Overview

Tilt / Beautiful People brings to life two innovative poetry books integrated into one. In Tilt, Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton (1947-2023) write through climate change, Maureen’s illness, and the pandemic with their signature wit and poignancy. Their feminist curiosity leads them to poems about gender identity, marriage equality, and the complexities of national politics. Assembled shortly before Maureen’s death, the poems in Tilt tell the story of a friendship rooted in collaborative artistic play. The title of the book gives a nod to the earth’s tilt, which gives us seasons, but also hints that the poems were written at full tilt, these poets hyperaware they only had so much time left to write with one another. Beautiful People was written back and forth over the course of several months by poets Maureen Seaton and Aaron Smith. Bold and inventive, it moves from sonnets and sestinas to prose poems and so much more. While its center is a love for poetry and art and laughter, the poets also grapple with mortality, sadness, and what it means to be alive on a broken but beautiful planet. Through their literary friendship, they put a mirror to all our lovely faces.

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9781957946221

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Maureen Seaton (1947-2023) authored twenty-three poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently The Sky Is an Elephant (ELJ Editions, 2023), Undersea (Jackleg Press, 2021), and Sweet World (CavanKerry Press, 2019), winner of the Florida Book Award in Poetry. Her honors include Lambda Literary Awards for both lesbian memoir and lesbian poetry, the Audre Lorde Award, an NEA, and the Pushcart. She was professor emerita of creative writing at the University of Miami and was voted Miami’s Best Poet 2020 by the readers of the Miami New Times. Aaron Smith is the author of five books published by the Pitt Poetry Series: Stop Lying: Poems (2023), The Book of Daniel (2019), Primer (2016), Appetite (2012), and Blue on Blue Ground (2005), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. He is a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a two-time finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. He is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Mass Cultural Council. With the poet James Allen Hall, he hosts Breaking Form: A Poetry and Culture Podcast. Currently, he is associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Denise Duhamel is, most recently, the author of Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). She and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored six collections. A recipient of NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, she is a distinguished university professor at Florida International University in Miami.

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