The rope (Paperback or Softback)

"John Colburn's The Rope is a documentary of the terror of now, a catalog in rapid-fire progression of the atrocities of capitalism and excess that have unfurled and finally fomented to an inevitable angry head in this early part of the 21st century. The narrator in these pieces writes from a position of numb optimism, knowing full well that while everything is terrible everywhere, just around the corner, things could be better, might be better, and therefore, one must keep pushing forward past a world of children in cages, poverty, class warfare, and everpresent skies full of dark radiation."

-Holly Day, author of In This Place, She is Her Own

"It's tempting to liken The Rope to an elegy forged by emotional compilations of memoir, longing and nostalgia. But, the cumulative effect of this book outdistances such description. The two long poems that make up this book build with devastating force and understatement and exceed easy definition. Colburn is a gifted and conscious artist who trusts in the pleasures of language and the pleasures of thought and he's not afraid to move in dark shadows. These are strong, unflinching poems, essential poems of witness in a dehumanizing time, which remind us despite our forgetfulness that without such poems to wake us to what we love and grieve, we are doomed to "becoming one sanitized object."'

-Juliet Patterson, author of Threnody

John Colburn is the author of Invisible Daughter (firthFORTH Books, 2013), Psychedelic Norway (Coffee House Press, 2013), and dear corpse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) as well as three chapbooks of poetry. He lives in St. Paul, MN and is one of the publishers/editors in the Spout Press collective.

Alyssa Baguss's practice explores mediated natural environments through drawing processes. Her work has been exhibited in the Twin Cities and regionally, including Augsburg College Christensen Center Art Gallery, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Soo Visual Arts Center, and Rosalux Gallery. Baguss has worked as a teaching artist and artist in residence with the Minnesota Center for Book Arts youth programming, Minneapolis Public School system's Art for Academic Achievement residency programs, and with various art organizations in the Twin Cities including the Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, the Rochester Art Center, and Public Arts St. Paul.