This exemplary anthology features two striking poems by first-prize winner Nancy Baker Rullo and diverse offerings by Will Nixon, Leo Vanderpot, Nancy W. Beard, Matthew J. Spireng, Andre Moul Ross, James Finn Cotter, David Appelbaum, Linda Melick, Raymond B. Anderson, Bobbi Katz, Kate Hymes, and Geri Rosenzweig.

SUNY professor and Chronogram contributor Uchmanowicz portrays a "year-rounder's" Cape Cod of fickle weather, untimely deaths, and gritty sensuality. Her taut, precise poems are vivid enough to grab a reader at first sight and rich enough to reward a second reading. Book design by Chronogram art director Carla Rozman.

This award-winning Chatham author's 19th poetry collection is a meditation on the elusive bond between fathers and sons. In this suite of 60 poems, Kherdian evokes his Armenian father through plainspoken recollections of poignant details: a heavy gray coat, the way he combed his eyebrows, his signature X.

Japan has National Living Treasures; Woodstock has Ed Sanders. The founding Fug, idiosyncratic man of letters, and unregenerate gadfly has gathered 15 of his overtly political poems under the welcoming banner of Shivastan, which craft-prints limited edition chapbooks in Nepal. Contact shivastan@hotmail.com.

Amy "Uzi" Ouzoonian, who freelances for this magazine, spins feisty and provocative riffs on such "outsider" topics as addiction, caring for the profoundly disabled, masturbation, and rape. Even on the page, her work has the jagged, raw energy of a spoken-word performance.

Lerner's geographical turf is the Lower East Side, her emotional turf the defiant New York loneliness which refuses to give up hope in a city where "A jazz band out of Brighton Beach/is tuning up the July heat..." She will return to the Colony Cafe as a featured reader in August.