A Book Called Rats

Miguel Murphy

The recipient of a Swarthout Award and an Academy of American Poets Prize, Miguel Murphy is an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame's Phoenix Institute and holds an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. His poems and review appear in Rain Taxi, Blackbird, Hayden's Ferry Review, and others. He lives in Venice Beach, California, and teaches at Santa Monica College.

Reviews

A Book Called Rats is a stunning collection, full of dark eroticism and haunting images that pull the reader into a world both beautiful and dangerous. The human condition doesn't change, but suddenly, in this sensuous, charged book with its perfect music, we are fascinated anew.

—Beckian Fritz Goldberg, author of The Book of Accident

As a text that inspires a modern-day Pied Piper who will dazzle and lure innocence away from the unsuspecting victim . . . A Book Called Rats will make the meek flinch with its romance to violence, but few will negate the power of its imagery and the direct address to the flesh as predator and prey.

—Rigoberto González, for the El Paso Times

Miguel Murphy's always exceptional poems show his work with characterization is invariably interesting and often surprising, perhaps even to the poet himself, finding a symbiosis with contemporary narrative that is both compelling and disturbing. Consistently singular, edgy, and haunting, these pieces operate best at an intuitive level, giving the reader something that gets under the skin. The struggles in these poems are literarily courageous ones.

—Alberto Ríos, National Book Award finalist for The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body

Ordering Information

To purchase A Book Called Rats by Miguel Murphy, please contact our distributor, University Press of New England toll free at 1-800-421-1561 or by fax at 1-603-448-9729. The book is also available online at UPNE, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine retailers.

To request a copy for review, please contact the Carnegie Mellon University Press Editorial Offices at (412) 268-2861 or by email at CarnegieMellonUniversityPress@gmail.com.