A sparkling debut collection from a Pushcart-Prize nominated poet that makes an ecstatic argument for living Containing joy and suffering side by side, Ramshackle Ode offers elegies and odes as necessary partners to bring out the greatest power in each. By turns celebratory, meditative, tender, and rebellious, these poems reimagine the divisions and intersections of life and death, the human and the natural world, the brutal and the beautiful. Time and again, they choose hope. From an award-winning young poet in the tradition of Marie Howe, Walt Whitman, Gerald Stern, and contemporary American bard Maurice Manning, Ramshackle Ode presents a new voice singing toward transcendence, offering the sense that, though this world is fragile, human existence is a wonderfully stubborn miracle of chance. AUTHOR: Keith Leonard's poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. A winner of the Beacon Street Prize and scholarships at Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conference, he is currently a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Indiana University. SELLING POINTS: ? This is the debut collection of a young poet on the rise and we're looking forward to introducing Leonard and his work broadly. ? Five of the poems in Ramshackle Ode have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Recently, Terrance Hayes selected ?The Name of My Banker? as the winner of the Beacon Street Prize for poetry, and Amaud Jamaul Johnson selected ?Osiris Ode? and ?Ode to the Unsayable? as finalists for the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize. ? Leonard has held scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Indiana University. He has many connections from these conferences and is excited and willing to promote his new book within and beyond these circles. ? Leonard is a magnetic reader whose work will spark with younger poetry readers, and we're publishing this directly into paperback original to make sure it's available to students. ? Ramshackle Ode will appeal to audiences that enjoy Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Marie Howe, Maurice Manning, and Gerald Stern. REVIEWS: "Intriguing and triumphant, Leonard's collection embodies the subject matter it so aptly depicts, whether it's a storm or steeple or meadow." Booklist
