Edited by Reb Livingston and Molly Arden, the second volume of No Tell Motel's Bedside Guide explores the multi-faceted aspects of desire and appeal. Including poems by Kristi Maxwell, Bruce Covey, Alison Stine, Evie Shockley, Jennifer L. Knox, Rebecca Loudon, Robyn Art, David Lehman, Didi Menendez, Charles Jensen, Jen Tynes, Clay Matthews, Kate Greenstreet, Aaron Belz, Carly Sachs, Margot Schilpp, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, kari edwards, Michael Quattrone, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Simon Perchik, Ron Klassnik, Peter Jay Shippy and many others.

Reb Livingston (hymnographer, crier of laments, wry chronicler of blockages, seepages and Thingamabobs) combs the spiritual runes, tunes and ruined stockings that remain after traffic between the sexes. God Damsel is a fractured, fractious and funny allegory which just might get biblical on your ass. Check it out. -Tom Beckett

The second edition, mass-market paperback, of Like a Fat Gold Watch: Meditations on Sylvia Plath and Living. This is a literary anthology of fiction, poetry, art and essays inspired by Sylvia Plath's work and life, not her death. Edited by Christine Hamm, and including work by Angela Simione, J. Hope Stein, Ann Bogle and many more.

Few poets' roots go deeper than the Romantics; Jill Alexander Essbaum's reach all the way to the Elizabethans. In her Harlot one hears Herbert and Wyatt and Donne, their parallax view of religion as sex and sex as religion, their delight in sin, their smirking penitence, their penchant for the conceit, their riddles and fables, their fondling and squeezing of language. But this "postulant in the Church of the Kiss" is a twenty-first century woman, a "strange woman" less bowed to confession than hell-bent on fairly bragging of threesomes and more complications than were wet-dreamt of in Mr. W. H.'s philosophy. - H. L. Hix

The images in this book vibrate. "Mars hangs above you like a meat chime." "An ovary red dress." "Let me release the thin broth tadpole-/sticky lake from between my legs."Cadaver Dogs gives us a fast and furious poetry of "linguistic impulse" (poet Denise Levertov's term) fused with a poetry of visceral impulse, and rushes of hyped up innuendo. Multiple sensory cataracts pour forth on every page. Whether their mode is pensive, elegiac, sexual or all of the above, these poems embrace the undomesticated, taking as a given the fact that humans are perpetually channeling the various animals we contain. Want vividness and gusto, postmodern sensitivity, lingual rapture? Consume this book, or let it consume you. -- Amy Gertsler

modern poetry, English

These poems will do ANYTHING. Edited by Reb Livingston and Molly Arden from No Tell Motel (www.notellmotel.org), this anthology includes seductive poems by over 80 of today's most discreet poets including Aaron Anstett, Bruce Covey, Catherine Daly, Denise Duhamel, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Amy Gerstler, Noah Eli Gordon, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Cynthia Huntington, Kirsten Kaschock, Amy King, Shin Yu Pai, Lance Phillips, P.F. Potvin, Standard Schaefer, Ravi Shankar, Heidi Lynn Staples, Allyssa Wolf and others.

Santa Fe. the swagger of the ransom of the made-up funeral "Leave me alone Tony Randall" All accidents are intentional, but they're still accidents, buddy. "The planets that are our brains orbit fitfully" Look at Richard playing the piano with that shitface grin.. I've gotta go steal some whiskey now to drink with Ol' Roison the Beau. Take a look at a teenage harmony. "I got angry at the wastebasket there. " Some poets have images passing through their eyes like melting ore until their sockets seal shut . Shafer, hand, foot, etc . "his lungs are well supplied with blood" "Lemme get one of them Roman Coin datebooks" With rocks, salt and nails. We don't have to take this one down Garth. "To own a boat must be a pleasure" -- Eddie Berrigan

Material (as in' concrete': glassine -- O liquid ) but abstract, say Miro in dialogue with Picasso. That is they're pretty painterly, the poems, with images that flow past one changing into words ...pixels ...serifs. Domestic, lyric, amorous -- well why not? Cracked, however, like the liberty bell. One can actually read them and be there, just reading, seeing (like you're really there, really really there. You get to stay yourself.) Steinlike (as in glasses), stained. Stunning. His best book yet. --Alice Notley

The gorgeous simplicity of Laurel Snyder's language makes all the possibilities-and the impossibility-of living stand out starkly. Her machines are thought machines, memory machines, the machines of false and daily logic, and we recognize them all. And, of course, they don't work this time either, but Snyder has found the poignancy in this, and more than that, she has found its meaning. A startling and touching book. --Cole Swensen