Seriously Funny:

Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, Seriously Funny ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness.

Most of the selections were made in the editors’ battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they’d set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn’t driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it.

From the Fishouse:

An astounding compilation of verse from the Web’s most cutting-edge poetry archive, including an audio compact disc. From the Fishouse is a leading on-line audio archive of contemporary poetry that focuses on emerging poets who pay particular attention to the sounds and rhythms of their work. This winning anthology of 175+ poems from the site is a festival of verse at its acoustic best. The book is divided into ten playful sections. Each one, named for a poem within it, underscores the Fishouse modus operandi of showcasing poetry’s aural and rhythmic possibilities.

America! What’s My Name?

America needs poetry more than it needs prisons; ill-conceived government policies, inadequate schools, political spin, or exit polls. Poetry, when used correctly, is the most democratic thing we own. It belongs to the people. It is for the people and it rings truest when written by the people.

You probably won’t find these poets in your syllabus, though there are more prize-winning writers in these pages than you will find in many university English departments. But wherever you can find a table or a hungry mouth; wherever people need nothing else with their soup but homemade biscuits, cornbread, tortillas, challah, or frybread, fresh out of the oven, I hope you will find this book being read aloud or passed hand to hand with love, with appreciation for genuine solutions for real hunger.

Gathering Ground:

Gathering Ground presents more than one hundred poems by Cave Canem participants and faculty. It embraces an impressive and eclectic gathering of forms, including sonnets, a bop (a new form created by a Cave Canem faculty member), blues, sestinas, prose poems, centos, free verse, and more. The roster of distinguished contributors includes Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Marilyn Nelson, Sonya Sanchez, Al Young, and many others.