An extraordinary lyric and visual meditation on place, nature, and art rippling out from Marfa, Texas Situated in the outreaches of southwest Texas, the town of Marfa has long been an oasis for artists, immigrants looking for work, and ranchers, while the ghosts of the indigenous and the borders between languages and nations are apparent everywhere. The poet and translator Jeffrey Yang experienced the vastness of desert, township, sky, and time itself as a profound clash of dislocation and familiarity. What does it mean to survive in a physical and metaphorical desert? How does a habitat long associated with wilderness and death become a center for nourishment and art? Out of those experiences and questions, Yang has fashioned a fascinating, multifaceted work—an anti-travel guide, an anti-Western, a book of last words—that is a lyrical, anthropological investigation into history, culture, and extremity of place. Paintings and drawings of Marfa’s landscapes and substations by the artist Rackstraw Downes intertwine with Yang’s texts as mutual nodes and lines of energy. Hey, Marfa is a desert diary scaled to music that aspires to emit particles of light.
This inviting book explores how small-town Marfa, Texas, has become a landmark arts destination and tourist attraction, despite--and because of--its remote location in the immense Chihuahuan desert.
Night garden, moon calendar, soft mint scent. Warm wind, silent. Gold, silver debris. —from "Yennecott" Jeffrey Yang's second collection of poems is an exploration of the various lines—horizon line, time line, blood line, poetic line—beyond which so much vanishes from sight, from memory. With historical documentation, lyrical association, and artistic virtuosity, Yang creates a collage of elegies, losses that are private and those that define our nation. Vanishing-Line is an ambitious book by one of the most fascinating new poets in America.
A memoir and book of mourning, a grandson’s attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather’s lifelong struggle. A memoir and book of mourning, a grandson’s attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather’s lifelong struggle. Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life—child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen—mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the twentieth century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting. Praise for The Grave on the Wall: "Shimoda brings his poetic lyricism to this moving and elegant memoir, the structure of which reflects the fragmentation of memories. … It is at once wistful and devastating to see Midori's life come full circle … In between is a life with tragedy, love, and the horrors unleashed by the atomic bomb."—Booklist, starred review "In a weaving meditation, Brandon Shimoda pens an elegant eulogy for his grandfather Midori, yet also for the living, we who survive on the margins of graveyards and rituals of our own making."—Karen Tei Yamashita, author of Letters to Memory "Sometimes a work of art functions as a dream. At other times, a work of art functions as a conscience. In the tradition of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, Brandon Shimoda's The Grave on the Wall is both. It is also the type of fragmented reckoning only America could instigate."—Myriam Gurba, author of Mean “Within this haunted sepulcher built out of silence, loss, and grief—its walls shadowed by the traumas of racial oppression and violence—a green river lined with peach trees flows beneath a bridge that leads back to the grandson."—Jeffrey Yang, author of Hey, Marfa: Poems "It is part dream, part memory, part forgetting, part identity. It is a remarkable exploration of how citizenship is forged by the brutal US imperial forces—through slave labor, forced detention, indiscriminate bombing, historical amnesia and wall. If someone asked me, Where are you from? I would answer, From The Grave on the Wall."—Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War "Shimoda intercedes into the absences, gaps and interstices of the present and delves the presence of mystery. This mystery is part of each of us. Shimoda outlines that mystery in silence and silhouette, in objects left behind at site-specific travels to Japan and in the disparate facts of his grandpa’s FBI file. Gratitude to Brandon Shimoda for taking on the mystery which only literature accepts as the basic challenge."—Sesshu Foster, author of City of the Future "Shimoda is a mystic writer … He puts what breaches itself (always) onto the page, so that the act of writing becomes akin to paper-making: an attention to fibers, coagulation, texture and the water-fire mixtures that signal irreversible alteration or change. … he has written a book that touches the bottom of my own soul."—Bhanu Kapil, author of Ban en Banlieue "The Grave on the Wall is a passage of aching nostalgia and relentless assembly out of which something more important than objective truth is conjured—a ritual frisson, a veracity of spirit. I am grateful to have traveled along.”—Trisha Low, The Believer
In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives. “One of the best books of poetry of the year . . . Quinn has accomplished something dizzying here: arranged a stellar cast of poets . . . It is what all anthologies must be: comprehensive, contradictory, stirring.” —The Millions **Featuring 107 poets, from A to Z—Julia Alvarez to Matthew Zapruder—with work in between by Jericho Brown, Billy Collins, Fanny Howe, Ada Limón, Sharon Olds, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Vijay Seshadri, and Jeffrey Yang** As the novel coronavirus and its devastating effects began to spread in the United States and around the world, Alice Quinn reached out to poets across the country to see if, and what, they were writing under quarantine. Moved and galvanized by the response, the onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America began collecting the poems arriving in her inbox, assembling this various, intimate, and intricate portrait of our suddenly altered reality. In these pages, we find poets grieving for relatives they are separated from or recovering from illness themselves, attending to suddenly complicated household tasks or turning to literature for strength, considering the bravery of medical workers or working their own shifts at the hospital, and, as the Black Lives Matter movement has swept the globe, reflecting on the inequities in our society that amplify sorrow and demand our engagement. From fierce and resilient to wistful, darkly humorous, and emblematically reverent about the earth and the vulnerability of human beings in frightening times, the poems in this collection find the words to describe what can feel unspeakably difficult and strange, providing wisdom, companionship, and depths of feeling that enliven our spirits. A portion of the advance for this book was generously donated by Alice Quinn and the poets to Chefs for America, an organization helping feed communities in need across the country during the pandemic.
New York Times bestseller In their first book, the Junk Gypsies—sisters and stars of the popular Texas-born brand and HGTV show—combine big dreams, stories of roadside treasures found, and down-home design projects inspired by epic makeovers for friends like Miranda Lambert, Billie Joe Armstrong, and Sadie Robertson. Amie and Jolie Sikes, the Thelma and Louise of the design world, are the Junk Gypsies: a family with an addiction to flea markets, wanderlust, and Americana inspired design. In their world, cowgirls are heroes, road trips last forever, and junk is treasured. Beginning with a little bit of faith and a whole lot of heart and soul, the sisters travelled the back roads of America like gypsies, collecting roadside trinkets and tattered treasures while meeting kindred spirits and lively characters along the way. With a mix of hippie, rock n’ roll, southern charm, and big dreams, these small-town Texas girls became restless wanderers and owners and operators of their dream business and bohemian brand, Junk Gypsy. Filled with stories from their unique journey as well as DIY projects and bohemian inspired designs, Junk Gypsy is a tribute to all the rowdy gypsies, crafty junkers, free-spirited romantics, and true-blue rebels who have ever dared to dream big.
Since 1889, mysterious lights have appeared outside Rostov, a remote Texas town. Ranchers believed them to be the campfires of rustlers, but campfires don’t rise and fall, merge, and change colors. In World War I, the locals believed that the lights came from German forces massing on the Mexican border. In the Second World War, the US military built an airfield there and used planes to try to discover the secret of the lights. In 1980, the entire town set out on a “Ghost Light Hunt.” For more than a century, each attempt to get close to the lights met with horrifying results. Now police officer Dan Page follows the trail of his missing wife from New Mexico to Texas and discovers that she and hundreds of spectators have become enraptured by the lights. After a crazed gunman fires obsessively into the crowd, the stage is set for more death. To save his wife, Page must confront the mystery of the lights. His desperate search reveals a government conspiracy that dates back to World War II. The abandoned airfield is more than what it seems. So is a nearby observatory, with a purpose even more mysterious and lethal than the lights themselves. Drawing his inspiration from the real-life Marfa lights, critically acclaimed Morrell packs The Shimmer with his trademark blend of action and terror.
Doyle Dykes is one of the premier fingerstyle guitarists in the world. When guitar great Chet Atkins was asked a few years ago who he'd pay money to go see, his answer was, "People like Doyle Dykes, who is just an amazing fingerpicker, I think." He has thrilled secular and church audiences all over the world, from the Grand Ole Opry to Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England (home of the some of the most famous rock concerts in history) to Shanghai, China; James' Burton's International Guitar Festival, Saddleback Community Church, and Harvest Christian Fellowship. But this book isn't just about his life as a guitar player. Infused into stories like how he was invited to be part of the Stamps Quartet (Elvis' backup band), why a white rose is on the headstock of his signature-model guitar, and how his worst night at the Opry turned out to be anything but, are accounts of the remarkable ways God has shown up in Doyle's life. His warm, engaging style will draw you into each chapter--and you'll finish the book having been inspired, feeling like Doyle is a new friend, and never viewing God the same way again. Includes embedded videos of music & interviews.
A multifaceted collection by Jeffrey Yang, whose poetry is “flexible, expansive, sonorously clever” (The Millions). In Jeffrey Yang’s vision for this brilliant new collection, the essence of poetry can be broken down into line and light. Dispersed across these poems are luminous centers, points of a constellation tracing lines of energy through art, myth, and history. These interconnections create vast and dynamic reverberations. As Yang asks in one poem, “What vitality binds a universe?” One long series explores through shadow and play the ancient Malay kingdom of Langkasuka, a legendary nexus of creativity, commerce, and spiritual life, threatened over time by violence, climate, and environmental degradation. The title poem is a study of time, night turning to dawn, revealing the lines and lights of an art installation on an island in the Hudson River, flowing into another poem about Grand Central Terminal’s atrium of stars, flowing upriver into a poem that describes a cemetery for a state prison. Another extended sequence is a collaboration investigating memory and loss, composed of Yang’s poems, Japanese translations by Hiroaki Sato, and drawings made with ink derived from tea leaves by the artist Kazumi Tanaka. The collection ends with moving elegies for poets, translators, and artists whose works have informed this one. Altogether, Line and Light illuminates the ways that ancestry holds and makes possible the act of making art.
Doyle Dykes is one of the premier fingerstyle guitarists in the world. When guitar great Chet Atkins was asked a few years ago who he'd pay money to go see, his answer was, "People like Doyle Dykes, who is just an amazing fingerpicker, I think." He has thrilled secular and church audiences all over the world, from the Grand Ole Opry to Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England (home of the some of the most famous rock concerts in history) to Shanghai, China; James' Burton's International Guitar Festival, Saddleback Community Church, and Harvest Christian Fellowship. But this book isn't just about his life as a guitar player. Infused into stories like how he was invited to be part of the Stamps Quartet (Elvis' backup band), why a white rose is on the headstock of his signature-model guitar, and how his worst night at the Opry turned out to be anything but, are accounts of the remarkable ways God has shown up in Doyle's life. His warm, engaging style will draw you into each chapter--and you'll finish the book having been inspired, feeling like Doyle is a new friend, and never viewing God the same way again. Includes DVD with music & interviews.
