Wave Books

Wave Books, founded in Seattle in 2005 (absorbing Verse Press), publishes poetry with an art-object austerity — plain covers, no blurbs — and an aesthetic that runs experimental without being airless: Mary Ruefle, Eileen Myles, Fred Moten, Anselm Berrigan. Its editorial stance is famously curatorial; it does not run contests, on principle.

The press reads unsolicited work only in occasional announced windows, publishes lectures and prose by poets (Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey became a classic), and its design language — that spare typography — is the most imitated look in small-press poetry.