This new collection from best-selling poet and novelist Stephen Dobyns focuses on the hard, ephemeral truth of mortality, and includes the section "Sixteen Sonnets for Isabel" about the recent death of his wife. In true Dobyns fashion, these poems grip and guide readers into a state of empathy, raising the question of how one lives and endures in the world.
Stephen Dobyns is a latter-day American surrealist, a spinner of dark, extravagant fables of a world we live or may live in. His poems are peopled with devils and angels, ghostly chickens, distorted mythological figures, God, and the risen dead 'pretending they're still alive'. The world of Cemetery Nights is haunted by regret, driven by desire and need, illuminated by daring make-believe. In these often frightening and sometimes strangely funny poems, Dobyns creates a remarkable bridge between pure entertainment and deep psychological insight.
Langley offers comfort and encouragement to those struggling with recent loss or grief, helping them find language for complex emotions, and open their hearts through poetry. Send My Roots Rain is a companion full of stories—sometimes wry and funny, always observant and accepting—for letting grief unfold and teach us. Langley invites a keen awareness that the passage through grief is the navigation of a narrow strait, requiring patience, skill, and worthy companions. These poems can be those companions on the journey. Langley has carefully selected 60 poems and arranged them in a meaningful arc, beginning with the shock of early grief, leading through a sensitive exploration of a new inner space. She introduces each section, encouraging the ongoing embrace of the healing power of poems, writing, and entry into the grieving process. Each poem is followed by a brief meditation and quotation, with questions for contemplation, journaling, or group discussion.
The Intersection of Poetry and Jungian Analysis Through Metaphor: In Creation You Are Created explores the relationship between Jungian psychoanalytical intervention and poetry, focusing on the emergence of metaphor, which occurs in both processes, as it happens in neuroscience and fairy tales.Metaphor is a mode of communication that forms a bridge between different experience domains through associative linkages: it refers to a subject by mentioning another for rhetorical effect. Indeed, the prominence of metaphor in Jungian therapy is a characteristic that differentiates it from other forms of treatment. That’s because metaphor—as we will see in this book—is deeply rooted in the body in two ways: It is used to organize bodily sensations cognitively and is located on the border between mind and brain. C. G. Jung uses a metaphor when he observes, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
"Ever since the cops revoked his private investigator's license, Charlie Bradshaw has been adjusting to life as a regular senior citizen. But reading, sitting around the house, and making amateur home repairs is a far cry from his past life as Saratoga Springs' most successful everyman detective. So when Charlie discovers the sprawled corpse of Saratoga Springs' biggest nuisance on his sidewalk, the ex-P.I. is torn. Should he risk asking questions of his own, knowing he could easily be prosecuted for doing P.I. work without a license? Or should he avoid the trouble and spend his twilight years in peace?"--
When the Gnostic Gospels collide with new age spiritualism, the Oxford Happiness Test, and treatises on Buddhist practice, we know we're in the territory of a Bruce Beasley collection. Alternately devout and heretical, Beasley—known for his intense and continuing soul-quest through previous award-winning books—interrogates the absurdities, psychic violence, and spiritual condition of twenty-first century America with despair, philosophic intelligence, and piercing humor. Bruce Beasley is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Theophobia (BOA, 2012). The winner of numerous literary awards and fellowships, he lives in Bellingham, WA, where he is a professor of English at Western Washington University.
Sean Thomas Dougherty celebrates the struggles, the dignity, and the joys of working-class life in the Rust Belt. Finding delight in everyday moments—a night at a packed karaoke bar, a father and daughter planting a garden, a biography of LeBron James as a metaphor for Ohio—these poems take pride in the people who survive despite all odds, who keep going without any concern for glory, fighting with wit and grace for justice, for joy, every god damned day.
Winner of the Isabella Gardner Award, this book-length poem is a collection of voices-in-dialogue—overheard, remembered, internal—that represents the mind at work as it considers the destructiveness of humanity, the hypocrisy bred in the bones of American venture. Voices from personal conversations, political speeches, Guantanamo detainees, news, and poets fill these pages, capturing a world of disrupted beauty and unrealized potential.
A literary cookbook that celebrates food and poetry, two of life's essential ingredients. In the same way that salt seasons ingredients to bring out their flavors, poetry seasons our lives; when celebrated together, our everyday moments and meals are richer and more meaningful. The twenty-five inspiring poems in this book—from such poets as Marge Piercy, Louise Glück, Mark Strand, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Jane Hirshfield—are accompanied by seventy-five recipes that bring the richness of words to life in our kitchen, on our plate, and through our palate. Eat This Poem opens us up to fresh ways of accessing poetry and lends new meaning to the foods we cook.
