How to Love a Country
How to Love a Country

Author: Richard Blanco

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 0807025917

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A timely and moving collection from the renowned inaugural poet on issues facing our country and people—immigration, gun violence, racism, LGBTQ issues, and more. Through an oracular yet intimate and accessible voice, Richard Blanco addresses the complexities and contradictions of our nationhood and the unresolved sociopolitical matters that affect us all. Blanco digs deep into the very marrow of our nation through poems that interrogate our past and present, grieve our injustices, and note our flaws, but also remember to celebrate our ideals and cling to our hopes. Charged with the utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, this book asserts that America could and ought someday to be a country where all narratives converge into one, a country we can all be proud to love and where we can all truly thrive. The poems form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics: the Pulse nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; a lynching in Alabama; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet’s abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed as a gay man. But despite each poem’s unique concern or occasion, all are fundamentally struggling with the overwhelming question of how to love this country.

I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems
I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems

Author: Arielle Greenberg

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781945588433

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"Sexually explicit poems that address the radical possibilities of a woman's pleasure and the endless varieties of human desire. Arielle Greenberg's I Live in the Country & other dirty poems exploits and undoes the stereotype of the "wholesome country life." Here, the speaker moves to the country ("where the animals are") in order to live a whole life, one in which she can live honestly and openly in a non-monogamous marriage. Her book is a visceral, erotic celebration of the cornucopia of sexual pleasures to be had in that rural life-in the muck of a pasture in spring or behind the bins of whole-wheat pastry flour at the local Co-op. Greenberg hauls out what has previously been stored under dark counters and labeled deviant-kink, fetish, and bondage- and moves it into the sunshine of sex-positivity and mutual consent. In doing so, she forges new literary territory-a feminist re-visioning of the Romantic pastoral poems of seduction. "I am trying to turn my eye toward joy," she writes. "My heart toward bliss.""--

My Mountain Country
My Mountain Country

Author: Lijun Ye

Publisher:

Published: 2019-08-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780999261347

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Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies. Translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. In this remarkable English debut, award-winning Chinese contemporary poet Ye Lijun offers readers a lyrical diorama of nature and the inner world. By turns intimate and profound, Ye's poems in Fiona Sze-Lorrain's masterful translations make music of everyday silences, and illuminate the invisible openings in our lives. In this vital collection by one of China's essential literary voices, each encounter is an invitation, wherein a village, a nest, a telescope, or a book proves to be a transient guide to the unknown. "Fiona Sze-Lorrain brings her sense of immediacy, and her lucid control of tone, to these inspired translations of Ye Lijun which capture, with unerring musicality, the rhythms of the original Chinese."--Martha Kapos "Ye Lijun's quiet, powerful poems accrete from places, memories, affect, and ideas unique to the poet. The distinctiveness of Ye's diction, metaphors, and associations make her imagination and intelligence anchor in ours. We come away from Ye's mountain, her house, her books, her loves, and return to those of our own with our senses made more acute. Translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain, a gifted poet herself, creates an English-language voice for Ye Lijun that has all the grace and surprise of the original."--Thomas Moran "[T]he joys revealed in MY MOUNTAIN COUNTRY, which bring together a selection of poems from her three books, elegantly translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, suggest that for an acute observer of the natural world every hour, secret or not, may become an occasion for opening, 'in clarity,' to the beloved, to nature, to the invisible--leaves and roses and flowering trees that at a moment's notice may awaken in her soul, alerting her once again to the mysterious bounty of life on earth."--Christopher Merrill

Ten Poems to Change Your Life
Ten Poems to Change Your Life

Author: Roger Housden

Publisher: Harmony

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 0307421759

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Great poetry calls into question everything. It dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind. It opens us to pain and joy and delight. It amazes, startles, pierces, and transforms us. It can lead to communion and grace. Through the voices of ten inspiring poets and his own reflections, the author of Sacred America shows how poetry illuminates the eternal feelings and desires that stir the human heart and soul. These poems explore such universal themes as the awakening of wonder, the longing for love, the wisdom of dreams, and the courage required to live an authentic life. In thoughtful commentary on each work, Housden offers glimpses into his personal spiritual journey and invites readers to contemplate the significance of the poet's message in their own lives. In Ten Poems to Change Your Life, Roger Housden shows how these astonishing poems can inspire you to live what you always knew in your bones but never had the words for. "The Journey" by Mary Oliver "Last Night as I Was Sleeping" by Antonio Machado "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman "Zero Circle" by Rumi "The Time Before Death" by Kabir "Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda "Last Gods" by Galway Kinnell "For the Anniversary of My Death" by W. S. Merwin "Love After Love" by Derek Walcott "The Dark Night" by St. John of the Cross

Town Life
Town Life

Author: Jay Parini

Publisher: Owl Books

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 9780805005776

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Poems explore a variety of themes including reading, suburbs, Kampuchea, spring, love, and history.

Light Magic for Dark Times
Light Magic for Dark Times

Author: Lisa Marie Basile

Publisher: Fair Winds Press

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1631595873

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When the world around you turns dark, tap into the light. If you’re having a hard time finding that light, facing trauma and division, or want to send healing vibes to a friend, the inspired, easy-to-do spells of Light Magic for Dark Times can assist. Luna Luna magazine’s Lisa Marie Basile shares inspired spells, rituals, and practices, including: A new moon ritual for attracting a lover A spell to banish recurring nightmares A graveyard meditation for engaging with death A mermaid ritual for going with the flow A zodiac practice for tapping into celestial mojo A rose-quartz elixir for finding self-love A spell to recharge after a protest or social justice work These 100 spells are ideal for those inexperienced with self-care rituals, as well as experienced witches. They can be cast during a crisis or to help prevent one, to protect loved ones, to welcome new beginnings, to heal from grief, or to find strength. Whether you’re working with the earth, performing a cleanse with water or smoke, healing with tinctures or crystals, meditating through grief, brewing, enchanting, or communing with your coven, Light Magic for Dark Times will help you tap into your inner witch in times of need.

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry
Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry

Author: Joy Harjo

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0393867927

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A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today. Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project—including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others—to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, “that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship.” In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems
Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems

Author: Jimmy Carter

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0812924347

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A collection of poetry by the former president shares Carter's private meditations and memories about his youth, family, friends, and politics. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

If I Should Say I Have Hope
If I Should Say I Have Hope

Author: Lynn Melnick

Publisher: Yesyes Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 91

ISBN-13: 9781936919123

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Poetry. "The title of Melnick's stunning book is a microcosm of the poems within—the uncertainty of 'if I should say' followed by the defiance of 'I have hope.' Her poems follow moments of unmooredness ('I am best / when I dabble in consciousness and a soundly / spinning room') with blinding insight ('You wouldn't know happy if it kissed you on the mouth')—tiptoeing followed by a kick to the head. On the melancholy-go-round of these poems, there's a swan-seat for sadness but also a tiger called Beauty and a horse called Hope. The unexpected music and syntax of Melnick's work will make you want to ride/read it again and again."—Matthea Harvey "Lynn Melnick's poems are a series of swift kicks knocking over whatever a lot of Boys think it's like to be a Girl. They're also the bruises afterward. IF I SHOULD SAY I HAVE HOPE teems with very small and much larger devastations, crackling throughout with fierceness and stealth and wry intelligence. 'There's some kind of crazy on the way,' she says. Those of us who've seen that crazy coming need this book. Those of us who haven't need it more."—Mark Bibbins "Lynn Melnick's poems in IF I SHOULD SAY I HAVE HOPE recall the raw power of Anne Sexton and read like Lynchian dreams. The voice of these poems proves consistent and potent, steeping the book in weather and worry, in impulse and flesh, sometimes in blood. Most of the poems in IF I SHOULD SAY I HAVE HOPE are formal in structure and tone, built mostly in couplets, sometimes tercets and quatrains, and all demand recognition of truth, of human details we might rather deny. If I should say I have hope, the speaker suggests, I need to say all of these things first. She confesses, 'I'll wreck it if it's good.' Calling attention to our often-destructive tendencies, the poet admits fallibility and imperfection, while quietly offering refuge to a thing with feathers."—Melinda Wilson, Coldfront Magazine's Top 40 Poetry Books of 2012

A Country of Strangers
A Country of Strangers

Author: D. Nurkse

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0593321405

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In an illuminating collection of selected poems over thirty-five years, one of our most essential American poets casts a clear eye on our politics, our places, and our heart’s hidden stories. D. Nurkse’s immigrant parents met on a boat out of Europe in 1940; he was a child of the generation whose anxieties were forged in the shadow of Hiroshima and the aftermath of WWII. His poems extend that child’s dignified ignorance into an open encounter with the cataclysms of the latter twentieth century and with family structures. Whispers of the old country of Estonia provide the backdrop for the boy’s baseballs, thrown in the fading twilight of the 1950s (“Secretly, I was proudest of my skill / at standing alone in the darkness”). The young man explores sexual passion and the arrival of a child in a young marriage (“We showed her daylight in our cupped hands”), while the mature poet writes of loneliness and community in our cities (“but on the streets / there was no one”), and the urgent need for us to keep expressing our will as citizens. Throughout this matchless career, over eleven books, Nurkse has crafted visceral lines that celebrate the fragility of what simply exists—birdsong, moonrise, illness, water towers—and the complexity of human perception, our stumble forward through it toward understanding.