A frog and a toad walk into a book of poems. They meet Paul Klee, Hieronymus Bosch, Adrienne Rich, Sesshu Toyo, Mark Twain, all of them escorted by Dean Rader. There are adventure poems, landscapes, assassins, self portraits, there are what some might call “ideas” mixed with some very funny moments, and what we might quite seriously call “emotions.” This collection will engage those interested in innovative, arresting, humorously engaging poetry.

DEAN RADER’s debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial First Book Prize, and won the 2010 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award. Recent poems appear in Best American Poetry 2012, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, Ninth Letter, Colorado Review, and Zyzzyva, which is featuring a folio of his poems in their fall 2013 issue. Rader publishes widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture. He is chair of the English Department at the University of San Francisco.