PRE-ORDER -- OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DATE: APRIL 7, 2026

Winner of the inaugural 2025 Stern Prize from The American Poetry Review, Michael Bazzett's astonishing Cloudwatcher is laced with wit and buoyed by a welcome eccentricity. These poems reside in an otherwhere of missing rivers and bottled starlight, where the sea leaves cryptic letters for beachcombers on shore, where rain can "wipe the name clean off a mountain." Bazzett is a master of building a world slightly parallel to this one, where to be imprisoned in a "cage of one's own desires" comes replete with cedar shavings, feeding tray, and water bottle. With its evocative imagery and crackling energy, Cloudwatcher offers the life-affirming reminder that "until / you crack a bit, you can't be over-joyed."