Stanley Dawson is a young Jamaican who volunteers for military service in the Royal Air Force then goes off to Great Britain to fight in World War II. After his arrival in England he becomes a casualty, not from action in combat, but from injuries he sustains during a training exercise. His experience in his weeks of hospitalization, left him determined to overcome the debilitating effects of frost bite he suffered. He recovers enough to justify to himself and his Commanding Officer that he was in Britain to fight in World War II as a Royal Air Force man. The long term effect of his injury catches up with him, however, soon after his return to Jamaica four years later, where he struggles to maintain himself as the old campaigner of organized combat—the war veteran—against casual, but a sharp-edged lifestyle of his boyhood friends. It is a way of life that makes him search for a clue to his apparent, irreparable existence. He senses that he is, not only partially incapacitated but spiritually dazed. His illness is made worse by the confusing political trend and the rising tide of emerging differing political opinions and the immediacy of social consciousness then sweeping the island.
Let verse be free wherever you (be) is the writer's use of (be) as an optional address to champion, and or convey, his free will. It reflects a secular idiom that the writer employs, enabling a grammatical shift that conveys choice, as it is to embrace the good the bad and the ugly to determine as mordant irreligious stance. "The Humbling" as the subtitle suggests, substantiates spirituality in the verse that conveys a secular motif for "In a Hollowed Tone" that depicts, if not heightens the spirituality of the faithful as sacrosanct. The writer use words to heighten the rhythm and sound of free verse to express his unconventional ideas. He uses words to convey his original and eccentric views, all of which is devoid of accepted usage of language, mealy to convey a view and his usage of free verse. Thus, it speaks of one who believes completely in the majesty of Jesus Christ, and one who has no desire to disobey Gods lawsthe Ten Commandments. Loyalty to his reverence demands that he remains loyal to the sacred teachings of Jesus Christ and against that of the profane, as Satans plot to induce someone to his earthly view of the world and faiths abound. To be sure, (be) is used also as a substitute of the plural verb (are) as grammatically incorrect, equally as it presents a calculated opposition to the other side of Eden as related in the good book, upholds to the laws of man and his rationale. The rational id to point to the other side of Heaven, as it is here on earth. The poem, in its totality, reflects a view that reorients the faithful that evil is never good; it is an abomination to the Lord. The writer acquires this dictum as mans easy way out into doing evil deeds, while the other is an accepted fact of man willing to save himself to attain the kingdom of Heaven and embrace the God given Heaven of his congregation. (This free verse, written in the desirable third person) With a theme that reflects the Good, the Bad and ultimately, the denouement or conclusion and resolution between good and evil. The result of which speaks to a Senator, as Yes, I can do my job, and to the Representatives as no can do, give them hell. Which occasions a prayer to ask God for his forbearance and his blessings, and to give God praise for his holiness that? Moves onto his creation in free verse as His giving life to all Which progresses one of the recipients, the good the bad and the indifferent congressman, as well as the good senator, right unto a mother and her young child in his childish behavior to his mom and ultimately to the world as a whole. The theme, stretched out into the core of the poem, reveals the seamy side of life as that of the devils delights to manipulate a woman, the woman of the night, to do his biddings by soliciting her Dear Johns. It is a theme stretched out when invitations are offered to a meal given by the devil that is as much a reaction for rich and poor sinners to attend and be Satan's mimicking the blessing of the Lords Supper, while he wrestles with God by way of free will of which he challenges man.
Poems / Images are a collection of verse, and excerpts from fiction I wrote over the years, with prose narrative honed and targeted to poems to make a connective, and where possible, an explosive imagery. Obviously, the writer believes he has met the goals he sets out for himself in this book, by making an imaginary unity in sound and meaning substantive, confident all along in his credo that he is always partial to impartiality.
Blood and Wine is complied from a collection of fictional writings, free verse and autobiographical material I wrote and published in several books over the years. I selected segments I thought were essential to the general focus of my book to hone prose and target free verse to signify the creative process within which my book strives. I began the book with a poetic challenge-Intruders, do not enter the mind / of the unborn child in the womb of thought-thereby promoting prose against the originality of free verse.
My endeavor here is to validate and document In Winters Eye what causes me to reflect, and try to recapture, in retrospect, my experiences--events propelled then by my pervasive apprehension of frost. This symbolic cold weather chills me to the bone In Winters Eye, which has now resurfaced in this brooding, but stark and detail reality. Yet, though the metaphorical winter weather doesnt bother me that much anymore, but when I accidentally get onto that slippery patch of racial black ice that camouflages the asphalt Thrue-way as passable, then, it would hit on my wheels and send me careening into a chaotic irrational verbal spin. My meeting with that icy patch on lifes roadway to somewhere, or nowhere for that matter, freewheels my sense of direction as it throws me off my intended course of normal human progress; after which I would struggle to maintain control of myself and the vehicle of my life I am driving down the road, if not to somewhere in the future, but to obliterate the past, where my wheels would swerve and skid helter skelter, luckily, into the shoulder of the Thrue-way for my ultimate survival. It became a necessity for me then, after meeting head-on the pronounced differences intoned by the assonant and dissonant sounds that racial preference plays out with acrimony, compared with the personal autonomy of my parent culture and the restrictions based on race in anothers. My endeavor to be accepted by my peers saw me struggle to adapt and to assimilate the new culture I enter, of which I wrote about In Winters Eye," or simply to remain, not just as an entity, but preferably that of a functional individual, as in the following. It is in such an ethnic arena that one jazz-dance to the subtle tempo from the racial nuances afoot, as one tries to keep time to that unique racial beat, sufficient to make one assess ones common experiences with others, keeping in mind, meanwhile, how it was in the countries, I lived and traveled over the years. In the fall of 1967, it was not a dream I had awakened from, and found myself living a life, akin to that of a spectator perched on a ledge in the balcony, gawking at the happenings taking place below in the arena. My consciousness held sway as I ogled at the vibrant milieu of racial politics happening then in my New York. I was not dreaming either when I found myself living in an apartment in Corona, Queens, as it was my natural evolvement within the trajectory of my migratory, path to the Big Apple. Neither was I having an-out-of-body experience that spirited me from Jamaica to London, then whisked me off to Toronto on a tidal wave, and finally being carried aloft by a big silver bird that landed me in the New York, slab-dab in the middle of the Civil Rights struggle. It was a vast struggle then, and remains so today, though on a higher level as still a living, breathing, a phenomenon that, in the 1960's, had elicited a mad rush of water to ooze from fire hoses manned by assiduous, if not sadistic, law and order protagonists that swept their fellow American brethren off their feet, and tossed them several yards from the offending fray.
In a Mellow Tone is a book about my recollections of times past and my reflections of such. The book highlights some short fiction that I included and of which emerge as scintillating. Some of the entries in the book is based on my entries in a journal I kept over the years. I was also cognizant in my observation of events going on around me.
Avi's treasured Newbery Honor Book now in expanded After Words edition!Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle is excited to return home from her school in England to her family in Rhode Island in the summer of 1832. But when the two families she was supposed to travel with mysteriously cancel their trips, Charlotte finds herself the lone passenger on a long sea voyage with a cruel captain and a mutinous crew. Worse yet, soon after stepping aboard the ship, she becomes enmeshed in a conflict between them! What begins as an eagerly anticipated ocean crossing turns into a harrowing journey, where Charlotte gains a villainous enemy . . . and is put on trial for murder!After Words material includes author Q & A, journal writing tips, and other activities that bring Charlotte's world to life!
A Bank Street Best Book of 2021 A Galaxy of Sea Stars is Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo’s second middle-grade novel—a heartwarming story about family, loyalty, and the hard choices we face in the name of friendship. Sometimes, the truth isn’t easy to see. Sometimes, you have to look below the surface to find it. Eleven-year-old Izzy feels as though her whole world is shifting, and she doesn’t like it. She wants her dad to act like he did before he was deployed to Afghanistan. She wants her mom to live with them at the marina where they’ve moved instead of spending all her time on Block Island. Most of all, she wants Piper, Zelda, and herself—the Sea Stars—to stay best friends, as they start sixth grade in a new school. Everything changes when Izzy’s father invites his former interpreter’s family, including eleven-year-old Sitara, to move into the marina’s upstairs apartment. Izzy doesn’t know what to make of Sitara—with her hijab and refusal to eat cafeteria food—and her presence disrupts the Sea Stars. But in Sitara Izzy finds someone brave, someone daring, someone who isn’t as afraid as Izzy is to use her voice and speak up for herself. As Izzy and Sitara grow closer, Izzy must make a choice: stay in her comfort zone and risk betraying her new friend, or speak up and lose the Sea Stars forever.
A modern-day expansion of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, this unforgettable debut novel weaves a spellbinding tale of magic and the power of love as a descendent of the original mermaid fights the terrible price of saving herself from a curse that has affected generations of women in her family. Kathleen has always been dramatic. She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her sixteenth birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that. Now Kathleen is a twenty-five-year-old opera student in Boston and shows immense promise as a soprano. Her girlfriend Harry, a mezzo in the same program, worries endlessly about Kathleen's phantom pain and obsession with the sea. Kathleen's mother and grandmother both committed suicide as young women, and Harry worries they suffered from the same symptoms. When Kathleen suffers yet another dangerous breakdown, Harry convinces Kathleen to visit her hometown in Ireland to learn more about her family history. In Ireland, they discover that the mystery—and the tragedy—of Kathleen’s family history is far older and stranger than they could have imagined. Kathleen’s fate seems sealed, and the only way out is a terrible choice between a mermaid’s two sirens—the sea, and her lover. But both choices mean death… Haunting and lyrical, The Mermaid’s Daughter asks—how far we will go for those we love? And can the transformative power of music overcome a magic that has prevailed for generations?
