Author: Shannon Wagner

Sacrilegion L. Lamar Wilson Carolina Wren Press, February 2013 $17.95 79 pages Dear Dr. Poetry, I don’t expect you to understand me, because no one does. My sorrow is darker than a thousand layers of guyliner. I just wanted you, as the foremost expert on poetry, to confirm my isolation—the way my own poetry does….

Madness, Rack, And Honey: Collected Lectures Mary Ruefle Wave Books, August 2012 327 pages $25.00   Dear Dr. Poetry, I’ve been hiding my poetry for 3 years now, and I’m dying to finally tell my family I’m a poet. But there’s always been a lot of stigma about poetry ever since Cousin Terrence died of melancholy….

The Revolution Happened And You Didn’t Call Me Maged Zaher TinFish Press, September 2012 67 pages $15.00 Dear Dr. Poetry, I’ve been occupying Wall Street continuously since September 2011. Since we lost Zuccotti Park, I’ve been sneaking into Goldman Sachs’ offices at night to sleep standing up behind a filing cabinet or large ficus. I’m…

An Individual History Michael Collier W. W. Norton & Co., July 2012 80 pages $25.95 Dear Dr. Poetry, My father died when I was very young and I don’t remember him much. My mom told me that he died doing what he loved—rescuing children from burning buildings. But I recently found out that he worked…

Darkroom Jazzy Danziger University of Wisconsin Press, March 2012 72 pages $16.95  Dear Dr. Poetry, I’m a mime currently looking to transition into set design, but I keep losing jobs because my sketches are just blank pages. I have no idea how to translate emotion into visual effects or create a scene that supports a…

Happy Life by David Budbill Copper Canyon Press, August 2011 122 pages $16.00 [Editor’s note: “Dear Dr. Poetry,” a new column by Shannon Wagner, will appear regularly on this blog.]   Dear Dr. Poetry When I sold my VW van to buy my first suit for a job at Mega Corp, my aura began browning…

End of American Magic by Christopher Locke Salmon Poetry / Dufour Editions, Sept. 2011 76 pages $21.95 Arthur Miller may have pronounced the American Dream dead in Death of a Salesman, but Christopher Locke’s new book of poetry, End of American Magic, implies such a pessimistic assessment isn’t wholly accurate.  Like Miller, Locke puts the reader on…

Rust Fish Maya Jewell Zeller Lost Horse Press, April 2011 77 pages $15.00 Maya Jewell Zeller’s bio tells us that she was “Born at home in the upstairs apartment of her parents’ gas station on the Oregon coast,” and this half-sentence provides exactly enough information to authenticate the stories at the core of Rust Fish,…