Beth Gylys is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to teaching, she has worked as a freelance writer and editor. Her work has been published in the Southern Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals.

About Bodies that Hum:

"Beth Gylys is a wonder. Forget your assumptions — good or ill — about the so-called New Formalism; Bodies that Hum is something new and unforeseen. Gylys shows us that the elegant restrictions of the villanelle are, to the right sensibility, uncannily suited to address "the truth of sex," its unreliable revelations. Her formal ingenuity, her terse vision, her humor and radiant candor all make this a remarkable, thoroughly engaging book."
—Tom Andrews

"Beth Gylys is a poet that people will remember and Bodies that Hum is going to be an auspicious debut collection. Her subject is an ordinary one, love and its discontents, but her music is extrodinary with the toughness of Carolyn Kizer and Dorothy Parker mixed into a loneliness that feels — it sounds very different! — like Emily Dickinson. Hers is an improvisatory, jazzy art that takes villanelles and sestinas back to the public urgency. These are secret songs that stay in the ear long after — after what? Well, do you have to ask?
—Dave Smith

"Though Beth Gylys's subject matter is often sexual, or at least involves the interplay of the sexes, it was not her content per se, but her phrasing and formal dexterity that kept me irresistibly returning to her poems. There's an intelligence and wit at work here, a compositional elan; every line is infused with attitude, and her endings always bring the poems to moments that seem both inevitable and unforseen. Bodies that Hum charms and probes, and even when it darkens, it remains vibrant and surprising."
—Stephen Dunn