With time in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she earned her Ph.D. in English, Mary Biddinger would know what a prairie is. In Prairie Fever, her collection of poems, she uses bucolic imagery like ''red-wing blackbirds,'' ''Riverside, selling spring peas/and bulbs. Last year's honey/wax candles.''

But all is not right here. These aren't pastoral poems delighting in nature; they're set in a muddy town of drunken fights (''bar stools brandished like stilettos'') and arson (''the sulfur lingered in her fingertips''). Most shocking, in The Edge of Town, a 14-year-old girl and her friends see a man's body in the river and poke it with sticks to make it float away. ''Prairie Gothic'' may be the style.

Biddinger, an assistant professor at the University of Akron, is the new editor for the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press. Prairie Fever (85 pages, softcover) costs $12 from http://www.steeltoebooks.com, at Western Kentucky University.

Sherwood Anderson

Though many people know Sherwood Anderson only for Winesburg, Ohio, the collection of short stories they were assigned to read in high school, Anderson ''wrote, published, and was deeply committed to poetry.''

So says Stuart Downs, editor of American Spring Song: The Selected Poems of Sherwood Anderson. Downs draws from Anderson's work written between 1915 and 1939, explaining the influence of Walt Whitman and other poets.

American Spring Song (105 pages, softcover) costs $18 from http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com.
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Footnotes

• Marcy Shankman will sign Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for College Students on Monday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at Legacy Village in Lyndhurst. On Thursday, author Carla Neggers will sign The Angel, a novel about a folklorist who follows the legend of an ancient Celtic statue. Both Joseph-Beth events are at 7 p.m.; Neggers also will read from and sign her book at 7 p.m. Friday at Borders, 3466 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights.

• Russ Musarra and Chuck Ayers will sign Walks Around Akron: Rediscovering a City in Transition at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Highland Square branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library, 807 W. Market St.

• Sportswriter and Hudson High School alumnus Curt Sampson will sign his new book Golf Dads: Fathers, Sons, and the Greatest Game from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Learned Owl Book Shop, 204 N. Main St., Hudson.

• Robert Spirko will sign his spy thriller The Palestine Conspiracy from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Borders Express in Chapel Hill Mall, and answer questions about Middle East peace efforts.

• Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 4015 Medina Road, Bath Township, starts its ''First Friday'' programming this week with Barbara Schubert, editor of A Time to Dance, the memoir of the Ohio Ballet's founder, Heinz Poll. Schubert will discuss and sign the book Friday at 7 p.m., and dancers from the University of Akron will perform excerpts from Poll's work afterward.

• The Cleveland Foundation has announced the winners of the 2008 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which ''recognize outstanding works that contribute to society's understanding of racism and foster an appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.'' The winners are Junot Diaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which also is this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, and Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist. William Melvin Kelley will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the ceremony, which is scheduled for Sept. 11. Among this year's judges was Akron-born poet Rita Dove.
— Barbara McIntyre
Special to the Beacon Journal