Anne Babson Confronts America’s Fractured Civic Imagination in Crossing State Lines
Unsolicited Press will publish Crossing State Lines, a new poetry collection by Anne Babson, on October 6, 2026. In Crossing State Lines, Babson assembles an unruly American cast—Walt Whitman, Liz Cheney, Phillis Wheatley, immigrants, office workers, commuters, political ghosts, and citizens trying to determine what remains solid beneath them. Together, they travel through a nation where geography, history, public language, and political allegiance no longer stay neatly within their borders.
The collection travels from Manhattan’s crowded commutes to the immense landscapes of Montana and Wyoming, from Ellis Island to airports, lakes, offices, and other spaces where American identity is tested, performed, passed down, and revised. Whitman enters the modern country through TSA scanners and digital spectacle. Liz Cheney appears in muddy boots, fishing in Wyoming while reckoning with political exile, family history, and the consequences of refusing an obvious lie. Historical voices collide with modern exhaustion, and democratic ideals meet the daily indignities of living in a nation that cannot agree on the nature of reality.
Babson approaches the current political crisis through poetry rather than commentary. Her work shifts among ghazals, rondels, inherited forms, and free verse, allowing the architecture of each poem to participate in its argument. Wit sits beside dread. Lyric beauty gives way to satire, historical inquiry, civic anger, and the occasional absurdity of attempting to remain honorable in dishonorable times.
Crossing State Lines is Babson’s fifth full-length poetry collection and her third book with Unsolicited Press. She is also the author of The White Trash Pantheon, winner of the Colby H. Kullman Award at the Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference; Polite Occasions; Messiah; and The Bunker Book.
Anne Babson is the author of five full-length poetry collections: The White Trash Pantheon, winner of the Colby H. Kullman Award at the Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference; Polite Occasions; Messiah; The Bunker Book; and Crossing State Lines. She has also published multiple chapbooks, and her individual poems have appeared in literary journals on five continents.
Babson received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and holds a terminal degree in writing from The City College of New York, where she studied with Marilyn Hacker. She is the librettist of the opera Lotus Lives, composed by Su Lian Tan, and the author of the play Reenactment, published by Review Americana. She has taught at Southeastern Louisiana University since 2016.
