Amidst the dangers of figurative language, the coercion of sentimentality, and the insidious freight of abstraction, these poems embody the necessity for the critical, the communal, the real. Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real uses conceptual critiques of public discourse and experimental social cartographies, as well as lyrics of intimacy, to defy prescribed ways of being. This is an act of resistance against dangerous and domineering narratives, and the power they inscribe.

From poet-provocateur Moez Surani comes Operations—a book-length poetic inventory of contemporary rhetoric of violence and aggression, as depicted through the evolution of the language used to name the many military operations conducted by UN Member Nations since the organization's inception in 1945. With Operations, Surani draws on contemporary poetic traditions, including conceptual and inventory poetics, to accomplish two important things: On the one hand, he shows that no word is free from connoting violence, while on the other hand, he provokes readers to consider whether their personal values match the values of the military operation that are conducted by their countries. By pulling military language away from euphemism—effectively, making it account for its doublespeaking ways—Operations gives voice to the many lives lost in conflicts around the world, in a volume that will speak equally to lovers of contemporary poetry, language, and linguistics, as to readers interested in politics, international relations, and public discourse.