Books published by Spuyten Duyvil

"Poetry by Anne Waldman presents various studies of place and protest, with images from such. Reflections on the state of the republic and the res publica of art"--

Lee Slonimsky's unique talents-a lyric voice, an affinity for mathematics and science, a playful way with language, and a passion for the natural world-combine with kaleidoscopic beauty in his new book of poems. Tibbetts Brook Park, 1953 is rich with small, precise observation about the larger world while highlighting a number of recurring obsessions-dragonflies, gnats, birds, and chicory-including a stunning sequence of sonnet-based poems about the life of Pythagoras. Slonimsky has a deft touch with rhyme and meter and a deep thirst for answers: "Where else did petal numbers come from? (Seventeen or eighteen, twenty-one; erratic but specific, mostly prime)". This is an unexpected and revelatory book from an exceptionally gifted poet. Liza Bennett, author of Bleeding Heart

"Yuri Vynnychuk is one of the most popular writers of Ukraine. His works are hotly debated and awarded many prizes. It's great that the cult author of Lviv can now cast a spell over German-speaking readers as well." Yuri Andrukhovych (Ukraine)

"Ezekiel Black's Letters from the Junta explores the intricacies of suffering and hope, with a sparse and concise language that elucidates politics, art, war, and the intersections of our humanity."-John Gosslee

This stunningly singular-indeed all but unclassifiable-work is neither simply an elegy for the poet and philosopher Michel Deguy's wife of forty years nor simply a work of mourning. There is almost nothing here, in Deguy's sharp poetic prose and philosophical ruminations, of emotion recounted in tranquility. Rather, these often astonishing pages etch the jagged edges of anguish experienced in the immediate aftermath of the profoundly affecting death of one's beloved. In these fragments written from deep within the solitude of mourning, the entire horizon of life and love shudders and falls prey to the erosion of meaning caused by the interruption of death. Here memories and intimate details from forty years of shared life lend urgency to philosophical exegesis and analysis, carried out in dialogue with his own work and with the tradition. Memories send him rummaging through his books, excavating his oeuvre for traces of a presence now marked by absence. And his attentiveness to life and language sends him into the traditions of poetry and thought that have informed his work for decades, from Homer and Heraclitus to Heidegger, Baudelaire, Blanchot, Derrida, and Nancy. Robert Harvey's accurate and astute translation and notes are always attentive to Deguy's allusiveness and linguistic invention. Stuart Kendall

In her collection, Shelter in Place, Catherine Kyle offers unapologetic mirrors and terrifying prophecies; these graceful, imaginative poems are not afraid to look into the deep dark-within and without-into the places we often close our eyes against. Refusing retreat, spurning sanctuary, Kyle's poetry is interrogatory, seeking answers: if we advocate awareness as a "balm," especially now "in the age of the image," how can we stare into the faces of suffering and do nothing? She goes on to ask: "if this world is a story, / what is its moral," an answer that relies on our acceptance of responsibility as "the sovereign or the heir." Will we be parent or legacy, liberator or disciple? Kyle reminds us that although we often give in-make deals with crossroads demons, relinquish our "hands" for "gloves," the "softest kid skin," take the easy outs-through it all we have a choice; we can choose to be museums, to "make shelters of / our bodies," to "carry the ghosts / of what is lost." We can "become custom jobs," play our parts, save empathy, create change. Even as Kyle's poetry terrifies and punctures us with worry, it rebels, refusing to relinquish hope, goading us into bravery. Shelter in Place is a warning, a slap in the face, a kick in the ass, a pre-apocalyptic prayer, a guide to action where "agency" equals "lullaby elegy power." Kara Dorris,author of Night Ride Home and Untitled Film Still Museum

A Place in the Sun is a beautifully rendered and expertly deconstructed novel. Warsh's stunningly effective use of multiple narratives, provided in exquisitely detailed lines, conveys an elastic and powerful emotional honesty. This is a sensual and desperate story from a writer with formidable powers of invention. Donald Breckenridge

No Balloons takes place at a university in the politically correct country of Sweden where everything looks very nice and respectable. At least on the surface. At the Institute for Languages and Literature at Lund University, the Danish professor finds himself struggling with Swedish mentality. He is a man in the prime of his life, yet still everything seems to be falling apart. His problems begin when he has intercourse with a Russian student in the Muslim prayer room at the University. Apparently you're not supposed to do that. But can you really prevent a frog from being green?

An American thriller. New York City's and upstate Hudson Valley's inhabitants at constant odds with one another... old rural families, wealthy art types, publishers, artists, struggling writers, and murders old and new.

For sheer reading pleasure and fidelity to its source, this entirely new translation of Baudelaire's magnum opus is matchless. With admirable disregard for the fashionable cliché according to which poetry is fundamentally "untranslatable," Eric Gans works from the startling premise that the greatest French poet of the nineteenth century can indeed be rendered in English without significant loss of meaning or effect. His daring approach involves sticking as closely as possible to the French original, combining the translator's modesty with a remarkable poetic talent, in order to showcase not his own ingenuity but Baudelaire's distinctive vision. Poetry lovers and students of French literature alike will applaud the result. Trevor Merrill, Lecturer in French, California Institute of Technology

It is an emotional history of Ukraine with a very well researched and vivid historical background that gives the reader the opportunity to understand not only the characters and their drama, but the entire drama of the country/countries in which they lived without leaving their village.

The poems in Charlotte Seley's The World Is My Rival strike as quickly and brightly as lightning and illuminate not only the landscape but the interiors of buildings and the private lives of those within.