Signals

Ed Madden is an associate professor of English and director of the Undergraduate Program in Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina as well as writer in residence at the Riverbanks Botanical Gardens in Columbia, South Carolina. He earned his B.A. in English from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, a B.S. in biblical studies from the Institute for Christian Studies in Austin, Texas, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Madden is the author of Tiresian Poetics and coeditor of Geographies and Genders in Irish Studies. He was selected by editor Natasha Trethewey for inclusion in the anthology Best New Poets of 2007.

Signals combines a matter of fact lyrical eye with a view to harder social realities, and there is a consistency in the collection, a working with and around couplets and tercets, a sparseness that seems to match an arid landscape, a place where one searches for hope. This collection bears the evidence of a high level of craft alongside a concern for what goes on in our lives. - Afaa Weaver, author of The Plum Flower Dance: Poems, 1985-2005, from the foreword