“In this long-awaited first collection, Toucans in the Arctic, Scott Coffel writes, ‘When I see a woman at the Cottage Bakery/immersed in Ulysses or The Brothers Karamzov/my desires align themselves in neat rows/for the march into liberated Paris…’ Of wide reference and deep thought, of language taut and somehow new, these are 21st Century poems of joy, rage, erudition, wry humor, monumental tenderness. You will remember the day you discovered this book.” – Suzanne Cleary

Toucans in the Arctic is an inspired truant from any number of poetical schools. In this lyric case study of tumult and tranquility, the poet, tour pamphlet in hand, wanders through the national park of the psyche, noting surfeits of beauty and ruin as he scrambles across the eerie landscapes of identity and marriage.

In April 2010, “Toucans in the Arctic” was honored by the Poetry Society of America as the recipient of its 2010 Norma Farber First Book Award.

Scott Coffel directs the University of Iowa’s Hanson Center for Technical Communication.  His poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Ploughshares, Paris Review, Antioch Review, The American Scholar, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and elsewhere. He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow for the summer of 2009.  

Publication date: May 2009

Read an excerpt of Toucans in the Arctic.