Angela Ball is professor of English in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and poetry editor for Mississippi Review. She is the author of four previous poetry collections, including The Museum of the Revolution: 58 Exhibits, Possession, Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds, and Quartet, as well as two chapbooks. She is the recipient of grants from the Mississippi Arts Commission and the NEA, and is a former poet-in-residence at the University of Richmond. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, the New Republic, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2001, among other publications.

Rodrigo Toscano is the author of To Leveling Swerve (2005), Platform (2004), The Disparities (2002) and Partisans (1999). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, War and Peace (2004 & 2007), In the Criminal’s Cabinet: An anthology of poetry and fiction (2004), and in McSweeney’s “Poets Picking Poets.” His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems, and radio pieces have been performed and broadcast widely. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Catalonian. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute, and lives in Brooklyn. His most recent collection, Collapsible Poetics Theater, won the 2008 National Poetry Series award.

Stephen Burt is Associate Professor of Literature at Harvard. He is the author of three collections of poetry, including Parallel Play (Graywolf, 2006); his book of writings on modern and contemporary poetry, Close Calls with Nonsense, was just released through Graywolf Press.

Close Calls in Time Out

Review for Parallel Play in the Washington Post Book World

Stephen Burt at Graywolf

Giao Buu goes by the name G. because there are too many vowels in his real name. He lives in Tremont with a roommate, a refrigerator, some really fat squirrels, and a box of honey bunches cereal that just won’t die. He works as a humorous greeting card writer/editor at American Greetings, and his best friend is Lucy, a dog of amazing amazingness who he believes is a superhero in her off-time. He has insanely wonderful parents and family who let him quit medical school to write, and baller friends who, well, ball, and who inspire everything he writes. G. likes to run, write, and watch any shows involving animals being awesome. He also loves to eat (bacon especially) and sleep (dreaming of bacon), and other activities that directly help him to live.