My Favorite Tyrants [Paperback]

The word “tyrant” carries negative connotations, but in this new collection, Joanne Diaz tries to understand what makes tyranny so compelling, even seductive. These dynamic, funny, often poignant poems investigate the nature of tyranny in all of its forms—political, cultural, familial, and erotic. Poems about Stalin, Lenin, and Castro appear beside poems about deeply personal histories. The result is a powerful exploration of desire, grief, and loss in a world where private relationships are always illuminated and informed by larger, more despotic forces.

Winner, Midwest Book Award for Poetry, Midwest Independent Publishers Association

Winner of the 2014 Brittingham Prize in Poetry
Crossing many geographies and eras, the poems ofMy Favorite Tyrantslyrically explore why tyranny is so compelling, even seductive. Joanne Diazs powerful and provocative collection is marked by the exploration of desire, grief, and loss in a world where private relationships are always illuminated by larger, more despotic forces.

Rich with smart, deft scenesplaces you may not have been before,exactly, but feel strangely at home in. Congratulations to this transporting, potent, poet.Naomi Shihab Nye, Brittingham Prize judge

Forged of equal parts brains and brass, these poems bleed and shine and all but blind us. How wild they are, how beautiful! I love the way Joanne Diaz uses light and noise to tell us more than any history book can of the tyrants who distort yet give meaning to our lives: Castro, Stalin, our teachers, our parents, ourselves.David Kirby

Exquisitely attentive to the given world, to history, to the human heart, to the cadence of words: the poems in this volume share all the virtues of Joanne Diazs earlier work. What is new is the freer discursive range and the sharpenedl#)