Poetry. The winner of the inaugural American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award, THINGS ARE HAPPENING investigates dramatic emotional landscapes in a peculiar, lucid poetry based in contemporary speech. Chosen from over 1,200 manuscripts and introduced by the distinguished poet Gerald Stern, this is a book of visionary, affectionate poems.

"Joshua Beckman's line breaks: are the lines, sensations, account as if overlapping thrown fooward as by a speaker who becomes breathles in the extension [of the sentence] sometimes to minute, concentrated pltelets as extension by slight disparities—such as 'without making you mad. What does your story have to do / with my life is something that a lot of people wonder.' 'I say, float away. See how far you get.'"
—Leslie Scalapino

Author City: SEATTLE, WA USA

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of seven books, including TAKE IT (Wave Books, 2009), SHAKE and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: NICE HAT. THANKS. and ADVENTURES WHILE PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF BEAUTY. He is an editor at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including MICROGRAMS (translated with Alejandro de Acosta) by Jorge Carrera Andrade, 5 METERS OF POEMS by Carlos Oquendo de Amat, and POKER by Tomaž Šalamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award. He is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Seattle and New York.