Spring 2015 Announcements: Poetry: Among the Living

[...]rising star Heather Christle attempts to transcend our solar system with the aptly titled Heliopause. In this book-length poem, Waldrep addresses matters as diverse as Mormonism, cymatics, race, Dolly the cloned sheep, and his own life and faith. The figure of the octopus shape-shifts itself across ocean depths, tide pools, aquariums, gardens, movies, pulp novels, fine art, and nightmares; Beer acts as the strange documentarian recording the bizarre, beautiful, and disturbing habits of creatures for whom subterfuge and mimicry are a means of survival. Bang captures the difficulties inherent in being human in the 21st century, when we set our watches by nuclear disasters, species collapse, pollution, mounting inequalities, warring nations, and our own mortality.