Books published by C&r Press

Poetry. "Curtis Bauer is precise about birds, be they crows, chimney swifts, sparrows, swallows, starlings, cardinals, doves, or grackles. Like Robert Frost, he knows the phoebe doesn't weep, for--like him--he is deeply versed in country things. But Bauer is wide-ranging and doesn't make a moral distinction between Iowa and New York, any more than he does between America and Spain, where he lives part of the year. He is one of the most tender new poets I know, yet when the subject calls for it, he can be as harsh as necessary, for he is a keen observer, and he is sane, a sane realist with a vivid imagination."--Gerald Stern"Velocity, vigor, heartbreak and vibrancy: you'll find all that and more in THE REAL CAUSE FOR YOUR ABSENCE. This book is full of astounding surprises. Sometimes Curtis Bauer plays sentence against line to shake things up before he sets everything right. Sometimes, with just a word, he knocks you out."--Camille T. Dungy

Poetry. African & African American Studies. "What is and has always been needed is an honest, clear, loving voice. Earl Braggs' UGLY LOVE (NOTES FROM THE NEGRO SIDE OF THE MOON) offers that. Pull up your favorite chair and cover your cold feet with your grandmother's quilt and enjoy this wonderful read."--Nikki Giovanni

"A raunchy, gargantuan, irreverent dash through the fields of ripeness and desire, spiced by history with a lightly borne trail of cultural baggage. (Reads like fun)."George Szirtes, critic for The Times, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize"With The Pleasures of Queuing Erik Martiny joins Aidan Higgins, Julian Gough, Kevin Barry, on the more exuberant wing of the Irish comic novel. His is a frothy mix of cosmopolitanism and theologico-sexual intrigue, but echoing with an unmistakable steel behind the ribald laughs."David Wheatley, critic for The Guardian, winner of Rooney Prize for Irish Literature"Hilarious and heartfelt in equal measure, Erik Martiny's story of bohemia and bountiful creation has the verve and nerve and verbal inventiveness of early Philip Roth."Lee Jenkins, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry"The Pleasures of Queuing is an irresistible addition to the distinguished recent annals of the Irish comic novel. The breathless eloquence of Martiny's narrative sweep through the eccentricities of his version of Cork doesn't allow the reader a moment's pause."Bernard O'Donoghue, Oxford University, winner of the Whitbread Prize

"Dazzling and dizzying are the two words that come to mind after reading Mike Dockins' latest collection of poetry, Letters to So-and-So from Wherever. In this remarkable compilation of letter-poems, Dockins is a darkly comic contemporary Whitman-his language as rich and stunning, his reach as exuberant and far-ranging. From the hilariously poignant opening missive to Santa Claus to the final lines of 'Letter to Sanders from Academia'-his zany critique of (among other things) academia and corporate America-this book will carry you on a brilliant and wildly magnificent ride." Beth Gylys, Spot in the Dark "The thousand injuries of wasting through nearly eight years-eight years!- between books by Mike Dockins! I have grown thin and ragged. O how the insufferable suffering of the universe has screamed-no, yawped-for this. It was well worth the wait. America's book reviewers take note upon your iPads: here's the language laid brutally honest and crankified. Find and grip tiny thesauri to discover violent verbs that describe this assault: a pummeling, whomping, pugilating new collection." Jamie Iredell, I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac

Fiction. Women's Studies. Described in a Kirkus starred review as "a triumphant, probing debut with literary and mass market appeal," RIVER TALK introduces an unforgettable array of characters. A woman reconsiders her decision to enter a polygamous marriage; an Iraq War veteran struggles to reclaim compromised relationships; a taxidermist plies his trade to woo the woman he loves; a Somali refugee takes a job at the local mill to support her family. In surefooted and emotionally deft prose, Anderson explores loss and desire, regret and hope. Everywhere we are reminded of all that a single life contains.

Poetry. "In his stunning new book THE NAME MUSEUM, Nick McRae reminds us that every name is, finally, a museum, an elegy, a narrative, and that all narrative becomes translation of place--and the collective voice of place--sometimes 'mythic, bloody as a psalm.' McRae's formal control always certain, ever graceful, these poems fuse harshness, longing, loss, spirituality, and beauty with the 'sweat and rapture' of the very best poetry."--Claudia Emerson "The hard evidence we gather from history and local lore, from tradition and experience, determines what we believe--or so we are inclined by logic to believe. And yet we linger more over the truths that defy belief. It is a strange paradox but one Nick McRae finds everywhere he trains his vision. An email from God, an homage to a one-armed barber, snakes and trucks, saints and prophets: this is the grist of a wonderful book of poetry, half apocalypse and half love-song. It is also the work of a young poet skilled in his craft and clearly devoted to his art."--Maurice Manning

"By bringing us pear blossoms and knife blades, smells of salt and poison, Dominguez weaves an artful web out of the opposites that hold us together. History, both personal and communal, comes alive in the best way, here: through our bodies. As easily as we feel sprinkler water puddle under our toes, we also join Dominguez in the less sublime, but more poignantly human condition of gluttony (a box of Cheez-Its in one sitting-how often do you get to experience that guilty pleasure in a poem?). Even in encouraging his students to dream beyond the packinghouse, he foregrounds the physical: 'Give them queso ranchero, and then, tell them to share their words.' Read and savor these poems; join Dominguez 'eating figs from the garden' on his backyard patio for a plática poética-and finish fulfilled by the many ways his lively, compassionate narrations both awaken and placate new hungers." -Maria Melendez

Poetry. "Rarely has a book of poems been as aptly titled as Barbara Crooker's MORE. Propelled by her hunger for beauty and language, she flies in low over human experience, noticing every gesture, every flavor, every nuance of color and light. Whether she is pondering a spill of salt or stepping into a painting by Hopper, Crooker never for one second lets us forget what it is to be alive and how many ways we have been given to express our gratitude for this simple fact. 'How did all this loveliness / spring from the dark?' she asks in one poem. I don't know the answer, but by the timeI finished reading this book, I could only agree with its final sentence: 'I want all this to last'"--Sue Ellen Thompson

Sybil Baker's TALISMANS is a contemporary Heart of Darkness. In its linked stories, Baker's compelling protagonist, Elise, travels throughout Asia in search of a way to come to terms with the deaths of her first love, her mother, and, especially, her father, a Vietnam vet who drowned in Thailand, where he lived with his second wife and family after abandoning Elise when she was a child. Although it is a harrowing journey, one in which she endures the loss of a lover, an opium habit, and the temptation of suicide, it is also an uplifting journey, as full of light as of darkness. The stories trace Elise's gradual movement away from what Koreans call han, the 'longing and sadness for something or someone that you can't have,' to jung, a 'feeling of attachment and affection, no matter what happens.' By tracing Elise's achievement of jung, Baker's stories become powerful talismans against death, loss, and the kind of fear that prevents us from living fully and truly. Read them and you will feel their marvelous magic at work in your heart, mind, and soul."e;-David Jauss, author of Black Maps and Alone With All That Could Happen"e;Sybil Baker writes beautifully of a young woman's journey to make peace with her past, in spite of being impeded by loss. The felt-life of her settings pulses on every page. The young woman is brave; Sybil Baker is brave, as well, for writing with such keen honesty."e;-Patricia Henley, author of Hummingbird House and In the River Sweet

Bruce McEver's words move us to the silence behind them, as the world itself is merely the image of its larger purpose. His poems impress with the sincerity that comes from immeasurable loss and tender regard. -J. D. McClatchy Bruce McEver writes poems with his head and heart but also with his ear, which is keenly attuned to the soundscape of simple English. In his newest poems, the clear observations of a world traveler are delivered with musical balance and a quiet authority. -Billy Collins

Still haunted by the past and his most recent failures, Kent lives in a capsule hotel, penniless, jobless, forgotten by a fickle public, abandoned by his wife, and at the mercy of a nasty methamphetamine habit. But Denis Ozman, shock comic and husband of Kent's former mistress, has not forgotten what Kent did to him. He's escaped from Japan's most notorious prison and is coming once more for Kent to seek the revenge that evaded him the first time.

All we hear about are lawlessness and violence, without social history or political context to fill out the picture. THE FIFTH LASH AND OTHER STORIES gives us a portrait of Pakistan, and Muslims in general, struggling to reason their way into a better future. Paranoia, self-hatred, delusion, insecurity, serfdom, surveillance, and denial have been some of the prevalent psychological motifs of the last decade; it's important to step outside their journalistic confines and move into the lyrical borderline where responsibility follows a two-way street and causes and consequences become muddled and merged, and this is what the book seeks to do. The old securities everywhere are gone; identities are switched and tried on and abandoned faster than ever; the media landscape saturates individual consciousness, and makes lies out of centuries of tradition and heroes of plastic idols. THE FIFTH LASH AND OTHER STORIES daringly enters this phantasmagoric cauldron, where appearance and reality have seamlessly blended, to complicate the picture even further, to turn all we think we know about Islam and Pakistan on its head. The "e;truth"e; will never set you free, is the ironic signature of the original voice defining this collection. These new stories from Shivani (Anatolia & Other Stories), many set in Pakistan, parse the disconnect between public and private behavior, and the desires that must be muted in order for people to survive. In "e;Love in a Time of Communication,"e; Javed, a young worker at General Tires in Karachi, tries to get his parents a phone line while dreaming of love for himself. Social mores come into play often, such as in "e;The Abscess of the World,"e; which follows David, an American student, to Karachi to feed his fascination with Islamic law, while his Pakistani roommate at Princeton, Agha, looks to leave his past behind and work on Wall Street. In "e;The House on Bahadur Shah Zafar Road,"e; the course of young Abid's life, full of A-levels study, dreams of Oxford, and first love, contrasts sharply with that of the family's young servant girl who has become pregnant. "e;The Censor"e; traces the constantly changing rules about what is or isn't permissible on the public airwaves; numbered paragraphs offer first-person accounts such as "e;The new rules of kissing are, it's allowed if it's done Indian-style.... But no American kissing."e; Shivani is a perceptive writer who puts his finger on the contradictions his characters navigate to survive daily life. --Publisher's Weekly