Dorianne Laux's long-awaited third book of poetry follows her collection, "What We Carry," a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In "Smoke," Laux revisits familiar themes of family, working class lives and the pleasures of the body in poetry that is vital and artfully crafted--poetry that "gets hard in the face of aloofness," in the words of one reviewer. In "Smoke," as in her previous work, Laux weaves the warp and woof of ordinary lives into extraordinary and complex tapestries. In "The Shipfitter's Wife," a woman recalls her husband's homecoming at the end of his work day:
"Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me--the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home."
And in the title poem, Laux muses on her own guilty pleasures:
"Who would want to give it up, the coal
a cat's eye in the dark room, no one there
but you and your smoke, the window
cracked to street sounds, the distant cries
of living things. Alone, you are almost
safe . . ."
With her keen ear and attentive eye, Dorianne Laux offers us a universe with which we are familiar, but gives it to us fresh.
Dorianne Laux is the author of two previous collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Ltd., and is co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of "The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Joys of Writing Poetry" (W.W. Norton, 1997), chosen as an alternate selection by several bookclubs. Laux was the judge for the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Contest, and is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. Laux lives in Eugene, Oregon.

From the nuts and bolts of craft to the sources of inspiration, this book is for anyone who wants to write poetry-and do it well.

In this fortuitous collaboration, two spirited poets, themselves teachers of poetry, offer guidance to aspiring beginners and those who have already published. Brief essays on the elements of poetry, technique, and suggested subjects for writing are each followed by distinctive writing exercises. ("Compare an actual family photograph with one that was never taken, but might have been.") The ups and downs of the writing life—including the inevitable visitations of self-doubt and writer's block—are here, along with tips about getting published. A special section contains twenty-minute writing exercises, and valuable appendixes cover further reading and marketing advice. On your own, this book can be your "teacher," while groups, in or out of the classroom, can profit from sharing weekly assignments.

Numerous examples of contemporary poetry, chosen for relevance and freshness, illustrate salient points and stimulate the imagination. By calling on their own experience and focusing on living American writers for their models, the authors introduce you to poetry as it is right now.

Dorianne Laux's fifth collection of poetry peels back time to the summer of love and the Vietnam War. Her keen hindsight uncovers the humanity at the center of conflict with language that goes straight to the heart. This work stands as an elegy for the loss of innocence, an homage to the glimmer underneath the urban grunge, and a love song to the imperfections that unite and divide us. Laux possesses what Tony Hoagland calls "the brave art of looking," with an immediate and compassionate touch.

Here is the good stuff: poetry written by women that actually excites the thinking reader. This anthology, spanning work of the last 75 years, will broaden its readers' notions of what defines erotic poetry. For what is more intriguing, more satisfying than strong, self-assured writing? This groundbreaking anthology includes some of our most powerful women writers-among them Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Alexander, Anne Sexton, Dorianne Laux, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton, and Louise Gluck. These poets fully demonstrate that, far from being prurient, the erotic can permeate even the most mundane aspects of life, from reading a book to buying clothes. At the same time, the collection affirms the enormous meaningfulness of poetry-its ability to express the inexpressible and to illuminate the most private and intimate of human experiences. The poets included here represent different ethnicities, geographies, social classes, and sexual preferences. The only characteristic they share is that they are women writing about sex.

Only as the Day Is Long represents a brilliant, daring body of work from one of our boldest contemporary poets, known to bear compassionate and ruthless witness to the quotidian. Drawn from Dorianne Laux's five expansive volumes, including her confident debut Awake, National Book Critics Circle Finalist What We Carry and Paterson Prize-winning The Book of Men, the poems in this collection have been "brought to the hard edge of meaning" (B. H. Fairchild) and praised for their "enormous precision and beauty" (Philip Levine). Twenty new odes pay homage to Laux's mother, an ordinary and extraordinary woman of the Depression era. The wealth of her life experience finds expression in Laux's earthy and lyrical depictions of working-class America, full of the dirt and mess of real life. From the opening poem "Two Pictures of My Sister" to the last "Letter to My Dead Mother" she writes in her words of "living gristle" with a perceptive frankness that is luminous in its specificity and universal in its appeal. Exploring experiences of survival and healing, of sexual love and celebration, Only as the Day Is Long shows Laux at the height of her powers.

This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored--tender, comic, wry, tragic--interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculinity and its importance in family. Some nights I hear my father's long romance with drugs echoed in the skeletal choir of crickets. Geffrey Davis holds an MFA and a PhD from Penn State University. A Cave Canem fellow, Davis is the recipient of the 2013 Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He currently teaches at the University of Arkansas.

In her seventh collection, Dorianne Laux once again offers poems that move us, include us, and appreciate us fully as the flawed humans we are. Life on Earth is a book of praise for our planet and ourselves, delivered with Laux’s trademark vitality, frank observation, and earthy wisdom. With odes to the unlikely and elemental—salt, snow, crows, cups, Bisquick, a shovel and rake, the ubiquitous can of WD 40, “the way / it releases the caught cogs / of the world”—as well as powerful homages to the poet’s mother and her carpenter’s spirit, Life on Earth urges us all to find extraordinary magic in the mess of ordinary life. From “I Never Wanted to Die” Even the cut flowers in a jar of water lift their soon to be dead heads and open their eyes, even they want a few more sips, to dwell here, in paradise, a few days longer.

Dorianne Laux's poetry is a poetry of risk; it goes to the very edge of extinction to find the hard facts that need to be sung. What We Carry includes poems of survival, poems of healing, poems of affirmation and poems of celebration. Sculptured, fluid and generous, they reveal a poet whose vision is informed by experience and caring. Of her poetry and poetic odyssey, critic William O'Daly writes: "It seems that Ms. Laux has chosen to witness what she must on her journey, in some way reliving and weaving together who she was and who she is to fully reclaim her body and soul ... The poems seem to have been well prepared for, born of years of hard work, careful listening, patience, until all the notes rang true". That attention to precision of image, language and sound, that pursuit of honesty and love is What We Carry - our lives, worth having, and worth transforming.