O, The Oprah Magazine, "42 Best LGBTQ Books of 2020" NPR's Favorite Books of 2020 In his fourth collection, 13th Balloon, Mark Bibbins turns his candid eye to the American AIDS crisis. With quiet consideration and dark wit, Bibbins addresses the majority of his poems to Mark Crast, his friend and lover who died from AIDS at the early age of 25. Every broken line and startling linguistic turn grapples with the genre of elegy: what does it mean to experience personal loss, Bibbins seems to ask, amidst a greater societal tragedy? The answer is blurred— amongst unforeseen disease, intolerance, and the intimate consequences of mismanaged power. Perhaps the most unanswerable question arrives when Bibbins writes, “For me elegy/ is like a Ouija planchette/ something I can barely touch/ as I try to make it/ say what I want it to say.” And while we are still searching for the words that might begin an answer, Bibbins helps us understand that there is endless value in continuing—through both joy and grief—to wonder.

Honored as a "Best Poetry Book of the Year" by Publishers Weekly "The book's a little crazy, packed with air quotes and brackets, jokes and condemnations, forms that explode across the page. Crazily enough, it's also packed with truth.”—NPR “The voice of this third book from Bibbins is marked and numbed by the onslaught of American media and politics that saturate the Internet, television, radio, and smartphone: ‘the way things are going, children/ will have to upgrade to more amusing.’ Much like advertisements or news stories vying for viewer’s attention, the book intentionally overwhelms, eschewing sections; the author instead differentiates the poems by repetition, creating a sort of echo chamber, similar to the way viral information cycles through social media platforms.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review "[A] hilarious send-up of contemporary values and an alarm bell of sorts, directing attention to all that is so sinister in our civilization.”—American Poets "Whip-smart and wickedly funny, They Don't Kill You is Bibbins's most authoritative and self-possessed collection to date."—Boston Review The poems in Mark Bibbins's breakthrough third book are formally innovative and socially alert. Roving across the weird human landscape of modern politics, media-exacerbated absurdity, and questionable social conventions, this collection counters dread with wit, chaos with clarity, and reminds us that suffering is "small//compared to what?" Mark Bibbins teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia University, and edits the poetry section of The Awl. He lives in New York City.

A compendium of stories about the importance of poems in people’s lives, accumulating a remarkable history of Copper Canyon Press. For its fiftieth anniversary, Copper Canyon Press invited a broad community of staffers, board members, and poets to help curate a celebratory anthology that it named A House Called Tomorrow. The response to that invitation, however, exceeded the book. The Press received so many stories about the poems, from people far and wide, that it knew it had to publish a second volume—this one. Come Shining is both an oral (and visual) history of Copper Canyon Press and a lasting testament to the power of poetry within people’s lives. If A House Called Tomorrow is the birthday cake, this is the birthday party: a joyous din of reminiscences, laughter, support, and yet more poems, all bound between two covers. Contributor stories are organized across thematic sections—such as “Personal Voltas” and “Stories for Our Tomorrow”—and are accompanied by a timeline of the Press, historic photos, and facsimiles of touching notes that Copper Canyon has received from readers and poets. The result is a remarkable account of a half-century of publishing, proof positive that poetry is, indeed, vital to language and living.

Kipper the dog has found a soggy blue balloon in the garden. At first, it seems like an ordinary balloon, but it's not. It's full of fun, magic and endless possibilities... 30 years after it was first published, The Blue Balloon is a celebrated picture book classic. It features the very first appearance of Mick Inkpen's much-loved puppy charachter, Kipper, and has delighted millions of children worldwide. This playful tale of imagination, complete with fantastic fold-out pages, is a classic to be treasured, loved and shared time and time again. This gorgeous anniversary edition comes complete with special bonus material and is an absolute must for all Kipper fans!