Books published by Press 53

Kathleen McGookey's "latest collection, Instructions for My Imposter, is an irresistible read: sixty-three resonant and lovingly polished works that sing their stories with only a few well-chosen details and images. The prose poem is an overnight bag which the writer must pack carefully, given there's room only for essentials. Most of McGookey's prose poems run fewer than two hundred words." (Clare MacQueen) "In these stunning prose poems-full of family and beautiful birds, loss and quiet observation, color and so much light-McGookey has written lines that will blind you with a luminescence that springs from precision and tender attention to detail. Her explorations of daily life are by turns yearning, metaphorical, and grounded in the holy ordinary." (Anne-Marie Oomen)

The twin subjects of love and death run through Ray Morrison's book like a freight train rumbling slowly late at night across a countryside overcome with sadness and loss. I Hear the Human Noise is a masterful collection of short stories, and Morrison is proof that, even in these narcissistic, technologically driven times we're living in, there are still people out there who care deeply about what it means to just be human. -Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table

Bully Love, Patricia Colleen Murphy's second book, won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry, selected by Poetry Series Editor Tom Lombardo. Bully Love follows the poet from Ohio to Arizona, from cows and cornfields to the Sonoran Desert, from youth to middle age, from daughter to orphan, from child to childfree, from loneliness to love. As the poet leaves a broken home to build a new life for herself, she struggles to adapt to a land teaming with dangers. Against a searing sunny backdrop, the poems describe how she makes peace with an inhospitable life and landscape as she overcomes hardships such as madness, death, depression, fear, anger, loneliness, heat, and hills. She ultimately finds beauty in the desert Edward Abbey called, "not the most suitable of environments for human habitation." The poems in Bully Love examine the long-term effects of displacement: a mother displaced from her home by mental illness, a women displaced from the Midwest to the Southwest, a girl scout camp displaced by a Uranium processing plant, desert wildlife displaced by urban sprawl and mining, wilderness displaced by careless tourists, ranches displaced by freeways, solitude displaced by companionship, fear displaced by joy. The collection examines how humans form relationships with both landscapes and lovers, all through the eyes of a woman who leaves a forlorn home, suffers relentless loss, and falls in love in and with one of the world's harshest ecosystems.

Hunger to Share might be called narrative poetry, but Bresnahan thinks and observes lyrically. She is full of a hungry love-for music, art, nature, and for disparate places and cultures (Woodworth). These arresting, compelling, and moving poems take us on journeys in Asian locales, in Appalachian landscapes, and in the arena of relationships (Barr). Bresnahan...takes the reader...on an unforgettable journey to destinations as placid as a Northern Wisconsin lake, to the complex panorama of present-day Southeast Asia, and to the interior realms of grief, courage, and love (Taylor).

An engrossing, fanciful collection of stories, written with insight, wisdom, and humor, O Monstrous World! is full of cinematic plot twists and literary miracles. These are stories about lawmakers, karate teachers, antique dealers, monster hunters, and even professors told with authority and humor. Josh Woods skillfully melds fantasy with reality, putting his characters to the test, determined to find their moral compass. In the end, he finds their hearts. There are monsters among us, but, more often, there are unlikely heroes. A joy to read from start to finish. -Margaret McMullan

To Be the Difference by Willie James King is filled with ". . .bare-boned, scalpel-edged verse [that] reverses and heals the mad maladies of our time" (Michael Martone); it is "Musical, passionate, and compassionate, without any airs or mask" (LaWanda Walters), and "The poems celebrate the courage of loved ones and petition for human rights not yet fully realized and still at risk. King's words are always hopeful and outlined with wisdom, clarity, and light" (Beth Copeland).

The Dictionary of Unspeakable Noise: New & Selected Poems 1975-2018 shows how Clint McCown ". . .keeps a wry eye on the universe and thereby keeps his sanity and ours." And why "He is asking all or most of the big questions, which are still the right questions," according to Roger Mitchell. Matthew Dickman says that McCown's poetry ". . .delves into the unruly world of nature, not as a guide or simply as scenery, but with the steady gaze of the late John Haines. Here nature, family, and selfhood are not just talked about but explored and questioned." Open this book to any page and you'll find Clint McCown turning the universe over and over in his mind to find the answers to his sometimes unusual and always perceptive questions.

Michael Hettich is one of our best and most necessary poets because his dreamlike stories remind us how little we truly see and how often we sleep through the day's deep revelations. This collection-so tightly choreographed and flawlessly written-is like a long poem that shines brighter with each turn of the page. By book's end, one is desirous to know more clearly those mysteries of the inner vision, and to bring a keener awareness to the fraught and fragile natural world that is ours to inhabit, nourish, and preserve. To Start an Orchard is a call to arms, demanding consciousness, responsibility, and love. -Richard Jones

Jacinta V. White's Resurrecting The Bones will not let southern African American history be silenced by re-zoning, gentrification, and useful forgetfulness. White's poems are Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy's "limbo time" in action. Each poem is a personal and historical guide through the richness and fullness of black southern culture and the mighty black church. White's language is hard-hitting, tender, and cosmic. Her images are sharp and unforgettable. The poems are narrative with a lyrical pulse that pulls the reader deeper into the rural landscape. A must read. -Tyree Daye

In the neighborhood of Jim Peterson's Speech Minus Applause, the dog bowl refills itself. There is nothing and everything to do. Thought is the only sound, and strangers, friends, animals and loved ones, old and new, come and go like fragments of light outside the window, travel down tributaries fed by a city, a street, a door, a mouth-a home becomes a body and the body a refuge for introspection and reverie, a leafy whirlwind of memory. In these wise and darkly animated poems, the wrinkled lines between dream and dreamer are called into question, and a curious and grief-struck eye turns to watch itself wander, from room to room, through its own joy and sadness-the voices in Peterson's newest collection can only, despite their loudest and wildest attempts, speak to themselves, and through that silence, they speak to everyone. -Grant Kittrell

Enigma is a stunning collection that works like good medicine. Endrezze is fiercely honest, bravely facing the terrors of history and our present world, but suffusing her vision with profound love. Her poems create a survivor's trail that can lead us back to sanity. Astonishing language and images greet us on every page. I will return to the intoxicating songs of this volume again and again, to sustain me in dark moments, reminding me of all that is worth saving. -Mona Power

Cowboy poet Sean Sexton's May Darkness Restore "is a glorious book-Sexton's generous, unerring artist's eye finds extraordinary beauty in the often difficult everyday facts in the life of a third-generation Florida cattle rancher. He glories in the magic and alchemy of language and turns words and phrases like 'Rhizobium leguminosarum' and 'raggedy-assed tractor' into pure poetry. This book celebrates the beauties of generation, death, rebirth and love, and offers us all a share of truly redemptive grace." -Sidney Wade, author of Bird Book: Poems