Satellite Convulsions

"Delirious Adventure stories in the shape of poems."--Laurie Anderson "Bibbins . . . has the courage to stop, to pin down the always irrational present moment, and the reader is eager to follow, to inhale its scathing or enticing perfume. . . . A brilliant young poet."--John Ashbery "Those who will feel themselves spoken for by these poems have been hungrily awaiting this book." --Publishers Weekly, starred review In his second collection, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, Lambda Award winner Mark Bibbins pressures language into a performance of surprising, invigorating movements across syntax and line. Vulnerable, yet suspicious and sharp-witted, he responds to a nation responsible for and besieged by a bankrupted presidency, employing concise lyrics and longer sequences while in the process inventing a new form, the exploded double haiku. Incited by progressive blogs, ad campaigns, elegy, and Eros, Bibbins addresses environmental catastrophe and grotesque political posturing in our nascent millennium, as well as the corporate media's willingness to front for the worst offenders as it both panders and condescends to audiences drunk on doublespeak. These are songs of passionate and ambivalence sung in a dark time. Wrong decisions are harder to make than most people realize, tears flying sideways in a gale. We swerve in the road so as not to hit dead things but I used to know someone who did the opposite. He liked to drive through them. Stars are most serious when seen from the back of a pickup truck while very very drunk and if someone kisses you there it doesn't count. . . . Mark Bibbins teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia University, and edits the poetry section of The Awl. He lives in New York City.

In Molly Bendall’s fourth book of poems, the verbal underworld of doing and undoing—oath, love charm, prayer, curse—becomes a refuge of tenderness and malediction. One of her generation’s most subtly imaginative poets, Bendall overhears—and whispers to the reader—a lost language which is by turns brainy and promiscuous, clueless and inscrutable, bewitching and bereft: a voice skirting a strange silence, a “goblin market” of snares, cures, trifles, and métiers inconnus. Under the spell of these poems, worlds once imagined break into growls and fingersnaps undoing the rough magic of impersonation.

Using the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” as a jumping-off point, The Cloud That Contained the Lightning explores the kinds of ethical choices we face as individuals and as a society with respect to the innovations and inventions we pursue. How are our fears, obsessions, prejudices, and cultures manifested in the ways we apply new technologies, such as the splitting of the atom? What were the attitudes that resulted in such a destructive invention? What prompted it to be used on a nation suspected to already be defeated? By weaving together the voices of Oppenheimer, his wife and brother, hibakusha (Japanese for “explosion-affected people”), and the mythological figures of Cronos and his children, Lowen creates a dialogue out of a vacuum of communication and imagines the kind of exchanges that might have led to a different outcome than the tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And in an exploration of our tendency for selective amnesia, this collection asks a critical question: How quickly will the forgotten lessons of the past allow us to repeat the tragic chapters of our history?

Tin House editors have assembled a dazzling anthology of work by established and emerging contemporary poets. Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House celebrates Tin HouseMagazine's commitment to publishing innovative contemporary poetry by both established and emerging poets. Tin House has established itself as one of the most exciting, eclectic, and popular literary magazines in America. The Village Voice declared that Tin House "may very well represent the future of literary magazines." This collection features work by Rae Armantrout, Frank Bidart, Billy Collins, Bei Dao, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Mark Doty, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Seamus Heaney, Lucia Perillo, D.A. Powell, Bin Ramke, Charles Simic, Wislawa Szymborska, C.K. Williams, and others.

David Wagoner writes about regular lives with plain grace and transcendent humanity, and the seventy-five poems he has chosen for the 2009 edition of The Best American Poetry grapple with life, celebrate freedom, and teem with imaginative energy. With engaging notes from the poets, Wagoner's superb introductory essay, series editor David Lehman's astute foreword about the current state of poetry and criticism, and cover art from the beloved poet John Ashbery, The Best American Poetry 2009 is a memorable and delightful addition to a series dedicated to showcasing the work of poets at their best.