Michael Rothenberg

Welcome to Monsterville, where the residents are anything but ordinary. The monsters here are "friendly thoughtful shy and scary," much like their human neighbors. Readers will meet a monster house who plays hopscotch and makes the sidewalks quake, laugh at a bubblegum-headed monster's epic tantrum, and cry with a monster called Sadness. This quirky collection of illustrated poems is a celebration of friendship, emotional intelligence, and creative play as a form of healing.

In Wildflowers for the Bullies, Rothenberg takes energetic poetic aim at some of the most glaring political issues of the day, including racism, economic injustice, police brutality, and our overly commercialized culture industry with its "zombie billboards" and "sponsored straightjackets." In his deeply moving poem, "War," Rothenberg uses varied and inventively phrased perspectives ("We imagine the shark a killing machine / We become the killing machine") to note how thoroughly the idea of war has infiltrated Americans' daily lives, offering "love as the answer."

In Memory of a Banyan Tree is a collection of poems relating to nature, ecology, and ecopoetics, selected from the expanse of Rothenberg's writings over the past thirty-five years. Rothenberg's many years as a horticulturist and his engagement in the environmental movement inform his work. These poems are a watershed account of an intimate relationship with the outside world.

Through the eyes of a private journal writer, poet Michael Rothenberg reports on the continual worldwide injustices, tragedies and killings we are forever made to bear witness to on the streets and via the media. What can be done? With compassion and humor, "Murder" begins the investigation.