Leaning House Poetry, Volume One, edited by Jack Myers and Mark Elliott No poetry in the world is as varied in character, flamboyant in style, and fluid in expression as contemporary American poetry. Its smooth and relaxed manner so closely resembles the idiom of American jazz that the day had to come for poetry to shake off the confines of the page and again express its rhythms through sound. Leaning House Records has anticipated this natural cross-over by assembling a CD/anthology of seven distinguished contemporary poets whose own words shiver and sparkle in golden beats as easy and complex as the American heart. You'll find here the quietly penetrating voice of Mark Cox plumbing the personal until it rises before us like a clear midwestern sky; the smartly tailored, sax-edged words of Lynn Emanuel sizzling up out of the Nevada desert; the postmodern, self-reflexive arpeggios of Mark Halliday's poems displaying the nervous system of the urban contemporary spirit; Li-Young Lee's verbal watercolors lightening the weight of elegy with gentle wisdom; Jack Myers' ironic and tenderly poetic quest for a fount of renewal hidden inside the rifts of personal, domestic loss; Naomi Shihab Nye's earthy affirmations for a global politics of amnesty and care that begin in the home; and Tim Seibles' sweetly crooning, muscular invitation to re-invent ourselves by loving what we could be. The idea was to gather together poets of unquestioned excellence whose styles and works are as excitingly original, resonant, and colloquial as jazz; a zesty bouquet of living voices calling to us from beyond the current wounds of war, material complacency, and personal despair. At this end-of-the-century period, times might seem to be glazed with an almost overwhelming complexity that invites malaise, but behind, underneath, and at the edge of the American inmost self there's a wake-up call for a new spiritual consciousness, a new mood of expression, that just now seems to be coloring the American spirit. There's nothing to do or anywhere to go. Just stop and listen. It's already here.

, from Wichita, Kansas, directs and teaches creative writing at Oklahoma State University and in the Vermont College MFA Program. He has published two volumes of poetry, Smoulder, and his latest, Make the Cobra Talk. His work has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, New England Review, North American Review, Pushcart Prize XVIII, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Kansas Commission on the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and two awards from the Vermont Council on the Arts. Poems: The Angelfish; Things My Grandfather Must Have Said; Inhospitable; The Tunnel at the End of the Light; In This His Suit; Grain; The Word

is the author of several volumes of poetry, Hotel Fiesta, The Technology of Love, and her latest, The Dig. She has been a recipient of two NEA Fellowships, the National Poetry Series Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. With David St. John, she was poetry editor for the 1994-1995 Pushcart Prize Anthology and has been a member of the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Bennington Writers Conference, The Warren Wilson Program in Creative Writing, and the Vermont College Creative Writing Program. Currently, she is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work also appears in the 1995 edition of The Best American Poetry edited by Richard Howard. Poems: Inspiration; The Politics of Narative -- Why I am a Poet; The Past

lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University. He is the author of two books of poetry, Little Star and, his latest, Tasker Street, and two critical studies, Stevens and the Interpersonal and The Sighted Singer (conversations with Allen Grossman on poetry and poetics). He received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University where he studied under Frank Bidart. He received two Pushcart Prizes and his work has been included in Best American Poetry: 1993 and numerous journals. Poems: Reality U.S.A.; Divorce Dream; Late Forties

, who lives in Chicago, was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1969 his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Mr. Lee is the author of two books of poetry, The Rose, which won the New York University's 1986 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award, and, his latest, The City in Which I Love You, the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared in three editions of The Pushcart Prizes: Best of the Small Presses and numerous other journals. He has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, among other honors. Poems: Jasmine; This Hour and What Is Dead; My Indigo; Eating Alone; With Ruins; The Weight of Sweetness

, born in Massachusetts, teaches creative writing in Dallas at Southern Methodist University and in the low-resident Vermont College MFA Program in Writing. He is the co-editor of New American Poets of the '90s, the author of six volumes of poetry, the latest being Blindsided, and co-editor of five other works about poetry, including A Profile of American Poetry in the 20th Century. His book As Long as You're Happy was selected by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Sheamus Heaney as the 1985 National Poetry Series Award. In addition, he has received two Texas Institute of Letters Awards and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Poems: It's Not My Cup of Tea; Sometimes, Sweetie, You Think Too Much; Bread, Meat Greens, and Soap; Taking the Children Away; Visitation Rights; Narcisus; True West

, born of a Palestinian father and American mother, grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. She is the author of several collections of poems including, Different Ways to Pray, Hugging the Juke Box (The National Poetry Series, also named a Notable Book by the American Library Association) and Yellow Glove, and numerous chapbooks. She is also the author of children's books including the American Library's Notable Book, This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World . She has received three Pushcart Prizes, two Texas Institute of Letters Poetry awards, the Charity Randall Prize for Spoken Poetry from the International Poetry Forum, and the I.B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets. She reads her work widely around the United States and has participated in three Arts America tours in the Middle East and Asia, sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency's Arts American Program. Poems: Rain; You Have to Be Careful; Streets; Sunday Walk, Richmond; Darling; Darling; Messenger; Jack Kerouc's Will

lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he teaches Literature in Old Dominion University's MFA Program. He grew up in Philadelphia and after attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas he remained and taught high-school English for 10 years. He is the author of three books of poetry, Body Moves, Hurdy Gurdy, and his latest, Kerosene. In 1991 he was awarded a writing fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. In 1992 his book Hurdy Gurdy won the Cleveland State University Poetry Manuscript Award and he won the Open Voice Award from the National Writers Voice Project. He has received grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Poems: Commercial Break: Road-Runner, Uneasy; What You Really Want; Kerosene; For Brothers Everywhere