Newtown resident Charles Rafferty is preparing for the publication of his new collection of poems.

BOA Editions has announced a publication date of November 11 for The Appendectomy Grin, Rafferty’s 16th release.

Compact in size, but massive in scope, the poems, according to the publisher, “explore the death of self, country, and planet, while remaining grounded in humor and the miracles of everyday life. In a world that is changing faster than ever, The Appendectomy Grin is a deep breath, a meditation, a rhythmic tickle fight, a slightly off-kilter manual on how to remain present and lucid in a world that seems intent on destroying itself.”

The result, also according to the release, “is an argument you cannot disbelieve by a poet leaving his unique scuff marks on the linoleum kitchen floor of the world. Does the executioner have a rationale for the order of our beheadings? Ask Charles Rafferty. The answer is in the book.”

The Appendectomy Grin is a 101-page paperback filled with 72 new works by Rafferty, who approaches everything from his hometown and a long debated punctuation mark to challenges for homeowners, and much more.

Albert Goldbarth, two-time recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, says Rafferty’s new works are “technically, yes,” prose poems.

“But really these are a new kind of physics: compact poems that, by virtue of their savvy soulful synapse-sparking swift connections, are larger on the inside than they are on the surface. They comment on our world with witty insight, and yet are themselves an imaginative world of a higher order. If Alice had entered such a wonderland of sharp thought and true tidings, she’d have never tried to leave,” according to Goldbarth.

Whipsaw author Suzanne Frischkorn says Rafferty’s “irrefutable voice meditates on ideas, nature, relationships, as well as things — how they start and the uncanny ways they are shaped in the end.

“These prose poems are full of hope even as they upend American culture. Often wry, and always surprising, Rafferty makes you reconsider everything you thought was true,” she added.

Charles Rafferty is the author of 15 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently A Cluster of Noisy Planets (BOA Editions, 2021). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Rhino, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares.

His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). He has also published a novel, Moscodelphia (Woodhall Press, 2021).

Rafferty has received grants from National Endowment for the Arts and Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Currently, he is a director at a research and advisory firm. He is also a songwriter and a naturalist.