In his debut poetry collection, The Nature of Things Fragile, Peter Vertacnik depicts a world fraught with vulnerability and loss. Utilizing a wide range of both received and nonce poetic forms, including sonnets, villanelles, triolets, a sestina, epigrams, blank verse, and word-count, he confronts the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, both recent and long past ("Face Value," "Odd Elegy," "Trace,"); the memories of old houses and towns left behind...

"For too long, African Americans have been left out of the story of the nation's founding, their voices absent from the memory and celebration of the creation of the American republic. Black Writers of the Founding Era--by far the richest and most expansive anthology of its kind ever assembled--restores these voices. The writings gathered here reveal the complexity and dynamism of African American life and culture in the period and show how the principles...

"A stunning debut that "brims with the talent and generosity of a living classic" (Ilya Kaminsky), from an award-winning DeafBlind poet. Formally restless and relentlessly instructive, How to Communicate is a dynamic journey through language, community, and the unfolding of an identity. Poet John Lee Clark pivots from inventive forms inspired by the braille slate to sensuous prose poems to pathbreaking translations from ASL and Protactile, a language...