Download Free On The Desire To Levitate Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online On The Desire To Levitate and write the review.

On the Desire to Levitate is the first collection of poems by Alison Powell. This striking collection includes vivid, unflinching meditations on aging, mythology, poetry, and family. In tight, elegant lines that alternate between homage and elegy, these poems explore known subjects with a rebellious eye: a defeated Hercules and a bitter Eurydice, a sympathetic Lucifer, and generations of adolescent girls as mythical adventurers moving within a beloved but confining Midwest. Yet in Powell’s skillful hands, hardship never overtakes: as judge Charles Hood writes, “There’s often a delicious humor in this work, and always a deep and lasting integrity.”
"In this book, Peter Adey explores the idea of levitation within our cultural, scientific and spiritual lives. From science to illustration, poetry, philsophy, law, technology and a wider popular, spiritual and visual imagination, Levitation casts the levitator as a far more vulnerable figure than we previously have thought"--Jacket flap
Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: And Other Stories’s 13 short stories are linked thematically by the recurring idea of flight, in its various definitions and senses. The characters are sometimes in flight from their situations, sometimes from other people, sometimes from themselves. Stories range from contemporary to historical, from realistic to magical realist. The known and the unknown often blur as the characters struggle to understand the unseen forces that move them. Ultimately, the crises that all the characters encounter are psychological or spiritual in some way, however each may define that; as the title of the collection suggests, the characters find themselves levitating somewhere between their deepest desires and an exquisite and terrifying nothingness. No one in these stories “wins” in the traditional sense; there are no tidy answers. But the stories are subtly life affirming in how each character deals with the difficulties of life. Each learns something about himself or herself, however fleeting that knowledge may be, however small a step forward it inspires. Life isn’t static, and neither are these people.
Trust. Five Letters. One Word. I'm the girl who doesn't let anyone in. My world was shattered and turned upside down in one night. Since then I've been trying to live, if that's what you call it, but fighting the anxiety of what happened and trusting others is hard. Each day is a struggle to reach for the unknown. Truth. Five Letters. One Word. I watched my father give my mother the world and the stars. She took everything from him, then left him as a broken man with nothing to live for. I told myself I'd never fall in love. I'm guarding my heart and emotions, only looking out for number one. The only way to have truth in any relationship is to stay true to yourself. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, you realize your puzzle is unfinished. You find a piece you never thought you needed until everything changes with one touch. After that...you levitate.
Literary Nonfiction. Vivid explorations of cryogenics, lion baiting, iDollators, dodo birds, SpaceX, and more populate THE ART OF PERPETUATION, a poignant new collection of lyric essays from Alison Powell that troubles the boundaries between human and animal, living and dead, man and woman, adult and child. These nine whip-smart essays juxtapose personal narrative--memories of the author's childhood growing up in southern Indiana and experiences as a mother of two--with scientific, historical, and cultural narrative. Throughout the collection, Powell seeks to unearth, to peel back, to lay bare: To pry something out of someone, the meat of a walnut from its enamel-like shell, is an excavation--to uncover a lie, an infidelity. Dizzying, fragmentary, and provocative, Powell's lyrical investigations dig in deep, coming up for air only to expose the meaningless of naming in a world obsessed with self-perpetuation. To say a poem is like a body is to say one's self is a machine. To say a body is erasable is to say extinction is a temperate clicking... And like that, with one hand on the glass and one gloved hand inside the mouth of the woolly rhino, you have done it. Alison Powell's THE ART OF PERPETUATION is a Mobius strip of macro and micro that remakes the Oxford English Dictionary into a murder mystery and organizes the kaleidoscope of the natural world into an occult circuit board. In these pages, we encounter the archeological Red Lady who wasn't one at all, the dreaming Elon Musk and his Ray Bradbury cloak of sci-fi improbability, and the reverend geologist who ate the heart of Louis XIV and declared that he, 'like all men of science, know[s] the body because of women and criminals.' Powell is a wizard of history and metaphorical precision, and imbues her elusive subjects with unsettling magnetism, whether it's Aristotle arguing that the city is organic, 'which is like saying cruelty is organic, ' or her compelling high school bully, who lives in her brain 'and sparkles with her violence, ' much like these dazzling, prismatic lyric essays.--Simeon Berry THE ART OF PERPETUATION is an extended meditation that considers the slipperiness of images. From the archives of dolls to Louis XIV's preserved heart to personal memories, which are merely images embedded in the psyche, the reader is gifted with a contemplative poetic. This book interrogates how histories, persons, places, and things slowly fade from our present view and leave in their stead wonder, awe, human connection, identitarian query, or ontological mystery. Powell shows us the mind of a scholar, maker, and thinker who can simultaneously hold the answers and the questions. This is writing at its best and most compelling. THE ART OF PERPETUATION is a book any writer worth their words will read and wish they wrote.--Airea D. Matthews
Blake said of his works, 'Tho' I call them Mine I know they are not Mine'. So who owns Blake? Blake has always been more than words on a page. This volume takes Blake 2.0 as an interactive concept, examining digital dissemination of his works and reinvention by artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers across a variety of twentieth-century media.
Join Helene Hadsell each day as she has breakfast, goes about her morning routine, and regales you, dear reader, with her serious, silly, and sermonish observations about the GLAD-SAD-MAD of life in her third book of wit and wisdom. She shares her secrets in a vibrant, warm, and folksy manner, unique only to her. GLAD - Helene was grateful for every moment her life held. All of them. She was GLAD she was blessed to experience all the ups, down, and all arounds. SAD - Helene didn't like to dwell in the SAD of life, but she knew it was unavoidable on this human journey. She focused on learning from any lesson that brought with it sorrow. MAD - Helene wasn't interested in existing. She wanted to LIVE. Have adventures. Savor every moment of her life. She was fighting MAD when and if anyone tried to take that away from her. Messengers and miracles. Self-awareness and soul contracts. Points to ponder and past lives. Thought forms and telepathy. Synchronicity and sermons. Yes! Helene had experienced all of these antics and more! In the 80+ years, she was in a physical body on planet earth, she had one daring adventure after another.
THE JOY LADDER: AN IRREVERENT GUIDE TO LIVING A JOYOUS LIFE slices through the FLAPDOODLE surrounding human potential and spirituality. It's simple, practical, shockingly common sensical, and most important, FUN! It declares that we are all meant to live lives of OUTRAGEOUS JOY; and many don't because they have been conditioned to believe that, while this may be possible for some few lucky souls, it is not attainable for them. It shows how we have been LED DOWN THE GARDEN PATH about how life works and why things happen to us. We attract situations and experiences, they don't just happen to us! Whatever you have been experiencing - YOU HAVE BEEN ATTRACTING! And that's great news because changing your life is totally in your hands! THE JOY LADDER is a breath of fresh air for those who do not resonate with the current messages on human potential because they intuitively know that, while there may be some whiffs of inspiration, the pervading odor is one of a busy cow pasture in the middle of summer! It is not another love, light and peace, airy-fairy new-age, babble speak book. It's a practical guide to living a dynamic, vital, enthusiastic and joyful life. And you won't need to join a religion or meditation group, stand on your head, pray to strange gods, or eat Tofu (unless you like Tofu). Please see the Joy Ladder website.
No one can teach a Christian to pray, like Teresa can. This lively little book introduces postmodern readers to one of Christianity's most endearing prayer warriors, and guides them through her most radical teachings. Here, Teresa of Avila is not a lofty, inaccessible saint; she's a companion, taking readers on a rollicking journey through their own interior castles. The secrets of Teresa's intimate devotional life are revealed, and readers learn practical ways to abandon complicated contemplative prayer techniques, and simply "enjoy" God. This journey through the life and writings of Teresa of Avila will engage Christians who would have never before considered encountering a post-Reformation Catholic nun. Mair Burney makes Teresa accessible—and essential—for understanding what it means to come to know God, and how it's possible. "I've been waiting for some time for the Ragamuffin Diva to write us a book about her own spiritual quest. And what she has delivered in God Alone Is Enough is beautifully written, winsome, and touching. Hers is a voice to which we all should listen. And the fact that she brings Teresa of Avila right into our own backyards makes it even better." -Tony Jones is the author of many books, including The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community" "Reading God Alone is Enough was an absolute joy...I experienced it as the gift of two older, sassy, rib-tickling sisters - one Teresa of Avila and the other Claudia of Burney – who sat their kid brother (me) up on the washing machine and said ‘look junior, this is what love is all about.' You trust them because you believe they care for you, but moreover because they have that glorious foolishness in their eyes." - John Blase, author of Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas "This is the kind of book that a serious Christian has to thank God for. It only illuminates and opens St. Teresa of Avila in a profound and intimate way. I cannot recommend this book too highly or, I suspect, even adequately. Read it and you will see what I mean." -Phyllis Tickle, author of The Divine Hours "A refreshing and engaging exploration with Teresa of Avila. Also, a true journey of soul into the heart of prayer." - Vinita Hampton Wright, author of Dwelling Places "Claudia Mair Burney writes with courage and compassion, capturing the best of Teresa and offering it to her readers with clarity and humor. God Alone is Enough is an invitation and a celebration. Expect to swoon, prepare to feast." - Jenny Schroedel, author of Naming the Child