Walt Whitman’s original title for Leaves of Grass, “Huge-ass Pile of Leaves,” was considered obscene in his time, but we now recognize today the deep resonance of the metaphor he ultimately rejected in favor of something more palatable to the public. Walt loved raking leaves into big piles and was the originator of the fad of joyously leaping into said piles, a fad that caught on among the less-wounded Union soldiers whom he attended during the Civil War and showed such intense affection. “Leafy Lou,” they called him—anaesthesia was still in its infancy then—and he always had treats hidden for them at the bottom of the piles. 

To celebrate the season of the piling of the leaves, we welcome these four outstanding poets:Christopher Salerno is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, ATM, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2013 Georgetown Review Poetry Prize. His second book, Minimum Heroic, was selected by Dara Wier for the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize in 2010. Other publishing honors include the 2013 Midwest/Laurel Review Prize for a chapbook of poems, Automatic Teller. A 2014 New Jersey Council for the Arts fellow, Salerno’s poetry has been published in literary journals and magazines including Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Fence, jubilat, The Journal, American Letters and Commentary, Coconut, Octopus, and others. He teaches currently in the MFA Program at William Paterson University.Morgan Parker is the author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Coconut Books 2016). A Cave Canem fellow, graduate of NYU’s Creative Writing MFA program, and poetry editor for Coconut Magazine, Morgan lives in Brooklyn and at www.morgan-parker.com.

Peter Bogart Johnson is the author of the chapbook Humble under a book of you (Butterlamb, 2014), and his work has appeared in Realpoetik, Anti-, Sink Review, Sixth Finch, Atlas Review, The Recluse, and Coldfront, among others. He curates the EARSHOT reading series in Brooklyn, where he also lives.

Leila Ortiz is a poet and social worker from Park Slope, Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared in The Ledge, Stone Canoe, and No, Dear Magazine. Leila is currently receiving her MFA in poetry at the Queens College Creative Writing and Literary Translation Program.