Dennis Finnell has published four books of poems, the most recent Pie 8, winner of the 2012 Bellday Prize. His first book is Red Cottage, which won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. His next two books, Belovèd Beast and The Gauguin Answer Sheet, were selected for the Contemporary Poetry Series from the University of Georgia Press. He has received grants and fellowships from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, The Ragdale Foundation, and the MacDowell Foundation, and taught at the University of Tennessee, Mount Holyoke College, Wesleyan University, and Greenfield Community College, where he also served as Co-Director of Financial Aid. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he now lives in western Massachusetts.

Books by Dennis Finnell:

About Ruins Assembling:

"Ruins Assembling lifts off into a language edged with light which probes the dimensions of memory, hidden neighborhoods, and an exuberant hope and affection for the past being 'tomorrow’s beginning.' Finnell’s lines swoop the reader up and into the competing layers of what’s remembered and what’s understood. This unrelenting, but tender, book is captivating and a great ride!"
—Pamela Stewart

"In true poems, things lay down the secret burden of their original names. And then the adventure of the secret begins. In Ruins Assembling, Dennis Finnell parses our national outrage of that adventure. En route, disparity becomes a common bond and secrecy a ruined temple rising. More than any American poet living now, Finnell is to be trusted, and trusted entirely."
—Donald Revell

"I could not get through this book quickly. Everything conspired to slow me down. At the end of each poem, I leapt back to the start again, simply because I wanted to. I began to read aloud, compelled to send the words out into a bigger arena, the room. I called my wife. Listen, I said, to this one. I read “Father of the Man,” but I couldn’t stop. I read her “811 Flags.” This brought me to a near stop at the base of a diseased tree, where the poet celebrates the arborist, Ed, 80-something, with expressions of what Ed hates, lawn chemicals, and what he loves, warblers. Let me read that again."
—Robert Stewart