Poetry. At once a debut collection of poetry and a gripping literary game, THAUMATROPE fascinates like a supermarket tabloid and like a dazzling gem. These fifty-two poems are laid out as a shuffled deck of cards, with each suit and number tracing a different mood, tone, lyric problem and narrative or characterological thread. Thumbing through the random order, the reader must build her own conceptual house of cards, plotting connections and alliances between the Jokers, junkies and other mundane and mystical protagonists who haunt the royal parks and seedy bars, lofty towers and run-down clinics of this dense and various book. With illustrations by collageuse Lisa Hargon-Smith.

About the author: Brent Hendricks's first book, Thaumatrope, was published by Action Books in 2007. His work has appeared in a number of magazines, including Black Warrior Review, Bomb, Conjunctions, Carolina Quarterly, First Intensity, Iowa Review, The New Review of Literature, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Southern Review and Tarpaulin Sky. He is General Counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity and lives in Tuscaloosa with writer Kate Bernheimer and their daughter Xia.