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Constituent and Pattern in Poetry is a collection of essays on literature and language. It is built on the assumption that works of literature have existence in the real world and that they may be analyzed in a fashion that is not totally subjective. Using models derived from structural linguistics, Archibald A. Hill presents a number of theoretical contributions to the study of poetry, as well as new ways of looking at specific poems. The book as a whole provides an overview of the tools and ideas Hill has developed for analyzing works of literature, and it is the first time the essays have been gathered together in one volume.

The book is divided into three sections: Definition of Literature and Study of Its Patterns, Types of Meaning and Imagery, and Principles for Interpreting Meaning. Each section opens with a theoretical essay, followed by three essays that work analytically with specific poets and poems using the methods defined in the first. In his examination of such poets as Hopkins, Browning, Milton, Blake, Keats, and Dickinson, Hill uses such proposals as the law of least lexical contribution and maximal contextual contribution; the hypothesis that, when possible meanings occur together in a cluster, they support each other; and the idea that it is sometimes possible to recover underlying language sequences from which the author has departed for identifiable reasons. By applying these suppositions to the study of particular poems, Hill shows how the reader may arrive at statements about the relative artistic merit of works of literature.

A new edition of Laura Riding's landmark 1928 poetry manifesto

Laura Riding’s Contemporaries and Snobs is one of modernism’s most audacious and overlooked manifestos, a book that drew a sharp line through the literary world of the late 1920s that is still visible today. In it, Riding dismantles the pretensions of the “snobs”—critics and poet-professionals who sought to codify modern poetry into systems—and champions the “contemporaries,” those who practiced poetry as an eccentric, individual act of creativity. 

In eight incisive essays, Riding takes readers on a tour of the literary scene of her day, exposing how the institutionalization of modernism threatened to clog the wellsprings of poetic originality. With ferocious wit, she critiques the philosophical dogmas of T. S. Eliot, Allen Tate, and the critical machinery of The Criterion, while elevating Gertrude Stein as the figurehead of a radical alternative, a “barbaric” poetics rooted in linguistic freshness. Riding’s defense of the poet as person, her skepticism toward impersonality, and her insistence on poetry’s autonomy from systems of thought anticipate later feminist and avant-garde critiques, making this volume a cornerstone for rethinking modernist traditions. In an era when debates about authenticity, individuality, and the institutional pressures on art feel more urgent than ever, Contemporaries and Snobs offers a counter-history, a reminder that poetry thrives not in conformity but in idiosyncrasy. Riding’s voice, imperious yet visionary, speaks directly to contemporary concerns about creative freedom and the commodification of literature. 

Nearing the centenary of its first publication, Contemporaries and Snobs will interest scholars of modernism and literary criticism, readers of Gertrude Stein and experimental poetics, feminist critics and theorists of authorship, and readers fascinated by the intellectual battles that shaped twentieth-century poetry.

The boundaries of poetry in English are expanded with Contemporary Korean Poetry, the first major scholarly anthology introducing twentieth century Korean poetry in English. In translating 181 poems by 140 poets, Ko Won manages to capture the feeling and mood of the original work, retaining the intended simplicity for effect.

Why have so many contemporary poets turned to source material, from newspapers to governmental records, as inspiration for their poetry? How can citational poems offer a means of social engagement? Contested Records analyzes how some of the most well-known twenty-first century North American poets work with fraught documents. Whether it’s the legal paperwork detailing the murder of 132 African captives, state transcriptions of the last words of death row inmates, or testimony from miners and rescue workers about a fatal mine disaster, author Michael Leong reveals that much of the power of contemporary poetry rests in its potential to select, adapt, evaluate, and extend public documentation.

Examining the use of documents in the works of Kenneth Goldsmith, Vanessa Place, Amiri Baraka, Claudia Rankine, M. NourbeSe Philip, and others, Leong reveals how official records can evoke a wide range of emotions—from hatred to veneration, from indifference to empathy, from desire to disgust. He looks at techniques such as collage, plagiarism, re-reporting, and textual outsourcing, and evaluates some of the most loved—and reviled—contemporary North American poems. Ultimately, Leong finds that if bureaucracy and documentation have the power to police and traumatize through the exercise of state power, then so, too, can document-based poetry function as an unofficial, counterhegemonic, and popular practice that authenticates marginalized experiences at the fringes of our cultural memory.

A debut full-length poetry collection from Sarah Lyn Rogers rewriting girlhood and summoning mischief

Sarah Lyn Rogers’s debut full-length collection is a tragicomic exploration of codependent and transactional relationships: economies of shame, gifts as debts, businesses run like families, and families run like businesses. What transgressions and abuses do we believe are acceptable fees for safety or love, and who upholds these myths? The poems in Cosmic Tantrum examine how our most intimate relationships shape the way we move through the wider world—and what happens when we reject the stories we’ve inherited about our worth.

The poems in Rebecca Black's first volume, Cottonlandia, move through myth and landscape, beginning in the deep South's “shimmer and tar” and ending in the “soot and orange dolor” of the California desert. Cottonlandia conjures a proto-continent where fashionable golems pose for antique photographs and nineteenth-century naturalists wander into the melee of the civil rights struggle in the South. 

By turns haunting and comic, Black's poems describe the archaeology of the apocalypse. Countesses leave behind poisonous snapshots, lovers examine their shapes in the mirror, and Seminoles return for skeletons arranged illegally in exhibits, even as floods force antebellum coffins to rise. 

In the title poem, reproduced on this page, the lines of a spiritual splinter and circle through a loose narrative, evoking the delirium of class and race in the author's Georgia hometown. Throughout the volume, poems quarrel with primal forces, threading the needle of historical oblivion with a dark, intelligent, and incantatory voice.

It is rare to find a collection so grounded in the manifold meanings of motherhood—in all its anxiety, ambivalence, and joy. From the aches and fears of pregnancy, through the pain and relief of childbirth, to the perplexing questions and worries of parenting, Rebekah Denison Hewitt grapples with what it is to make a human (and to sometimes lose one), “the baby a creature / in bloom / the mother / a lotus eater.”

Closing with the counsel “Do not be afraid. / Rinse your heart out. Proceed,” these poems give readers many reasons to fear—health issues, genetic deformities, postpartum depression, gun violence, and car accidents. Yet always lurking underneath are light, optimism, and a stubborn willingness to soldier on. Exploring the stories, myths, and personal histories that shape the experience of modern motherhood, Creature in Bloom expands the conversation around what it means to be a mother.

War and its reverberations propel people across the Nigerian landscape in Hussain Ahmed’s third collection

In Crossroad Mirror many poems begin after sundown—in quiet moments when the bounds between the past and the present, the living and the dead, blur.  War and its aftershocks often form the backdrop for these scenes, though Ahmed’s verse rarely brings us to the battlefield itself. Instead, we hear the stories of refugees, civilian casualties, and ordinary soldiers trying to make sense of their circumstances. “There’s no vocabulary in the army—for grief, or death,” writes Ahmed. “Each door you exit, leads to another parade ground.” A group of soldiers wait out a rainstorm—and the war—together in a tent. Their families linger by the radio and listen for news. The “missing” loom as large as the dead.

Tracing the threads of migration that war so often catalyzes, Crossroad Mirror takes us from grassland to cornfield to coastline and explores the role storytelling and spirituality play in leaving and grieving. 

Curandereando: Sacred Decolonial Healing reclaims curanderismo as a living and revolutionary practice of ancestral wisdom, resilience, and renewal. Blending poetry, Spanglish storytelling, oral histories, and testimonios, this hybrid work illuminates healing as both a sacred tradition and a decolonial act of resistance.

The book traces curanderismo’s survival under colonial oppression, its adaptations across diasporas, and its vital role in addressing contemporary struggles for ecological balance, cultural survival, and social justice. By centering diverse healers and community voices, it resists folkloric portrayals and instead presents curanderismo as an evolving practice deeply relevant to today’s crises.

Accessible yet scholarly, Curandereando bridges sacred traditions with academic discourse, challenging Western medical dominance while offering holistic frameworks grounded in ancestral knowledge. This book is an essential resource for Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies, and environmental justice. It will also resonate with community healers, educators, and readers seeking decolonial approaches to wellness, spirituality, and cultural renewal.