SHELLEY PUHAK
READ sample poems:​
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"Portrait of the artist with the family dog" in The Atlantic
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"Portrait of the artist as a twelve-year-old girl" in The Missouri Review
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"Portrait of the artist in the pediatrician's waiting room" in Poetry Daily
HARBINGER
National Poetry Series Winner
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A meditation on artistic creation and historical memory, Harbinger explores the many facets of the artistic self.
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"The speaker in Shelley Puhak’s Harbinger is no closer to knowing herself than I am, than we are, which is why we trust her. Each similarly titled poem holds a triptych mirror up to the artist and, in so doing, up to us all, so we may better see ourselves as we are. In ever-changing form.”
– NICOLE SEALEY
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"These poems are fierce and foreboding, proving poetry’s revelatory power."
– PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)
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"Puhak's grasp here is shocking, reaching across centuries, millennia...[but with] a narrative that is perfectly contemporary, postmodern, and personal...exquisitely well-crafted...Sometimes, a book can surprise you."
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"“These poems share a deep curiosity about and connection to our world…. A collection that should not be missed.”
– LIBRARY JOURNAL
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READ sample poems:​
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"Letter to An Old Flame" in The Missouri Review
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"The Last Meeting" in Verse Daily
GUINEVERE IN BALTIMORE
Winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize
A feminist revisioning of Arthurian legend that examines love in all of its chemical, biological, political, and technological dimensions.
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"What makes Guinevere in Baltimore work is the sheer brilliance of the individual poems...masterfully crafted, a veritable feast for any lover of words."
– CHARLES SIMIC
"A freakishly brilliant book in its conception, Shelley Puhak’s Guinevere in Baltimore raises the stakes for American poetry of the twenty-first century."
– CATE MARVIN ​
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Winner of the Towson Prize for Literature
A hybrid of poetry and historical fiction that explores who gets cropped out off, or spliced back into, the past.
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"Deeply political and deeply personal, Stalin in Aruba is a startling debut...Puhak has me hooked. This is a poet to keep your eye on!"
— JULIANNA BAGOTT
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"Shelley Puhak’s stunning first book of poems is not so much a voyage but a zigzagging from one strange and fascinating port to another: Hitler’s lovers, lady laudanum drinkers, a high-school Proteus...and a cemetery of life stories."
— JOHN SUROWIECKI