All You Ask For is Longing: New and Selected Poems

For over twenty years Sean Thomas Dougherty has negotiated between modernist and avant-garde writing and more populist traditions that extend back to Walt Whitman. His subject matter ranges from basketball to Bjork, from blue collar workers to Biggie Smalls, from Luciano Pavarotti to women waiting at a diner outside a prison in Upstate New York. Selecting from the best of eight previous collections, this New and Selected reveals the powerful arc and development of Dougherty's writing and establishes him as a voice of dissent for the future.

DISCOGRAPHYNew Poems Long Like a RiverDear L, Am I Another Exchanged for YesThe Blues is a VerbDear L, The Choruses We Lost Along the CoastPoem To Be Put in A Drawer After TellingThe Spanish Poet Tries to ExplainSong for my FatherPoem Written on a Chain-Link FenceAgainst EconomicsWhat Singing Left We Wrote Was What Was SungDear L, I Don't Know How Across the Grass Our Daughter Runs Balancing Life (a ball a blade a)Most of my Life is Gnawing the Most Remarkable LiesOur LimpingWhen the Sirens ShriekAt the Toss of a Coin A Dream Like a Jaguar Walked into Jorge's CueDouble ItJorge's UncleDear You Who Never ReturnedMore Alone Than LonlienessDeserted Parking Lots with Faded LinesWe Once Were Stolen SkateboardsA WeightWhat Is Lost Is Never SaidWaiting to be Shot in the BackSearching for a Shallow VeinDecateur ChevyDear L, DizzyDear L, I Cannot SpellAnything That Can Be MisreadDear L,I Am Your ScarThe Voice I Pretend I Am SometimeDear L, The Door Shuts the RainEveryway Our Lungs Tattered~The Mercy of Sleep 1994Tears for Saint CatherineTears of Saint CatherineThe Staircase of the Body On her Journey to Avignon to Argue the Fate of the Church with the PopeLike the Wings of White Moths on Moonless NightsWounds of Blood and Light~Love Song of the Young Couple, The Dumb Job 1994At Mike's Pub and GrubTiny GriefsDanger FlammableThe SweeperI'm Looking for Lorca in your LettersI Open my Eyes to the Wind at the Corner~The Body's Precarious Balance 1997Beyond the Chain-Link FencePoem for Anthony Otherwise Known as HeadDays of 1984Long Coats with Deep PocketsInsert Your Name HereAn Iron SpiralCocoonsMoon-Grief UtteranceThe CoatAlba on the Second FloorClay~Except by Falling 2000Spoken Blind to a Break Beat While DrinkingUntitled at Hong FatsThe Somnambulist WaltzHungryThere is Nothing to Offer my BreathLamentationThe Body is the WaterNine Innings to Go~The Biography of Broken Things 2003In the Biography of Broken ThingsPrisonsThemAt a Certain Hour. On a Certain DaySpread Your WingsIn the Rain~Nightshift Belonging to Lorca 2004InvocationErotic PoemOrangesFuck Me Like Being Born (after Ruth Schwartz)Sean Thomas DoughertyBus Stop at 12th StreetRimas DissolutasAgainst GreenSnowglobeIn the Gloaming~Broken Hallelujahs 2007Dear PistachioThe Sky InsideAll You Ask for is LongingMy Father's Fro in the Mode of Romare BeardenOberek for Etheridge KnightThe Day Biggie Smalls Died (AKA Christopher Wallace, March 7, 1997)Embraceable YouKowalski: A HistoriographyWhat We KeepAfter the Election~Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line 2010AriasThe Opposite of ElegyDear TiaraOur Love as an Origami CraneRaphaelShellUntitled on Someone Else's AnniversaryDuet