Erin Belieu

"Slant Six if a wry commentary on contemporary American life, satirizing our frantic standards of beauty, success, and participatory consumerism"--Back cover.

Slant Six

Carl Phillips

Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That Matter Most is home to fifty-seven author-selected poems and accompanying essays that explain how and why each poet chose a poem as their “personal best.” The anthology offers a provocative and surprising range of responses in which readers will find poetic context for the life of a poem and revelatory insight into the unique, personal experiences that shape the writing process itself. Including works from a wide variety of voices both new and well-established, Personal Best is a far-reaching, essential touchstone for the art of poetry in the United States today. The anthology gives readers—both longtime fans of poetry and those just discovering its possibilities—an intimate view of the heart and spirit that make poetry one of our most quintessentially human forms of expression.

Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most

Personal Best

Erin Belieu’s debut, Infanta, was selected for the National Poetry Series and quickly sold through its large first printing. Both The Washington Post and the National Book Critics Circle named it one of the best poetry books of 1993. In her second book, Belieu proves herself a poet worthy of all the recognition. Coaxing a voice of urban chic from the dirt-filled roots of rural tension, these poems are as captivating as any in American poetry. One Above & One Below resists the oppressive limits of traditional gender roles, interrupting power dynamics in this impressive second collection. 

One Above & One Below

Chosen for the National Poetry Series by Hayden Carruth, Infanta introduces Erin Belieu as a poet with an uncanny knack for listening and for locating the perspective of various others within her poems. Armed with humor, anger, and sensuality, she fuses the discursive methods of fiction to a lyric impulse, resulting in a remarkable book of portraits, mostly of people caught in ungainly moments of failure and self-revelation.

Infanta

Come Hither Honeycomb

Come-Hither Honeycomb is the eclectic fifth book of poems from the visionary mind of Erin Belieu. Whether it’s the relatable humiliation of the doctor’s office morphing into a meditation on mortality, a scathing condemnation of abuse provoked by the image of a fifteenth-century woodcut, or a villanelle evoking the tension of hostage situation, Belieu finds inspiration far and wide, casting her sardonic gaze on the world. In what is her most personal book to date, Belieu faces―with courage and candor―her life pattern of brutal relationships, until she painfully breaks free of them.

Come-Hither Honeycomb

Infidelity inspired Erin Belieu's third book--an angry, fast-paced, and lyrical tour-de-force

Black Box

Home to fifty-eight author-selected poems and accompanying essays, Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That Matter Most is a far-reaching, essential touchstone for the art of poetry in the United States today. Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That Matter Most is home to fifty-eight author-selected poems and accompanying essays that explain how and why each poet chose a poem as their “personal best.” The anthology offers a provocative and surprising range of responses in which readers will find poetic context for the life of a poem and revelatory insight into the unique, personal experiences that shape the writing process itself. Including works from a wide variety of voices both new and well-established, Personal Best is a far-reaching, essential touchstone for the art of poetry in the United States today. The anthology gives readers—both long-time fans of poetry and those just discovering its possibilities—an intimate view of the heart and spirit that make poetry one of our most quintessentially human forms of expression.

Susan Aizenberg

Jeremy Countryman

Featuring four hundred poems by more than one hundred female poets, this stunning celebration of the American poetess includes the work of Ai, Jane Kenyon, Leslie Scalapino, Julia Alvarez, C. D. Wright, and many others. Simultaneous.

Erin Belieu

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