The Two Pits: New and Selected Poems

Bringing together verses that span much of Siddhartha Menon's career – including selections from three previous volumes as well as two sections of unpublished poems – The Two Pits offers the most comprehensive introduction yet to his body of work.

In the titular opening section, Menon observes how leaves fall and are renewed, lamps are lit beside a thoroughfare, concrete parleys with moss and young trees, and freedom with entanglement. The intimate and the expansive bridge the book's five boroughs, prising open our desires and moments of epiphany.

Wise and often playful, the poems address enduring questions about mortality and meaning, whether in Shakespeare's Macbeth, or in a shelter for homeless boys, or in the kaleidoscope of everyday life and relationships.