The book Paintings and Love Poems of Montana and the World is truly an expression of love and is stimulated by the forces of nature, the beauty of mother earth, and the miracle of the sun and sea that feed the soul of our existence; the ups and downs of our emotional state, with expressions of natural love, wild Montana love, and adventure. Upon reading, you will tap into love and beauty forevergreen. The power of it is truly a gift to life and all humanity. Love is all there is. -Alva

Poetry.New to SPD. These poems capture wonderfully the complex and rich interconnection between the human mind and heart and nature. A moving and beautiful collection -- Susan Griffin. Melissa Kwasny is the author of two novels Modern Daughters and the Outlaw West and Trees Call for What They Need. She makes her home in Montana.

Poetry. Women's Studies. Concrete Poetry. "Combine Apollinaire with Pam Grier and you might come close to Montana Ray's ferocious debut, (GUNS & BUTTER). Each concrete poem is shaped like a gun and its poetic interiors are bracingly brutal and gorgeous. Capsuled in parentheticals, each magnetic phrase is locked and loaded as Ray burns holes into subjects ranging from interracial love, single motherhood, to America's unrelenting addiction to gun violence. Her voice is mesmerizing, tender, vicious, chimeric, as she veers between role-playing a warrior glock-wielding Annie Oakley to 'warm, new mother.' I love (GUNS & BUTTER) and cannot sing it enough praises. It's the kind of rare first collection that is startling, necessary, and is truly like no other book." Cathy Park Hong ..".honest, sparse writing that is brazen and piercing as a bullet." Publishers Weekly "With cohesive intelligence, not to mention pained hilarity, Ray recasts what is not only possible but endlessly delightful in Poetry." Cate Marvin "Is she getting off on this? It's uncomfortable to read." Joy Katz, American Poetry Review "This work reminds me that it's point of view that gives motherhood, violence, race, desire meaning beyond language. Nothing in things, except how held, by whom." Simone White"

Publishers Weekly called Jim Harrison "an untrammeled renegade genius," a poet who performed "absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language."

Now with an introduction from celebrated poet James Tate, Riding the Earthboy 40 is the only volume of poetry written by acclaimed Native American novelist James Welch. The title of the book refers to the forty acres of Montana land Welch's father once leased from a Blackfeet family called Earthboy. This land and its surroundings shaped the writer's worldview as a youth, its rawness resonates in the vitality of his elegant poetry, and his verse shows a great awareness of a moment in time, of a place in nature, and of the human being in context. Deeply evoking the specific Native American experience in Montana, Welch's poems nonetheless speak profoundly to all readers. With its new introduction, this vital work that has influenced so many American writers is certain to capture a new generation of readers.

Using side-by-side pairings of first drafts and final versions, including full-page reproductions from the poets' personal notebooks, as well as an insightful essay on each poem's journey from start to finish, The Art of Revising Poetry tracks the creative process of twenty-one of the United States' most influential poets as they struggle over a single word, line break, or thought. This behind-the-scenes look into the creative minds of working poets, including African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native poets from across the US, is an essential resource for students practicing poetry, and for instructors looking to enliven the classroom with real world examples. Students learn first-hand from the deft revisions working poets make, while poetry teachers can show in detail how experienced poets self-edit, tinker, cut, rearrange, and craft a poem. The Art of Revising Poetry is a must-have for aspiring poets and poetry teachers at all levels.

Winner, Montana Book Award-Honor Book, 2019 The River Where You Forgot My Name travels between early 1800s Virginia and Missouri and present-day western Montana, a place where “bats sail the river of dark.” In their crosscutting, the poems in this collection reflect on American progress; technology, exploration, and environment; and the ever-changing landscape at the intersection of wilderness and civilization. Three of the book’s five sections follow poet Corrie Williamson’s experiences while living for five years in western Montana. The remaining sections are persona poems written in the voice of Julia Hancock Clark, wife of William Clark, who she married soon after he returned from his western expedition with Meriwether Lewis. Julia lived with Clark in the then-frontier town of St. Louis until her early death in 1820. She offers a foil for the poet’s first-person Montana narrative and enriches the historical perspective of the poetry, providing a female voice to counterbalance the often male-centered discovery and frontier narrative. The collection shines with all-too human moments of levity, tragedy, and beauty such as when Clark names a river Judith after his future wife, not knowing that everyone calls her Julia, or when the poet on a hike to Goldbug Hot Springs imagines a mercury-poisoned Lewis waking “with the dawn between his teeth.” Williamson turns a curious and critical eye on the motives and impact of expansionism, unpacking some of the darker ramifications of American hunger for land and resources. These poems combine breathtaking natural beauty with backbreaking human labor, all in the search for something that approaches grace.

In When We Were Birds, Joe Wilkins wrestles his attention away from the griefs, deprivations, and high prairies of his Montana childhood and turns toward "the bean-rusted fields and gutted factories of the Midwest," toward ordinary injustice and everyday sadness, toward the imminent birth of his son and his own confusions in taking up the mantle of fatherhood, toward faith and grace, legacy and luck. A panoply of voices are at play--the escaped convict, the late-night convenience store clerk, and the drowned child all have their say--and as this motley chorus rises and crests, we begin to understand something of what binds us and makes us human: while the world invariably breaks all our hearts, Wilkins insists that is the very "place / hope lives, in the breaking." Within a notable range of form, concern, and voice, the poems here never fail to sing. Whether praiseful or interrogating, When We Were Birds is a book of flight, light, and song. "When we were birds," Wilkins begins, "we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped-- / it's true, we flew."