Crime Wave: Poems - Paperback

These Personae relate their stories in voices darkly comic, irreverent, fantastical or in the manner of 21st century urban realism. Crime or shady dealings is the throughline, from the low streets to corruption and deceit at the highest echelons of power. Even the dead can't stop talking. Or tweeting. Suzanne Lummis, a principal definer of the poem noir, now, in her fourth collection, gives full expression to the stark, tearless sensibility.

"Guns, spies, noir. Love, The Other Woman, serial killers. Crime Wave is brilliant with an inimitable voice, a master class in style. Here, there is gravity as much as levity. I laughed then gasped at the lyric virtuosity. Suzanne Lummis is a treasure. This extraordinary book is a prize."

-Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower, California Poet Laureate

"In Crime Wave, the dead speak with wised-up fury and the kind of courage that refuses cultural disregard. Lummis's feminist noir aesthetic has never been fiercer or more poignant... Crime Wave rejects despair. It's as searing as it is hopeful."

-Dorothy Barresi, author of What We Did While We Made More Guns