What a cool idea to spread poetry - for National Poetry Month Book of Kells is advocating a big poetry book giveaway for blogsters. Visit her site to see which blogs are participating. And we at CU Poetry want to spread the love of poetry as well. What do you have to do? Simply make a comment in the comment section to be in a random drawing to win one of these two awesome books.
By our very own CU Poetry member-
John Palen Open Communion New & Selected Poems by Mayapple Press
"This selection, reaching back twenty years, establishes John Palen’s quiet eloquence in poems which convey a deep, straightforward honesty about the fumblings, failures and occasional radiance of human life."
John Palen’s poetry has appeared in literary journals for more than 40 years, including Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, The Formalist, Kansas Quarterly, and Passages North, and in anthologies published by Milkweed Editions and Wayne State University Press. He was a finalist in the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Competition in 1995 and a Pushcart nominee in 2003. His Open Communion: New and Selected Poems was published in 2005 by Mayapple Press. Since then he has had chapbooks published by March Street Press and Pudding House, and poetry and short fiction appearing or forthcoming in Sleet, Press 1, Gulf Stream, Prick of the Spindle, Trigger, New Verse News, and elsewhere. His first collection of flash fiction, Small Economies, was published by Mayapple in January 2012.
Lucia Perillo Inseminating the Elephant
This book is a pulitzer prize finalist but don't hold that against it. "It is a delight to wander with [Perillo] into strange and imaginative territories. Always, I read her poems with surprise and (write it!) jealousy."—Billy Collins
Lucia Perillo’s hard-edged yet vulnerable poems attempt to reconcile the comic impulse—the humorous deflection of anxiety—with the complications and tragedies of living in a mortal, fragile “meat cage.” Perillo’s surgical honesty—and biting, nourishing humor—chronicle human failings, sexuality, and the collision of nature with the manufactured world. Whether recalling her former career as a naturalist experimenting on white rats or watching birds from her wheelchair, she draws the reader into unforgettable places rich in image and story.
Lucia Perillo is the author of four books of poetry that have won the Norma Farber First Book Award, the Kate Tufts Prize, the Balcones Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her critically acclaimed memoir, I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature, was published in 2007.