About twenty years ago, I heard William Stafford read his poetry for about twenty minutes. For a young aspiring writer like I was then, he was mesmerizing, a mix of poetic energy and grandfatherly wisdom, with a high-spirited charm.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Aimee Nezhukumatathil & Ross Gay Lace & Pyrite Organic Weapon Arts Press, 2014 Two gardens, 500 miles apart, managed to be in conversation with one another over the span of five seasons.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Rachel Moritz Many Forms in Water above/ground press, 2014 Born of a connection to Theodor Schwenk’s 1965 text Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, this collection seeks to inhabit that infinitesimal sp...

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Nikki Wallschlaeger I Would Be the Happiest Bird Horseless Press, 2014 It is transient, it is migratory, it embarks from the restlessness of youth and family and lands in self-actualization.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Daniel Borzutzky Bedtime Stories for the End of the World Bloof Books, 2014 This is a collection in which the synaptic leaps have their own synaptic leaps. In direct confrontation with neoliberalism, Borzutzky holds nothing back.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Amber Atiya the fierce bums of doo wop Argos Books, 2014 Densely-packed prosody and firecracker content fill the pages of this stunning, debut collection. It is a native NYC voice, it is a fearless voice,

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Ashley Inguanta For the Woman Alone Ampersand Books, 2014 More artistic creation than poetry collection, more journal than sketchbook: For the Woman Alone resists category to transport the reader into the mind of an artist.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Ken Pobo When the Light Turns Green Spruce Alley Press, 2014 A garden is not always a garden: our metaphors speak of our experiences and musings. Pobo shows the reader how seasons can mean change of weather, passage of time,

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Laura Foley Joy Street Headmistress Press, 2014 Within Joy Street are access panels to the poet’s mind. She has a stunning way of bringing a reader to a place and time and then making them feel comfortable only to pull their atten...

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet The Greenhouse Bull City Press, 2014 In a collection that subverts sentiment even as it delves into the rich inner life of human sentimentality, Stonestreet stretches language and the reader’s expectations...

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Leslie McGrath By the Windpipe ELJ Publications, 2014 A poetry of the mind, a poetry of form, a poetry of sound? McGrath’s verse resists a container– it springs up organically from human impulse and psyche.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Yu Han Chao One Woman Fruit Stand Imaginary Friend Press, 2014 Stunning and startling imagery carry this collection of fruit, bearing, and creation through to the final line, “…and life will never be the same again.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Dan Brady Cabin Fever/Fossil Record Flying Guillotine Press, 2014 Modeled after Eugene Leroy’s layered paintings, these poems assemble and dissemble themselves right before the reader’s eyes.

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Megan Moriarty From the Dictionary of Living Things Finishing Line Press, 2014 Part dictionary, part guide to living, and part historical record of content, From the Dictionary of Living Things turns its own pages.

Chapbookapalooza, 2014 Lyric Hunter Swallower Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014 Mastering a bi-lingual prosody, these poems confront the idea of “city” and our romanticizing of containers. They show a brilliant mind disassembling trite societal structures.

At Chapbookapalooza, our headliner goes first. And here she is with a stunning collection of poetry that subverts pop culture by placing it in direct conversation with everything it hints at but is too shifty to engage outright.

In his new book of poems, Origins (Palimpsest Press, 2012), the Canadian writer Darryl Whetter uses metaphor to excavate the links between pre-historic life, extinction, evolution and modern-day sex. In this interview with the New Books Network,

Dorothea Lasky‘s Rome (Liveright, 2014) is a collection that will catch you off guard. Lasky lures the reader in with familiar language and imagery only to have them suddenly realize they’ve been brought to room where the walls wobble and collapse,

Bangalore (Copper Canyon Press 2013) by Kerry James Evans calls out to its reader from an urgency that is its own place and time. He has inhabited many spaces, geographically and socially. His poems reach out from them. Evans shows us that poetry,

She Has A Name (Four Way Books 2014) by Kamilah Aisha Moon is a startling collection that dares to intimately address the way a family transforms when caring for an Autistic child. Deemed a “biomythography,” (a term coined by Audre Lorde),

In my dream, I am the president. When I awake, I am a beggar of the world. The landay represents an oral tradition of a mostly illiterate people. It is a dirge, a calling out to, that is specific to each woman who sings it. Even within the confines of...

Language Arts (Wave Books 2014) by Cedar Sigo is a departure and then reintroduction to form on avant garde’s terms. In addition to disparate explosions of imagery, Cedar trains the ear for surprise of sound and a prosody that was born of childhood pra...

Kevin Prufer is a rare poet who manages to layer narratives and weave metrical variations seamlessly into his work, all while placing it on the page in an organic and “effortless” way. This is especially notable when we come to understand the process b...

To read Venus Thrash‘s The Fateful Apple (Urban Poets and Lyricists, 2014) is to venture into two assertions of self-hood.  The first is a raucous, boundary-setting with the world and the second is reverent consciousness of ancestry and quietude.

In Jason Koo‘s new collection, America’s Favorite Poem (C&R Press, 2014), we see a poet placing himself on the timeline of his art. This timeline covers an ethnic, geographic, and artistic lineage that pays homage to Brooklyn’s literary heritage.