Poetry Profiles: Tupelo Press - NYTimes.com The latest in a series of occasional profiles of poetry publishers. These questions were answered by Jeffrey Levine, publisher and editor in chief of Tupelo Press (with assistance from Marie Gauthier, director of sales and marketing). Wish List I: What book in the last five years do you wish you had published? Cynthia Huntington's "Heavenly Bodies" (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), which I just kept thinking about, and which went on to be a National Book Award finalist. Wish List II: When you're reading a manuscript submission by a writer you're unfamiliar with, what are you looking for in the poems? It's a kind of precision I find myself looking for, having to do with the bravery of the poet in making a discernible emotional investment in the poem's imagery, and in accomplishing this emotional investment with the use of connective tissue we'll call "gesture" - where language opens up a clearing in which something happens, and we see and feel the gestures of that thing happening, and we come to recognize it for what it is, as if for the first time, that very particular "now." A Brief History Tupelo Press was established in 1999 by Mr. Levine, who wanted to create a small nonprofit publishing house that had a mission of discovering great, mostly young, writers, and designing, editing, publishing and distributing their books: "I knew there wouldn't be much money in it, but I knew it would be so very satisfying to make these books, to give young "emerging" writers (meaning writers who deserved to be known, but weren't yet there), a vehicle - and entry into the world of literature." Short Shelf: Who are among your favorite poets? Dickinson, Shakespeare, Milosz, Heaney, Bishop, Frost, Stevens, Charles Wright, Cafavy, Merwin - and everything written by Robert Hass and Anne Carson. Of course, this is a trick question, which obliges me to omit many, many treasured books of Tupelo Press poetry, which I would not live without, as they are my children, and brilliant ones, too. What's the most challenging/difficult book you've published? I think Ruth Ellen Kocher's "domina Un/blued" (2013) is tough and extraordinarily powerful. Mary Molinary's new "Mary and the Giant Mechanism" is like a storm of words, or birds - a storm of words with many birds - and is about the enormous difficulties of living in a time of seemingly endless war. List Highlights: A sampling of books you're most proud to have published. "Dancing in Odessa" (2004) by Ilya Kaminsky tops the list because he is one of those rarest of finds in this or any century, a writer who establishes what poetry can be. Dan Beachy-Quick's "Circle's Apprentice" (2011) is, in my opinion, one of the most intimate books of poetry ever published by the press. Aimee Nezhukumatathil's "Miracle Fruit" (2003) - a clear, compelling, voice informed by all of the senses and a touch of whimsy. Recent books that you're especially excited about? In addition to those already named, Christopher Merrill's "Boat," Amaud Jamaul Johnson's "Darktown Follies" and Lee Sharkey's "Calendars of Fire." Why Publish Poetry? Poetry is language that is most alive, most intense, and most fully expressive of the musical, dramatic, imagistic and emotional potential of words - words in shapes. Poetry requires concentration and even courage to read, or write, or publish - and in this time, when we're all (to quote T. S. Eliot) "distracted by distraction from distraction," poetry invites and allows the deepest forms of concentration. A Poem Author's Prayer If I speak for the dead, I must leave this animal of my body, I must write the same poem over and over, for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender. If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man who runs through rooms without touching the furniture. Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year is it?" I can dance in my sleep and laugh in front of the mirror. Even sleep is a prayer, Lord, I will praise your madness, and in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us, music in which we move. For whatever I say is a kind of petition, and the darkest days must I praise. Ilya Kaminsky, from "Dancing in Odessa"