Catalogue
Titles are listed alphabetically by author.
Neither World
Poems
Ralph Angel
1995. ISBN: 1-881163-12-1 / 1-881163-13-X
“A fully realized book of poems — which is just what Ralph Angel’s award-winning new volume, Neither World, is — performs a strange feat of magic. It both evokes a landscape that's already there, describing some chosen portion of the outer world, and takes us to a new interior dimension of that landscape... Angel’s poems are stamped indelibly with the mark of a unique, shaping imagination, and they’re fresh with the news of how it feels to live right now.”
—Mark Doty in The Los Angeles Times
Performing Worlds into Being: Native American Women’s Theater
Nonfiction
Armstrong, A.E., Johnson, K.L. and Wortman, W.A., Eds.
2009. 978-1-4243-3112-3
Based on the rich results of a 2007 conference at Miami University, this volume brings together some of the most prominent voices in Native North American theater. Subdivided into four thematic sections, it skilfully combines plays, interviews, surveys, critical analyses, poetic responses and essays into a truly communal approach to contemporary indigenous performance. Includes DVD with color photographs and performances.
Now
Poems
Judith Baumel
1996. 1-881163-14-8 / 1-881163-15-6
“The passionate and personal poems in Now, Judith Baumel’s second collection, often unfold in long sentences
that picture the world in sometimes harsh detail. But if they reflect an essentially troubled view of life, they also articulate a
readiness to be astonished by beauty and heartened by love.”
—Jonathan Aaron, The Boston Globe
Ariadne’s Island
Poems
Molly Bendall
2002. 1-881163-39-3 / 1-881163-40-7
“In Molly Bendall’s gorgeous new book, Ariadne’s Island, the contemporary moment and Ariadne and
Theseus’ mythic moment of ‘Pain and Departure’ are driven together. Out of that collision issues a world jagged,
askew, and ravishing. Ariadne’s Island is a ‘house of shimmering water’ in which time, love, and
departure dodge and circle, slippery as fish. What endures is the presiding force of a woman's voice: a current that cuts the vacancies
of desertion into form. This is a brilliant book: glittering and intelligent.”
—Lynn Emanuel
Dark Summer
Poems
Molly Bendall
1994. 1-881163-29-6 /1-881163-30-X
“Bendall lets loose unidentifiable viruses in the aesthetic world of posed appearances: poetry, ballet, sculpture, painting,
and dressing well. She weighs what stands forth with what is withheld. In her world, being is at once more and less than it seems. Such
ontological queasiness is, of course, up to date; it’s Djuna Barnes, it’s Colette, made current.”
—Calvin Bedient, Poetry
What Wind Will Do
Poems
Debra Bruce
1997. 1-881163-18-0 / 1-881163-19-9
“What strikes me about What Wind Will Do is Debra Bruce’s wonderful eye for the luminous detail and the
wrenching but understated lyricism of imminent loss... Along with such poets as Marilyn Hacker, Jane Kenyon, and Mary Oliver, Bruce has
given us another woman’s voice we have to listen to!”
—Julia Alvarez
Talk Poetry
Poems
Mairéad Byrne
2007. 1-881163-49-7
“Talk Poetry is so hot. High bandwidth textblocks buzz with wonderful conversations. Verbal quadrats frame teeming diversifications. It’s just gorgeous. What do you think’s going to happen when a magnificent poet finds her perfect form? Don’t let this one slip through your fingers. Unmissable.”
—Randolph Healy
Burning the Aspern Papers
Poems
John Drury
2003. 1-881163-41-5 / 1-881163-42-3
“John Drury’s marvelous new collection is a celebration of lives both extraordinary and everyday, from the sweet moan
of a delta blues singer to the high extravagance of Baron Corvo. Deft and uncanny in their psychological insights, powerful and
surprising in their meditations, these poems reflect the maturing of a true formal master, a genuine virtuoso of both soul and song.”
—David St. John
The title poem of this new collection received The Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review.
The Disappearing Town
Poems
John Drury
2000. 1-881163-31-8 / 1-881163-32-6
From Venice to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, from one disappearing town in the marshes to another, John Drury, in his first full-length book of poems, navigates through the twisty channels of memory and perception, loss and desire, where what’s real and what’s a wavering reflection attract and perplex the bedazzled explorer. …Like a camera’s viewfinder in which two halves of an image must line up perfectly to come into focus, Drury pieces together the past and the present into “one likeness that is whole.”
The Printer’s Error
Poems
Aaron Fogel
2001. 1-881163-35-0 / 1-881163-36-9
“Of the overlooked poets of our time, Aaron Fogel may be the most brilliant and the most imaginatively complex.
If you haven't read him, there is great pleasure in your immediate future. I love his work.”
—David Lehman
Virgil’s Cow
Poems
Frederick Farryl Goodwin
2009. 978-1-4243-3113-0
Twenty years in the making, Virgil’s Cow is the debut collection by apocalyptic American poet and former hardcore vocalist Frederick Farryl Goodwin. Improbably fusing the best of what tradition has to offer this “Oxbridge” educated poet with attention to recombinatory energies, Virgil’s Cow presents a luminous voice for today’s brave new linguistic world of “hybridized” possibility.
A Fight in the Doctor’s Office
Novella
Cary Holladay
2008. 978-1-4243-3111-6
“Cary Holladay’s lovely tale of misguided desire combines the precise vision of Flannery O’Connor with the brutal comic touch of Lewis Nordan. I can’t remember the last book I read with as many moments of mystery, illumination and emotional honesty.”
—Michael F. Parker, author of If You Want Me to Stay and Don’t Make Me Stop Now
This item is available as part of a bundle.
The Perfect Life
Poems
Kate Knapp Johnson
1993. 1-881163-04-0 / 1-881163-05-9
“What I love about this luminous book is its courage, its wit, and its unrelenting honesty, but most of all I love the almost
spiritual joy at its center, the calm there, the generosity, the strength.”
—Thomas Lux
Wind Somewhere, and Shade
Poems
Kate Knapp Johnson
2001. 1-881163-33-4 / 1-881163-34-2
“Kate Johnson’s gift is to make the inner life so clear and concrete as to fix a self to the page.
She confronts suffering without erasing the possibility of love, or denying the presence of joy. Distilled and direct, plain and
mysterious at once, these poems involve us in moments in the work of soul-making.”
—Mark Doty
Brilliant Windows
Poems
Larry Kramer
1997. 1-881163-22-9 / 1-881163-23-7
“Larry Kramer brings to his poems, as Brilliant Windows generously brings to its readers, that rarest element in
poetry these days: a feeling for the human comedy so profound and far-reaching in its sympathies that it restores one’s faith
in what earlier ages called ‘wisdom.’ Lyrically charged, passionately conceived, completely free of the moribund
trappings of literary fashion, the music of these poems rises to the pitch of their grandly secular vision. This is a book that—
like a talisman for the twenty-first century—one could, in all faith, slip into the hands of one’s children, or
one’s children’s children.”
—Sherod Santos
Between Cup and Lip
Poems
Peter Manson
2008. 978-1-4243-3110-9
Between Cup and Lip is Peter Manson’s first American book publication. Containing 18 years of previously uncollected work, Between Cup and Lip forms the missing link between two collections published in Britain, For the Good of Liars (Barque, 2006) and Adjunct: An Undigest (Edinburgh Review, 2005), demonstrating the continuum between the prosodically-dense, endlessly considered poetry of the former and the procedural work of the latter.
Out of print
Kisses
Poems
Steve Orlen
1997. 1-881163-20-2 / 1-881163-21-0
“Orlen is a wonderful poet and one of the best practitioners of free verse writing today. The sounds of his poems bang and
glide. Most fine poetry strikes the mind and heart. This is true of Orlen as well, but his poems also strike the ear. They feel good
in the mouth.”
—Stephen Dobyns
Badlands
Novella
Cynthia Reeves
2007. 978-1-4243-3109-3 / 978-1-4243-3108-6
Winner of the 2006 Miami University Press Novella Contest, Badlands portrays the twenty–four–year marriage of Caro and Daniel Singleman—the marriage that was, is, and might have been. As the dying Caro confronts a night of crisis, the couple attempt to reshape the present by reconstructing the past through the interleaving of memory, hallucination, and dream. In this fraught terrain, Badlands explores two human mysteries—the inscrutability of the heart and the persistence of hope in the face of overwhelming loss.
This item is available as part of a bundle.
Selected Poems
1965-1995
Hugh Seidman
1995. 1-88163-10-5 / 1-881163-11-3
“[T]he anguish of these poems remains immediate, absolute... I know few collections so lacking in complacency, so adamant
in their refusal to charm or console, so fiercely intelligent.”
—Louise Glück, The Village Voice
Selected Poems: 1965-1995 was chosen as one of The Village Voice’s “25 Favorite Books of 1995” and was listed as one of the top 10 poetry books of the year—the only book published by a university press—by a panel of professional literary critics from such places as The Chicago Tribune, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Review of Books, and The Washington Post.
The Waiting Room
Novella
Albert Sgambati
2006. 1-881163-48-2
Winner of the Miami University Press Novella Contest for 2005, The Waiting Room is a compact tale of alienation, abandonment, love and transgression. Albert Sgambati’s prose is sharp, funny and very much of the moment, and his characters are unique and sympathetically drawn. The Waiting Room will stay with readers long after the reading and the waiting is over.
This item is available as part of a bundle.
Long Distance
Poems
Aleda Shirley
1996. 1-881163-16-4 / 1-881163-17-2
“Reminiscent of poems of the late Richard Hugo, Shirley’s measured lyric language and seamless craftmanship reveal
the offroad intimacies and profundities of the American landscape.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This item is not available online.
- Cloth: $15.00
Miami University
A Personal History
Phillip R. Shriver. Edited by Dr. William Pratt
1998. 1-881163-28-8
Miami University: A Personal History incorporates the lectures on Miami history which have been given by a former president to large classes for many years. As a complement to Walter Havinghurst’s narrative of The Miami Years —the primary source of university history ever since the Sesquicentennial Year of 1959, when it was first published— the Shriver history is a personal account, often with humorous asides, of a university rooted in the western academic tradition, which bears an Indian tribal name native to southwestern Ohio.
For individuals and trade, call (513) 529-2600 or fax (513) 529-2625 Miami University Bookstore, Phillip R. Shriver Center, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056.
Kingdom Come
Poems
Jim Simmerman
1999. 1-881163-26-1 / 1-881163-27-X
“Jim Simmerman’s new book...offers troubling and resonant satisfactions both in its poetic mastery and its
heartfelt inquiries.. If forced to compare him to another contemporary poet, I'd have to posit a composite: Bill Knott
(for playful inventiveness) plus Marilyn Hacker (for formal competence) plus Philip Levine (for his good heart). If that seems
like an unlikely aesthetic mix to dwell in one poet, such are the surprises in these poems.”
—Alison Deming, Sonora Review
Moon Go Away, I Don't Love You No More
Poems
Jim Simmerman
1994. 1-881163-08-3 / 1-881163-09-1
“There is a powerful, conversational ease and intimacy to Jim Simmerman’s new poems, a deceptive nonchalance that masks their deep ironies and hard-won truths. In Simmerman’s world, the delicate cracks just below the surface of our decorum are always about to erupt into chasms. Beyond the silver face of the mirror, a skeletal leer is forming. Yet the deep tenderness and fierce humanity of these poems restore us to a faith in our own futures, even as Simmerman’s ‘grievous angels’ watch over us in our private, solitary voyages. This is without question Jim Simmerman’s finest poetry.”
—David St. John
Gender Studies
Poems
Jeffery Skinner
2002. 1-881163-37-7 / 1-881163-38-5
“Jeffrey Skinner’s new book—his best yet—is powered by a deep bittersweet nostalgia, a wry
skeptical intelligence, and a canny sense of humor—all of which he uses to take aim at what is fleeting and tenuous,
what is lost and passing away. Gender Studies is a literary accomplishment, a humane achievement.
—Edward Hirsch
Rainbow Darkness
An Anthology of African American Poetry
Edited by Keith Tuma, with photographs by Lynda Koolish
2005. 1-881163-47-4
Rainbow Darkness gathers poems by a range of established and newer African American poets including Jeff Allen, Wanda Coleman, C. S. Giscombe, Terrance Hayes, Kim Hunter, Honorée Jeffers, Nathaniel Mackey, Harryette Mullen, Mendi Lewis Obadike, Reginald Shepherd, Timothy Siebles, Evie Shockley, Lorenzo Thomas, Natasha Trethewey, Anthony Walton, Crystal Williams, and Tyrone Williams, and essays by Herman Beavers, Aldon Nielsen, Kathy Lou Schultz, Evie Shockley, and Lorenzo Thomas.
The Guide to the Flying Island
Novella
Lee Upton
2009. 978-1-60743-571-6
“Lee Upton’s The Guide to the Flying Island is a carefully nuanced enchantment which unfolds in the community around an isolated island chapel and on the threshold between the psychological and the metaphysical. As I watched Jake Isinglass attempt to unravel the mysteries of a missing nun and the loss of his mother, I was captivated by the mist-filled maritime setting and the enigmatic behavior of locals and pilgrims. Any fan of Picnic at Hanging Rock or The Magus will be spellbound by Upton’s deft prose and compelling characters.
—R.T. Smith, author of Faith and Uke Rivers Delivers
After A Spell
Poems
Nance Van Winckel
1998. 1-881163-24-5 / 1-881163-25-3
“Van Winckel’s angels are those of experience, of a life lived in a world populated by the strange and
sordid, the supremely fictional and the shockingly real: bizarre relatives of mythic proportions, criminal friends shuffled
off to lengthy prison sentences, tragic lovers and their selfish needs, seductive strippers in the dance of provocation.
These people and others blossom to vivid life in memory's fertile dirt.”
—High Plains Literary Review
Beside Ourselves
Poems
Nance Van Winckel
2003. 1-881163-43-1 / 1-881163-44-X
“Nance Van Winckel’s poems work, walk, shine, splash, and heal. Their facts are hallucinatory. This traveling
phosphoric light registers and defines simultaneously many—all—parallel worlds born on the spot while walking.
Amorphous borders are the sharpest edges. ‘Blink, and this sleep is a pebble carried in the great / gullet of a dream
—augering down the lava core / and rising into the night mountains…’ Yes. And more. Fascinating.”
—Tomaz Salamun, poet
The Dirt
Poems
Nance Van Winckel
1993. 1-881163-06-7 / 1-881163-07-5
“After reading The Dirt, Nance Van Winckel’s second book of poetry, I had the feeling that I was
standing on the cusp of the poems and would not be allowed access to their meanings until I had read the book several more times…
What makes so many of the poems so good is the elegant language and imagery that made me want to reread them, to understand
each poem on its own terms.”
—Laurie Byrne Bouck, Indiana Review
Mayor of the Roses
Stories
By Marianne Villanueva
2005. 1-881163-45-8 / 1-881163-46-6
In stories simultaneously sorrowful and hopeful, Villanueva writes of the contrary beauty, ugliness and violence of her native land, the Philippines, as well as of the myriad contradictions of immigrant life in the new landscapes of America.