{"title":"Poetry in Conversation","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003eJoin us for in-person monthly discussions of a book of poems chosen by a local poet. We'll have copies of each month's selection on hand in the shop and available online. Registration is not required, and these events are free. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003eVisit our \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/2024-events-calendar\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e2026 Calendar of Events\u003c\/a\u003e to see upcoming scheduled dates and mark your calendars. \u003cstrong\u003eThese conversations will take place on Sundays, from 12:30 to 2:00. \u003c\/strong\u003eWe'll be revealing the name of each month's poet, along with their book selection, in our \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/openpoetrybooks.us15.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=589b7359bea0dca0571277a2b\u0026amp;id=f1b9b0eb26\" target=\"_blank\"\u003emonthly newsletter\u003c\/a\u003e. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/4-19-poetry-in-conversation-with-dujie-tahat?_pos=4\u0026amp;_sid=aa387c181\u0026amp;_ss=r\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eApril\u003c\/a\u003e: An Authentic Life by Jennifer Change, selected by Dujie Tahat\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/5-17-poetry-in-conversation-with-troy-osaki\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eMay\u003c\/a\u003e: The Gate of Memory, edited by Brynn Saito \u0026amp; Brandon Shimoda, selected by Troy Osaki\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/6-14-poetry-in-conversation-with-rae-armantrout\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eJune\u003c\/a\u003e: Ruins of Nostalgia by Donna Stonecipher, selected by Rae Armantrout\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/7-19-poetry-in-conversation-with-paul-hlava-ceballos\"\u003eJuly\u003c\/a\u003e: Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin, selected by Paul Hlava Ceballos\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/8-16-poetry-in-conversation-feat-ally-ang\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAugust\u003c\/a\u003e: The Hell of That Star by Kim Hyesoon, selected by Ally Ang\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/9-20-poetry-in-conversation-feat-lue-hughes?_pos=10\u0026amp;_sid=f704c3151\u0026amp;_ss=r\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eSeptember\u003c\/a\u003e: Bluest Nude, selected by Lue Hughes\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 14px;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: trebuchet ms, lucida grande, lucida sans unicode, lucida sans, tahoma, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/pages\/10-18-poetry-in-conversation-feat-kelli-russell-agodon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eOctober\u003c\/a\u003e: I Am Trying to Love the Whole World, selected by Kelli Russell Agodon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"hughes-luther-touched","title":"Hughes, Lue: Touched","description":"\u003cp\u003eSibling Rivalry Press, chapbook\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: January 30, 2018\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI trust Lue Hughes with the body. In\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eTouched\u003c\/i\u003e, Hughes is careful with it, she handles the body as deliberate and tender as one would a poem. The bodies here, be they black, queer, animal, living, or recovering, are given an authority only possible in poems, and only executed right in the handles of a capable poem. Hughes is more than capable though. Here is the first announcement of a bad one, y’all. And I mean black people bad. Good bad. Bad bad. “When you reached the bladder,\/ there was God.” Yep. Hughes said that. I didn’t know I was waiting on someone to say all these things until I opened them up and lived them. And it took living to make these poems. And it is our pleasure to live in them now. “Touched” is only one thing this book will leave you. Let it leave you these ways also: awed, floored, stunned, healed, shaken, still, better, clean, ready to read it again.\u003cbr\u003e- Danez Smith, author of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eDon’t Call Us Dead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe voice emerging from Lue Hughes’\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eTouched\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis unafraid of tenderness and bruise. Every poem in this chapbook collection risks a “madly, meat seething romance” with the past and with home. The bodies central to this work are black and holy, at once hunted and denied. I find myself, in encountering that raw in this book, wondering after its dark spaces: “At the end of the day, agony is a mouth.”\u003cbr\u003e- francine j. harris, author of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlay Dead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLue Hughes is a Seattle native. She is the Founder\/Editor-in-Chief of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ethe Shade Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand Associate Poetry Editor for\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Offing\u003c\/i\u003e. She is a\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eWindy City Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eChicago: 30 Under 30 Honoree.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":31566060716055,"sku":"9781943977451","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/71IovhQy6FL._SL1360.jpg?v=1785955674"},{"product_id":"conjure-by-rae-armantrout","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Conjure","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September 8, 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \"A new book of poems by the National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize-winner, exploring thought, dialogue, and everyday interactions.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":31573313978391,"sku":"9780819579973","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/rae.jpg?v=1591919589"},{"product_id":"tahat-dujie-salat","title":"Tahat, Dujie: Salat","description":"\u003cp\u003eTupelo Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: November 1, 2020\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eSalat\u003c\/em\u003e, or \u003cem\u003esalah\u003c\/em\u003e, means prayer in Arabic. In SALAT, the structure of prayer is transformed into poetic form free from the narrow strictures of Muslim and non-Muslim minds. At the most basic level, these poems interrogate coming of age as a Muslim immigrant boy in post-9\/11 America. These poems take us from classrooms to hotel pools, corner stores to airports, playgrounds to dream states in order to pose questions and reassemble memories about place, belonging, alienation. This collection is less a statement on parenthood, state violence, racism, and disenfranchisement so much as a prayer hovering over it all, hoping against hope that the incantation might be enough to sustain us.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32952773509143,"sku":"9781946482402","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/dt.jpg?v=1605205251"},{"product_id":"04-27-2021-dialogues-with-rising-tides-by-kelli-russell-agodon","title":"Agodon, Kelli Russell: Dialogues with Rising Tides","description":"\u003cp\u003eCopper Canyon Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: April 27, 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Kelli Russell Agodon's fourth collection, each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under. The anxieties and heartbreaks of life--including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide--are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor. \u003cem\u003eDialogues with Rising Tides\u003c\/em\u003e does not answer, This or that? It passionately exclaims, And also! Even in the midst of great difficulty, radiant wonders are illuminated at every turn.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32980403486743,"sku":"9781556596155","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/71nsNj5CRoL._SL1500.jpg?v=1788643640"},{"product_id":"11-16-2021-banana-we-pilot-the-blood-by-paul-hlava-ceballos-quenton-baker","title":"Hlava Ceballos, Paul \u0026 Quenton Baker: Banana [ ] \/ we pilot the blood","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eChristina Sharpe \u0026amp; Torkwase Dyson\u003c\/span\u003e (The 3rd Thing, paperback)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: November 16, 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis tête-bêche (head-to-toe) book is more than the sum of its parts: two poetic accounts of Empire by two different writers. Assembled from Senate documents detailing the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole, Quenton Baker's \u003cem\u003ewe pilot the blood\u003c\/em\u003e considers the position of blackness and the ongoing afterlife of slavery. Paul Hlava Ceballos's \u003cem\u003eBanana [ ]\u003c\/em\u003e collages declassified CIA documents, corporate reports, horticultural papers and personal accounts into a bloody portrait of multinational exploitation. Between these lyrical interrogations is a contemplative interval conducted by the writer and scholar Christina Sharpe in collaboration with Torkwase Dyson's \u003cem\u003eHypershapes\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39362491056151,"sku":"9781734407181","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/pchqb.jpg?v=1628715299"},{"product_id":"03-08-2022-finalists-by-rae-armantrout","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Finalists","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublication Date: March 8, 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublisher Marketing: A double book by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat will we call the last generation before the looming end times? With\u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e Finalists\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Rae Armantrout suggests one option. Brilliant and irascible, playful and intense, Armantrout nails the current moment's debris fields and super computers, its sizzling malaise and confusion, with an exemplary immensity of heart and a boundless capacity for humor. The poems in this book find (and create) beauty in the midst of the ongoing crisis.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCONTRAST\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat's to like\u003cbr\u003eif not contrast?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShadows beneath\u003cbr\u003ethe model's sharp\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003echeekbones, her ample\u003cbr\u003eyet precise lips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eClean lines separating\u003cbr\u003ebounty\u003cbr\u003efrom its opposite.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is not\u003cbr\u003ewhat I want\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto want.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese eyes\u003cbr\u003eon the hypothetical\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edistance.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39363410100247,"sku":"9780819580689","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/rae_75d89af3-85e8-4826-b4aa-b2c2ef845451.jpg?v=1628812221"},{"product_id":"09-13-22-codjoe-ame-bluest-nude-poems","title":"Codjoe, Ama: Bluest Nude: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eMilkweed Editions, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September, 13, 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"productDetailElements\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"shortAnnotation\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\"\u003ePublisher Marketing: Codjoe’s poems explore how the archetype of the artist complicates the typical expectations of women:\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ebe gazed upon, be silent, be selfless, reproduce\u003c\/em\u003e. Dialoguing with and through art,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBluest Nude\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003econsiders alternative ways of holding and constructing the self. From Lorna Simpson to Gwendolyn Brooks to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, contemporary and ancestral artists populate\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBluest Nude\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ein a choreography of Codjoe’s making. Precise and halting, this finely wrought, riveting collection is marked by an acute rendering of highly charged emotional spaces. Purposefully shifting between the role of artist and subject, seer and seen, Codjoe’s poems ask what the act of looking does to a person—public looking, private looking, and that most intimate, singular spectacle of looking at one’s self. What does it mean to see while being seen? In poems that illuminate the tension between the possibilities of openness and and its impediments,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBluest Nude\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eoffers vulnerability as a medium to be immersed in and, ultimately, shared as a kind of power: “There are as many walls inside me \/ as there are bones at the bottom of the sea,” Codjoe writes in the masterful titular poem. “I want to be seen clearly or not at all.” “The end of the world has ended,” Codjoe’s speaker announces, “and desire is still \/ all I crave.” Startling and seductive in equal measure, this formally ambitious collection represents a powerful, luminous beginning.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40173830078487,"sku":"9781571315427","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/Screenshot2026-08-03at1.29.51PM.png?v=1785788998"},{"product_id":"9-27-2022-hlava-ceballos-paul-banana","title":"Hlava Ceballos, Paul: banana [   ]","description":"\u003cp\u003eUniversity of Pittsburgh Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September 27, 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe poems in Paul Hlava Ceballos's debut collection\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ebanana [ ]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ereveal the extractive relationship the United States has with the Americas and its people through poetic portraits of migrants, family, and personal memories. At the heart of the book is a long poem that traces the history of bananas in Latin America using only found text from sources such as history books, declassified CIA documents, and commercials. The book includes collage, Ecuadorian decimas, a sonnet series in the voices of Incan royalty at the moment of colonization, and a long poem interspersed with photos and the author's mother's bilingual idioms. Traversing language and borders, history and story, traditional and invented forms, this book guides us beyond survival to love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40302035304471,"sku":"9780822966937","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/Screenshot_2026-03-05_at_12.30.25_PM.png?v=1772742647"},{"product_id":"stonecipher-donna-the-ruins-pb","title":"Stonecipher, Donna: The Ruins of Nostalgia","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: October 10, 2023\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: New work from one of the most compelling and transformative writers of the contemporary prose poem What is it to feel nostalgia, to be skeptical of it yet cleave intently to the complex truths of feeling and thought? In a series of 64 gorgeous, ramifying, unsettling prose poems addressing late-twentieth- and twenty-first century experience and its discontents, The Ruins of Nostalgia offers a strikingly original exploration of the misunderstood phenomenon of nostalgia as both feeling-state and historical phenomenon. Each poem, also titled The Ruins of Nostalgia, is a kind of lyrical mini-essay, playful, passionate, analytic. Some poems take a location, memory, conceit, or object as their theme. Throughout the series, the poems recognize and celebrate the nostalgias they ironize, which are in turn celebrated and then ironized again. Written often in the fictional persona of the first-person plural, The Ruins of Nostalgia explores the rich territory where individual response meets a collective phenomenon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Ruins of Nostalgia 13\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhere once there had been a low-end stationery store minded by an elderly beauty queen, there was now a store for high-end espresso machines minded by nobody. Where once there had been an illegal beer garden in a weedy lot, there was now a complex of luxury lofts with Parisian-style ivory façades. Where once there had been a bookstore and a bike shop and a bakery, there was now a wax museum for tourists. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been farms there were now subdivisions. Where once there had been subdivisions there were now sub-subdivisions. We lived in a sub-subdivision of a subdivision. We ourselves had become subdivided--where once we had merely been of two minds. * Where once there had been a river there was now a road. A vocal local group had started a movement to break up the road and \"daylight\" the river, which still flowed, in the dark, underneath the road. * Could we daylight the farms, the empty lots, the stationery store, the elderly beauty queen, the city we moved to? Was it still flowing somewhere, under the luxury lofts, deliquescing in the dark, inhabited by our luxury selves, not yet subdivided, because not yet whole? * Could we daylight the ruins of nostalgia?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40530735628311,"sku":"9780819500847","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/71eXhaDIg-L._SL1500.jpg?v=1777489964"},{"product_id":"agodon-kelli-russell-demystifyipb","title":"Agodon, Kelli Russell \u0026 Rich, Susan: Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo Sylvias Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: February 1, 2023\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBook creation is an art and Demystifying the Manuscript offers many perspectives on how to put together a book of poems through the essays and interviews of contemporary prize-winning poets and editors. While there isn't a single \"correct\" method for creating a book of poems, Demystifying the Manuscript is filled with expert advice on all aspects of manuscript creation: ordering your poems, determining your goals, insider tips from the editors of journals and small presses, and everything in between. 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From the new physics to mortality, Armantrout engages with the half-seen and the half-believed. These poems step into the dance of consciousness and its perennial ghost partner--\"to make the world up\/of provisional pairs.\" At a time when our world is being progressively despoiled, Armantrout has emerged as one of our most important and articulate authors. These poems push against the limit of knowledge, that event-horizon, and into the echoes and phantasms beyond, calling us to look toward the \"next life\" and find it where we can.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40679364886551,"sku":"9780819568212","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/view_archive_6fac2600-9d73-485d-b55c-3aea87278cdd.jpg?v=1697662525"},{"product_id":"armantrout-rae-partly-nepb","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Partly: New \u0026 Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press (paperback, 2017)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: Rae Armantrout's poetry comprises one of the most refined and visionary bodies of work written over the last forty years. These potent, compact meditations on our complicated times reveal her observant sensibility, lively intellect, and emotional complexity. This generous volume charts the evolution of Armantrout's mature, stylistically distinct work. In addition to 25 new poems, there are selections from her books Up To Speed, Next Life, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winning volume Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, and Itself. Including some of her most brilliant pieces, Partly affirms Armantrout's reputation as one of our sharpest and most innovative writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40679365148695,"sku":"9780819577733","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/51ZVKeBMuSL._AC_UL600_SR600_600.jpg?v=1698353656"},{"product_id":"armantrout-rae-noticepb","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Notice","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: February 6, 2024\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: A chapbook from Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout on climate change Notice is the product of a life-long interest in natural sciences by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout. 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There are even a few poems in which the author allows for something like hope.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40813984284695,"sku":"9780819501011","price":7.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/519Q-mbpHaL.jpg?v=1703108797"},{"product_id":"armantrout-rae-versed","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Versed","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: August 01, 2010\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: Rae Armantrout has always organized her collections of poetry as though they were works in themselves. Versed brings two of these sequences together, offering readers an expanded view of the arc of her writing. The poems in the first section, Versed, play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice that inevitably cracks: \"Metaphor forms \/ a crust \/ beneath which \/ the crevasse of each experience.\" Dark Matter, the second section, alludes to more than the unseen substance thought to make up the majority of mass in the universe. The invisible and unknowable are confronted directly as Armantrout's experience with cancer marks these poems with a new austerity, shot through with her signature wit and stark unsentimental thinking. Together, the poems of Versed part us from our assumptions about reality, revealing the gaps and fissures in our emotional and linguistic constructs, showing us ourselves where we are most exposed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40817190404119,"sku":"9780819570918","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/9780819570918.jpg?v=1703810875"},{"product_id":"hughes-luther-shiver-in-pb","title":"Hughes, Lue: Shiver in the Leaves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e(BOA Editions)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September 27, 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNestled against the backdrop of Seattle's flora, fauna, and cityscape, Luther Hughes' debut poetry collection wrestles with the interior and exterior symbiosis of a gay Black man finding refuge from the threat of depression and death through love and desire.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHughes draws readers into a Seattle that is heavily entrenched in violent anti-Blackness, and full of vulnerable and personal encounters from both the speaker's past and present. With reverent and careful imagery, Hughes fashions deeply saturated, tender vignettes that reckon relationships between family and friends, lovers, nature, and the police-state.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA Shiver in the Leaves\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis stunningly cinematic in its layered portrayal of the never-ending dualities of a queer Black poet's life in the city. Hughes's interrogation of selfhood renders a sharply intimate and viscerally powerful reimagining of what it means to be alive in a body, and what it can mean\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eto live\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41208040947735,"sku":"9781950774678","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/ShiverCover.jpg?v=1714073664"},{"product_id":"lin-esther-cold-thiefpb","title":"Lin, Esther: Cold Thief Place","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlice James Books, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: March 11, 2025\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: Cold Thief Place speaks of the experiences of an undocumented American, her parents who fled Communist China and found safety in fundamentalist Christianity, and how she tried to understand them and herself by way of confessional poems.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a family story. It tells of a mother who fled an authoritarian government and turned that authoritarianism on to her children. Of a father who made a new life--three times on three different continents--and his sea voyage in between. Or what a daughter imagines of these events, as much as it's possible to truly know one's parents. The narrator, who is their daughter, grew up in difficult but very different circumstances, too: undocumented in the United States and was pressured into a greencard marriage in order to live a \"normal life.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the myths of America is that Americans are newly formed, defiant of authority, and free from old-world traditions. This book speaks to dark side of this myth: of the legacies that my parents wished to escape but instead carried with them: their distrust of government and their desire for an authoritarianism similar to the kind they had fled. Individually, the poems attempt to understand the emotions surrounding these impulses, from the point-of-view of their daughter, who is herself displaced as an undocumented American--that is, a person who is not permitted to be American, and without a home country to return to.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41536727449623,"sku":"9781949944709","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/Screenshot2026-03-01at4.55.20AM.png?v=1772369727"},{"product_id":"chang-jennifer-an-authentpb","title":"Chang, Jennifer: An Authentic Life","description":"\u003cp\u003eCopper Canyon Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: October 15, 2024\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: An Authentic Life is an exacting and fearless interrogation of the education one receives from the institutions of academia and family. Sprawling yet urgent, meditative yet lucid, the poems in Jennifer Chang's anticipated third collection, An Authentic Life, offer a bold examination of a world deeply influenced by war and patriarchy. In dialogues against literature, against philosophy, and against God, Chang interrogates the \"fathers\" who stand at the center of history. Poems navigate wounds opened by explorations of family and generational trauma, and draw on the author's experiences as a mother, as the daughter of immigrants, and as a citizen of our deeply divided nation. Here, the patriarchal violence of history becomes intimate, brought down to a domestic scale. A woman sweeping the floor cannot escape thoughts of war, or her dying mother, while another scene shows friends questioning the \"despite-ness\" of love. In poems where the lyric is reimagined as porous, discursive, and bursting open, Chang fearlessly confronts the forms of knowledge that hold power. Meticulous and masterful, An Authentic Life creates a world where we can begin \"to unlearn everything.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41536735182871,"sku":"9781556596995","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/Screenshot2026-03-01at12.46.18PM.png?v=1772397986"},{"product_id":"armantrout-rae-go-figurepb","title":"Armantrout, Rae: Go Figure","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: August 6, 2024\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with \"this ongoing attempt\/ to catalog the world\" in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who \"check-marks morning\/once more\/\/like someone who gets up\/to make sure\/\/ the door is locked\" to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: \"We name things\/ to know where we are.\" Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. \"It's true things fall apart.\" Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking\/we heat ourselves up.\" Sample Text HYPER-VIGILANCE Hilarious, the way a crab's slender eye-stalks stand straight up from its scuttling carapace— the way vigilance takes many forms? * That bird check-marks morning once more like someone who gets up to make sure the door is locked. * I sound like I know what I'm talking about. 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The poetry expresses a range of experiences and perspectives from the afterlife of this historical yet enduring injustice. With a foreword by acclaimed poet, activist, and concentration camp survivor, Mitsuye Yamada, and an introduction by the editors, poets Brynn Saito and Brandon Shimoda, \u003cem\u003eThe Gate of Memory \u003c\/em\u003eexplores intergenerational trauma as the contributors, all of whom are descendants of those who were incarcerated, sift through an intimate record of wartime incarceration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContributors to this anthology include poets of Japanese American, Japanese Canadian, Okinawan American, Okinawan Canadian, Japanese Hawaiian, Alaska Native, mixed race Nikkei, and Japanese descent. Their poems reimagine, reinhabit, and retell the story of incarceration while embodying its many legacies, through a diversity of modes and themes, creating a panoramic portrait of anti-Asian racism, assimilation, loyalty, resistance, and redemption. The anthology illuminates individual perspectives and reveals collective experience. It insists upon the imperative of poetry in the processes of solidarity and transgenerational healing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith contributions from: Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, Brittany Arita, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Brian Komei Dempster, Miya Folick, Sesshu Foster, Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, Steve Fujimura, Laura K. Fukumoto, Cathlin Goulding, Rebecca A. Green, Richard Hamasaki, Sharon Hashimoto, Casey Hidekawa Lane\/Levinski, Garrett Hongo, Jodi Hottel, Kurt Yokoyama Ikeda, Kevin Irie, Michael Ishii, Erica H. Isomura, Lauren Emiko Ito, Susan Kiyo Ito, Miya Iwataki, Dr. Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, W. 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Which is to say, this is a collection of shape-shifting care packages: \u003cspan\u003epoems as reminders of what sustains us; poems that bear witness to needful defiance; poems of generosity and grit. -R.A. Villanueva\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI love these poems. They are pasalubong from that distant cousin who somehow knows you as intimately as you know yourself. -Angela Garbes\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn Dujie Tahat's latest work, they speak of a longing that cannot merely be erased through the accumulation of things. Tahat questions our insistence in the economy of our grief by constructing delicate, jewel-like memory boxes. And in the moment when we open these gifts, we are offered a chance to return to a home that is within ourselves. -Oliver de la Paz\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis collection is an innovative wonder-to borrow Tahat's words, here there are \"no blemishes.\" Only \"bloom.\" -Janine Joseph\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWith invention and verve, Tahat packs and packs each balikbayan box to gift us history and tsimis and music and grief, memory and flowers and anger and forgiveness and legacy. These boxes are of and for kasama and pamilya-not limited by borders or time or space. -Michelle Peñaloza\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat Dujie Tahat is able to do with multiple languages (English, Tagalog, Taglish, Hip Hop) is surreal and only further proves an entanglement that only they are able to deliver so gracefully.\" One of the most compelling collections of poetry I've ever come across. -Ebo Barton\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42270023024663,"sku":"9781934832868","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/61CMB0lcnfL._AC_UF1000_1000_QL80.jpg?v=1744920525"},{"product_id":"ang-ally-let-the-mopb","title":"Ang, Ally: Let the Moon Wobble","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlice James Books, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: November 11, 2025\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn poems born of intense loneliness, grief, anger, and uncertainty at a convergence of apocalypses: a raging pandemic, a worsening climate crisis, and numerous global uprisings, Ally Ang's Let the Moon Wobble asks and seeks to answer the question: What makes the end of the world worth surviving?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLet the Moon Wobble\u003c\/em\u003e considers multiple speakers' journeys through the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the rise of fascism. With humor, lyricism, and endearing absurdity, Ang uses varied forms and poetic traditions to process feelings of helplessness and uncertainty. These poems ache for connection and lineage in a time of unrelenting isolation, plumbing the depths of grief and rage against the systems and institutions that aim to repress and kill queer people of color.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoursing through \u003cem\u003eLet the Moon Wobble\u003c\/em\u003e is the deep desire for wildness, freedom from convention and constraint, and to be seen. The speaker refuses erasure, often taking up so much space that they're impossible to ignore. Ultimately, we arrive at a place of hope and possibility where what's \"freshly broken\" can give way to blooming. Ang's debut is a testament to the ways queer joy and community can fuel resistance and allow us to imagine radical new ways of being.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42287708504087,"sku":"9781949944884","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/letthemoonwobble_1.jpg?v=1752549115"},{"product_id":"kim-hyesoon-the-hell-opb","title":"Kim, Hyesoon: The Hell of That Star","description":"\u003cp\u003eWesleyan University Press, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTranslated by Cindy Juyoung Ok\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: February 3, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: Singular poetry made through censorship, elusion, and language renewal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe astonishing poetry collection \u003ci\u003eThe Hell of That Star\u003c\/i\u003e enlivens the horror of Korean life under U.S.-backed authoritarianism. Poems of blows and vomit, births and coffins alternate blithe confidence and trembling terror. When slapped seven times by a government censor, Kim responded with defiant poems. The death of language becomes a death of the writer; within death, Kim finds new life in fragmentation and reorientation. This singular volume provides a wild and rigorous study of the words of the nation-state and the self, as well as the deprivations, detainments, and surprises in between. In evading censorship, Kim's poems question, twist, and transmute; language is a site where the personal and political meet to escape containment, emptiness, and domestication. 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Blending humor with vulnerability, we embrace the beautiful messiness of relationships, of aging, of being human. Explorations of desire, technology, spirituality, aging, and even Emily Dickinson gather here, echoing like birdsong through a chapel made of missed calls. Sharp and playful, \u003ci\u003eAccidental Devotions\u003c\/i\u003e is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers--for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson's book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. 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