just came out, though I'm still stuck on this one, still aspiring into its spaces. A continuation of a record of another, though equally necessary, order.

Lake Antiquity by Brandon Downing (Fence Books)
At the time of mentioning, LA was still en route from Singapore. I was able to view (courtesy of Mr. Dark Brandon) a full PDF which, holy fuck, suffered me a stockpile of flashbacks (and forwards). I am sweating to think of the actual object!

Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008 by Norma Cole (City Lights)
A slight Selected, thinner than some of her individual volumes, though still requiring (softly, assuredly) the best of attention. Any invitation of accessing Norma Cole's work must be taken.

New Roman by Phil Cordelli (self-published)
Produced in an edition of 19, which I believe have all been dispersed, and eaten. Phil Cordelli's poems and constructions are quite literally my sustenance, and I hope they remain so long after I'm dead.

Purgatory by Raul Zurita (University of California Press)
See note for INRI above.

* * *

Brandon Shimoda's collaborations, drawings and writings have appeared in The Alps (Flim Forum Press), The Inland Sea (Tarpaulin Sky Press), and elsewhere.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Julie Babcock

Julie Babcock's selections:

Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler (Penguin)
Everything great poetry should be—old and new, hallucinogenic and sane—all at once.

See Jack by Russell Edson (University of Pittsburgh)
This is a link to my Rain Taxi review reposted by Powell’s

Where I Stay by Andrew Zornoza (Tarpaulin Sky)
Zornoza drives a transcendently blurry line between poetry, prose, and art. This book is going to haunt me for a long time.

American Prophet by Robert Fanning (Marick)
Fanning creates an extremely compelling character and follows his struggles for meaning through a Michigan landscape that includes drycleaners, superstores, and Elvisfest.

* * *

Julie Babcock's most recent work appears in Necessary Fiction, The Apple Valley Review, MiPOesias, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. She teaches at University of Michigan.

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).

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley's recommendations:

Book that Made Me Love the Prose Poem Again:
Self-Portrait with Crayon by Alison Benis White (Cleveland State University Press)

Book that Made Me Love Sprawling Free Verse Again:
Mister Skylight by Ed Skoog (Copper Canyon Press)

Book that Got a Lot of Hype in the Mainstream But Earned Said Hype:
Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove (W. W. Norton)

Book with the Most Intriguing Conceptual Premise:
From the Fever World by Jehanne Dubrow (Washington Writers' Publishing House)

Book I am Most Dying To Read As Soon as I Splurge on the Hardback:
Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)

* * *

Sandra Beasley won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize for I Was the Jukebox, selected by Joy Harjo and forthcoming from W. W. Norton. Her first collection, Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize judged by Marie Howe. She lives in Washington, D.C.

This Week at No Tell Motel

Jeff Downey digs against the squalor this week at No Tell Motel.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Charles Jensen

Charles Jensen's selections:

Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager (Cherry Grove)

Sister by Nikole Brown (Red Hen Press)

The Book of the Heart Taken by Love by Jim Elledge (Five Fingers Press)

Pear Slip by Matthew Hittinger (Spire Press)

Breakfast with Thom Gunn by Randall Mann (University of Chicago Press)

The Moon Makes Its Own Plea by Wendy Mnookin (BOA Editions)

Blue House by Christopher Nelson (Poetry Society Chapbook Fellowship)

Chronic by D. A. Powell (Graywolf)

Ohio Violence by Alison Stine (University of North Texas Press)

Sight Map by Brian Teare (University of California Press)

* * *

Charles Jensen is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently The First Risk. He directs The Writer's Center, one of the nation's largest literary centers. He lives in metropolitan Washington, DC.

HTMLGIANT Second Annual Indie Lit Secret Santa

details here.

Check the comment field for special offers from indie presses (No Tell Books included) for those participating in the gift exchange.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Peg Duthie

Peg Duthie's selections:

Light, Moving by Carolyn Miller (Sixteen Rivers Press)
Some natterings on why I liked it here. (In a nutshell: poems infused with both heartache and gratitude.)

Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan (Norton; the hardcover came out two years ago, but the paperback only this year).
I can't quote from it at the moment, because I mailed my copy to a friend (one who is, among many things, a civil rights activist with a math-enamored son) with a "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS" note, but this conversation with Anna Clark provides an overview of his interests and range.

The Doors of the Body by Mary Alexandra Agner (Mayapple Press).
Mary's a personal friend, so I'm pleased to see this collection garnering rave reviews (and nominated for a Pushcart, too!). It's beautifully produced, and if my fairy godmother felt like stopping by the North Pole for a while, I'd ask her to sneak a copy of this chapbook in with every Barbie he plans to deliver.

* * *

Peg Duthie's lyrics and stories have appeared at 7x20, qarrtsiluni, and elsewhere, and a quartet of holiday poems went live The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature on December 2.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Matthew Thorburn

Matthew Thorburn's selection:

Displacement by Leslie Harrison (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Chosen by Eavan Boland for the Bakeless Prize, Leslie Harrison’s first book vividly renders the aftershocks and fallout when love is displaced by betrayal, then anger and regret. “No map for how to live past this,” Harrison writes, but these poems map out the unfolding days and nights of that new life. They are, by turns, bitter and hopeful, angry and funny, sly and wise. Physically as well as emotionally uprooted, the speaker of these poems has gone off into the country, in order to gain the distance needed to see the world again – to gain a deeper perspective and a steadier hold on life, both her own and the capital-L Life of the larger, wilder world. “This is the address of distance,” Harrison writes, “where distance came to live // in the seefar longlight in the shining day.”

* * *

Matthew Thorburn is the author of a book of poems, Subject to Change, and a recently published chapbook, the long poem Disappears in the Rain. He lives in New York City and writes about writing at Elsewhere

Poems Can Stop Bulldozers

Jill Alexander Essbaum reads her poems on the Poetry Magazine Podcast along with Valzhyna Mort and John Kinsella.



Buy Harlot here.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Marcela Sulak

Marcela Sulak's selections:

Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki by Tony Barnstone (BkMk Press)

Pulleys and Locomotion by Rachel Galvin (Black Lawrence Press)

Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

Ink for an Odd Cartography by Michelle Battiste (Black Lawrence Press)

* * *

Marcela Sulak is the author of Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press January 2010), the chapbook Of All The Things That Don’t Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press 2008), and three book-length translations of poetry from the Czech and French. She is currently an assistant professor of literature at American University, but as of March, 2010, she will be the Director of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar-Ilan University.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Leigh Stein

Leigh Stein's selections:

Ohio Violence by Alison Stine (University of North Texas Press)
"Does it matter if it didn't happen?" -p56
Fields, road kill, secrets, best book I've ever read on a plane.

Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia Books)
"A mistake had been made. 'Should we shoot it?' asked Walter B. 'Of course,' sighed Beatrice, 'we should not shoot it.'" -p24
Banquets and debacles, as explained by the last two people on earth.

* * *

Leigh Stein is the author of the chapbooks How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press) and Least Inhabited Island II (h-ngm-n Combatives). She lives in Brooklyn, where she teaches drama to public schoolchildren and dresses up like a mouse princess at comic book conventions.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Anne Gorrick

Anne Gorrick's selections:

Luminous Flux by Lynn Behrendt (Lines Chapbooks)

DARC by Maryrose Larkin (FLASH + CARD)

Cadaver Dogs by Rebecca Loudon (No Tell Books)

Temporary Bunk by Lori Anderson Moseman (Swank Books)

Big American Trip by Christian Peet (Shearsman Books)

Position & Relation by India Radfar (Station Hill Press)

In the Architecture of Bone by Alan Semerdjian (Gen Pop Books)

Manatee/Humanity by Anne Waldman (Penguin)

* * *

Anne Gorrick’s work has been published in many journals including: American Letters and Commentary, Bird Dog, Copper Nickel, the Cortland Review, Fact-Simile, Fence, Filling Station, Glitterpony, Gutcult, No Tell Motel, Otoliths, the Seneca Review, Shearsman, Sous Rature, Sulfur, Wheelhouse and word for/word. Collaborating with artist Cynthia Winika, she produced a limited edition artists’ book called “Swans, the ice,” she said with grants through the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She also curates the reading series, Cadmium Text, which focuses on innovative writing in and around the New York’s Hudson Valley. Find out more about the readings at: www.cadmiumtextseries.blogspot.com

Her first book, Kyotologic, is available from Shearsman Books (Exeter, UK). I Formation will be out in 2010, also from Shearsman Books.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - John Findura

John Findura's selections:

Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)
It is impossible for Zachary Schomburg to write anything less that an excellent poem. He's so good it scares me.

Book of Whispering In The Projection Booth by Joshua Marie Wilkinson (Tupelo Press)
JMW is currently my favorite living poet. Why? Read his books. All of them.

Something Has To Happen Next by Andrew Michael Roberts (U. of Iowa Press)
The right combination of everything is found in here.

At night by Lisa Ciccarello (Scantily Clad Press) - echap
So intense I nearly bit through my tongue.

Sunny Wednesday by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books)
Sad songs say so much. This book says what those songs can't.

* * *

John Findura holds an MFA from The New School. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of the chapbook Useful Shrapnel (Scantily Clad Press, 2009) and his poetry and criticism appear in journals such as Mid-American Review, Verse, Fugue, Fourteen Hills, CutBank, No Tell Motel, H_NGM_N, Jacket, and Rain Taxi, among others. Born in Paterson, he lives in Northern New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Nathan Logan

Nathan Logan's selections:

The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)

The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey (Magic Helicopter Press)

Used White Wife by Sandra Simonds (Grey Book Press)

Borrowed House by Brooklyn Copeland (Greying Ghost Press)

* * *

Nathan Logan is the author of the e-book Dick (PANGUR BAN PARTY, 2009) and the chapbook Holly from Muncie (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in/are forthcoming from elimae, Event, pax americana, and SIR! among others.

New Titles by No Tell Poets

Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina (Cleveland State Poetry Center)

Slaves to Do These Things by Amy King (BlazeVox)

rock. paper. scissors. by Scott Glassman (Ahadada Books) (free e-chap)

They Speak of Fruit by Gary L. McDowell (Cooper Dillon)

Your Name Is The Only Freedom by Janaka Stucky (Brave Men Press)