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The Chance of Home Somewhere there must be where no one wonders whether you belong... So begins the title poem of this remarkable collection from a popular poet and scholar of mysticism. These poems remind us that "home" shapes us, not as a particular place; home is a way of being in this world, for us and for the creatures with whom we share it. It finds expression in the inner light that carries us through dark seasons and in what inspires us to risk life in the face of death. Home comes to us in the unexpected glimpses we sometimes have of a wholeness resonant enough to hold us amid fragments. Many of these poems come from a long looking at the familiar and the ordinary, a patient listening for traces of a beauty that might still save us--in the rhythms of a street musician plying his trade in a Lisbon subway, the radiance of birdsong interrupting the night's last hour, and the tolling of an old temple bell that "still sings in the silences." They ponder the resilience that lies at the heart of the natural world, as well as in our desire to thrive amid the distractions that pressure us in our lives. In an over-saturated age like ours, they invite us to linger at the edges of silence, and wonder what it means that we are not made for reason alone, but "for what song can bring of solace and delight."
Daringly realistic and artfully mediated by past and present, Claudia Emerson's Secure the Shadow contains historical pieces as well as poems centering on the deaths of the poet's brother and father. Emerson covers all aspects of the tragedies that, as Keats believed, contribute to our human collective of Soul-making, in which each death accrues into an immortal web of ongoing love and meaning for the living. Emerson's unwavering gaze shows that loss cannot be eluded, but can be embraced in elegies as devastating as they are beautiful. The macabre title poem refers to the old custom of making daguerreotypes, primitive photographs, of deceased loved ones. Other striking poems describe animal deaths -- mysterious calf killings, a hog slaughter, the burial of a dead jay, "identifiable / but light, dry, its eyes vacant orbits." Death, as the speaker's heart and mind instruct her, exists in a shadow world. When the body disappears, the shadow also flees. By securing the shadow, the poet finds a representation of the dead's soul, a soul always linked to the body. Hence, Emerson's attention to the minute details of the body's repose -- reflected in the long, related sequence of refrained poems -- never allows its memory to fade.
Portrait of the Alcoholic is the first chapbook of poems from Ruth Lilly-winner and founding editor of Divedapper, Kaveh Akbar.
\"I got to see her triumph and fall apart. I wept and cheered for her. She was so beautiful and so strong, so weak and hurting, all swept together and intertwined.\" ~ from an included prose piece titled, My Life Story in Music.\r\n\r\nThese are poems from my idyllic youth, my rebellion, my wild abandon, up to my rescue, redemption, and rebirth as a functioning member of society, and a grown woman with a family of my own. In my early days, I wrote about pain, which was easy. The harder thing was to learn to write about all the joy and adventure of being happy and loved. \r\n\r\nIt wasn\"t until later in life that I found my community of artists and really learned to tell the tales from all the angles. I am indebted to the Fresno Rogue Festival, in California, where I first read for an audience and fell in love with receiving a standing ovation. Also, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Rogue Poetry Slam in Southern Oregon, where I learned to do competitive poetry and bring my best, and bring the poetry that I was afraid to share, that made my hands tremble and my voice quake, to sit in awe of the skill of other poets, and sometimes take home the money and win, even with the odds stacked against me, as other poets made the room jump and dance to their words. Oh, sweet victory! \r\n\r\n\"If you have ever loved another, been passionate about anything, mourned a loss, been a parent, heck, been alive - this poet will move you! Her rhythmic words pulse with the beat that promises (like it or not) the continuum of LIFE.\" \r\n~ Patti Thornton, in her review of Liesl Garner\"s 2008 Rogue Festival Poetry Show\r\n\r\n
Peach State has its origins in Atlanta, Georgia, the author’s hometown and an emblematic city of the New South, a name that reflects the American region’s invigoration in recent decades by immigration and a spirit of reinvention. Focused mainly on food and cooking, these poems explore the city’s transformation from the mid-twentieth century to today, as seen and shaped by Chinese Americans. The poems are set in restaurants, home kitchens, grocery stores, and the houses of friends and neighbors. Often employing forms—sonnet, villanelle, sestina, palindrome, ghazal, rhymed stanzas—they also mirror the constant negotiation with tradition that marks both immigrant and Southern experience. Excerpt from “You’re from the South?” As if it had never joined the Union. As if we had to go through Customs when bringing Vidalia onions to uncles and cousins in the North, where Confucians and their brethren flock for education. As if our speech required translation or at least interpretation. As if Hartsfield-Jackson were a plantation, the Amtrak Crescent a moon over rows of cotton, and all of us a population that never saw snow or migration.
Luminous new poems from the author of "The Appalachian Book of the Dead" Landscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation. Don't just do something, sit there. And so I have, so I have, the seasons curling around me like smoke, Gone to the end of the earth and back without a sound. -"Body and Soul II" This is Charles Wright's first collection of verse since the completion of his Appalachian Book of the Dead, the trilogy of trilogies hailed as one "among the great long poems of the century" (James Longenbach, Boston Review). Wright speaks in these poems with characteristic charm, restlessness, and wit, writing again and again, "I sit where I always sit," only to reveal himself in a new setting every time. In A Short History of the Shadow Wright's return to the landscapes of his early work finds his art resilient in a world haunted by death and the dead.
A raucous, bawdy, and hilarious investigation of the South through the unforgettable voice of Fanny, Nickole Brown's fierce, tough-as-new-rope grandmother.
Poems, prayers and stores from beloved spiritual teachers, perfect for ending a yoga class or for personal inspiration
One of The New York Times' 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A searing new collection from one of our country's most important poets Memories mercies mostly aren't but there were I swear days veined with grace —from "Memory's Mercies" Once in the West, Christian Wiman's fourth collection, is as intense and intimate as poetry gets—from the "suffering of primal silence" that it plumbs to the "rockshriek of joy" that it achieves and enables. Readers of Wiman's earlier books will recognize the sharp characterizations and humor—"From her I learned the earthworm's exemplary open-mindedness, / its engine of discriminate shit"—as well as his particular brand of reverent rage: "Lord if I implore you please just please leave me alone / is that a prayer that's every instant answered?" But there is something new here, too: moving love poems to his wife, tender glimpses of his children, and, amid the onslaughts of illness and fear and failures, "a trace / of peace."