Thursday's Three on Poetry

Today, Thursday's Three brings you a trio of poetry books that may not have registered on your radar.

✭ The Oklahoma Poets Laureate: A Sourcebook, History, and Anthology (Mongrel Empire Press, 2015) ~ Editor Shawn Holliday, associate dean of graduate studies, Northwestern Oklahoma State University and a professor of English, provides a history of and contextual introduction to the Oklahoma Poets Laureate, biographies, critical evaluations of the 20 poets, and a selection of poems from each.

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Benjamin Myers is the state's current Poet Laureate; read a profile.

Mongrel Empire Press on FaceBook

✭ Hallelujah for 50ft Women: Poems About Women's Relationship to Their Bodies (Bloodaxe Books, April 2015) ~  The third anthology of women's poetry from Raving Beauties, the collection includes poems by Selima Hill, Kim Addonizio, Jackie Kay, and Helen Dunmore. 

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The Raving Beauties are Sue Jones-Davies, Fan Viner, and Dee Orr. Read about the group's other books.

Bloodaxe on FaceBook

Raving Beauties on FaceBook

✭ The Last Two Seconds (Graywolf Press, March 2015) ~ Poet, translator, and professor of English Mary Jo Bang's first poetry collection since Elegy (Graywolf, 2009), which won a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, this book addresses the difficulties of being human in the 21st Century.  The poem's titles — e.g., "Rude Mechanicals", "Time Trap: The Perpetual Moment", "Reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness", "Studies in Neuroscience: The Perpetual Moment", "Close Observation Especially of One under Suspicion", "The Disappearance of Amerika: After Kafka", "Filming the Doomsday Clock" — hint at our issues with time, machines, and disasters of our own making. Among her other honors, Bang received the 2005 Alice Fay di Castagnola Award.

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Mary Jo Bang Profile and Books at Graywolf

Graywolf Press on FaceBook