Beltway Poetry Quarterly

First Books IV

Volume 16:2, Spring 2015
Table of Contents

Tanya Olson
from Boyishly, YesYes Books, 2013
“Notes from Jonah’s Lecture Series”
“Eight Masculine Dreams of Charles Olson”
“Our Beautiful Giant”
“My Love is Green, America”

Robert Herschbach
from Loose Weather, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2013
“Lego Man”
“Lego Bride”
“Lego Mama”
“Brickocalypse”

Pages D. Matam
from The Heart of a Comet, WriteBloody, 2014
“Genesis According to Hip Hop (in 7 Tankas)”
“Burning Buildings”
“Voodoo”
“The Phoenix’s Resignation”
“Left Over”

Mary-Sherman Willis
from Graffiti Calculus, CW Books, 2013
from “Kilroy”

Carlos Parada Ayala
from La luz de la tormenta/The Light of the Storm, Zozobra Publishing, 2013
“Noctorno/Nocturnal”
“Vaivén de fantasías/Marooned”
“Otoño/Fall”
“Día de los muertos/Day of the Dead”

Jacqueline Jules
from Stronger Than Cleopatra, ELJ Publications, 2014
“Yellow Marigolds”
“The Old Woman in the Grocery Store”
“Shoes”
“Worms in the Flour”

Luc Phinney
from Compass, Truman State University Press, 2013
“After College”
“At the Forge After an Argument”
“On the Way to Catoctin”
“The Pleasures of the Alphabet”

Katherine E. Young
from Day of the Border Guards, University of Arkansas Press, 2014
“Old Maps”
“The Cow”
“City of Bells”
“Kingdom of Heaven”

Margaret Mackinnon
from The Invented Child, Silverfish Review Press, 2013
“The Juniper Tree”
“Near the Water’s Edge”
“Saint-Gaudens at Aspet, Last Afternoons”
“The Invented Child”

This special issue features 9 authors from the greater DC area, with excerpts from their first single-author full-length books of poems. Many thanks to the presses who published these books, for permission to reprint individual poems: CW Books, ELJ Publications, Silverfish Review Press, Truman State University Press, University of Arkansas Press, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, WriteBloody Books, YesYes Books, and Zozobra Publishing. If you like what you read, please support these authors and buy their books! A link to each press is provided at the bottom of their web pages.

Although this is the largest of the popular semiannual First Books issues we’ve compiled, there were still a number of other notable first books that came out in the past two years that we could not include. We’d like to recommend that you look for these titles as well, below.

Also recommended:

Cacayo Ballasteros, Polvo Enamorado/Lovedust, Izote Press, 2013
Tarfia Faizullah, Seam, Southern Illinois U. Press, 2014
Frederick Foote, Medic Against Bomb, Grayson Books, 2014
Natalie Giarratano, Leaving Clean, Briery Creek Press, 2013
Joanna Hoffman, Running for Trap Doors, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013
Hailey Leithauser, Swoop, Graywolf Press, 2013
Saundra Rose Maley, Disappearing Act, Dryad Press, 2014
Venus Thrash, The Fateful Apple, Hawkins Publishing, 2014