Poetry Notes
by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 2/26/2007
MARCH PUBLICATIONS
Inspired by urban gardens, the morning subway and history speaking from each cornice, fire escape and Laundromat window of New York City, Floating City, Anne Pierson Wiese's lyrical if talky Walt Whitman Award–winning debut (selected by Kay Ryan) mixes lavish descriptions, scene-setting reportage and understated self-revelation: "I notice myself growing older most/ among other growing things." Wiese also remembers her Midwestern roots, taking a few scenes and subjects from the Great Plains, where her family still lives. (LSU, $16.95 72p ISBN 978-0-8071-3235-7)
The Resurrection Trade, the detail-rich fifth outing from Minnesota poet Leslie Adrienne Miller delves into the surprisingly close connections between the anatomy of women, as described by Leonardo da Vinci and others; the real erotic life of the poet and of women in general; the poet's European travels; and, most affectingly, the toddler she is now raising, who made those travels difficult or impossible, but gave her even better sources for poems: "The house is a map the new mother unfolds." (Graywolf, $14 paper 110p ISBN 978-1-55597-463-3
FEBRUARY PUBLICATIONS
Performance poet and Slam champ Roger Bonair-Agard shows his chops and his Trinidad-via-Brooklyn roots in his exciting if occasionally unpolished debut, Tarnish and Masquerade, packaged with an audio CD. The book follows the journey he—and so many others—undertook to American cities, where hip-hop culture, Afro-Caribbean tradition, familial affection and economic hardship all add their timbres to his voice, "a haughty English and rhythmic dialect strung together on the stout cord of understanding." (Cypher [SPD, dist.], $12 paper 104p ISBN 978-1-892494-69-6)
Excellent new poems by prolific surrealist, grouchy comic, underground hero and oddball formal virtuoso Bill Knott ("One of my pores creaks/ when I pass through it/.../ soon for the last time") join haunting, humorous collages by poet and artist Star Black in Stigmata Errata Etcetera; intro. by Mark Doty. (Saturnalia [SPD, dist.], $16 80p ISBN 978-0-9754990-4-7)
