Two poets for the price of one: Gary Dop reads from "Father, Child, Water," and Amy Munson reads from "Yes Thorn"

“Funny, wicked,  and  poignant. Dop’s  poetic  gaze  is  wide-ranging  and piercing... a highly enjoyable and memorable book.”--Poetry Magazine

Father, Child, Water is a simple book of poems about people, family, humanity, and our bumbling efforts to connect with each other. A  parade  of  characters  and  voices,  these  poems  stumble  along  the playful  and  pained pathways  of  our  days. This is a book  of  honest feeling. This book believes in the sacred exchange of a smile. Father, Child,  Water wants  to  make  you  laugh,  wants  to  surprise  you  with sorrow, and certainly wants to remind you that you are alive.

Gary Dop, poet, performer, and playwright, lives in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where he is an English professor at Randolph College. Dop received his MFA from the University of Nebraska, and his writing, which has been published throughout the country in magazines such as Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Agni, and New Letters, has been recognized with a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and the 2013 Great Plains Emerging Writer Prize.

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Yes Thorn abides with mysteries--mortality, sexuality, divinity, and love. The poet interrogates these not as concepts but as vital forces, without stooping to explain for contain their unbounded power in our days and nights. In poems sometimes beautifully ornate and with acrobatic syntax, Amy Munson counterpoises classical lyricism with tougher, blunter elements. Yes Thorn brings a new voice to American poetry, and its revelations are both earthy and exalting.

Amy Munson is a poet who lives in Minneapolis. Yes Thorn is her debut collection. Her work has received grants from the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board and has appeared in journals such as the Kenyon Review, the Gettysburg Review, West Branch, and Image. She received her MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and she teaches at the University of Northwestern--St. Paul.