Spring 2008 - University of Georgia Press

The VQR Poetry Series strives to publish some of the freshest, most accomplished poetry being written today.
The series gathers a group of diverse poets committed to using intensely focused language to affect the way that
readers see the world. A poem, at its heart, is a statement of refusal to accept common knowledge and the status
quo. By studying the world for themselves, these poets illuminate what we, as a culture, may learn from close
inspection. www.vqronline.org/poetryseries
The History of Anonymity
Poems by Jennifer Chang
Simon Weaver
Hardscrabble
Poems by Kevin McFadden
Angie Hogan
This debut collection of vivid, lyrical poems explores the
emotional landscape of childhood without confession and
without straightforward narrative. Chang sweeps together
myth and fairy tale, skirting the edges of events to focus on
the psychological tenor of experience: the underpinnings
of identity and the role of nature in both constructing and
erasing a self. From the edge of the ocean, where things
constantly shift and dissolve, through “the forest’s thick, /
where the trees meet the dark,” to an imaginary cliffside
town of fog, this book makes a journey both natural and
psychological, using experiments in language and form to
capture the search for personhood and place.
“In this remarkable first collection, Jennifer Chang writes,
‘You don’t see the black line of yourself, / the vanishing / you
slowly come to.’ Spare yet sinuous; haunted, visionary; these
poems continually enact encounters between what vanishes
and what burns in the body and mind.”
—Arthur Sze, author of Quipu
Jennifer Chang’s poems have appeared in Kenyon Review,
New England Review, New Republic, Prairie Schooner and
other publications. She is a founder and advisory board
member of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that
promotes Asian American poetry.
April
5 1 ⁄2 x 8 1 ⁄2 | 96 pp.
Paper, $16.95t | 978-0-8203-3116-4
Playful and rich, formally inventive, funny and wry,
McFadden’s poems examine American identity through the
latent possibilities of language. Transforming empty spans
of interstate and inconspicuous small towns into landscapes
fertile with wordplay and rampant with irony, McFadden
makes letters themselves rearrange and conspire against
commonplaces.
“These limber, overcaffeinated poems spring off the page like
Olympic athletes, their motto not ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’
but ‘Smarter, Funnier, Wiser.’ The stadium in which they
run and leap is plastered with road signs, biblical misprints,
anagrams, McFaddenisms of every kind. And everywhere
cups of precious metal, ones from which the reader will drink
again and again.”
—David Kirby, author of The House on Boulevard St.
Kevin McFadden has published in a wide array of
journals, including Denver Quarterly, Fence, Kenyon Review,
Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review.
He is the associate program director for the Virginia Festival
of the Book.
April
5 1 ⁄2 x 8 1 ⁄2 | 112 pp.
Paper, $16.95t | 978-0-8203-3118-8
Poetry
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