In his new chapbook, Present Conditions, Joseph Massey writes that “the weather within / is the weather without.” His poems chronicle a difficult winter where the universe grows colder, his speaker taking all day to “filter out the debris of a dream.” These poems bring us the aching beauty of the natural world, and the crushing sadness of interior space. A speaker’s failed suicide. The return to sanity. The waiting where we can’t go on, but we do go on, if nothing else when “the windows / . . . go blind.”

Joseph Massey is the author of Illocality (Wave Books, 2015) and a trilogy grounded in the landscape of coastal Humboldt County, California: Areas of Fog (Shearsman Books, 2009), At the Point (Shearsman Books, 2011), and To Keep Time (Omnidawn, 2014). He worked as an instructor and teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo (Modern and Contemporary Poetry) MOOC, which serves thousands of students, worldwide, at no cost. He now teaches privately. He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.

1 (1) Present Conditions – Joseph Massey (Hollyridge Press, 2018)

2 (8) A Chapbook Of Poems – Prince Unsworth (Independently published, 2017)

3 (3) The Cows – Lydia Davis (Sarabande Books, 2011)

4 (New entry) The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named: Poems – Nicole Sealey (Northwestern University Press, 29 Feb. 2016)

5 (5) On Imagination – Mary Ruefle (Sarabande Books, July 2017)

6 (New entry) Brood – Kimiko Hahn  (Sarabande Books, July 2018)

7 (2) Purity of Aim: The Book Jacket Designs of Alvin Lustig – Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger (RIT Press, 2010)

8 (New entry) The Wire-Headed Heathen – Inua Ellams (Akashic Books, 2016)

9 (New Entry) Broken Women of the Mountains – Nida Mahmoed (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform April 2009)

10 (New entry) Puro Amor  – Sandra Cisneros (Sarabande Books, 2018)