Modern and contemporary poetry
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£52.70
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisThe Rivers Are Inside Our Homes handles themes of loss and exile, aging generations, fable and fairy tale, marriage and hurt, with the island of Cuba at its heart.These incandescent poems by Cuban American poet Victoria María Castells explore how we can salvage our notion of paradise in an overspent Eden. In thwarted homes located in Havana and Miami, Rapunzel and her prince, persecuted nymphs, Morgause, and Bluebeard's wife speak to us directly, all in need of returning to safety. Confronting machismo, illness, heartbreak, and isolation, the poems depict how women are at the mercy of men, either husband or oligarch. Yet all generations of Cubans are bombarded with this need to return or to leave, to have both, to have neither.Meanwhile, hurricane seasons add further instability to shelter and family, growing fiercer every year. Exile and displacement are accepted as permanent conditions. Latin America will mirror Cuba's violent struggles as conquered lanTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£13.29
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Shopping or The End of Time
Book SynopsisThese tour-de-force poems simultaneously capture an impression of emptiness and pleasure, of existing in a liminal space filled with both hollowness and potential.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Ravine Part 1. Women Who begat the earth? 80 to 90 percent of my awareness When I was 13 there was a girl I knew My gravestone The mother should be as stunning With pleasure the young men Initially I was a beautiful woman A naked woman is perched in the window The doves were moaning crying cooing calling A map is a picture that shows where things are Part 2. Money My husband fidgets with the inner mechanism of the country The culture oriented itself toward shopping In my childhood The economy is synchronized and delicate In this house we loved My darkest thoughts In the middle of the disaster nothing bad had happened to me My new blue kitchen cabinets painted blue Is the wind so dirty? Our house (among all the homes in the city) Part 3. Children A ghost is what you call a woman The new mothers The unbearable can actually be borne My pregnancy was a long and happy nightmare Nothing could be sweeter than JoaquÍn is my favorite child Statues or knotted ropes or scored stone I ask JoaquÍn if he likes the music AndrÉs said Woe was the sentiment Part 4. Ghosts Sitting at the lip of the tunnel to the past It is sad What is your ideal life I am going to make a poem We each of us carry Neptune is a place we’ll never go All the time art is falling It is turbulent to be a person Hypothetical Painting
£16.10
University of Wisconsin Press At Wrist
Book SynopsisPoets have been writing about love for centuries, so it is thrilling when a new voice comes along capable of breathing new life into old structures. In (At) Wrist, Tacey Atsitty melds inherited forms such as the sonnet with her Dine (Navajo) and religious experiences to boldly and beautifully seek a love that can last for eternity.Trade ReviewAs formally seductive as it is subversive, Tacey Atsitty’s (At) Wrist is a poetry of deep longing and praise, of loss and the courage of resilience. Anchored in an intimate vision of connectedness, her syntax works its way beyond thought’s limit, setting its hook in the terrain of memory and dream. This is a book I will return to for what no other poet I know delivers with such daring and vulnerability, a poetry wherein time, body, and the natural world are presented as a singularity otherwise known as love." - James KimbrellTable of Contents A February Snow Sonnet for My Wrist Bird Dance Round Our Wrists Out of Star Sang Over Chafe Apricot Lament Hole through the Rock Querido Apu Lace Sonnet Still Life Morrow River Silt The Night My Wrist Broke Last Night, Bleeding A Blood Letting On Innocence When It Was Time Scaling the Black It’s Hard to Write a Love Poem When Candy Dish Sonnet Into Rain Of Ribbon The Warbler Night Portrait with Cannon Fire Pollenback Portrait of a Gray Room ) ( Lacing Acknowledgments
£16.16
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin The Roof of the Whale Poems
Book SynopsisVenezuelan poet Juan Calzadilla (b. 1931) is considered one of the most influential poets of the Spanish language. But while his books have appeared in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spain, his work has not been widely available in English until now.Trade Review“Calzadilla addressed his poems to a specific audience during a momentous time; and yet his poems feel as though they were written last week precisely for us. Unvarnished, unimproved, shamanistic, his poems exude a raw, tumultuous energy that legendary translator Katherine Hedeen and her savvy co-translator Olivia Lott catch every drop of. But be careful, reader. Don’t start this book at night; you not only won’t sleep a wink, but you may find yourself far from home—as far as the Caracas of your imagination—rushing through ill-lit streets in a frenzy.”—Forrest GanderTable of Contents Foreword by VÍctor RodrÍguez NÚÑez Introduction by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott Dictado por la jaurÍa / Dictated by the Pack (1962) DICTADO POR LA JAURÍA / DICTATED BY THE PACK vivo a diario / i live day by day funcionario que celebra un ritual / a civil servant celebrates a ritual escorpiÓn / scorpion vecindad del buitre / vulture neighborhood esperando salvaciÓn / waiting for salvation gracias al barniz / thanks to the varnish mingitorio / urinal una sala de juego / a cardroom me reconozco / i see me los mÉtodos necesarios / the necessary methods he sido otro / i have been another golpeando el abismo / hitting the abyss CON MALOS MODALES / WITH BAD MANNERS con malos modales / with bad manners cuarzo / quartz el magma debe retornar / the magma must return en memoria del Ángel / in memory of the angel los horizontes son nuestros brazos / the horizons are our arms EL INVISIBLE SALE DE LA CASA / THE INVISIBLE MAN LEAVES THE HOUSE “una vez que se toma el sombrero. . .” / “once a hat’s been picked up. . .” DESCENDIENTE DE AHAB / DESCENDENT OF AHAB “para un pÚblico enfermo. . .” / “for a sick public. . .” fin del acto / end of the act el doble hace su entrada / the double enters the scene mi vocaciÓn de actor / my vocation as an actor la venganza / revenge poste / post escalÓn / step cadena sola / single chain cuento / story un hilo sobre el abismo / a thread above the abyss sÓlo comer es una empresa / only eating is a business me levanto / i get up jonÁs siempre / always jonah Malos modales / Bad Manners (1965) “Ciudadano libre a un palmo por encima. . .” / “Free citizen just an inch above. . .” CONTANDO HASTA CERO / COUNTING TO ZERO Contando hasta cero / Counting to Zero “Mis decisiones se encuentran demasiado cerca. . .” / “My decisions are too close. . .” “Despierto Sigo vivo por ese solo instante. . .” / “Awake I am still alive for that one moment. . .” “Todas mis preocupaciones son el hilo de donde cuelgo. . .” / “All my worries are the thread I hang from. . .” Las armas invisibles / The Invisible Arms Hago un alto / I Take a Break S u b s i s t o / I S u b s i s t Requisitoria de los trajes vacÍos / Interrogation of the Empty Suits RELEVO DE GUARDIA / CHANGING OF THE GUARD Relevo de guardia / Changing of the Guard Paisajes subterrÁneos / Subterranean Landscapes Bajo nuevo aviso / Under New Notice Ciudad sola / Lonely City Una coincidencia / A coincidence “Los espectÁculos banales. . .” / “Banal spectacles. . .” CACERÍA / HUNT “Me llevan como una bestia domÉstica. . .” / “Like a tamed beast. . .” El prisionero de su conciencia / The Prisoner of His Conscience Órbitas separadas / Separate Orbits “Si he avanzado hacia adelante. . .” / “If I have made any progress. . .” Debo decir / I Should Say De transformaciones / On Transformations “Demandas clemencia. . .” / “You demand clemency. . .” Las contradicciones sobrenaturales / The Supernatural Contradictions (1967) RELEVO DE GUARDIA / CHANGING OF THE GUARD Decisiones / Decisions Corona de reyes / Crown of Kings Ases / Aces LegÍtima defensa / Legitimate Defense Tomas el pavimiento por la forma exacta de tu piel / You Take Pavement as the Precise Shape of Your Skin Las apuestas / The Wagers Arco de silex / Arc of Silex SISTEMA DE CONDUCTA / BEHAVIOR SYSTEM Por partida doble / Double Entry Jaula para occisos / Cage for the Slain Bestia I Bestia II Bestia III / Beast I Beast II Beast III “Suelo tomar extraÑas determinaciones. . .” / “I tend to make strange determinations. . .” Otra direcciÓn / A Different Direction Órdenes / Orders Imagen humeante / Smoking Image CARNET DE ENUMERACIONES / ENUMERATIONS CARD MÁscara de papel / Paper Mask Cubrir la duda con un mantel de fiesta / To Cover Doubt with a Fancy Tablecloth Cuidado frÁgil / Warning Fragile “La mirada quiere claraboyas. . .” / “The glance wants skylights. . .” Fuerza bruta / Brute Force “Salud. . .” / “To your health. . .” “La contrariedad nacida. . .” / “The opposition born. . .” ABISMO PÚBLICO / PUBLIC ABYSS HÁbitos / Habit Dentro de la roca vacÍa / Inside the Empty Rock De los reos / On Prisoners Setencia / Sentence Mandamiento / Commandment C14 / C14 UN OJO DE CONTRAPESO / AN EYE AS COUNTERWEIGHT Piedra sobre piedra / Stone upon Stone “Sumiso” / “Submissive” “De una caja de asfÓdelos empujada contra la corriente. . .” / “From a box of asphodels pushed against the current. . .” “Pon atenciÓn Date cuenta ConcÉntrate. . .” / “Pay attention Realize Focus. . .” La quinta parte del espÍritu es el deseo de huir / The Fifth Part of the Spirit Is the Desire to Flee “Entre jaulas de occisos. . .” / “Among cages of the slain. . .” Appendix: An Interview with Juan Calzadilla by VÍctor RodrÍguez NÚÑez, translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott Acknowledgments
£14.36
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Afterlife
Book SynopsisGrief fractures and scars. In Afterlife Michael Dhyne picks up the shattered remains, examining each shard in the light, attempting to find meaning - or at least understanding - in the death of his father.Trade ReviewHeartbreaking and brilliant in its delicacy and its depths, and in the many ways it reaches from interior drama to range far out into the wider world. The spell cast by this book ties our adult ways of moving through our lives to the primitive child-need for magic and reassurance: the longing we all know for order amid the terrors of random events, and the search, in the welter of our days, for the place or person or state of mind in which self can feel held." - Debra NystromTable of Contents To My Father, the Light Kara Insomnia Afterlife Living Room In Love with a Girl Eating Strawberries God’s Eye Self-Portrait with Sky Left Over Memorial Arizona The Window New Mexico 4 a.m. Texas A Beginning Louisiana Without End Tennessee Last Words to My Husband Virginia Like a Gift Passed Between Us Nothing Blackout Self-Portrait on the Beloved’s Body On Silence 95 South Sonogram Portrait of My Father as a Young Man Tell Me a Story Father’s Day Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor), Cy Twombly, 1994 Heaven Is Empty and We’re All in It Notes Acknowledgments
£16.16
Yale University Press What Noise Against the Cane 115 Yale Series of
Book SynopsisThe 115th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets is a lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourselfTrade ReviewFinalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry, sponsored by The National Book FoundationLonglisted for the 2022 OCM Bocas PrizeFinalist for the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, sponsored by the Claremont Graduate SchoolNamed One of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public LibraryLonglisted for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize, sponsored by Swansea University“Bailey invites us to see what twenty-first-century life is like for a young woman of the Black diaspora in the long wake of a history of slavery, brutality, and struggling for freedoms bodily and psychological.”—Carl Phillips, from the Foreword“Desiree C. Bailey sings true in her debut What Noise Against the Cane. Wherever this voice goes a Caribbean sun travels with it transfiguring what a maroon might overhear—a call awaiting response.”—Yusef Komunyakaa
£16.99
WW Norton & Co 430 Movie
Book SynopsisIn highly charged, dazzling language, 4:30 Movie explores a sister's death and the ways movies shape our imaginations.
£12.34
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdallas
Book SynopsisThe extraordinary Swahili poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki, in English Voice of Agony, is a collection of prison poems composed by Abdilatif Abdalla between 1969 and 1972. Imaginative Vision is the first complete literary translation into English of one of the most esteemed and influential collections of Swahili poetry of the twentieth century.Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction by Annmarie Drury Preface to the Translationby Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Translator’s Introduction by Ken Walibora Waliaula Voice of Agony Sauti ya Dhiki Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula I Won’t Compromise N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Go and Console Him Kamliwaze Worry Not Tuza Moyo The Boil Jipu I’ll Never Let Go Siwati Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Human Perfection Ukamilifu wa Mja What Has Offended You? Lilokuudhi ni Lipi? Coconut Palm: A Tug-of-War Mnazi: Vuta N’kuvute This Speaking Out Kuno Kunena Slipperiness Telezi Speak Out, You Who Dare Semani Wenye Kusema Even a Clever Guy Can’t Shave His Own Head Muwerevu Hajinyowi It Will End Yatakoma Alas, My Friend! Ah! Mwenzangu Be Gone, Anxiety Wasiwasi Enda Zako What a Bad Fellow! Mja Si Mwema What Will Happen? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Our Mother Africa Mamaetu Afrika Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow Jana na Leo na Kesho A Precious Thing Can’t Last Chema Hakudumu Be Patient, My Heart Moyo Iwa Na Subira Don’t Kill Me! Usiniuwe! Things Have Their Own Ways Mambo Yana Mambo Yake Don’t Listen to Them Watiliye Pamba Pampering Tendekezo I Wouldn’t Be Here Today Leo N’singekuwako Cockadoodle-do! Kokoiko! Don’t Cling to Silence ’Sikakawane na Kimya Travelers, Let’s Wake Up Wasafiri Tuamkeni Come to Your Senses Zindukani Goodbye Kwa Heri The Town Cockerel and the Country One La Mjini na La Shamba Wash Him Muosheni I’m Coming Naja Crossroads Ndiya Panda A Thing Can’t Be Human Kichu Hakiwi Ni Uchu Tit for Tat Kutendana I’m Back N’sharudi Critical PerspectivesSauti ya Dhiki: Its Place in Swahili Literature and East African Literature by Ann Biersteker Abdilatif and I: Reflections on Comparative Experiencesby Alamin Mazrui Rhymed, Metrical Translations of Four Poemsby Meg Arenberg This is What I Hold Fast N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Which Will It Be? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Textual Backgrounds: Voice of Agony in Its Historical MomentKenya: Twendapi? Kenya: Where Are We Heading? by Abdilatif Abdalla, Translated by Kai Kresse Introduction to the 1973 edition by Shihabuddin Chiraghdin, Translated by Ann Biersteker Author’s Preface to the 1973 editionbyAbdilatif Abdalla,Translated by Ann Biersteker Bibliography Notes on Contributors
£31.30
The University of Michigan Press The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdallas
Book SynopsisThe extraordinary Swahili poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki, in English Voice of Agony, is a collection of prison poems composed by Abdilatif Abdalla between 1969 and 1972. Imaginative Vision is the first complete literary translation into English of one of the most esteemed and influential collections of Swahili poetry of the twentieth century.Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction by Annmarie Drury Preface to the Translationby Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Translator’s Introduction by Ken Walibora Waliaula Voice of Agony Sauti ya Dhiki Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula I Won’t Compromise N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Go and Console Him Kamliwaze Worry Not Tuza Moyo The Boil Jipu I’ll Never Let Go Siwati Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Human Perfection Ukamilifu wa Mja What Has Offended You? Lilokuudhi ni Lipi? Coconut Palm: A Tug-of-War Mnazi: Vuta N’kuvute This Speaking Out Kuno Kunena Slipperiness Telezi Speak Out, You Who Dare Semani Wenye Kusema Even a Clever Guy Can’t Shave His Own Head Muwerevu Hajinyowi It Will End Yatakoma Alas, My Friend! Ah! Mwenzangu Be Gone, Anxiety Wasiwasi Enda Zako What a Bad Fellow! Mja Si Mwema What Will Happen? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Our Mother Africa Mamaetu Afrika Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow Jana na Leo na Kesho A Precious Thing Can’t Last Chema Hakudumu Be Patient, My Heart Moyo Iwa Na Subira Don’t Kill Me! Usiniuwe! Things Have Their Own Ways Mambo Yana Mambo Yake Don’t Listen to Them Watiliye Pamba Pampering Tendekezo I Wouldn’t Be Here Today Leo N’singekuwako Cockadoodle-do! Kokoiko! Don’t Cling to Silence ’Sikakawane na Kimya Travelers, Let’s Wake Up Wasafiri Tuamkeni Come to Your Senses Zindukani Goodbye Kwa Heri The Town Cockerel and the Country One La Mjini na La Shamba Wash Him Muosheni I’m Coming Naja Crossroads Ndiya Panda A Thing Can’t Be Human Kichu Hakiwi Ni Uchu Tit for Tat Kutendana I’m Back N’sharudi Critical PerspectivesSauti ya Dhiki: Its Place in Swahili Literature and East African Literature by Ann Biersteker Abdilatif and I: Reflections on Comparative Experiencesby Alamin Mazrui Rhymed, Metrical Translations of Four Poemsby Meg Arenberg This is What I Hold Fast N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Which Will It Be? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Textual Backgrounds: Voice of Agony in Its Historical MomentKenya: Twendapi? Kenya: Where Are We Heading? by Abdilatif Abdalla, Translated by Kai Kresse Introduction to the 1973 edition by Shihabuddin Chiraghdin, Translated by Ann Biersteker Author’s Preface to the 1973 editionbyAbdilatif Abdalla,Translated by Ann Biersteker Bibliography Notes on Contributors
£45.71
Princeton University Press Prickly Moses
Book SynopsisTrade Review"West finds inspiration for his gorgeously detailed poems in the figures and likenesses of nature: a eucalyptus twists ‘like wrist joints in an artist’s portfolio,’ new growth catches ‘the light like a crowd / of scimitars in the breeze.’ The Australian poet’s formally engaged, often rhyming verse—sonnets, couplets—reveals a mind nurtured in a Mediterranean climate of classicism."---David Woo, Literary Hub
£15.29
Princeton University Press Prickly Moses
Book SynopsisTrade Review"West finds inspiration for his gorgeously detailed poems in the figures and likenesses of nature: a eucalyptus twists ‘like wrist joints in an artist’s portfolio,’ new growth catches ‘the light like a crowd / of scimitars in the breeze.’ The Australian poet’s formally engaged, often rhyming verse—sonnets, couplets—reveals a mind nurtured in a Mediterranean climate of classicism."---David Woo, Literary Hub
£42.50
McGill-Queen's University Press The Night Chorus
Book SynopsisPoems that give voice and agency to marginal figures in rural places and cityscapes.Trade Review"'Intensify' is the Rilkean injunction that Harold Hoefle both declares and practises in this propulsive first collection of poems. I admire equally the energy of his lines and the range of his sympathies." Steven Heighton, 2016 Governor General's Poetry Award winner for The Waking Comes Late"The Night Chorus sings of a private world that spans from Lac La Pêche to the British Museum, from a rural ditch to the city bus. These poems access memories, intimate conversations, and seemingly ordinary moments that Harold Hoefle discerns with the bright precision of a jeweller. To read The Night Chorus is to drive along a road that, in Hoefle's words, "climbs, dips, arcs, cup[s] the world in a curve." Where you stop to rest is often where you will want to linger for a while longer." Gillian Sze, author of Panicle
£15.19
Ohio University Press Bread of the Moment
Book SynopsisDavid Sanders’s second book of poems mixes free and formal verse to search for wisdom in life’s quiet moments as well as in those jolting times when our fragility is most apparent.Trade Review“The poems in David Sanders’s beautifully balanced new collection, Bread of the Moment, reach as deeply as any I know, achieving the emotional clarity of poets like Robert Hayden, Robert Hass, and W. S. Merwin. This is wise, expertly crafted work, facing mortality with humor sufficient to the need and with reverent attention to memory, nature, and the poet’s art. I am profoundly moved and instructed by this lucid book.” -- Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore: Poems“David Sanders’s second collection of poems, Bread of the Moment, contains an astonishing breadth of emotional and physical landscapes in poems beautifully realized and forcefully felt. It is a book haunted by memory—understood as a ‘selective, mythic thing, a lie’—and alive with strikingly memorable images, like the French king’s hunting trophies, ‘sprouting enormous racks, / like dozens of arms, hands, / reaching out to me from the stone blocks, / frozen, locked in place.’ Bread of the Moment is an evocative book, a dynamic expression, and expansion, of Sanders’s art.” -- Ernest Hilbert, author of Last One Out“‘Every time/ is the last time. That’s what the world keeps teaching.’ Bread of the Moment’s truths are hard won, but its delights are palpable. It is night swimming in cold lake water full of stars.” -- Jason Gray, author of Radiation King“David Sanders peers into the psychology of a charged or puzzling moment, in most of these poems. Living through such moments can be painful and yet the pondering of them brings a kind of nourishment. In ‘So, I Tell Myself’ he contemplates an odd confluence of small misfortunes, and the poem enables him to escape from a paranoid interpretation of that confluence. ‘Matinée’ notices how a mood of inflated pride (as when you see yourself as Cary Grant or Gregory Peck) inevitably must come down to street level—though a poised account of this humbling descent allows for the more sustainable stardom of poetic insight.” -- Mark Halliday, author of Losers Dream OnTable of ContentsOne Politics (A Walk through the Woods) The Blue Danube Waiting to Happen Wedding Day (Bird Trapped in a Flue) Matinée Chatelaine The Break-In The Slide Exercise (Cul-de-sac) Abandoned Nests Exposed by Winter Meal of Dreams The House on Fire across the Street Self-Portrait as a Fly on the Wall of Modern History Morning Frost along the River The Luxury of Light Horses Another Poem Beginning with the Weather: An Elegy Art Lessons from the Past Particulates Self-Portrait with Antlers Banking and Turning Full Moon, Dow Lake, July Two Election-Day Raccoon The Two of Us After Learning of the Death of a Roommate I Hadn’t Seen in Forty Years Holiday Party with Roses Talking to Old People Emanation So, I Tell Myself Autumn and the End of Autumn In His Defense Wood Frogs Letter to the Editor Utility My Books What We Don’t Know Common Wisdom A Kind of Proof Dear Vulture Early March, with Horses Reasons Not to Leave To an Old Friend Whose Politics Have Changed [Enter ghost] Morning Sleet
£13.99
LSU Press No More Time
Book SynopsisOffers a celebration of the natural environment that also bemoans its mistreatment at the hands of humans. The collection's long sequence, “A Field Guide to People”, is an alpha-bestiary of twenty-six sonnets, each a meditation on a species of flora or fauna that is thriving, endangered, or extinct.
£15.15
Northwestern University Press The Shared World
Book SynopsisThe latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The Shared World imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black woman. The book delves into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother.Trade Review“Vievee Francis is, undoubtedly, one of the most compelling poets alive and writing today. In her fourth book, The Shared World, she charts a course of how entangled all of our lives are in today’s world. Who do we share the world with? Who do we ignore? What does it mean to live so closely in proximity to each other and to have such deeply complicated histories? At the heart of this book is this truth: what is the telling, and how do we go about the ways of doing so? With bravery, Francis peels back the layers, not leaving a simple understanding but instead, by the telling, examining the complications of what it means to tell.” —Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come for Us: Poems“When I say Vievee Francis is one of the finest living American writers, I say it without hyperbole. Each of her poems is a revelation. They embody Lorca’s idea that duende is about self-discovery, of excavation through image and the imaginary. Not for the self, but from the self. Few poets can write with her earned grace.” —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the WorldTable of Contents To Forget A Call to Arms Break Me and I’ll Sing Finding Myself in the Market of Accra Another Attempt at the Telling 1965 The Shared World Honey Given to Rust On the Piney Woods, Death, Bobby Frank Cherry and Me The Keening The Poets Who Are Our Enemies When Your Brother Dies You Want I’ve Worn It Three Days in a Row Ugly Fruit Everything is Berlin Dead or Alive, The Rats Ignore Us Juneteenth(#3) The Smell Accidental City Provincetown, MA You Prefer Us Dead Alright, I Am the One You Prefer Dead The Quiver Tree Marvin Gaye: Mercy I Have Been Witness and Victim Yes, Among Them I’ve Been Thinking About Love Again I Know That Music Birdsong Like a Child’s Marvin Gaye: Sugar Uncle Sonny Bless the Kindling World Brother of Skulls Room for One Omnivore The Fisherman Speaks Again of his Days The Lie And Upon That Pale Horse a Paler Woman Emmett, I said Wait The Marsh King Without End Reading Neruda at 2:00 AM The River Shivers as Much as I The Winter Kingdom Small Reprieve To Be Touched as Sophia The Sound Epiphany: Parable of the Tongue Cut by Strings That Cat Returns The Wheel of the Bus: A Fiction Relevance An Unkindness Of Landscape My Dolls Were Just That Meat Eater Goat Heart I Am the Only One I Know Who Can Cook Them Br’er Rabbit’s Hole What The Fat Man Taught Mother Tongue Why I Don’t Wait The Company of Wolves The Shore Nouvea Slim The Morning I Miss Such Devotion Everywhere and Here Too Canzone in Blue, Then Bluer Muleskinners The World Contracts Moan Soft Like You Wanted Somebody Terrible Cannibal In A Lesser Paradise Goat Fantastica Melancholia The Dead Horse The Cannibal Myth Ota Benga’s Case Dark Horse
£21.15
Syracuse University Press The Less Said the Truer New and Selected Poems
Book SynopsisIn Hazo’s latest collection, The Less Said, the Truer, he brings together new poems as well as selections from three previous books. The author’s poignant reflections on life and death, love and loss, and age and memory allow the poems to be deeply personal while also connecting with the everyday experiences of readers.
£38.66
Ohio University Press Intrusive Beauty Poems
Book SynopsisIn this powerful debut, Capista traverses earth and ether to yield poems that elucidate the space between one’s life and one’s livelihood. While its landscapes range from back-alley Baltimore to the Bitterroot Valley, this book remains close to unbidden beauty and its capacity to sway one’s vision of the world.Trade Review“Both wry and ardent, Intrusive Beauty is an immensely accomplished book. Readers have all the pleasures of great poetry here—nuanced syntax, a musician’s harmonious ear, and a remarkably deft and varied handling of form.… Nothing is precious here—even the poems about fatherhood and nature, those baited traps, are leapt over by Capista’s nimble speaker.”“Capista’s choice to write about unglamorous aspects of his life is consistently surprising and offers multiple opportunities for readers to connect with his poems’ narratives and the philosophical predicaments he uses those narratives to explore…[t]he book is powerful in the humility it strikes as it bears witness to the often underwhelming and still splendid life of an artist. I see myself everywhere in its breath.” * Iron Horse Review *“Capista doesn’t shy away from the joys of rollicking through language’s innate richness of sound and meter. In his debut collection … little gems of insight and deep reflection [sparkle] throughout. [Capista] has the ability to see beauty in all places, and through his keen observations, he allows us to see this beauty, too." * Baltimore Magazine *“Capista has his hand on all aspects of this art. His craft is impeccable, often witty, and always refreshing…[t]he poet expresses essential goodness in daily acts, and takes on this art to prove it to us. This is a reward for the writer and the reader.” * Washington Independent Review of Books *"Contemporary poetry rarely has a melodic cadence, as rhythmic poetry is somehow considered unsophisticated. But Joseph J. Capista doesn’t shy away from the joys of rollicking through language’s innate richness of sound, as he weaves narratives about Baltimore, life as a husband and father, and the elegance of the natural world. The Towson University professor has the ability to see beauty in all places, and through his observations, he allows us to see it, too.“ * Baltimore Magazine *“(Intrusive Beauty demands a reader willing to talk back and engage with its sometimes troubling depictions of violence without setting the book down too long. Making that commitment to reading and rereading offers a significant reward. Some books you reread because you want to get another hit of dopamine. I reread Intrusive Beauty because I wanted a second round with it, to go back for a rematch. Which was, I have to say, more rewarding.” * Barrelhouse Reviews *
£13.99
University of Pittsburgh Press no time like now
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£18.52
University of Pittsburgh Press Tenant of Fire The
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£18.52
University of Pittsburgh Press Horsepower
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£18.40
University of Pittsburgh Press I New and Selected Poems
Book SynopsisShows the reader both the closeness of the enemy and the poet's inherent courage, inventiveness, and joy.
£18.40
University of Pittsburgh Press Second Story Poems Pitt Poetry Series
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£18.40
University of Pittsburgh Press Peach State
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£15.00
University of Pittsburgh Press Cemetery Ink
Book SynopsisPoems exploring understandings of belonging - from places and histories, to ways of knowing, loving, and grieving.
£18.40
University of Pittsburgh Press Every Form of Ruin
Book SynopsisA rebuttal to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Every Form of Ruin posits the Erinyes’ fury as righteous, understanding Clytemnestra’s rageful response to loss, and refusing Iphigenia’s relegation to a footnoted sacrifice.
£15.00
University of Pittsburgh Press Endurable Infinity
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£16.68
Fordham University Press Midden
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsForeword: Midden, When Glory Comes xiii I Walk My Road at Dusk 1 The Way Home 3 Dear ghosts, I pick the list 5 The Story of Fire 6 Their Objects 7 Shipwreck at New Meadows 8 Bas-Relief: Jake Marks 9 Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes 10 Interview with the Dead 11 Dear ghosts, because you tell me to, I begin again 16 So Many Things 17 The Tray of Spades 18 Dear ghosts, my neighbor catches you with her camera 21 The Schoolteacher Answers the Call 22 Sestina Fragments: Our Teacher Prays for Bread 25 Dear ghosts, I wake wishing my body 27 No Man’s Land 28 Annie in the Boat 30 Dear ghosts, how can we stop the sunlight spinning the story 31 John Eason Stops Preaching 32 This Is Our Home Now 33 Sucker Fish 35 What William Marks Knows, Age 3 36 Dear ghosts, with a red pencil I draw a map. 37 Each Morning Drowns in Open Air 38 The Procedure 39 Upon Opening Another Folded Day 40 Feeble-Minded 41 Dear ghosts, because you are dead and restless 42 Lottie Marks Dreams Escape 43 Dear ghosts, there was a man who lived here 44 Lottie Marks on Silence 45 Agent Pease’s Defense 46 Midden 48 Dear ghosts, when I said all I ever wanted was land 49 Yellow Surprise 50 How to Build a Houseboat 51 Shed Night 52 Potter’s Field 53 Dear ghosts, you say all our bones are made of paper 54 Paddling the Storm 55 Descendant’s Riddle 56 Untold 57 Dear ghosts, this land harvests the body to rubble. 58 Erasure 59 Saudade 61 Final Invocation for Ghosts 62 Afterword 65 Notes 69 Acknowledgments 73
£18.04
Fordham University Press Xamissa
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsProloog 1 Rearrival 7 The Dream of the Road 17 Doppler Shift 21 Folding Screen 29 Twin Soldiers 31 The Prisoner 32 Elegy for the Gesture 33 The Water Archives 35 helena | Lena 43 Lontara Translation 111 Sources 113 Notes 115 Acknowledgments 119
£18.89
MP-NMX Uni of New Mexico A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery
Book SynopsisGives voice to abused children, murdered women, research animals, war veterans, and even metronomes and lampshades. In poems inspired by Ovid, Tina Carlson explores the roots of voicelessness and journeys into metamorphosis, granting speech to those ignored or victimized and thereby allowing them to provide witness to their own lives.Trade ReviewTina Carlson's images are always palpable, surprising, their resonance almost too powerful for the page. What she does with those images, how she shapes and where she takes them, is an experience her readers won't forget. I am still catching my breath."—Margaret Randall, author of Stormclouds Like Unkept Promises "Here lies a beauty great enough to capture and heal an aching heart, elegiac enough to canonize the lost. These poems cut a path lit by the ancestral flint of Carlson's scalpel. Stepping out into the light after the dark theater of these poems, one perceives more readily a world stripped of its skin, fed by their true seeing, their lazar gaze, and Carlson's own crooked smile, these the touchstones of her artistic reliquary."—Lise Goett, author of Leprosarium"In A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery, vulnerable myths and porous pasts are 'blown open.' These poems unhinge for the reader a kind of nourishment. 'We were once specks of light,' Carlson writes, as she moves us toward illumination."—Lauren Camp, author of Took House "These are the poems, poet Tina Carlson the guide we need at this crucial time in the inferno of our own making."—Carole Simmons Oles, author of A Selected History of Her Heart: PoemsTable of Contents Backyard of Her Alphabets Ghost Town on Iris Avenue A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery My Mother as Moon Cigarette Smoke and a Blue Impala Gran Via Agoraphobia My Father Comes Home from War with Guns My Father Prayed Mud Babies The Embassy of Silence At the Rest Stop, Fully Gloved, She Calls Me Mommy You Will Dream that Great Aunt Dolor Loves Your Wild Hair Dark Dowry How holy the cloth sewn sidewise Sheltering in Place for Beginners Coat-Grave, Nation of Moths ALMA Anatomy of Silence Fin Feather Bark and Skin Day after America Metronome and Daruma Doll As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room Lampshade and Floor Mat Turn the Ship Around Saint Ursula Heaven Snow Queen The Little Robber Girl Monster Open Your Mouth Why did you kill your wife, mr XYZ? Thirteen Children Rescued from Their Parents Testify Ice Matron West Side Murders, Seven Years Later How She Becomes a Fountain Every Bird in My Blood Has a Name Flo and the Frozen Girl Guest Place in the Shadow There I Stood, in All My Forms Until I Could No Longer Fly and So Became a Map: Pegasus From the Island of Pomegranates Pandora on the Mother Road Atlas There I stood begging at the door of my death I Fled the Dry Lips of Men Dermoid Dear Human, The Flying Boy Wearing His Father's Dog Tags Feathers Appear on Branches as Flame And When He Thought He Had Found Me In the Tree Museum The Painter Martia Avalanche Machu Picchu Notes Acknowledgements
£16.11
Seagull Books London Ltd Under the Aleppo Sun
Book SynopsisAleppo is Alice Attie's home city, where her grandparents were born, and with the poems in Under the Aleppo Sun, she takes us there to the months before Assad unleashed his attack in 2011.
£12.99
Seagull Books London Ltd Thick of It
Book SynopsisThe poems of Ulrike Almut Sandig are at once simple and fantastic. This new collection finds her on her way to imaginary territories. Thick of It charts a journey through two hemispheres to the center of the world and navigates a thicket that is at once the world, the psyche, and language itself.
£12.99
Lynx House Press The Present State of the Garden
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. In The Present State of the Garden, both childhood and the natural world are elegized as the speaker works through layers of loss: the dissolution of a marriage and a world on the brink of ecological collapse.
£14.36
Lynx House Press The Many Beds of Martha Washington
Book SynopsisVan Winckel’s poems hover at the intersections of folktale and history, of past life regressions and future life visions, in a voice that is intimate, eerie, wry, and always strangely like a voice that has been going on in our heads without our noticing. The chill and pleasure it renders is a little like what one feels upon first reading Proust.
£18.95
University of Virginia Press Best New Poets 2021 50 Poems from Emerging
Book SynopsisEntering its seventeenth year, Best New Poets has established itself as a crucial venue for rising poets and a valuable resource for poetry lovers. The poems included in this eclectic sampling represent the best from the many that have been nominated by America’s top literary magazines and writing programs.Trade ReviewPraise for earlier editions:"[A] reminder that contemporary poetry is not only alive and well but continuing to grow." - Publishers Weekly"This collection stands out among the crowd claiming to represent emergent poets. Much of the editing and preliminary reading was done by emerging poets themselves, which results in an anthology that’s fresh and eclectic, and may actually represent a significant portion of the best new poetry being written by the next generation." - Virginia Quarterly Review
£11.35
MP-NCA Uni of North Carolina Your Diamond Dreams Cut Open My Arteries
Book SynopsisCritics have called Else Lasker-Schuler the greatest of all German women poets and one of the finest Jewish poets. This selection of translations by Robert Newton, supplemented by a biographical and critical introduction and a selected bibliography, was the first substantial presentation of her works in English at its original publication in 1982.Trade ReviewWith Robert W. Newton's collection of poems by Else Lasker-Schuler in translation, there is now available to the English reading audience a representative selection of this unique poet who is usually classified as a precursor of German expressionism and yet defies all classification." - German Studies Review
£21.56
Duke University Press The Chasers
Book SynopsisRenato Rosaldo's new prose poetry collection shares his experiences and those of his group of twelve Mexican-American Tucson High School friends known as the Chasers as they grew up, graduated, and fell out of touch, conveying the realities of Chicano life on the borderlands from the 1950s to the present.Trade Review"The Chasers is at once a snapshot of Chicano culture in the '50s, and contemporary in its humanity." -- Meredith O'Neil * Tucson Weekly *"The Chasers is a must read." -- Margaret Randall * World Literature Today *"Rosaldo’s antropoesía is an emerging hybrid genre, a method of knowledge production that cannot be codified. It insists on highlighting nuances rather than erecting schemas. It is precise in its ability to articulate the uncategorizable." -- Tara Westmor * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrelude xi Cast of Characters xiii Part I. Walnuts 3 Never Chicano Enough 5 Suddenly Blank 7 Nice Meals 8 Down the Little Arroyo 9 Never Dreamed 11 A Dark Side 13 Talking with Mom 16 Fastest Naked Sprinter 19 In the Cactus Chronicle 21 The Chaser Mystique 23 Part II. Playing Bull 27 Sports People 29 All about Fun 32 A Quiet Guy 34 In Formation 35 Champagne in a Martini Class 38 White, Black, or Blue 41 My Inner Mexican Comes In 42 No More Oranges 45 No Emblem 46 Ode to Ralph 48 I'd Like the Job 50 Part III. Not from Tucson 55 Ornamental Oranges 57 I Never Liked You 60 A Place to Stand 62 Fiftieth Reunion 64 I Was Shaking 69 Three Months Older 71 Guys on One Side 74 In the School Yard 76 Erased 77 You Won't Do Well 78 Part IV. Observing 83 Never a Fighter 85 Papa y yo hablamos 86 Dad and I Talk 87 You Were or Were Not 89 Raw Eggs 90 My Brother Raul 92 I Remember 93 An Old Story 97 I Am a Chaser 99 My Dad Died When I Was Six 101 Packager 103 Sure Hope We Can Enjoy a Few More Years 107 Acknowledgments 109
£75.65
Duke University Press The Chasers
Book SynopsisRenato Rosaldo's new prose poetry collection shares his experiences and those of his group of twelve Mexican-American Tucson High School friends known as the Chasers as they grew up, graduated, and fell out of touch, conveying the realities of Chicano life on the borderlands from the 1950s to the present.Trade Review"The Chasers is at once a snapshot of Chicano culture in the '50s, and contemporary in its humanity." -- Meredith O'Neil * Tucson Weekly *"The Chasers is a must read." -- Margaret Randall * World Literature Today *"Rosaldo’s antropoesía is an emerging hybrid genre, a method of knowledge production that cannot be codified. It insists on highlighting nuances rather than erecting schemas. It is precise in its ability to articulate the uncategorizable." -- Tara Westmor * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrelude xi Cast of Characters xiii Part I. Walnuts 3 Never Chicano Enough 5 Suddenly Blank 7 Nice Meals 8 Down the Little Arroyo 9 Never Dreamed 11 A Dark Side 13 Talking with Mom 16 Fastest Naked Sprinter 19 In the Cactus Chronicle 21 The Chaser Mystique 23 Part II. Playing Bull 27 Sports People 29 All about Fun 32 A Quiet Guy 34 In Formation 35 Champagne in a Martini Class 38 White, Black, or Blue 41 My Inner Mexican Comes In 42 No More Oranges 45 No Emblem 46 Ode to Ralph 48 I'd Like the Job 50 Part III. Not from Tucson 55 Ornamental Oranges 57 I Never Liked You 60 A Place to Stand 62 Fiftieth Reunion 64 I Was Shaking 69 Three Months Older 71 Guys on One Side 74 In the School Yard 76 Erased 77 You Won't Do Well 78 Part IV. Observing 83 Never a Fighter 85 Papa y yo hablamos 86 Dad and I Talk 87 You Were or Were Not 89 Raw Eggs 90 My Brother Raul 92 I Remember 93 An Old Story 97 I Am a Chaser 99 My Dad Died When I Was Six 101 Packager 103 Sure Hope We Can Enjoy a Few More Years 107 Acknowledgments 109
£18.89
University of Nebraska Press Nebraska
Book SynopsisKwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica, where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992 he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska. In Nebraska, this beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Dawes explores a theme constant in his workthe intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska's discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall. With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant. Trade Review"Dawes is no longer a stranger to the middle American landscape, now a welcome newcomer creating space for new voices to be heard."—Luke Hollis, Harvard Review Online"As the poet contemplates the wealth of opportunity that seems innate—now, as well as when the plains people first saw the land, concluding in Prairie that the wide-ranging opportunity must be home to imagination and continual new beginnings. This is where Nebraska meets the poet most intimately, as a place of riches and with a history of new beginnings."—Jordan Charlton, Adriot JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments I How I Became an Apostle Advent The Barking Geese of Edenton The Immigrant Contemplates Death Fledge Longing for the Hall of the Deaf The Midwestern Sky First Winter Loneliness Dark Season Plain-Speaking Novela The Scent of the Cankerworm Dawn Chadron Sandoz Revisited The Enemy of Memory The Poor Man’s Sacrifice Bones Sponge On History II The Epoch of Lies Sea and Rain Purple Forgetting The Quality of Light In These Times Sugar “All Teeth and Smile” Sniper III Half Long Distance Prairie Pleasure The Chronicler of Sorrows July Fourth IV Jasmine On Blindness Insomniac Bed Time Transplant Surviving, Again Sancho Panza The Messiness of Place Bone Dust Ambulation Falling Away On Picking Battles The Exile Remembers His Sisters Fatigue
£15.19
University of Nebraska Press Everybodys Jonesin for Something
Book SynopsisTurning an unflinching spotlight on the American Dream, Indigo Moor plunges headfirst into national—and personal—laments and desires. From Emmett Till to the fall of the Twin Towers and through the wildfires of Paradise, California, Moor weaves a thread through the hopes, sacrifices, and Sisyphean yearnings that make this country the beautiful trap that it is. Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something takes an imagistic leap through the darker side of our search for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,perusing what we lose, what we leave behind, and what strange beauty we uncover. Trade Review"Indigo Moor’s new book challenges us to look back to gain a wider understanding of what has been, look around to derive a deeper understanding of one another, and look inside to find our true home."—Entropy“Indigo Moor’s new collection shuttles between searing rebuke and hopeful anguish with accents of hard-edged humor. What I love most is the clarity of thought—the no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled sharpness of the language that carries the reader through each poem, jonesin’ for the next. Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something invites you out of your complacency and fuels a restlessness that reminds you that you’re alive, that this is no time for sleeping.”—Tim Seibles, author of One Turn around the Sun“An extraordinary and penetrating look at the world through the eyes of an electrifying writer who is indeed jonesin’ for something; perhaps the answer to who we are as Americans, or even who we are as human beings. There’s joy in experiencing a work like this one. Each page enthralls as Indigo Moor explores a myriad of topics in a keenly aware, yet compassionate voice filled with stirring language, powerful observations, and intense wonder.”—Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas, author of Epitaph for the Beloved“Narratives don’t always belong to history’s victors,’’ writes Indigo Moor. If this line gives you pause, I strongly suggest you carry Moor’s brilliant book, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, home with you. In this dazzling book, you will read just how closely this poet has been paying attention, to us, to his histories, foreign and domestic, to our mighty (and sometimes mighty confusing) nation. Jonesin’ is a verse flashlight to all the corners you thought no one was supposed to pay attention to, line by beautifully crafted line, truth by earned truth. You’ll reach the last line of the last poem, and trust me, that’s when the hunger for more will begin.”—Cornelius Eady, author of The War Against the ObviousTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsThis American Groove Love Letter to Dr. Ford from the Patriarchy Trayvon Martin Disappears on Stage The New Math Extinction EventAll Night Jazz from the Sisyphus ClubAll Night . . .. . . Jazz . . .. . . from the Sisyphus Club Creole Rumspringa The Fortress of First and Last Thoughts Christ Is Summoned to the House of the Broken Ladder Mamie Till & the Minotaur What Was True and Not So. And Yet, Again . . . Unforgettable Birds in FlightA Dream Deferred/Detained Dismissed Genealogy Guardians Fermi Paradox for Black Nerds Happiness The Wandering Jew Drunk Dials God The Party Crashers of Paradise Exiled to America Oppenheimer’s Badass Cat Joshua in the New World Frac/Tured Finder of Lost Sheep Woods to Grow Out Of Red and Yellow QuartetWe the (Chameleon) People Unjumping the Broom Easter Morning Prayer Hunter’s Moon The Saint of McClatchy Park Veterans of Foreign Wars How We Got Here from There Blackberries Maisey Gets a Washing Machine Pretty Boy Sanchez American Bataan Lost in the World Machine Catching a Cotton Ball Anywhere but Here
£12.34
University of Nebraska Press More in Time
Book SynopsisMore in Time is a celebration and tribute to two-time United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. Trade Review"To recognize his [Ted Kooser's] retirement from conducting the beloved personal tutorials he has provided to graduate students at UNL, 68 of his former students, university colleagues and poetic peers have produced More in Time, a compilation of poems and memories of Kooser's influence upon their lives."—J. Kemper Campbell, Lincoln Journal Star“Ted Kooser is kind, as we know from every essay and poem published in this volume to honor the poet’s retirement from the University of Nebraska. Ted Kooser is accomplished and beloved as teacher, writer, poet, editor, painter and friend. And Ted Kooser leaves the public life of the university as a national poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner to become what he has always been, a private man of genius. Long may he thrive and publish, labor in his fields, make and paint the birdhouses that adorn our trees, the gorgeous chicken coop in his yard, and write poems so distilled that our souls bend in delight.”—Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986–2020 “Ted Kooser’s poems are as natural and true as anything I know in American poetry. I love his honed-down style, his subtle humor, and his attention to a detail that will shine with kindness and grace by the end of the poem.”—Joyce Sutphen, author of Carrying Water to the Field“When I arrived in the U.S., I experienced an immense culture shock that was incredibly difficult to shake off, and it held me back, held my tongue back in my other classes. But each time I was in Ted’s presence, I grew fully into myself in ways that weren’t so apparent in his absence.”—Saddiq Dzukogi, author of Your Crib, My Qibla“Ted’s office was a place of magic for me for the few years that I did tutorials with him. . . . He deeply respected the mystery that arose in the course of writing, the surprising element of the poem that a poet might not see herself, until an astute reader pointed it out.”—Katie Schmid, author of NowhereTable of ContentsEditorial Note Marco Abel, Jessica Poli, and Timothy Schaffert Acknowledgments Introduction: Splitting an Order, Ted Kooser, Copper Canyon, 2017 Diane Glancy Naomi Shihab Nye Ted Kooser Is My President Jill McCabe Johnson What Ted Likes 1,001 Things to Amend Before You Die—Excerpt 244–258 Marjorie Saiser Ted Is Writing This Morning Jehanne Dubrow From Description to Discovery Pledge Mary K. Stillwell A Toast to Chance, Good Fortune, and Ted Kooser Amelia María de la Luz Montes Ted Kooser’s Near South History Tour Platte River Andrea Hollander The Things Themselves Old Snow Stephen Behrendt The Surprising Novelty of the Familiar: Ted Kooser’s Poetry Sarah McKinstry-Brown Supper with Amy Mark Sanders A Summer Letter to Old Friends Up North Sharon Chmielarz Aunt Bertha Suzanne Ohlmann Sustenance James Daniels The Crucial Lack of Redemption Sally Green Wildflower Samuel Green Feathering Mark Irwin The smaller house Ivan Young Translating Ted Kooser Ferris Wheel Dana Gioia Discovering Ted Kooser (1980) Cody Lumpkin Old Man in the Hall of Nebraska Wildlife Christine Stewart-Nuñez My Poetry Foundation Medical Arts Building, Watertown Robert Hedin Prunings Debra Nystrom Inland Sea Stuart Kestenbaum The Work at Hand Michelle Menting Absorbing the Moment Ode to the Poster of Reptiles & Amphibians on the Exam Room Wall at the Animal Clinic on South Street Gerald Costanzo Conversing with Ted Kooser for Nearly Fifty Years Barbara Crooker Forsythia Todd Robinson Broken Summer Sonnet Faith Shearin Menagerie Hope Wabuke On Ted Kooser: Poet of Clarity & Sight Afterwards Katie Schmid The Mechanic Turning 32 Grace Bauer Summer Morning Walks: 4 Postcards for Ted Kooser Stacey Waite The Politics of Noticing: Ted Kooser in Poetry and Pedagogy James Crews More in Time: A Letter to Ted Trey Moody Good Morning The Oriole Jessica Poli Holmes Lake Connie Wanek Sign Painter Twyla M. Hansen I Never Thought I’d Outlive My Evergreens Tami Haaland Sewing Room, 1973 Jeffrey Harrison Early Wonderment Peggy Shumaker Ted Talk Sarah A. Chavez Ted Kooser and the Act of Poetry as Life Practice Home Again Saddiq Dzukogi To See Beyond the Self Song to a Birdwoman Adrian Koesters “Late Summer”: Doing the Work and Giving the Gift Denise Banker At the Rehabilitation Hospital Biljana D. Obradović Tribute to Ted Kooser: “A Poem Has to Be Something More Than a Good Story” Elegy for an Eastern Fallen Star Linda Parsons April Wish Mark Vinz Ted Kooser, the Midwest Small Press Poetry Renaissance of the 1960s and ’70s, and a Poem Inspired by Both Great Plains JC Reilly Bathroom Spiders Freya Manfred When a Place Finds Voice Crystal S. Gibbins Writing toward Home Lake of the Woods Jonathan Greene One Light to Another Dan Gerber In Praise of Ted Kooser Todd Davis Fishing with Nightcrawlers Hadara Bar-Nadav House Sandra Yanonne A Valentine Sonnet Joyce Sutphen At the Graveyard Rosemary Zumpfe Grace in Poetry Making Ice Angels Rebecca Macijeski Making Sense, Making a LifeTime’s Beard, His Closest Thing to Seasons Amy Plettner How I Found Ted Maria Nazos Tuesdays with Ted Kooser: How I Found the Heart behind My Collection of Poems, Pulse The Ghost’s Daughter Speaks Jonis Agee Mercurius Matt Mason Opening Night Rehearsal Judith Harris For Ted, On His Hiatus Karen Head Ready to Hold My Hand: Ted Kooser as Mentor and Friend At the St. Elizabeth Mammography Center Jane Hirshfield Letter to TK: May 26, 2020 Kwame Dawes The Chronicler of Sorrows Fences Source Acknowledgments List of Contributors
£12.34
University of Nebraska Press Long Rules
Book SynopsisA book-length poem in six sections, Long Rules takes readers to five Trappist monasteries in the southeastern United States to consider the intersections of solitude, family, music, and landscape. Its lines unspool in a loose and echoing blank verse that investigates monastic rules, sunlight, Saint Basil, turnips, Thomas Merton, saddle-backed caterpillars, John Prine, fatherhood, and everything in between. Looking inside and outside the self, Perry asks, what, or whom, are we serving? Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, this essay in verse contemplates the meaning of solitude and its contemporary ramifications in a time of uncertainty.Trade Review“A remarkable addition to the company of book-length, broadly inclusive poems like James McMichael’s Four Good Things and C. S. Giscombe’s Giscome Road. . . . In blank verse that is flexible and assured, the poet’s attention runs the gamut from Saint Basil to Willie Nelson, from dulcimer acoustics to the caterpillars that eat his blueberry plants. The voice here is neighborly, its pacing exquisite. Perry’s rich meditation on nature, community, and the different forms of love brims with music and insight.”—Don Bogen, author of Immediate Song“With one of the greatest opening lines for a book ever, ‘Listen, child of God, to Willie Nelson,’ Long Rules is a joy to read. It calls itself an essay in verse, following a steady form so effortlessly you half forget it’s not just an essay. And the skill in putting these poems together is amazing to experience as a reader. The poet teaches about theology and contemplation through musings on songwriters and musicians, making centuries-old thoughts seem at home with us today.”—Matt Mason, state poet of Nebraska“Nathaniel Perry’s Long Rules is a gentle doctrinal essay exploring the mystery by which collectivity authors solitude and prayer invents the world. . . . Long Rules is so profound and beautiful that, but for the casual asides to the reader and references to contemporary singers, I would half think it was the lost work of some wise soul from the deep past.”—Jennifer Moxley, author of Druthers and The Open SecretTable of ContentsI. Our Lady of the Angels: Crozet, Virginia II. Holy Cross Abbey: Berryville, Virginia III. Mepkin Abbey: Moncks Corner, South Carolina IV. Our Lady of Gethsemani: New Haven, Kentucky V. Cumberland County, Virginia VI. Monastery of the Holy Spirit: Conyers, Georgia Acknowledgments
£12.34
University of Nebraska Press The Track the Whales Make
Book Synopsis2022 High Plains Book Award Winner in Poetry Marjorie Saiser’s strong, clear language makes the reader feel at home in her poems. Dealing with all the ways love goes right and wrong, this collection honors the challenges of holding firm to who we really are, as well as our connections to the natural world.The Track the Whales Make includes poems from Saiser’s seven previous books, along with new ones. Her poetry originates from the everyday things we might overlook in the hurry of our daily routines, giving us a chance to stop and appreciate the little things, while wrapped in her comforting diction. Because the poems come from ordinary life, there is humor alongside happiness and sadness, the mixed bag we survive or create, day by day.Trade Review“Marjorie Saiser is a poet of ephemera, a poet who looks east at sunset to watch subtle light changing: ‘The glow is, and then is gone.’ And so is everyone and everything we love. Saiser tells this truth: ‘Every last thing is transitory.’ She looks at the difficult moments, at the precious fleeting moments: ‘That’s what it was like, though there is no record of it. / Let me be the record of it.’ When a whale’s flukes slip underwater, a trace shimmers for a fraction of a liquid second. That’s the moment of Saiser’s poetry, a poetry of generations of profound compassion, passed down.”—Peggy Shumaker, author of Cairn“Marjorie Saiser’s poetry is wise and generous and altogether genuine. No poet in this country is better at writing about love, and, in a sense, all of her poems are in some way about love.”—Ted Kooser, U.S. poet laureate, 2004–2006“Marjorie Saiser writes, ‘I wanted / the luminous coin, big sky over rooftops, / the celestial and the neighborhood.’ In these pages she finds both and gives them to us in an extraordinary volume of new and selected poems. With one poem, ‘Charmed by the Dirt Road,’ she explains generations of women. I move from delight to tears reading these brilliant, compassionate, and beautifully wrought poems. Saiser is a great poet.”—Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986–2020 Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction by Ted KooserI Could Taste It: New Poems The Shirt I Would Have Bought You Sometimes I Remember to Watch When You Write the Story We Wait for the Trogon So Bad I Could Taste It I Had a Marriage in Those Days What I Shouted and He Shouted Charmed by the Dirt Road To the Cattle in the Dream The Moon Is a Swan This Is How I Bow Down in Homage Kindness Scraped Up the Money It’s a Small Breath Not Enough Space in Storage Device Hope SpringsFrom Learning to Swim, 2019 Weren’t We Beautiful I Save My Love Every Last Thing Is Transitory Plastic Bag on the Lawn Edith Porath Nelsen, You Signed Your Quilt After the Divorce the Soccer Game What She Taught Me To the Author I’m Reading at Night This Year I Did Not This Is the Photo of My Father Before He Taught Me to Drive I Pretend I Can Remember The One with Violets in Her Lap For the Record The Citrus Thief Insomnia Is a StreetlightFrom The Woman in the Moon, 2018 The Nobody Bird My Love With His Saw Has Taken the Cedar Down When Life Seems a To-Do List Each Wrong Choice Was a Horse I Saddled What I Think My Real Self Likes My Mother the Child What He Needed Final Shirt Despair Woke Me Ah, Charles, If You Could Have What Did You Think Love Would Be? About That Smart Thinly-Veiled Stuff My Daughter Tells Me She Loves Me Green Ash My Notes in MarginsFrom I Have Nothing to Say about Fire, 2016 The Track the Whales Make She Gives Me the Watch Off Her Arm The Story, Part of It How I Left You Bad News, Good News Thanksgiving for Two We Disagree Let Me Think of the Frost That Will Crack Our Bones Draw What Is There Those Pieces We Carry What I Think My Father Loved It Does Not Have to Be Worth the Dying Last Day of Kindergarten For My DaughterFrom Losing the Ring in the River, 2013 Clara Says I Do Clara Loses the Ring When I Have Hurt Him as Much as I Can Potato Soup I Was New and Shiny Playing My Cards Let Me Be the First Snake of Spring To the Moon in the Morning Note to My Father After All These Years I Leaned in Close Take, Eat; This Is My Body You and I, the Cranes, the RiverFrom Beside You at the Stoplight, 2010 Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the Stoplight Weekends, Sleeping In Even the Alphabet On the Road Template I Didn’t Know I Loved Stand-In She Was Perhaps Dead Labor Textile For My Body I Want to Be a Man You Can’t Say I Mammogram You Wonder Why We Don’t Get Along Her Kid Brother Ran Beside the Car We Visit the Homestead One-Finger WaveFrom Lost in Seward County, 2001 The Sisters Play Canasta in a Snowstorm Overheard at the Cafe Otto As Long as Someone Remembers Summer, Striking You Gave Me a Typewriter Lying on the Driveway, Studying Stars Holed Up in Valentine, Nebraska Prairie Pretends to Be Mild The Muse Is a Little Girl Night FlightFrom Bones of a Very Fine Hand, 1999 Resurrection The Green Coat Keeping My Mother Warm Saying Yes on the Road Perfume Counter, Dillard’s The World Was Not Enough Loving Her in the Mountains I Let My Daughter Down Cutting My Hair Washing the Walls Taking the Baby to the Marsh Shopping Storm at Night I Want to Create The Last Thing He Said Today
£15.19
University of Nebraska Press Cotton Candy Poems Dipped Out of the Air
Book SynopsisFinalist for the 2023 Midwest Book Award Finalist for the 2023 Heartland Booksellers Award Poems dipped out of the air describes the manner in which Ted Kooser composed the poems in Cotton Candy, the result of his daily routine of getting up long before dawn, sitting with coffee, pen, and notebook, and writing whatever drifts into his mind. Whether those words and images are serious or just plain silly, Kooser tries not to censor himself. His objective is to catch whatever comes to him, to snatch it out of the air in words, rhythms, and cadences, the way a cotton candy vendor dips an airy puff out of a cloud of spun sugar and hands it to his customer. Poems written in fun and now shared with the reader, Kooser's playful and magical confections charm and delight.Trade Review"There is much to be admired in Kooser's improvisational approach to composition."—Publishers Weekly“That Kooser often sees things we do not would be delight enough, but more amazing is exactly what he sees. Nothing escapes him. Everything is illuminated.”—Library Journal“There is a sense of quiet amazement at the core of all Kooser’s work.”—Washington Post“[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes the way an investigator dusts for fingerprints. His language is so controlled and convincing that one can’t help but feel significant truths behind his lines.”—Philadelphia Inquirer“Kooser’s ability to discover the smallest detail and render it remarkable is a rare gift.”—Bloomsbury Review“Kooser is straightforward, possesses an American essence, is humble, gritty, ironic, and has a gift for detail and deceptive simplicity.”—Seattle Post-IntelligencerTable of ContentsAcknowledgements A Word from the Author I Cotton Candy Spider A Windy January Morning Wind in the Chimney A Light Snow in Late March Spring Turtles Handoff Culvert Shadows at Sunset Clouds and Moon Toad Easter Morning Burning the Prairie Raindrop Bucket In a Glade In Light from a Single Lamp II Following the Weather Rowboat In May Harpist Dandelion Yellowjacket A Brief Shower The Candle’s Butterfly A Kitchen Drawer A Breezy Summer Morning A Thump A Lake of Starlight Bicycles on Top of Cars Two Horses A New Moon A Sudden Storm A Walk with my Shadow In Midsummer One Cloud III Birdhouse A Sighting A Sound in the Night In a Shed A Cloudy Sunrise A Novelty In a Cold Late-Afternoon Rain A Fluttering Melon A Falling Feather A Few Things in Their Places A Light in a Farmyard A Seascape Full Moon A Dervish of Leaves IV A Windy Monday Egg Carton Cornshucks A Winter Landscape A Leaf in Wind On a Dark Winter Morning Pleasures of Snow An Oriole Nest in Winter November Snow After an Ice Storm A Falling Branch Fresh Snow, with Deer Tracks A Man Walking in Deep Snow Icicle A Stand of Ornamental Grass A Special Kind of Sunset
£13.29
University of Nebraska Press Might Kindred
Book SynopsisEric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist The poems of Might Kindred wonder aloud: can we belong to one another, and “can a people belong to a dreaming machine?” Conjuring mountains and bodies of water, queer and immigrant poetics, beloveds both human and animal, Mónica Gomery explores the intimately personal and the possibility of a collective voice. Here anthems are sung and fall apart midsong. The speaker exchanges letters with her ancestors, is visited by a shadow sister, and interrogates what it means to make a home as a first-generation American. Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, the poems in Might Kindred are rooted in the body and its cousins, seeking the possibility of kinship, “in case we might kindness, might ardor together.” Belonging and unbelonging are claimed as part of the same complicated whole, and Gomery’s intersections reach for something divine at the center.Trade Review"These generous and sensitive meditations on belonging and the first-generation experience cast intimate light on shared human experiences."—Publishers Weekly“What I found in this collection is not only an invitation to belong, but a reassurance that the self has always been unequivocally whole even if we must journey forward and back through time to come to that understanding.”—S.M. Badawi, Waxwing Magazine“Into this collection’s longing arms Gomery gathers all matter of kin and all kin of matter: landscapes, stones, ‘unsiblings,’ creation myths, God, language, home, bodies, soil, dignity, ‘jagged verges,’ mirrors, and eyes. She grapples: What are we to do in a world where loss is certain, time is defiant, and the self aches to transcend its borders? Instead of offering us synthetic answers Gomery’s poems arrive ‘bare skinned on the bridge between thinking and knowing.’ This book is an invitation, a constellation, a map. We are lucky, lucky victims of its grandeur.”—Shira Erlichman, author of Odes to Lithium “‘If you take a child to the mountain,’ writes Mónica Gomery in Might Kindred, ‘do not expect the mountain to not live inside the child.’ Reader, you and I are the child. This collection is the mountain. Expect nothing less than to be forever changed.”—Nicole Sealey, author of Ordinary BeastTable of ContentsSelf-Portrait with Airplane Turbulence Theology Emblanquecer Immigrant Elegy for Ávila Family Is an Illumination of Shoulders Ghazal for a First Lover Might Kindred Prologue When My Sister Visits Here God Queers the Mountain It Isn’t Easy to Speak Falling Out A Poem with Two Memories of Venezuela Letter to Myself from My Great Grandmother Origin Stories Abecedario When My Sister Visits After Pulse The Synagogue Membership Assembles to Discuss the Fascist Presidency Imaginative Exercise in the Study of Epigenetics Dendrochronology of Hair Ode to the Poop Bag The Oldest Form of Prayer Now We Live Together Because It Is Elul When My Sister Visits We Thanked Her by Digging a Hole Fragments of an Anthem Banishing Loneliness Here A Poem About a Book About Venezuela Sleeping in Hurricane Season Emblanquecer Ghazal for a Year Halleluyah We Walked Dahlias to Her Front Porch I Thought I Was Done Writing About My Dead Ghazal for God & Wellbutrin The Poet Considers If Her Body Belongs to Her When My Sister Visits Here Love Letter Acknowledgments Notes
£13.29
St Augustine's Press Spending the Winter – A Poetry Collection
Book SynopsisThe poetry of Spending the Winter is musical and structured, whimsical and piercing, begging to be read aloud when one is not laughing or arrested by an image that hooks the heart. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading,” writes one poet. “A throwback to a time when lovers of poetry…looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin,” adds another. With sections of comedy that show his wit, translations that echo his vast reading, and formalist poetry that reveal his craft, Bottum aims, in the way few poets these days do, at memorable lines and heart-stopping images as he seeks the deep stuff of human experience: God and birth and death—the beautiful and terrifying finitude of life. “We do with words what little words can do,” he writes. But in Spending the Winter, Joseph Bottum shows that words can do far more than a little. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading. . . . If you’re a reader who loves poetry whatever mood it’s in, just open Spending the Winter anywhere to find poems that hurt, enlighten, and delight.” —Rhina P. Espaillat, author of Rehearsing Absence and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize “Joseph Bottum is a brilliant formalist, and to read him is to enter the world of the tried-and-true classics, all achieved with an amazingly contemporary ring. His Spending the Winter is a delight. Here is a poetry of elegy, humor, wit, political savvy, and vast learning.” —Paul Mariani, author The Great Wheel and winner of the John Ciardi Award “Joseph Bottum’s Spending the Winter is a throwback to a time when lovers of poetry outside the literary establishment looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin. This is poetry from another age—an age when we expected intellectual, religious, and literary significance from our verse.” —A.M. Juster, author of Wonder and Wrath and winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize “Spending the Winter is a word-lover’s dream: Joseph Bottum’s poems pierce, probe, dazzle, and delight. They will open the eyes of your soul.” —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well “When reading Spending the Winter, I recalled C.S. Lewis’s description of joy as a wanting for something that is beyond this world. There’s a sense in these poems that things around us are fleeting, yet for that reason, the poems ask us to pay all the more attention.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Giving the Devil his Due
£13.94
Kent State University Press The Many Names for Mother
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2018 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry PrizeThe Many Names for Mother is an exploration of intergenerational motherhood; its poems reach toward the future even as they reflect on the past. This evocative collection hovers around history, trauma, and absence—from ancestral histories of anti-Semitic discrimination in the former Soviet Union to the poet’s travels, while pregnant with her son, to death camp sites in Poland. As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, Dasbach ponders how the weight of her Jewish-refugee immigrant experience comes to influence her raising of a first-generation, bilingual, and multiethnic American child.A series of poems titled “Other women don’t tell you” becomes a refrain throughout the book, echoing the unspoken or taboo aspects of motherhood, from pregnancy to the postpartum body. The Many Names for Mother emphasises that there is no single narrative of motherhood, no finite image of her body or its transformation, and no unified name for any of this experience. The collection is a reminder of the mothers we all come from, urging us to remember both our named and unnamed pasts.Trade ReviewDasbach's collection is masterfully ordered to carry the reader through the weight and the gift of intergenerational inheritance. The history Dasbach has inherited, and which sits at the heart of these poems, is Jewish, Ukrainian, U.S.-American, and matrilineal. If it is not always an easy inheritance, it is one that Dasbach's poems honor and carry forward.... Dasbach's poems delve into motherhood in all its complications in a way I didn't know I needed to read until I read them."—The Adroit Journal
£15.16
Kent State University Press How Blood Works
Book SynopsisHow Blood Works is a collection of poems that considers the way memory, identity, and our very blood take shape in the places we inhabit: rooms, cities, landscapes, and the spaces within the body. Moore examines the idea of bloodlines—literal familial ties and the traumas, secrets, and complex relationships passed from one generation to the next. To explore these motifs, many of the poems borrow from the world of visual art, including painting, sculpture and its resonance with the creation of the self, and architecture, too, as a metaphorical counterweight to nature.In keeping with the central theme that the stories we tell ourselves—and, by extension, our understanding of who we are—are shaped by the spaces in which we tell them, the poems in How Blood Works vary in form. From traditionally lineated lyrics to more architectural, segmented prose pieces, the poems themselves become a space for narratives of the self to play out.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2020 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize"A luminous debut collection of poems." —Peg Boyers, author of To Forget Venice"Moore explores the difficult territory of all that we cannot explain yet must embrace." —Jim Daniels, author of The Middle Ages
£15.16