"Lavishly mordant, magically bitter, erotically sardonic, the poems of This Lamentable City plant themselves on the far side of history's hopelessness, where sometimes even a trace of love springs. Ilya Kaminsky's free translations are a live-wire joy to read."
--Alicia Ostriker

Polina Barskova's poems are a zesty paradoxical concoction: erudite but bawdy, elegant though raw, subtle yet often outrageous. As Ilya Kaminsky attests in his introduction to Tupelo's newest book, This Lamentable City, "Barskova is an elegiac poet who brings to her American readers a language formally inventive, worldly and humorous. One of her strengths is her ability to bring together strikingly erotic, sensual images . . . with a deep sense of history and culture. . . . In Russian, Barskova is a master of meter, rhyme, and alliteration, and . . . (w)hat comes across in English is the tonality of the poems, the clarity of her vocal play and images, her intricacy of address." This is the first collection of Barskova's poems to be published in translation, in a handsome dual-language edition. brought to you by a team of superb poet-translators -- Ilya Kaminsky along with Kathryn Farris, Rachel Galvin, and Matthew Zapruder.

"Polina Barskova's work emerges from an intelligence and a sensibility in which poetry matters, and not only to poets. These poems arise from a confluence of history and lyric: . . . fraught with danger but vibrant with inquiry." -- Marilyn Hacker

"Barskova is a poet whose voice is at once so intimate and taunting, it can be almost impossible to resist her. 'Are you still frightened,' begins the book's first poem, 'my clueless devochka?' It is this closeness, as though her lines are whispered in your ear, that allows Barskova to turn away from us with such terrific effort in her poems. 'Now you will forget what you desired,' she writes, 'Now,/ Who you were.' ...Barskova demonstrates an extraordinary amount of vocal variation, as in 'When someone dies...,' in which Barskova is clear and unforgiving in her instructions on how to handle a dead man: 'Right now you should lick him.' ...Barkova's is a voice of stunning original and eroticism." -- Publishers Weekly

To celebrate the Spring Equinox, we're releasing the Audio CD of Annie Finch's memorable and musical book of poetry, Calendars, first published by Tupelo in 2003 and one of our perennial bestsellers.

Previously Tupelo Press has offered a CD with Coleman Barks's dynamic performances of 13th-century poet Rumi, with cellist Eugene Friesen. Calendars is the first CD we've produced from a book of contemporary poetry. Tupelo commissioned musical interludes for the CD, played on Celtic harp and recorded by Mac Ritchey, member of the world music duo 35th Parallel.

The introductory price for the Calendars CD is $12.00. As a special offer, you can get the paperback version of the book and the CD for only $20.00 (a $28.95 value). Order your copies today, by clicking here. A hardcover version of the book is also available, for $22.95.

Annie Finch will be reading from Calendars on Sunday, April 25, 2010, at 3:30 PM on the Poetry Stage at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. General admission is free; "Panel Pass" tickets are required for special events (see website below). Location: UCLA Campus, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90024. Contact: (213) 237‑BOOK or email FOBinfo AT latimes.com Information: http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/program-schedule/sunday-stages/#ps

Howard Klein's elegant, mysterious design for the cover of Patricia Fargnoli's newest book Then, Something (Tupelo, 2009) has been named as winner of an Eric Hoffer Award / "da Vinci Eye" commendation. Take another look at the cover in the next article of this newsletter. You can see that Howard used a haunting black-and-white photograph by Brian Jecker. Congratulations to all!

At this month's AWP Conference and Book Fair in Denver, we heard hundreds of visitors to the Tupelo display exclaim how impressed they are with the art and design work on our covers.

In 2009, William Kuch's design for the cover of Kristin Bock's book Cloisters received an Eric Hoffer Award / da Vinci Eye citation.

And in another celebration of this fine book, Janet McCann has written a new review of Patricia Fargnoli's Then, Something (Tupelo, 2009) in the latest issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review:

"This book makes the reader ache beautifully. Its moving meditations on aging, loss, and sorrow, framed in striking nature imagery, both remind us of our own griefs and enhance our appreciation of the natural world. . . . When all comes to an end, the poems ask, what lasts? There are exploratory forays toward answers, but no conclusive affirmation. . . . Even the attractive cover suggests this vision, with its photograph of a misty landscape in which an animal - a deer? - can barely be distinguished.

"Then, Something is divided into five sections, the first of which establishes the tone with poems of an older woman, looking back at what she has valued, beautiful things and homely. The first poem is a moving list of such things which concludes . . . 'take nothing, / take less than nothing and even less than that. Remove your shoes, place your pulse on the table, / release breath. Leave behind the scars on your finger, your thigh, the long one over your heart.' The long lines of these poem are like a great rush of breath, suggesting a whole life being indrawn, exhaled."

Dan Beachy-Quick's most recent book, This Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo, 2009), was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's annual William Carlos Williams Award. In addition, the Colorado Center for the Book at Colorado Humanities has announced that This Nest, Swift Passerine is a finalist for the 2010 Colorado Book Awards.

Read the full Colorado Humanities announcement here. And order your copy of this innovative book today directly from Tupelo's website by clicking here.

Just discovered, there's a wonderful interview with Joy Katz, author of The Garden Room (Tupelo, 2006) in the online journal Arch Literary Journal, with a discussion of the poet's ways of concentrating on remembered images:

"I let an object become the focus of my attention, clearing my mind of other thoughts. It sounds like a trance, or like meditation, but for me it was easier than meditating, because I'm overly sensitive to objects. It was a kind of self-negation. . . . Like Williams, I tried to apprehend the object 'intensely in the present, virtually out of time.' I could then perceive what I felt was the consciousness of the object. It has to do with the particular silence of a thing. The silence a made bed keeps is different than the silence an unmade bed keeps. I wanted to record those differences, to become the object through which the silence (or consciousness) passed. To become a seismograph.

"It's funny to compare what I did to meditation, since it's so materialistic -- obsessed with objects. Schopenhauer would say that no matter what 'consciousness' I thought an object emitted, or transmitted, or whatever, the poems are all constructs of my brain, since the information passed through it and into my pen. Yet the poems do feel, to me, more objective than subjective."

"Tupelo Books often end up being my favourites... which means I carry them around in my knapsack, read them in bed, and end up thinking about for my own work. No lie! I am only too happy to help out."
~ Tupelo Subscriber
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

We are offering our popular subscriptions, which save you money and bring a series of terrific books straight home to you as they're released. Buy a subscription for yourself. Then give friends and family a gift they'll treasure for years to come.

These subscriptions are like the "community-supported agriculture" or CSA memberships many organic farms are now offering to loyal customers. Like those devoted farmers, we ask our subscribers to invest in advance, during our editorial and design process, and in return we'll send nine beautiful books, postage paid, winging their way directly home to you throughout the year.

The 2010 subscription includes new books by John Cross, Martha Zweig, Polina Barskova (translated by Ilya Kaminsky), Gary Soto, Ellen Doré Watson, Rebecca Dunham, Megan Snyder-Camp, Michael Chitwood, and Stacey Waite.

The Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference provides the faculty, tools, and methods necessary to set poets with a completed manuscript or manuscript-in-process on a path towards publication. Faculty includes conference founder (and Tupelo author) Joan Houlihan as well as Jeffrey Levine, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Tupelo Press.

For details on location, requirements and cost, please visit: http://colrainpoetry.com

You may also:
Call: (978) 897-0054
Email: conferences@colrainpoetry.com
Write: Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
c/o Concord Poetry Center
40 Stow Street, Concord, MA 01742