The Groundswell Moving, winner of the Branton New Voices Prize, sees David Robertson tell the story of his family in terms that are both celebratory and elegiac. In each poem, Robertson carefully locates the complicated tensions and allegiances of both our public postures and our intimate selves. In long, rugged, and occasionally Whitmanesque poems, Robertson combines a sweeping pace with a sharp eye for detail. This is a tender and exhilerating first book.
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West Wind Lifting gathers together in a single volume the critical essays, sketches, plays, and stories of acclaimed Chicago writer Dennis Booth. From his critical work on the connection between Gertrude Stein and Lizzy Borton to his funny (and often absurd) radio plays, this edition includes a generous selection of both published and unpublished work from every phase of Booth’s career.
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No one would accuse of Roger Shoran of being an optimist, much less a sentimentalist. In Almost in Space, winner of the Branton New Voices Award, he confronts the human condition in all of its messy, unsatisfying, and frequently tragic complications. At times his bleak negatives are a slap in the face to our pieties. “We want a world that’s nice and values well-being/ but nature, with gleaming teeth, just doesn’t care.” Nonetheless, for all of its seeming cynicism, the collection is ultimately a celebration of imagination, intellect, and the human bravery to bark back at the void.
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