Curated in Collaboration with Black Ocean | Twenty years ago, Black Ocean set out to publish poetry that was formally adventurous, visually arresting, and impossible to place on a shelf. This anniversary bundle brings together three titles that embody exactly that commitment — a Swedish surrealist at the edge of language and depression, the legendary American debut that shaped a generation, and a searing account of one city's grief and resilience. Each book operates in a different register, and all three are united by Black Ocean's singular editorial vision. Find this bundle only at thepoetryshop.com.
Aase's Death by Aase Berg
One of Sweden's most influential poets, Aase Berg brings the full weight of her surrealist, linguistically experimental sensibility to a sustained meditation on depression — what she calls "a poetics of failing to use the right words." The grammar breaks deliberately, the language moves slow and underwater, and in that failure Berg finds something darkly animate: an insurrectionary politics of not being well. Translated by Johannes Göransson.
The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans by Bill Knott
Back in print for the first time in almost 60 years, with a new introduction by Richard Hell. Written under the pen name St. Geraud, this debut collection influenced generations of writers and musicians — from James Tate and Denis Johnson to Thurston Moore. James Wright called Knott an "unmistakable genius." Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Buffalo Free Rapid Transit by Joe Hall
The sequel to Fugue & Strike, this searing and clear-eyed collection documents Buffalo's decade of crisis — a cop cracking a protester's skull, catastrophic wildfires, a racist massacre, and a deadly blizzard. Joe Hall bears unflinching witness to how Buffalonians lived, coped, and dreamed through it all, in long searching lines that crack open where cold reality meets vision.
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