Contrapuntal: Brooklyn Crane, ‘Secrecy in Sacred Places’

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From worship and tenderness to profanity. Two poems becoming one through the contrapuntal technique.

Quatorzain I: Secrecy.

Solemn prayers fill the empty church;
hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.

Midnights are when angels fill the halls—
neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls—
right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls.
Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud,
earnest praises proudly thus avowed,
bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.

Only God may hear them. Only he
knows the meaning of their cry and plea.
Yet-unknown and his alone to see,
choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near
as an offering at last sincere,
echoed up in majesty and fear.

Quatorzain II: In Sacred Places.

Caressing, smiling, both confiding,
enamored dreamers kiss in hiding.
In sacred places coinciding,
grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure,
humanity devoid of measure,
melodic in its throes of pleasure.

Secure’s the love away from judges—
revealed to none who touch begrudges,
observes the bruising lips and smudges—
liturgical in eyes’ occlusion.
Neglect has borne them disillusion,
religion out of shared seclusion.

Nocturnal lovers taste affection
seduced by solitude. Perfection.

Contrapuntal: Secrecy in Sacred Places.

Solemn prayers fill the empty church;
Caressing, smiling, both confiding,
Hallow’d songs arise from pews of birch.

Enamored dreamers kiss in hiding.
Midnights are when angels fill the halls—
In sacred places coinciding,

Neither flaw nor sin to weight their calls—
Grotesque to Earth, they birth a treasure,
Right where Heaven’s ardent mercy falls.

Humanity devoid of measure,
Yes, Amen, and God, they sing aloud,
Melodic in its throes of pleasure.

Earnest praises proudly thus avowed,
Sincere’s the love away from judges—
Bless’d by secrecy’s embrace and shroud.

Revealed to none who touch begrudges,
Only God may hear them. Only he
Observes the birth of bruising smudges—

Knows the meaning of their cry and plea.
Liturgical within seclusion.
Yet-unknown and his alone to see,

Neglect has borne them disillusion—
Choirs outbreathe a psalm when no one’s near
Religion out of shared seclusion.

As an offering at last sincere,
Nocturnal lovers taste affection,
Echoed up in majesty and fear.
’
Seduced by solitude. Perfection.

*****

Brooklyn Crane writes:

This God-Forsaken Contrapuntal!

Contrapuntal poetry seems complicated, and it actually is. Merging lines and meanings can be quite tricky! However, I’ve read several of them either composed of poems which barely hold up on their own or too short enough to be manageable, and in response to this, I obviously went over the top. Let’s see everything you can do by blending two poems together!

A contrapuntal text is the result of the intercalary arrangement of two separate pieces of writing which creates a hidden meaning.

When I prepared to pitch the idea of writing a complex-as-all-hell contrapuntal to my friend and fellow writer Narcisse Tardif, the very first thought that came to mind was that of how most contrapuntal poetry out there simply isn’t formal at all. I mean, who has the time for that? Of course, this being my publication, the name of which is Scheming Rhymes, I naturally had to do something about that. Two questions came out of this train of thought, and these were:

  1. What if it was a contrapuntal between two sonnets?
  2. What if I could produce an acrostic resulting from their intercalation?

If you’ve actually read my poem, you will obviously notice that the sonnets are not sonnets at all—or at least not in the traditional sense of the word. They are indeed quatorzains, as the silly French call the 14-line arrangements that most sonnets adhere to, but the only thing these have in common with them is the couplet of the Shakespearean variant. Undeniably, I could have just written two sonnets. However, it’s never that simple on Scheming Rhymes, and you’re here for it. We’ll get there in a bit.

Regarding the acrostic, yes—there’s a reason for the italicized start of every line. Why did I do this? I just wanted to leave a signature in this poem. Here it is!

S-C-H-E-M-I-N-G-R-H-Y-M-E-S-B-R-O-O-K-L-Y-N-C-R-A-N-E’-S

Fourteen and fourteen from each poem constituting this contrapuntal add up to twenty-eight lines for me to work with. Scheming Rhymes perfectly fills half of that space while Brooklyn Crane sadly leaves me one letter short. Upon this ill-fated realization, I added the S at the end and pretended myself to be a brilliant strategist who can overcome anything with enough delusion. Surely the reader will know that an apostrophe precedes it because, you know, the poem is mine.

It is now that we can address the odd rhyme schemes of the quatorzains as, with the previous information in mind, I went ballistic.

“Could I arrange the poems in a way that their merging results in a different form? If so, which form would that be?”

SO! Because I had just recently posted my terza rima composition breakdown, it was freshly in my mind that a possible solution to this conundrum was such a form. I mean, think about it. Terza rima poems work on a formula of 3x + 1 (or 2), so I did 28 minus 1, divided by 3, and I landed on– I KNOW YOU ARE NOT HERE FOR THE MATH! Anyway, I landed on 9 tercets plus 1 loose line, accounting for all twenty-eight verses.

Next was the question of what the rhyme schemes had to be in order to fulfill this crazy dream. Terza rima works on a ABA BCB CDC … YZY Z (or ZZ) scheme, so I superimposed it on the acrostic as follows.

Tercet 1: S(A)-C(B)-H(A)
Tercet 2: E(B)-M(C)-I(B)
Tercet 3: N(C)-G(D)-R(C)
Tercet 4: H(D)-Y(E)-M(D)
Tercet 5: E(E)-S(F)-B(E)
Tercet 6: R(F)-O(G)-O(F)
Tercet 7: K(G)-L(H)-Y(G)
Tercet 8: N(H)-C(I)-R(H)
Tercet 9: A(I)-N(J)-E’(I)
Loose line: S(J)

That’s all fine and dandy, but I still had to distribute these evenly between the quatorzains.

Quatorzain 1: S(A), H(A), M(C), N(C), R(C), Y(E), E(E), B(E), O(G), K(G), Y(G), C(I), A(I), E’(I)

Quatorzain 2: C(B), E(B), I(B), G(D), H(D), M(D), S(F), R(F), O(F), L(H), N(H), R(H), N(J), S(J)

I hope that you are starting to see the way these two bastards came into existence. We now have the structural guidelines for both quatorzains and the resulting terza rima. This would absolutely be enough for a sane person to go about their day. It’s a double quatorzain/terza rima/contrapuntal/acrostic after all.

It was not enough for me, but I will not bore you with the metrical choices made in this poem. It’s explained on the paid-for section of my terza rima post, though.

Oh, yes. This is a shameless plug for my paid subscription. Come on—you already love Scheming Rhymes!

With all of these guardrails to work with, it was finally time to write. It was absolute hell.

But why do this?

The short answer is: because I can, lol. The actual answer, however, is that I do it because it can be done. Scheming Rhymes is all about exploring what we can do to enrich poetry, understanding both the traditions that educate our verse today and the techniques that might innovate its composition tomorrow. This work is not perfect, I’m aware, and there is sure to be someone who executes the planning behind it more expertly, but we ought to encourage writers to challenge themselves and produce beauty through effort, not through simply making poetry easier.

So there you have it. Here’s to more brutal antitheses to free verse poetic prose!

Join the madness—or don’t!

As with all previously explored forms and techniques, I am not here to police you about how you write and what decisions you make. You can make lines vary in syllable count, ditch the rhymes, change the number of lines per stanza, or anything else you want to do. All I intend on this publication is to give you a starting point from which to find your identity as a writer. Here’s the text by Ani Beeler that inspired me to explore this technique using a completely different approach:

Another contrapuntal! This is my absolute favorite form. I shall be posting several of these. Again, the way this works: Read column 1, column 2, and then across column 1 to 2…

*****

Brooklyn Crane: Celebrating human ingenuity in poetry! Writer, advocate, unapologetic rhyme addict, and public enemy of AI content. Subscribe to Scheming Rhymes—read more of my work and learn more about poetry forms and techniques.

Illustration attributed to Mihály Zichy based on Mikhail Lermontov’s poem The Demon, via Art Renewal Center.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Below’

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What hovers above condenses below
And the vagus nerve has wonders to show:
Mill of the belly, invisible grind
Slick convolutions sculpt all they find
Smooth muscle contracts around traveling scat
As sensual as the yawn of a cat.
An abdominal chorus—how it gurgles!
Saturn’s own voice, corruptly fertile.
Cells split and shimmy, chromosomes boil
Identity settles, signed with a coil,

Written in meat’s salty alphabet.
Pulsing skin shimmers, scented and wet.
Eyeballs disguised writhe over a dream.
Our rubbery hearts, the genitals’ steam
Carbon dioxide’s vegetable tang
Ancient green song all vertebrates sang
Wet from the lick of valence’s tongue.
Leaping or lurching down star light’s descent
Trailing our dreams and our excrement.
From acids and stink the soul forges land:
Thoughts in our heads, and work in the hand.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “Below” was inspired by the concentration of nerves in our guts that functions as a second brain, the alchemical axiom “As above, so below” & “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement” from Yeats’s Crazy Jane poem.”

‘Below’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Body Fluid Cleanup Kit, bus, Colorado River Discovery, Page, Arizona, USA” by gruntzooki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Paul Burgess, ‘Another Old, Familiar Story’

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“The strong survive, and all of that,”
he’d tell the limply dangling cloth
between his beak, a former moth,
but doesn’t sense the lunging cat,

who doesn’t think the wheels that run
consider cats their proper prey.
Yet, now he’s just a dead display
beneath the slowly dying sun.

Who knows if later down the road
that truck won’t strike a rotting tree
and bring to bear on top of me
its paralyzing wooden load?

Though like a reel of comic scenes,
it’s also how our stories go:
the endings are the same, we know,
but brought about by varied means.

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “Earlier in the summer, a bird appeared in front of me casually holding a dying moth and looking almost cheerful. The encounter got me thinking about deaths that come suddenly, without malice, and without much meaning to the creatures or things that have caused them. I can’t say exactly why, but some combination of my mood and the circumstances made the sight more vivid and significant to me than it might have been on another day.”

‘Another Old, Familiar Story’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Pulsebeat, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, and several other publications.  https://paulburgesswritingandlanguage.blog/

“Kaka (Nestor sp) and Pururi Moth (Aenetus virescens)” by Nga Manu Images NZ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Martin Briggs, ‘Saxon’

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From forefathers’ farmstead hunger me hounded
With woman and bairns and some wretched remains:      
Leaping alone on the deep, our boat bounded
Away from the homeland of Angles and Danes.      

For days the deck dandled on wastes of grey water,
And shivered and shook in the growl of a gale
While sea monsters daunted my wife and my daughters
And I drew deep draughts from an ox-horn of ale.                 

The strong ones – the heroes – they breasted and braved
Those terrible fathoms of fearfullest depth,
And steadily steered us through wind and through wave
While cursing all cowards, disdainful of death.

But Njord sent a silver-winged gannet to guide us.
Impatient for cornlands by weal or by war,
We raced with the wind and the sunrise behind us,                    
And sure was our way to a grey wooded shore. 

On the flood, up a watercourse muddily canting  
Through marshes where mist devils wreathed among reeds,
Where pastures awaited our ploughing and planting
We oared ourselves bravely, emboldened by need.

But furtive eyes followed our struggle upstream
As we ventured our vessel in menacing silence.
The landscape seemed empty, yet sometimes the gleam
Of a blade in the coverts of blackthorn spoke violence.

Whoever they were, they were ready for raiders;
And we, to contest our new home to the last.
Still no-one molested, still no-one waylaid us.
At length we approached apprehensive, and passed,

As we warily, wearily rieved up the river,
A barrack abandoned, a half-ruined hall.
Within arrow’s reach but wavering never
While Britons looked on from those broken-down walls

Some long-vanished Legion had left there, and stared
From their crumbling defences of rubble and stones.
We were outnumbered, but though we prepared
For foray or ambush, they left us alone.

Where the shallows gave out and we grounded the keel   
At a bend in the vale, shipped oars and dropped sail,  
An auspicious white egret wheeled over the field
Where we sit by this hearth where I tell you this tale.

So here we sowed barley, roots, rye and wheat;
Brewed strong Saxon beer, baked good Saxon bread;
Our sheep grazed and grew, gave us wool, milk and meat.
Brides were my daughters for Britons – both wed                  

Sons of the tribe we had troubled when first
Setting foot on their dale in that dangerous dawn.
Then you came along, with lungs fit to burst,
Your grandfather’s joy from the day you were born.

Well, we followed the fashion for Cross and for Christ,
Acknowledged His kingship to keep a calm life,                    
Forswore the old gods, and got us baptised.                 
I bowed to His will when He took my young wife….

Your grandmother’s happy in heaven, they say,
Spinning and weaving a wool of pure gold
Where angels sit feasting and drinking all day.
Another turf on the fire, boy, these evenings are cold.

Yes, I, a dull peasant, she thought me so grand,           
Me, shy of adventure and frightened of pain….       
But these fields were fertile, four cows bore my brand,
And I, a true Saxon, lived up to my name

Of Earth-Brother.  They’ll tell you in our mother tongue
That heroes are warlike, wield swords, win more land,
Yet I was content among swine and their dung.
The ploughshare I chose; but, boy, understand:              

All-Fatherly fortune has favoured my choice.
You wonder, wide-eyed, would I do it again?
The ocean, the fear?  Hear an old voice: 
The heart in the breast of my broodiest hen

Beats brave as the heart of a hero – but then,
No courage is needed to counter the new.        
Heroes are merely a notion of men.
The future must happen; will happen to you.

*****

Martin Briggs writes: “Saxon” began as an experiment.  I wanted to think myself into the frame of mind of men forced by circumstances to seek out and colonise new lands – a situation being re-enacted tragically today in response to environmental and other pressures.  The heavy alliteration reflects the Anglo-Saxon predilection for the same, and the persistent rhythm is intended to convey a sense of bardic tradition.”

“Saxon” was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.  This version has been subject to very minor revision.

Martin Briggs only began writing in earnest after retiring from a career in public administration, since when his work has appeared in a variety of periodicals and formats on both sides of the Atlantic.  He regards form, rhyme and metre as a liberating force rather than a constraint, and as a means of perpetuating a tradition which is as old as poetry itself.  He lives in Suffolk, a part of England where Anglo-Saxons settled quite densely. 

Photo: “The Saxon Huscarl” by One lucky guy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Jean L. Kreiling, ‘My Sister’s Bathrobe’

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The inside of the collar’s badly frayed;
the pink and sky-blue stripes began to fade
a while ago. I’ve worn it for twelve years,
she wore it for a few, and it appears
it might not last much longer. I’ll be sad
to lose it, and to lose the sense I’ve had,
each time I slip it on, that she would grin
to see it on me. She was short and thin,
I’m not, so when I wear it, I expose
a bit of leg, while it reached to her toes.
And she’d wear slippers with it, taking care
they matched the robe; my bigger feet are bare.
I put this robe on and I put on all
the ways we differed—though I don’t recall
we argued much. She listened to Garth Brooks,
I favor Brahms; she was the best of cooks —
those famous meatballs, cookies of all kinds —
while takeout is my strength. Sometimes what binds
two sisters may be each one’s readiness
to be amused by her antithesis
when it’s wrapped up in measureless affection —
as I still feel wrapped up in our connection,
and not just when I wear her robe. Although
I’ll let it go soon, with regret, I know
I won’t let go of her until the day
the world lets go of me. Some things don’t fray.

*****

Jean L. Kreiling writes: “This poem is entirely autobiographical; my sister Susan’s premature death to brain cancer broke my family’s heart. Wearing her robe has been therapeutic—as was writing this poem—but I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life.”

‘My Sister’s Bathrobe’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Home and Away (2025). Her work has been awarded the Able Muse Book Award, the Frost Farm Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, among other honors.

Pulsebeat Poetry Journal

“Bathrobe person” by artant is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Shamik Banerjee, ‘Written in a Cubicle’

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What spurs me, in this breathing grave
of coffee mouths and cheeks unshaved,
to stand upon my chair and shout,
“I’m out! I’m out

of this forever-widening coop
where glumness, going on a loop,
entraps, within its strangling mesh,
the mind and flesh?”

I should be sitting by my table
immersed in some sweet ancient fable
or search, within some lyric verse,
joy’s universe.

But here I am—jailed in a row
of coffee mouths and heads that bow
to despots (dressed in cotton coats)
who grab our throats.

*****

Shamik Banerjee writes: “Written in a Cubicle took root in the very cubicle where I spend nine hours a day typing incessantly and passively listening to the heavy buzz of my colleagues. I know that this poem doesn’t carry an optimistic tone, but it is also true that this very cubicle helps me clear my bills. It was just one of those days when I felt like writing it. It was cathartic, I admit.”

‘Written in a Cubicle’ was first published in The Society of Classical Poets.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. He currently resides in Gurgaon, Haryana. Some of his recent publications include Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears, St. Austin, San Antonio Review, Sheepshead Review, The Trinity Review, Third Wednesday, and Amethyst Review among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024, and was nominated for the Best of the Net by Flapper Press.

“Outside, looking in” by Ravages is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Simon MacCulloch, ‘As Yet Not Come to Life’

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The chain between your ankles clanks upon each creaking stair
As you ascend from cellar depths through shadowed drops to where
I lie behind my bedroom door. A cartoon ghost, you seem,
Come dragging from a TV tale to shamble through my dream
Then out the waking end, with chains a-rattling, bones stripped bare.

No doubt you have a story of your own; it isn’t mine,
And if you have a role for me it’s one I must decline.
I’ve never been a Montresor, a Scrooge is not my style,
(I may not lack the malice but I surely lack the guile).
I hide no guilt of which a ghost might form the outward sign.

Well, yes, there’ve been some peccadilloes (now you’ve reached the landing),
But nothing on the scale I sense your bloody bones demanding.
The murders I have dreamed of I have quailed from in the doing,
The chances I have missed the only fuel for my rueing.
There’s nothing you can lay before the door at which you’re standing.

And yet this door is opening slowly – slowly in you come,
Your grin as final as the grave, your empty skull as dumb,
Your only sound the rusty crepitation of the chains
That drape the fleshless network of your hollowed-out remains.
There’s nothing in you – mine the depths your pitted sockets plumb.

And now I grasp your import, and I shake with joy and dread.
For what was it that Shakespeare’s Earl, in dark foreboding, said?
“Such things” (our present seeds) “become the hatch and brood of time”.
And thus I birth the spectre of my destiny in crime.
Strike off your chains – my deeds to come will raise you by their dead!

*****

Simon MacCulloch writes: “As Yet Not Come to Life” takes as its starting point an image that terrified me as an infant. It was in a televised, animated adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – at one point, the ghost of Marley is shown mounting a staircase  towards Scrooge’s room, and we are shown only the skeletal lower legs as they slowly ascend the steps, inhibited by shackles round the ankles. This image became the main focus of my typical childish bedtime fears for a long while afterwards and has never been quite forgotten. I hope to take it to my grave, though not just yet.”

‘As Yet Not Come to Life’ was first published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

“Simon MacCulloch has published hundreds of poems in a variety of outlets, including literary, academic, genre, humorous and religious publications. He lives in London. His Lovecraftian sonnet sequence, The Eyes of Azathoth, is due from Jackanapes Press in October 2026.

“Marley with Chains figurine” by Peter E. Lee is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Into the Attic’

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In the narrow hallway, almost out of reach,
Is a cord you pull down, lowering stairs
To access the attic, which is stuffed
With all manner of wonderful, half-forgotten things.

Imagine if you could find another cord there,
To pull down to access the entire world above–
Overhanging trees and sky and space and planets and all.

*****

There is so much magic in attics–and even more so if they can only be accessed by pull-down stairs. My five-year-old grandson in Canada will be visiting us in the Bahamas in a few weeks, and he only had one question when I called him on his birthday: Would he be allowed in the attic? Whether he heard wild stories from his father, or whether he was put up to be the petitioner by his older siblings, I have no idea. But in the attic and on the roof are both super exciting places…

‘Into the Attic’ was originally published in Snakeskin–thanks, George Simmers!

Illustration by RHL and Quill, my ChatGPT. (I told Quill that an engineer might question the integrity of the mechanics, but I’m not an engineer so I’ll live with it. The mood is perfect!)

Translation: Suleiman the Magnificent, ‘Throne of my lonely niche’

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Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my female Sultan,
The most beautiful among the beautiful…
My springtime, my merry-faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf…
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world…
My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad, my Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief…
I’ll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.

*****

Suleiman the First, born in 1494, was Ottoman emperor from 1520 to 1566. Known to his subjects as The Lawgiver from his extensive reforms of education, society, taxation and criminal law, he was known in the West as The Magnificent for his court surpassing Europeans in grandeur. He formed an alliance with the French against the Hapsburgs, extended the empire in the Balkans and North Africa, and broke with tradition by marrying a Ukrainian or possibly Polish slave from his harem: Roxelana, or Hürrem, the mother of his successor Selim the Second. Under the pen name Muhibbi, he wrote love poems for Roxelana.

Painting: Attributed to Anton Hickel (1745-1798), Roxelana and Suleiman the Magnificent

Morri Creech, ‘An Ordinary Childhood’

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Our mother was a mousetrap under the stairs.
She used as bait the things she never said.
We’d hear a snap and find three silver hairs
in an old passport, pinned like something dead.

Our father was an occupying force
in a town of collaborators. Good
behavior meant not signaling in morse
enemy troops camped in a distant wood.

Our parents paced—her mind a radio
playing the classic dirges until dawn,
his heart a spider web spun in the snow
catching the dusk sun before it was gone.

For supper, they would feed us each a crumb
of moonlight. Our house was a moving train.
Evenings they danced in a delirium
of silence, drunk on a thimbleful of rain.

*****

Morri Creech writes: “I don’t really have comments for this poem. The first line came to me, and the rest of the poem found its way as I continued to search for context to support that sentence. I didn’t know what I was going to say until I was saying it.”

‘An Ordinary Childhood’ was the 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize Winner

Morri Creech is the author of five collections of poetry: Paper Cathedrals (Kent State U P, 2001), which received the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize; Field Knowledge (Waywiser, 2006), which received the Anthony Hecht Poetry prize and was nominated for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Poet’s Prize; The Sleep of Reason (Waywiser, March 2013), a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize; Blue Rooms (Waywiser, October 2018); and, most recently, The Sentence (LSUP, September 2023). A recipient of NEA and Ruth Lilly Fellowships, as well as grants from the North Carolina and Louisiana Arts councils, he is the Writer in Residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches courses in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with the novelist Sarah Creech.

“Chocolate Ice Cream Temptation” by h.koppdelaney is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.