03/01/2026
We’re thrilled to announce the release of Old Gnu, the new poetry collection by Charles Harper Webb, selected by Roger Weingarten for the Editor’s Choice Award.
Charles Harper Webb has published books of poetry with University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Wisconsin Press, and others. His book of craft essays, A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, was published by Red Hen Press, which also published his novel Ursula Lake. Webb's awards in poetry include the Morse Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Felix Po***ck Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Prize, and the Editor’s Choice Award from Longleaf Press. His poems have appeared in distinguished journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Yale Review, Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Tin House, Poets of the New Century, Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize. A former professional rock musician and psychotherapist, he is the editor of Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, and recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation. He is professor emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach.
"Beguiled by Webb’s poetry since October ’99, when I found myself in a bookstore poetry section unable to tear myself from Liver‘s marvelous poems, when a screaky voice, breaking my concentration, asked, 'Are you going to buy that book?' 25 years go by, and Old Gnu—this latest collection of driven, deeply remembered, funny/tragic, linguistically brilliant, brilliantly composed and moving explorations of the human experiment—once again captures this reader’s whole being. From 'Dreadnought eggs' to the 'pure po*******hy' of plants, from his 'way of making turtles swim in air' to wondering if we are 'a yeast infection in our Mother Earth?' Reader, I wholeheartedly recommend you buy this book, so you can delight in this Old Gnu street corner a capella elegy/panegyric." -Roger Weingarten
Beguiled by Webb's poetry since October '99, when I found myself in a bookstore poetry section unable to tear myself from Liver's marvelous poems, when a screaky voice, breaking my concentration, asked, "Are you going to buy that book?" 25 years go by, and Old Gnu—this latest collection of driven,...
