Alan Michael Parker and friends

Tupelo Press has released a new anthology, The Imaginary Poets, edited by Alan Michael Parker.

In his introduction, Parker writes:

Translate a poem into English, offer a biography of the poet, and then write a short essay in which the poem, the poet, and the corpus are considered -- and make all of it up, without once indicating you have done so. Thus charged were the twenty-two contributors to this volume, who in response produced poems "translated" from eighteen languages including Dirja, Vietnamese, Yiddish, and even from Egyptian hieroglyphs, poems that may be read in the grand literary tradition of heteronyms and alter egos.

The book is marvelous, one astonishment after another. The works are funny, moving, revelatory. Here's the list of contributors:

Aliki Barnstone
Josh Bell
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Martha Collins
Annie Finch
Judith Hall
Barbara Hamby
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Garrett Hongo
Andrew Hudgins
David Kirby
Maxine Kumin
Khaled Mattawa
D. A. Powell
Kevin Prufer
Anna Rabinowitz
Victoria Redel
David St. John
Mark Strand
Thom Ward
Rosanna Warren
Eleanor Wilner

In this holiday season, buy one copy of The Imaginary Poets for your favorite poet and another for yourself.