Winner of the 2014 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye The word “tyrant” carries negative connotations, but in this new collection, Joanne Diaz tries to understand what makes tyranny so compelling, even seductive. These dynamic, funny, often poignant poems investigate the nature of tyranny in all of its forms—political, cultural, familial, and erotic. Poems about Stalin, Lenin, and Castro appear beside poems about deeply personal histories. The result is a powerful exploration of desire, grief, and loss in a world where private relationships are always illuminated and informed by larger, more despotic forces. Winner, Midwest Book Award for Poetry, Midwest Independent Publishers Association “Rich with smart, deft scenes―places you may not have been before, exactly , but feel strangely at home in. Congratulations to this transporting, potent, poet.”―Naomi Shihab Nye, Brittingham Prize judge “Forged of equal parts brains and brass, these poems bleed and shine and all but blind us. How wild they are, how beautiful! I love the way Joanne Diaz uses light and noise to tell us more than any history book can of the tyrants who distort yet give meaning to our lives: Castro, Stalin, our teachers, our parents, ourselves.”―David Kirby “Exquisitely attentive to the given world, to history, to the human heart, to the cadence of words: the poems in this volume share all the virtues of Joanne Diaz’s earlier work. What is new is the freer discursive range and the sharpened abutments of tenderness and astringency. Elegy meets social satire in these pages, the TSA watch list meets an elegant Persian poetic form. In the world these poems refuse to disown, sorrow smells like Lysol in the toilet stalls and bounty is undaunted by formica: it's a joy to see how largeness of spirit and clear-eyed penetration can sustain one another. Her favorite tyrants? Above all, the dictates of memory and love.”―Linda Gregerson “[Diaz’s] poems are nakedly aware of political realities while possessed of an urgent grace.”— Library Journal The Brittingham Prize in Poetry Ronald Wallace, Series Editor Joanne Diaz is an assistant professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. She is the author of an earlier collection of poems, The Lessons , and her poetry has appeared in AGNI , The American Poetry Review , and Prairie Schooner , among other publications. She is also a past recipient of writing fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Don’t get me wrong― I have my favorite tyrants. When the boots are shiny and the hair neatly combed, it means that a group of people, however misguided, lusty, or downright hateful, have collectively agreed to make a fuss, be modern, and, if not handsome, at least clean. And that cleanliness has always counted for a lot in a world where its promise is a kind of food. ―excerpt from “a la Turka” © The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.