University of Arkansas Press Publishes Two New Poetry Books

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published two new books in its Arkansas Poetry Series, Weapons Grade by Terese Svoboda (Paperback $16.00) and Start with the Trouble by Daniel Donaghy.

Noted poet Thomas Lux says that she “has such range — of subject, of emotion (from whimsical play to chillingly dead serious) — that these poems take you on a wild ride, fast and dangerous, but always in control. This is a goddamn terrific book!” And poet Maureen Seaton says Weapons Grade shows Svoboda to be “an indefatigably American writer of conscience and acuity — a documentarian and saboteur, satirist and sharp-tongued citizen, her poems dangerous and heartbreaking.”

In a pre-publication review Publishers Weekly wrote that “Svoboda’s poems are as haunting as they are funny, as pleasurable as they are powerful.” And the September/October issue of Poets & Writers picked the book as one of its “New and Noteworthy Books.”

Svoboda is the author of 10 books of prose and poetry, most recently Black Glasses Like Clark Kent that won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her honors in poetry include the Iowa Poetry Prize and two prizes from the Poetry Society of America, the Lucille Medwick Award and Cecil Hemley Award. Her opera WET premiered at Los Angeles Disney Hall in 2005. She lives in New York City. A video for the book can be seen at the press’s Web site, www.uapress.com.

Daniel Donaghy’s second collection, Start with the Trouble, is a place where beauty exists amid every kind of ugliness and where that beauty is made even more precious because of the depths from which it rises. He uses the power of poetry to connect the Kensington section of Philadelphia he knew as a boy –– a place replete with crime, poverty, fractured families and various other kinds of darkness –– to upstate New York’s woods, rural Connecticut’s town greens and small churches, and Vancouver’s back alleys. In doing so, he examines the relationship between memory and identity and strives to give voice to those who might otherwise be forgotten by history.

Poet Kim Addonizio describes Start with the Trouble as “a memory-haunted book ... a hymn to lives that don’t flower, shot through with loss and, finally, redemption.” And poet Jim Daniels says, “Donaghy is the real deal. He’s not striking any poses or doing any fancy dances. These poems grab you by the collar and compel you to listen.”

Daniel Donaghy was raised in Philadelphia and is the author of Streetfighting, a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist. He is assistant professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University.

The Arkansas Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer, has been publishing poetry since 2002. Last year the series announced its inaugural Miller Williams Poetry Prize. The winner receives a $5,000 prize and a featured reading at the Arkansas Festival of Writers sponsored by the University of Arkansas’ programs in creative writing and translation.