Straight from the heart and imagination of Mel Finefrock, blind writer and musician, emerges a delicately bold collection of exploratory free verse poems chronicling various aspects of her personal journey. Believing that there is beauty to behold in almost any situation, Finefrock quilts precious and ordinary moments alike into patchwork poetry that embodies themes of love, friendship, pain, and growth. While unique to her experiences, Finefrock's soul-baring reflections are also applicable on a universal level and will inspire readers to look inward.
Mirroring the structure of a quilt, this volume of poems are built in three layers, representing biblical/spiritual reference, musical reference, and references to sewing/quilting itself. These are the poems of American slavery."--
THE TITLE: At the age of seventeen I discovered T.S. Eliot's poem “The Wasteland.” The only part of the poem I could relate to was about “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante.” Four of the tarot cards are invented by Eliot (Drowned Phoenician Sailor, Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks and the Lady of Situations). Having invented my own Drom Ek Romani cards as part of my heritage, I could appreciate his imaginary cards with their mystical names. My first poem explains each tarot card and the second one details the Drom Romani although I make no claim to be a “famous clairvoyante.” The other poems are a patchwork of subjects including tributes to Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, and other writers of music and poetry.THE POEMS: With the exception of several free verse poems, the others are a mixture of Shakespearean Sonnets, Terza Rima, Rima Royale, and, well, more sonnets. The poetry forms are very confining yet I attempted to make them all-encompassing in their little world. When writing the 22 sonnets for the Drom Romani I began speaking in rhyming iambic pentameter in my dreams. Does that make me a poet? I hope so. Failing that, a sonnet a day keeps senility away. I am hoping that whatever your age, you find enjoyment in my poetry.
This bestselling "lyrical, moving book: part essay, part memoir, part surprising cultural study" is an examination of why we cry, how we cry, and what it means to cry from a woman on the cusp of motherhood confronting her own depression (The New York Times Book Review). Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen–tear–shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear–collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence. Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle’s investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.
Winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize A collection in five parts, Susan Howe’s electrifying new book opens with a preface by the poet that lays out some of Debths’ inspirations: the art of Paul Thek, the Isabella Stewart Gardner collection, and early American writings; and in it she also addresses memory’s threads and galaxies, “the rule of remoteness,” and “the luminous story surrounding all things noumenal.” Following the preface are four sections of poetry: “Titian Air Vent,” “Tom Tit Tot” (her newest collage poems), “Periscope,” and “Debths.” As always with Howe, Debths brings “a not-being-in-the-no.”
A Kind of Yellow is a book of poems of loss, grief and celebration. The book speaks of personal transcendence and renewal through teen pregnancy, domestic violence; being the mother of three, including a gifted, disturbed child; surviving a son's suicide. It attests to the power of creative writing to transform, heal and offer community. Some responses to A king of Yellow: James Hollis, Jungian analyst, author of The Middle Passage, Inner City Books: "...Courageous and eloquent and moving...."; Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists, author of Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford University Press: "Its unremitting honesty takes the reader...into realms of human experience where courage becomes communion with the sacred."; Hight school students in Connecticut: "...in the end, there was her strength, and that gave me strength. I felt honored... that she would assume our intelligence was up to par with her own." "...she knows what it feels like to paint on that fake face, and she didn't want this to be a fake book of poetry... it is ... a gift she laid out for me to read." Writer's Digest in awarding A Kind of Yellow its 13th Annual International 1st Place Prize for self-Published Poetry Books: "...These were...accomplished poems...heartfelt....They expressed genuine emotion and the need to make sense of human life."
The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death were turned into tabloid fodder. In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news. With a poet's eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable. It's impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias. Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervor of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame. "Much too long, suffering has been part of our collective queer legacy. We weather the storm of insult to character and seemingly irreconcilable injustice in tandem with the hope that the arc of time will bend towards justice; our time is now. A Quilt for David is a posthumous journal of vindication."—Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends "A stunning homage to people with AIDS."—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 "I found this an incredibly moving book. Reigns deals in hard truths, revisioning one man's life and death, and our collective queer history."—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals "A Quilt for David is amazing and so powerful, filled with anger and frustration . . . It's an unforgettable book."—Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY "Told in short, occasionally haiku-like entries, Reigns has done what literature should: put the reader into the mind, the suffering, of another human being."—Andrew Holleran, author of Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited "Steven Reigns lifts David Acer thirty years after his death to show the naked cost of violent, unexamined public opinion around the catastrophe of AIDS. This poetry masterfully documents the tangle of hatred and lies haunting a generation of survivors. I am often grateful for what poems give to me, most especially the ones in this book."—CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration "This writing is energetic, alive, and uncensored. Through poetry and prose we glean a deep understanding of a life misunderstood and mischaracterized. Reigns goes to the mat to find out what really happened, and with his expert pacing we're right there with him."—Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones "One of the most important roles a poet can assume is that of emotional historian. Reigns certainly understands that notion in this necessary and genre-bending book."—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country
