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Lucy Adkins – Two-Toned Dress Lucy Adkins grew up in rural Nebraska. Her debut collection spans generations and illuminates the complexity of love and relationships in poems of specific places and times. She crafts her words with skill, sensually and musically, revealing the duality of humanity her title implies. She writes with a fierce tenderness. Amazon order |
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Ellery Akers – A Door Into the Wild A Door into the Wild is both a celebration of California landscapes and a meditation about love, loss, and the healing power of nature. In this collection of prose poems and drawings, multifaceted poet and artist Ellery Akers offers the reader a profound tribute to the Earth. author's site Amazon order |
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Ellery Akers – Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance The poems in Swerve give voice to the shock, fear, and desperation many feel about the current administration’s anti-environmental policies. They meditate on the beauty of the non-human world. They champion women in the #MeToo movement who are empowering themselves and making vital changes. Powerful and compassionate, Swerve is ultimately a call to activism, inspiring readers to "swerve" and demand a better world. author's site Amazon order |
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Mary Allen – The Deep Limitless Air: A Memoir in Pieces A collection of personal essays by the author of The Rooms of Heaven. Each essay is a tiny memoir that poses and answers a small or large narrative question, and together the pieces echo and revisit each other, revealing an evolving arc. MaryAllenWriter.com IowaWritingCoach.com Amazon order |
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Diane Averill – Beautiful Obstacles "These are deeply felt poems with traces of the soul all through
them. It does my heart good to know the book, these poems, are in
the world. They bless the reader who comes upon them. Vivid, startling,
committed, these poems are gifts Diane has received and in turn
gave to us." – Li-Young Lee Amazon
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Kate Aver Avraham – Arms of My Longing Avraham's poems remind me of what matters most, how the small, deeply experienced and witnessed moments add up to a life. They tell an intimate and universal story of interconnection with the earth, ourselves and each other. Amazon
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KB Ballentine – Spirit of Wild "As KB Ballentine delves without fear from windowed rooms into a wilderness of forest and ocean, it soon becomes clear that even the darkness in her collection Spirit of Wild is one that teems with life, wing, and song. Ballentine shows us that there is ‘a shelter for the sacred in each of us.’ Spirit of Wild is a balm, and I didn't know how much I needed it." – Chera Hammons author's site Amazon order
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KB Ballentine – The Perfume of Leaving In Celtic spirituality thin places are where the physical and spiritual, the visible and invisible, merge. Ballentine's work is full of such places. Her writing weaves sensual beauty, transparent emotions, and language that sings - poems running wild in the landscape of the heart. author's site Amazon order |
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KB Ballentine – What Comes of Waiting KB Ballentine weaves an astounding tenderness in vision and voice. Her poems are elegant jewels, with a powerful sense of place in the Appalachian mountains. Her vision is sometimes devastating, and always full of a sensual beauty, transparent emotions, and language that sings. Her poems will call you to you see the world in a different way. author's site Amazon order |
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Lynne Barnes – Falling into Flowers Falling into Flowers invokes a powerful sense of history, sculpted with tender, goose-bump evoking details, depicting the South in the 1950s and '60s and the Haight-Ashbury commune scene after the Summer of Love. This book is a journey from marshes of grief into flats full of idealistic hippies in the City of St. Francis, witnessing the events that helped shape the era of the Flower Generation. Amazon order |
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Patricia Barone – The Scent of Water The Scent of Water has the memorable imagery, engaging perceptions, and heightened language we have a right to expect in genuine poetry. Patricia Barone has united poems of the personal with poems that engage the larger world and its chaos. This is a book of water, especially the Mississippi and the lives it nourishes. Amazon order |
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Beau Beausoleil – A Glyphic House: New and Selected Poems 1976 ‑ 2019 "These finely‑crafted lyric poems pack a sensation of words under tremendous pressure, as if everything depended on the poet's clear articulation of complex feeling. The lines are short, the essential lexicon is simple: Moon. Field. Water. Hand. House. Here is language burnished by life and loss to a deep, enduring glow." ‑Julie Bruck. Amazon order |
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Barry Benson and Steve Benson – Schooled Lives: Poems By Two Brothers "The Benson brothers have put together not only a fine book of poems well worth keeping close but also a strong testament of faith in those subtleties of blood that can elevate the ordinary into song." Gary Gildner . . . "This is what poetry was meant to be, neither overly-sentimental nor veiled in obscure imagery. The poems read like music you have discovered as you search across the radio dial. Once found you stay tuned, turning the pages for more. This is adult poetry with risky passion, psychological pain, sensual thirst and the ache of longing." Amazon order info |
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Barry Benson and Steve Benson – Poems by the Skunk River Valley Boys The joy of reading Poems By The Skunk River Valley Boys by Barry and Steve Benson is to watch grown men pay such careful attention to the world. At once flirty, funny, and philosophical... these two brothers play a brisk poetic ping-pong across the margins and gutters of their outstanding new book. Amazon order info |
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Nancy Berg – Oracles for Night-Blooming Eccentrics "Right out of the headlines, participant in, on and of the edges of the dangerous and 'bejeweled' world, listener of sages ubiquitous, public radio opinionated, cable tv hysterical, spinning on the deck of the luxury liner of night itself . . . and a penchant for small dogs and oracular insomnia, this is Nancy Berg's poetry, seeking its soulmate inside an emerald and unlike anything else being written, 'crackling like early electricity,' heavy with art . . . abundant with literary grace and charm." – Rustin Larson author's site Amazon order |
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Marianne Betterly – The Return of the Bees Marianne Betterly is an award-winning poet who writes about nature, love, loss, the streets of San Francisco, fairy tales and the synchronicity of events. A believer in auguries, old and new, she loves to discover hidden meaning floating on a double latte, in a swarm of bees or in a murder of crows. Amazon order info |
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Dale Biron – Poetry for the Leader Inside You: A Search and Rescue Mission for the Heart and Soul Dale Biron uses poetry as a path for soul retrieval. Over the past 25 years, he has coached an extraordinary number of successful leaders and teams, fulfilling his mission to support clients in both their work and personal lives. Using bold, powerful language, he is transforming how timeless narratives unleash the imagination, and touch the heart and soul. Amazon order info |
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Micki Blenkush – Now We Will Speak in Flowers Now We Will Speak in Flowers speaks of the silences and languages that construct family, history, self, and our place on this earth as Micki Blenkush invites us through "the narrow gate" of memory, praise, and loss. author's site Amazon order info |
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Claudia Cole Bluhm – At the End of my Walk At the End of my Walk is a memoir written in narrative poetry. Bluhm is a storyteller who gets at the heart of the journey of tranformation. Divided into seven sections: Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back; Childhood; The Father Complex; The Mother Complex; Lost; Found; and We Are All Coyotes, her journey celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit, to grow and to become wild and free. author's site Amazon order info |
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Mary Ellen Branan – Weavings Mary Ellen Branan served with the Peace Corps in Poland from 1994 to 1996. Her poems "return again and again to test what stands between us, never quite giving up on what might connect us. They cherish contact as well as the possibility of genuine sympathy, proving the tender spot between the self and the other, either human or animal. Weavings is a quiet, important book of poems." - Richard Lyons. "Mary Branan's work chronicles life ... with a warmth and sophistication that only time and artistic sensitivity can bring." - Karla K. Morton, Texas Poet Laureate Amazon order info |
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Rosalind Brenner – Every Glittering Chimera "Rosalind Brenner, in her fine and brave debut collection, takes on the difficulties of loving when the models for such are dysfunctional. These are the poems of a survivor of family life, someone who wishes to "return memory to its grave," and in so doing presents the struggles of becoming oneself, a cathartic journey forged by honesty and made beautiful by art." - Stephen Dunn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Amazon order info |
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June Rachuy Brindell – This Moment's Daughter June Rachuy Brindel, beloved author of Ariadne and Phaedra, was a prolific poet. She collaborated on songs with her husband, composer Bernard Brindel. She had numerous poems published in literary magazines, and this is her first full-length collection of poems. The wise woman voice of her novels sings on every page. Amazon order info |
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Christopher Buckley – Flying Backbone Flying Backbone collects Christopher Buckley's poems from 1979 through 2007 responding to the life and paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. Buckley explains that he was compelled by "The vitality she found in everything-from bones in the desert to skyscrapers in Manhattan – the way the work suggests a practical cast, one that cherishes the earth and praises the strength of the human spirit as it endures here." "He has an exquisite ear for language... – Library Journal Amazon order info |
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Kerry Tepperman Campbell – Dreaming of France Kerry Tepperman Campbell's brilliant debut delves into the imaginations of American women who are fascinated with France. These jewel‑like vignettes and prose poems weave their way between an imagined world and a real one. The reader will be swept away by these seductive vignettes, set in a world where archetypes hover and even small moments become indelible. Amazon order info |
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Scott Caputo – The Bridge Under Construction “Scott Caputo artfully explores the overarching metaphor of the bridges in our lives — to foreign destinations, new jobs, family homes, courtship and marriage, fatherhood, spiritual peace. Nestled within this engaging landscape are ekphrastic and humorous poems that both illuminate and surprise. This collection is a love song to life.” - Kirston Koths Amazon order |
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Scott Caputo – The Holy Trinity of Chiles "Join Scott Caputo on a pilgrimage where we are offered nothing less than the full measure of being human. Accessible, these poems are made from the whole cloth of experience. Caputo never shies away from his religion or the marketplace. Astonishment lies down with humor. In Holy Trinity of Chiles the wanderer and the word-lover find nourishment." -Kit Kennedy Amazon order |
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Grace Cavalieri – Owning The Not So Distant World In her new book, Owning The Not So Distant World, Grace Cavalieri journeys through love and its permutations. Cavalieri is not afraid of the nighttime mind and its hidden treasures; she dares to dive deep into the unconscious, to surface with astonishment and gratitude. These are poems of risk and sometimes experimentation, breaking old forms to create energy for the new. Cavalieri shares the compassion of poetry, like a candle held out to the world. Amazon order |
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Lisa Cihlar – When I Pick Up My Wings from the Dry Cleaners Winner of the 2013 Blue Light Poetry Prize, Cihlar's poetry is full of muscle and sinew, power and verve, a voice so undeniable that it wraps itself around your synaptic connections and becomes indelible, essential. This is poetry of the highest order. Her music will carpe diem your mind; her characters, larger than life ... A new poetic powerhouse is in town. Amazon order info |
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Lynn Cohen – Between the Years “Lynn Carrroll Cohen's poems combine a confessional straightforwardness and a formal sharpness in a unique way. Her poems deconstruct the presumable difference between them while also maintaining it . . . Cohen shows how by casting experience in the forms in which we live it – a dinner, a glance, a blandishment over a glass of wine. . . . A marriage of two minds in the mind of a single voice‑‑compelling, distinct, and true.” - Perry Meisel Amazon order info |
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Lynn Cohen – Dreams and Dreamers “Lynn Cohen’s poems are tender elegies for lost youth, passion and ease. Graceful and economical, these lyrics offer bright glimpses of city and country, travel and remembered haunts. They are stories in miniature, deftly moving back and forth in time, lit with flashes of insight. Childhood anticipates future scars; middle age looks back to simpler ardor. Cohen uses a compact, elegant style to create a lucid world of longing.” - Martha Hollander, Winner of the Whitman Award under W. S. Merwin. Amazon order info |
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Angel Collier – The Zen of Falling Leaves "Angel Collier's poems are exotic butterflies. Lovely language, vision, beauty, a spiritual connection with the land, the birds, and the trees. Her poems reveal a divine tenderness, an honest telling, an open diary of her life and soul. Her language sings and shines." Amazon order info |
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David Connor – The Here and Now of It The Here and Now of It is a book of wit and wisdom, a life of experience distilled into vision and joy. It’s fascinating to read about the life adventures of someone who has lived through eight decades and share in the wisdom he has gleaned. At once you will realize this is a quick and highly observant mind behind these poems – honed by a deep and well-earned awareness of the world. Get ready to think more deeply about what you assume to be true. Amazon order info |
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David Connor – The Long and the Short of It David Connor's gutsy collection of poems is a compendium of the 20th century American life as seen through the unflinching eye of a dedicated physician and investigator into the mysteries of body and soul. Amazon order info |
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Philip Dacey – Gimme Five Dacey’s twelfth book demonstrates in poem after poem how the restriction of five stanzas of five lines each is like gravity to a dancer: it frees the artist. His poetry offers “fine turns of language...amazing knots tied and untied” – Louis McKee. And according to the San Francisco Review of Books, ”Dacey’s work never fails to amaze.” Amazon order info |
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Lucille Lang Day – Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place The seventy-four poems in Lucille Lang Day’s Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place take the reader on a journey across continents, seas, and time. Charged with a lyricism that is at the same time tough and vulnerable, the poems preserve images of a beauty that are on the verge of disappearing or has already disappeared – beauty of the rain forests of Costa Rica, the birds of the Galápagos, or cities like Athens, San Miguel de Allende, and Venice in flood author's site Amazon order info |
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Lucille Lang Day – Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems The Muse of Museums has found her poet in Lucille Lang Day. She has a painter's eyes, a scientist's mind and an alchemist's soul. In her museum poems, she describes the world we enter with scientific precision, paints it with colorful words, then throws in a tincture of wild imagination, memory, a drop of ancestral spirit and proclaims: "Let there be magic!." Read these poems and you too will be touched by magic.” author's site Amazon order info |
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Michelle Demers – Green Mountain Zen Green Mountain Zen renders the cycles of the human spirit as it surrenders to the shortest, most shut-down days of winter, keeping the coals of itself aglow, and then opens to celebration as the earth softens, greens, and again offers its abundance. This is a wise book, attentive to the nuances of inner and outer weather. - Leslie Ullman Amazon order info |
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Amarylis Douglas – The Fellowship of the Rain Set amidst America's uneven economic recovery, Amarylis Douglas provides a poetry of witness to the epidemic of homelessness. These poems are individual and unforgettable portraits of Americans we don't want to see, and for whom the word recovery hasn't applied. Amazon order |
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Johanna Ely – Postcards from a Dream It's a stunning act of courage when Johanna Ely manipulates twenty‑six letters and spells out the contemplations from the alphabet soup of her mind. Her voice, attuned to brilliant imagery, is both subtle and striking. She's a language artist who travels through dappled sunlight and bleak shadows to bare her gifted essence. Amazon order |
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Heather Estes – Inner Sunset This book is full of lyricism, animist and mystical, about the natural world of ocean, trees, fog, birds, insects, and yet, vividly anchored in the city, the house, through windows, walks and wide open eyes. She touches us with her quiet passion and deep regard for the beauty and terror of nature. author's site Amazon order |
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Kathy Evans – Trespassers Welcome Kathy Evans's full‑length debut, Trespassers Welcome, is a long overdue extravaganza of imaginative leaps, bounds, and deep dives, a worldwide web of seemingly unlikely but delightfully believable connections . . . from the everyday to the unexpected. Her work is profoundly playful and playfully profound. Amazon order |
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Rumors of Shore, by Paul Fisher The wildness of the natural world, and of the spirit, just barely contained; the elemental and the ephemeral; a primal darkness full of stars; fistfuls of tart black fruit-this is the stuff out of which Paul Fisher makes his poems, poems that are mysterious and musical and often terrifyingly beautiful, carved out of the strange light of this world "into luck, luminosities, pearls." – Cecilia Woloch. His is a soft, evocative, welcoming voice, resonant with a deep humility toward this world. Amazon order |
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Amusing the Angels, by Stewart Florsheim "Florsheim’s vision is encompassing, with room enough for the emotional convolutions of family, Holocaust survivors, spiritual seekers, intimate partners, world travelers, artists, and even total strangers. Pulsing through the array of details is the tempered passion of someone who considers desire as 'the trembling to be whole.' " – Thomas Centolella author's site Amazon order |
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A Split Second of Light, by Stewart Florsheim "Stewart Florsheim is one of those rare poets who has it all: chillingly beautiful language that draws the reader into myriad worlds of “riveting silence” and “prayer bells”; great courage to face the darkness, and the strength and wisdom to see that death and life are inextricably intertwined. This is an extraordinary book." – Louise Nayer, author of Burned: A Memoir author's site Amazon order |
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The Short Fall from Grace, by Stewart Florsheim "Stewart Florsheim has written a Moebius strip of a book, starting with the nearly unspeakable grief of being the child of ill-matched parents, and proceeding by turns into the amorous education of a young man, the perspicuity of a middle-aged aesthete (many of the poems here take their cue from great paintings), and finally marriage and fatherhood, which loop back with irony and insight to the beginning of Florsheim's narrative arc. The Short Fall From Grace, then, doesn't occur so much in a straight line—the way an actual fall might—as it does in a circular fashion, owing its trajectory not to gravity but to the irresistible pull of time." –Thomas Centolella author's site Amazon order |
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Pandemic Puzzle Poems, anthology selected by Diane Frank & Prartho Sereno This book is a gathering of community. It chronicles our Pandemic Times through the eyes, hearts, and minds of poets. “To write a single poem is a selfless act and a minor miracle. In times of trouble people often turn to poems, and poems often turn into prayers.” – Joseph Zaccardi Poems by Jane Hirshfield, Ted Kooser, Dorianne Laux, Stephen Dunn, Naomi Shihab Nye, Thomas Centolella, Marsha de la O, Terry Lucas, Barbara Quick, Melissa Studdard, Loretta Diane Walker, Marge Piercy, and many more poets who will delight and amaze you - some well known and others who also deserve to be read. Every poem in this book has a gift for you. Amazon order |
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Fog and Light, anthology selected by Diane Frank A love letter to San Francisco... In this collection, we show you the city that most tourists miss... Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirschman, Alejandro Murguía, Barbara Quick, Thomas Centolella, Kathy Evans, Alice Rogoff, Alison Luterman, Daniel J. Langton, Robert Scotellaro, Jane Underwood, and many other celebrated poets. editor's site Amazon order |
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Dreams and Blessings - Six Visionary Poets, anthology selected by Diane Frank |
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River of Earth and Sky, anthology selected by Diane Frank More than 100 poets in this impressive collection of poems and poets! River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the 21st Century mixes the best voices of our generation with the grass roots. In these pages, you will find poets who have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, along with lesser known poets who also deserve to be read. Jane Hirshfield praises this book: "Congratulations on this fantastic coming together of voices." editor's site Amazon order |
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Yoga of the Impossible, a novel by Diane Frank “In Yoga of the Impossible, a series of journeys of the mind, the heart, and the whole spirit dance, punctuated by the most amazing imagery. At some place in this picaresque work, the reader will stand up and cheer. I guarantee it.” —Mary Norbert Korte, author of The Persephone Poems author's site Amazon order |
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Swan Light, by Diane Frank "These poems of love returning to love, and light returning to light, are a heart gone supernova. Page by page Frank burns a path to her readers' hearts. The alignments are profound, the connections electric – from heart to bone, from marrow to star. These are radiant poems, where we earthbound creatures may find simultaneous escape and renewal." – George Wallace, Walt Whitman Birthplace Writer in Residence author's site review Amazon order |
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Entering the Word Temple, by Diane Frank "Diane Frank can enter, at will, that region where visions reveal themselves like snapshots. She transcribes these as jewel-like images on the page, through a vocabulary steeped in the natural world and the insistent predilections of the human heart." – Nancy Berg "Diane Frank crafts more than words, she brews word medicine. I feel her syllables like salve penetrate my skin to heal deeply hidden wounds." – Robin Lim author's site Amazon order |
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Blackberries in the Dream House, a novel by Diane Frank Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Blackberries in the Dream House is the forbidden love story of a geisha and a Buddhist monk in Kyoto, 150 years ago, in the genre of magical realism. Praised for the beauty of its language, this novel is deeply feminine, erotic and metaphysical. author's site Amazon order |
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The Winter Life of Shooting Stars, by Diane Frank "Tomas Transtromer once said that his poems are meeting places for souls. In this world where one does not always feel entirely at home, it is with a sense of recognition that one enters a Diane Frank poem, with all its exotic quirks, and rather than feel it to be strange, feel it to be a habitable, companionable place of kindred spirits." – Tom Centolella "What stays with me is that the poet depends on touch rather than vision to 'see' the real world. The narrators use their fingers and fingertips to make sure of reality; often the eyes are used to look beyond reality." – Daniel Langton author's site Amazon order |
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Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin, by Diane Frank "In Diane Frank's poems, the beautifully sensual language is like the dense fur on a winter animal. Something powerful moves and shifts beneath the surface. On this inner level Diane controls more than language. Her dimensions are so primal that the rhythm and textures of her voice could swell the moon." – Corinne Erly author's site Amazon order |
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Joyce Futa – Lit Windows: A Book of Haibun and Tanka Prose Joyce Futa casts time into long waves of elegant prose, and then gathers what remains in her poet’s net. Her writing builds with a quiet intensity, much like a great soup whose signature dish is tasted as much through the mystery of its chef as its ingredients ... a memoir of dream and memory alive with persons and place, beautifully crafted into haunting, profound, and often luminous haibuns. Amazon order info |
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Elinor Gale – The Emancipation of Emily Rosenbloom The Emancipation of Emily Rosenbloom is 50‑something’s Bridget Jones Diary. Masterfully written in the archetype of the female antihero, this debut novel unfolds with a wicked sense of humor. The novel is populated with unforgettable characters—Dr. Rothman, the invisible psychiatrist; Emily’s intuitive and exasperating mother in Florida; and Raspberry, the wonder dog. Highly recommended when you want to forget about the world and just laugh. Amazon order info |
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Lisha Adela García – A Rope of Luna This collection of poems immerses us in the raw wound of life as an immigrant child, as a daughter of a dying mother, as an estranged child of a faraway father, of a determined poet capturing the beauty of life in its "new botanical garden." Vividly painting the experience of leaving her native land and of being immersed in a place where her ethnicity, her language, and the prejudice of local institutions mark her as the despised and the disposable, Garcia evokes an eloquence both powerful and incisive. Amazon order info |
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Lisha Adela García – Blood Rivers Lisha Adela García's splendid debut full-length collection of poems follows the legacy of blood-spilled, spared, reviled, holy, singled-out, intermingled, and sustaining. These are poems of cultural border crossings and personal boundary breaches as seen from the female perspective. Her "whole life is the geography between...two countries, two cultures, two languages," the Rio Grande, "hugging both sides" of her story. Amazon order info |
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Joan Gelfand – Extreme: a novel |
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Melanie Gendron – This Fool's Journey "The personified tarot cards in This Fool's Journey talk about themselves, making the archetypes accessible to the reader. The line drawings of the Gendron Tarot major arcana make this book a visual as well as consciously expansive treat." – John Gray author's site Amazon order |
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Jennifer Grant – Dangerous Women "Jennifer Grant's Dangerous Women is a powerful and brilliant display of recreating history. What is most impressive is her ability to draw the reader into astounding lives that are of a different time and place, lives that are different from her own. This is a masterful book by a masterful poet, one that must be read." – Sue Walker, Poet Laureate Emerita of Alabama. author's site Amazon order |
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John Peter Harn – Physics for Beginners In Physics for Beginners, John Harn seems to bend the natural world to his will, upending what we know. His poems inhabit loss and though they are often steeped in the indifference of geologic time and weary religious notions, they are tempered by humor and fragile beauty. This is an exceptional first book. Amazon order |
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Tom Hazuka – Flash Fiction Funny Tom Hazuka's Flash Fiction Funny is a delight. Comical, silly, absurd, slapstick, quirky and always fun. Well-crafted flashes by established and up-and-coming authors find humour in a wonderful array of characters and scenarios: waitresses, teachers, musicians, dentists, gynocologists, Barbie dolls and superheroes; first dates, sexual fantasies, walks with ABBA and swimming with chickens. author's site Amazon order |
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Melissa Hobbs – Under the Pomegranate Sun In Melissa Hobbs' debut collection of poems, you will discover beautifully crafted language informed by a multi‑cultural spiritual vision. The author presents a world view shattered by the shootings at Kent State, where she was a university student. In her images, a powerful reverence for the natural world. In the subtext, a plea and a prayer for the planet to survive. Amazon order |
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David Hurlin – Zero Gravity Funk Libido |
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George James – Copperhead: Tantric Lessons On Love These are offerings of healing for the dance of sexuality and spirituality, a dance of light and shadow that has troubled seekers for eons. "George James' Copperhead has a powerful teaching about higher love in a world that has become profane. Each poem is a lesson and a gift." – Diane Frank. author's site Amazon order |
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George James – Peeling the Onion George James has written a book of transformational poems about the fivefold spiritual journey, where everyone will find a facet of their own soul. Peeling the Onion’s poems reveal universal life issues we all experience in some form. The wisdom, inspiration and healing offered is simple, direct and easy to assimilate by everyone regardless of their life’s path and level of personal and spiritual development. author's site Amazon order |
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Irwin Keller – Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder Shechinah at the Art Institute is a long‑awaited collection of luminous essays, memoir, and poetry by rabbi, former drag queen, and self‑proclaimed hope‑monger, Irwin Keller. Keller, most recently known for his viral protest poem, "Taking Sides," leads us on dazzling journeys into Jewish mysticism, love, loss, memory, gender, AIDS, and the Milky Way itself. Buckle your seatbelts. Amazon order |
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Helga Kidder – Learning Curve Helga Kidder presents a superbly human and intuitive-not an ideological or political-view of immigration, a perspective that is sorely needed for cross-cultural empathy. Poetry, her "bridge of memory," has kept her whole through the fragmentation of immigration. Kidder's poetry has enabled her to accept her double identity. Amazon order |
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Helga Kidder – Loving the Dead |
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Helga Kidder – Blackberry Winter Helga Kidder is a native of Germany's Black Forest region and lives in the Tennessee hills. These poems, light and dark, are worshipful of creation and wise about the nebulous nature of time, and one woman's place in both. A beautifully crafted book with soaring images. Amazon order |
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Helga Kidder – Luckier than the Stars Helga Kidder's Luckier than the Stars is an odyssey that takes us from her childhood memories and post war Germany to present day America, "a life spent to fit and re-fit the broken pieces." A master of metaphor and a vigilant seer of the extraordinary in the ordinary, she knows "...the past is a bell/ the present, newborn sea turtles/ racing to the ocean's moon..." Amazon order |
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Ria Kinzel – In the Year of Leaping Ice Ria Kinzel’s fiercely honest poetry is an inspiration to speak your own truth. In her extraordinary poem, “Coming of Rage,” she witnesses against injustice and cruelty as she discovers for herself oppression in apartheid South Africa, denigration of women, and a religion of sin and shame. Her poetry is powerful and can open the hearts of her readers. Amazon order |
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Philip Kobylarz – now leaving nowheresville - short stories You don't know who the alien is, you or the other guy, or girl, or possibly both. Not that it makes you compañeros; so we learn in these wry stories, told with the air of a disabused Mediterranean wanderer run aground, occasionally, in the American west. Amazon order |
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Philip Kobylarz – rues Philip Kobylarz’s enigmatic poems lead us into silences. “All views are interiors.” They also remind us that poetry is a tribute to Mystery. By elevating ordinary moments to the level of the Silence, Kobylarz validates every small and minute detail of existence. – Ewa Chrusciel Amazon order |
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Anna Kodama – Lit Only by a Few Thousand Stars "Anna Kodama is a gifted poet whose gaze penetrates Life to its bones. With masterful crafting of language, she gives shape to the Mystery, often in the voice of the shaman or wise woman. To read Anna's work is like being in a gentle rain of blessing." – Jennifer Read Hawthorne, coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul and author of Life As a Prayer: Poems author's site Amazon order |
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Kirston Koths – One Good Turn Kirston Koths' debut collection of poems, is a perfect synergy of wisdom, beauty, angst, and the voice of the tribal elder. More than any other poet I know, he freeze-frames the magic of his childhood and renders it eternal. Amazon order |
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Jennifer Lagier – Meditations on Seascapes and Cypress "Jennifer Lagier's poems are a prayer for the survival of the natural world. As she walks the Pacific coast each morning, she pays close attention to where she walks and what she sees. Her poems are witness to the strength and the fragility of the ecosystem. The poems in this book are Jennifer Lagier's best work." Diane Frank, author of While Listening to the Enigma Variations Amazon order |
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Jennifer Lagier – Harbingers In Harbingers, you will find the sharp eye of the photographer, the passion of the environmental activist, and a prayer for the survival of the Earth. As the poet takes you on coastal walks on the Monterey Peninsula, she reveals her delight in all natural things and her fears about global warming. Amazon order |
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Daniel J. Langton – During Our Walks A series of monologues by the village explainer to a recent arrival. Magical storytelling, beautiful wordsmithing. Lyrical and entertaining from beginning to end. author's site Amazon order |
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Daniel J. Langton – Personal Effects, New and Selected Poems Daniel J. Langton was launched into a life of writing poetry by William Carlos Williams. "These poems have a lovely pacing and interior radiance." – Tess Gallagher. "Superbly written, beautifully controlled, and yet continually freshened by a kind and fresh imagination." – Robert Bly author's site Amazon order |
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Rustin Larson – Lost Letters and Windfalls "Rustin Larson is a terrific, elegant, original poet whose voice rings so truly we become better people just by reading him." – Naomi Shihab Nye. "This is a book of small tendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you." – Nynke Passi, Director, MFA in Creative Writing, MIU. author's site Amazon order |
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Rustin Larson – Pavement Even for Rustin Larson, a master of invention, Pavement breaks into new territory. Brilliant writing, a delight on every page, a joy to read! His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Poetry East, and other magazines. author's site Amazon order |
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Rustin Larson – Bum Cantos, Winter Jazz, & the Collected Discography of Morning Rustin Larson's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Poetry East, Saranac Review, and more. Challenging a reader's perspective while remaining accessible, direct and vulnerable, Rustin Larson magically turns the routine into the extraordinary. author's site Amazon order |
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Rustin Larson – The Wine-Dark House The Wine-Dark House is a triumph by Rustin Larson. The poems are evocative and finely wrought, brimming with detailed, sensual images and delicately crafted lines. The poet leads us gently, yet with a firm purpose, on a tour of shadowed memory, both distant and more recent, that explores memory's hard truth. Larson is courageous in that he is not willing to take refuge in the ordinary. With consummate skill, inspired wit, and a rare compassion, these poems observe, reflect, and startle, reminding us of the necessary human endeavor to both honor and challenge the occasions of our daily lives. author's site Amazon order |
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Nikia Leopold – Small Pleasures "Niki Leopold is an exquisite receiver-of sensory news, complex emotions, hints of meaning. Her poems are passionate, delicate, fierce, brave." – Mary Azrael Amazon order info |
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Judy Liese – I Was Albert Schweitzer's Secret Mistress In this charming and delightful collection of poetry and prose, we are taken through the imaginative journey of a child in rural Wisconsin, a young nurse's experiences in Alaska, and contented married life in northern California. This is a book to be savored and treasured like an old friendship. Amazon order info |
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The Geometry of Splitting Souls, by Robin Lim "Robin Lim is a woman of staggering energy, passion, goodness and talent. Her poems take all four of those traits, and weave them into wonder." — Elizabeth Gilbert Order online at Amazon, or call by phone:1st World Publishing at 641-209-5000. |
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Carey Link – To Light a House of Bones The poems of Carey Link's To Light a House of Bones locate and celebrate a point of grace and balance and buoyancy "between earth and sky." Earth's restrictions are heavy and real, but in a suspended cradle, a hammock, even in a wheelchair - the poet is borne up by the "breath" and "breeze" of language. Her delicately nuanced poems are compact, powerful - dazzling over and over, in the words of Emily Dickinson, with "truth's superb surprise." – Harry Moore in memory Amazon order info |
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Carey Link – Through the Kaleidoscope Carey Link's new book of poems is a journey of healing and celebration. Her poems are cryptic, mysterious, elegantly written, and often heartbreaking. Most poets are not able to accomplish what she does in such a small space, and underneath, there's a sense of the mystical. Every line delivers. Every line sings. Amazon order info |
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Naomi Ruth Lowinsky – Death and His Lorca Death and His Lorca is a powerful volume of poems about love, about loss but also about how lost ones still stream indelibly through a life. Although her book touches on Jungian symbols of Self, Anima and Animus, mostly it presents the Shadow: the fire, the wild and unknown. Amazon order info |
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Naomi Ruth Lowinsky – The Little House on Stilts Remembers Sing a song of home, the places that have held you. Lament the haunted Shoah-torn dwellings that could not hold. Create a dirge for the loss of your home, where power animals and spirits hovered, and give the home a voice to wail your leaving. Celebrate the lovemaking that brings fire to the everyday, moving back and forth through time in anguish and joy, as though all times were this one. Amazon order info |
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Jeanne Lupton – Love is a Tanka Lupton takes ownership of the tanka form to entertain with wit, careful observation, and tenderness. She reveals a life lived over time and with challenges. All are suffused with the divine light of the ordinary. The Buddhists say that the most enlightened being appears to be most ordinary. These poems are a treasure. Amazon order info |
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Emilie Lygren – What We Were Born For "Emilie Lygren writes essential, elegant poems that help us live our lives and apprehend with deepest gratitude all the gifts surrounding us." – Naomi Shihab Nye. "This voice is a wild spirit disguised as human..." – Kim Stafford author's site Amazon order |
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Kathleen Lynch – Lucky Witness "One senses that Kathleen Lynch — in her brilliant, sometimes devastating book — intends her title to be read un-ironically. As in Ingmar Bergman films, the poems cast a light on various darknesses that in their exposures, their witnessing, are the essential cries and whispers of poetry." – Stephen Dunn, Author of Pagan Virtues author's site Amazon order |
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Bruce Majors – What I Know about Light In language fearsomely open and fiercely raw, Bruce Majors' newest collection is full of poems that deal with the difficult stuff of real life. In the tradition of Sholom Aleichem and other great philosopher poets, he wrestles with large issues. And in the tradition of the great philosopher poets, he finds the light inside of appearances. Amazon order info |
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Michael Malan – Deep Territory "There is a special sense of kinship and community in Michael Malan's poems: trees, streams, clouds, horses, and horizons. All things are alert, articulate, and time in touch with the timeless. These are poems of thanksgiving, and calm recognition." - Robert Morgan Amazon order info |
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Michael Malan – Overland Park Michael Malan is editor of Cloudbank, a literary journal published in Corvallis, Oregon. He writes a poetry of interlocking assumptions, a puzzling delight, exhilarating because it’s always on the move. The effect is to make us innocent again. Bright, unpredictable, yet grounded in an accessible lyric vision. Amazon order info |
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Michael Malan – Tarzan’s Jungle Plane "Malan recognizes that the miraculous and the humdrum are simply two sides of the same coin, and as he makes clear in the title poem, he’s not afraid to 'let the monkey fly the plane.'" —Gary Young, author of That’s What I Thought and Precious Mirror. author's site Amazon order |
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Constance Rowell Mastores – A Deep but Dazzling Darkness Mastores is a poet of immediacy - of rapt contemplation of the phenomenal world. She has a musician's ear for how to create marvelous sound effects with words and cadence. "With her shape-shifting, synesthetic imagery and her subtle use of sound, Mastores is a poet whose words seem to breathe on the page." — Blue Unicorn Amazon order |
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Ken McCullough – Walking Backwards This is a book about relationships: with each other and with the natural world. Ken McCullough demonstrates a profound understanding and acceptance of the balance between light and dark in the universe. . . his words are passionate and elegant, and meditate on life from the perspective of one who has lived it fully. McCullough speaks to us with wit and humility, as prophet, trickster, father, lover, friend and teacher. Amazon order |
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Sarah McKinstry-Brown – Cradling Monsoons Cradling Monsoons "pits tension between reality and desire, cultivating a world rich with lived imagination. In Sarah McKinstry-Brown’s grasp, language tackles the world of marriage, pregnancies and family with a complex love capable of cradling frustrations and grief with a patience that can ride through any monsoons and still trust there will be air to breathe soon enough." —Lisa Gill, Author of The Relenting "These poems make art from life, and reveal the making and living of life as an art of terrible power and tenderness. These poems are pure muscle, fierce heart." —Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year author's site Amazon order |
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Ed Meek – What We Love "Ed Meek digs underneath the broad lawns and narrow minds of the suburbs to unearth a deeper and at times darker, truth about ourselves and our lives." -Doug Holder. "His poems are brilliant, fresh, and full of subtle surprises." - James Chichetto. "Ed Meek's poems ... show us what's real and true, whether it's terrifying or funny as hell." - Bill Littlefield, NPR Amazon order |
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Susie Meserve – Little Prayers While a poem is traditionally an artifact, these poems make you feel like you are the artifact, having been crafted by them, as if they have always existed. And yet despite that peculiar species of infinity, a Susie Meserve poem is always happening this morning [...] There exists in this book a marvelous interplay between a boundless knowing and a boundless unknowing -- Susie Meserve is no doubt herself an oracle: "Every time I open my mouth, something hops in," she sings. - Mike Dockins, author of Slouching in the Path of a Comet Amazon order |
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Edmund Miller – The Screwdriver’s Apprentice “The slither-under-your-skin wit of The Screwdriver’s Apprentice begins with the title and becomes more irresistible, gloriously off-center, and alive as you make your way through these now-you-see-them-now-you ... poems. Hot, smart and sensual. Not only dazzling but moving, deeply so.” - James R. Kincaid Amazon order |
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Michael Miller – A Boy in the City "Poetry is an ocean into which all sorts of rivers enter, like boisterous guests. One of literature's obsessions is childhood. Michael Miller looks back, way back. He is experienced enough to know the world he writes about is gone, and then he brings it back to life." - Daniel J. Langton, Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University Amazon order |
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MJ Moore – Topography of Dreams MJ Moore's rich and exuberant book of poetry offers wisdom that sees beneath the surface of life and the natural world, pointing us toward greater connections. We journey with her to Vietnam and India, kayak with her on the bay in twilight and taste apple-heavy, autumn air. Ranging from lush memories to direct insights, her poems sweep across continents, life's stages, the natural world. Amazon order |
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Sharon Lask Munson – The Weight of Snow Sharon's poems travel through space, tunnel through time, and cross generations. Whether free verse, prose poem, haiku or haibun, they carry, lean on and converse with each other in this exquisite volume of poetry. Reality is often heightened. Snow becomes more than snow.. author's site Amazon order |
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Sharon Lask Munson – That Certain Blue Sharon's first full-length book of poems invites the reader into a world of compassion and tenderness, family traditions, affirming a life of grace and quiet joy. author's site Amazon order |
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Claudine Nash – Beginner's Guide to Loss in the Multiverse Claudine Nash’s words tug at the very fabric of space and time. Her poems peel back layers in such a way that the reader can simultaneously witness the molten core of the earth and the innermost depths of the narrator’s soul. author's site Amazon order |
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Burned, a memoir by Louise Nayer Louise Nayer illuminates both the emotional intensity of loss and the surprising strength that is summoned up for the sake of loved ones. Burned is the story of a family stripped to their barest elements and held together by love.. Amazon order info |
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The Houses are Covered in Sound by Louise Nayer Louise Nayer's poems are full of vision, wisdom, vulnerability and beautifully crafted language. "She has sharp imagery and honesty in her work, and her poetry is in touch with life, as poetry is supposed to be." – John Logan "Louise Nayer is a markedly gifted poet." – Robert Creeley. Amazon order info |
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Marsha M. Nelson – Night Visions “In Night Visions, Marsha M. Nelson threads the cycle of the outer world through the cycle of the spirit-self. This collection is evidence of her deep-seated spiritual roots and how her faith has given her wings and rest on the branches of victory.” - Loretta Diane Walker Amazon order info |
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Susie Niedermeyer – Under a Prairie Moon In Under a Prairie Moon, Susie Niedermeyer doesn't so much observe the natural world as experience it flowing through her. In a poetic voice that is at once down-to-earth and visionary, she explores inner and outer landscapes as they intersect and shape one another. Many of her poems are rooted in close, delicate observation of plant and animal life in the rural Midwest and are animated by the poet's acute sensitivity. These poems carry the weight and the wisdom of lived experience: how memories accumulate and cast their shadows on the present; how illumination and understanding can come suddenly, in a moment. Amazon order info |
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Barbara Novack – Do Houses Dream? Barbara Novack's debut book of poems offers the reader a celebration
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Rayne O'Brien – Living on a Song a Day From Ellen Burstyn: "Rayne O'Brian is my favorite poet in the whole wide world. She tops a list that includes Mary Oliver, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rilke, Rumi and Yeats. Reading her poems startles with their tenderness, awakens with their deep perception and thrills with her mastery of the poetic language. Reading her poems is a balm for the soul." Amazon order info |
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Fred Ostrander – Petroglyphs Fred Ostrander is a poet who understands a dedicated and diligent approach to the use of language. His poetic vision, subtle and engaging, is powered by the natural rhythms of a confiding voice, a voice that conveys a man of deep integrity and humanity. The poems in Petroglyphs are intimate and universal, lyrical and intelligent. They call the reader back, again and again, to wander around their word and sound landscapes. "To begin reading Fred Ostrander is to enter an alternate, intenser world where the great images rule and the tides of the universe palpably lift (and drop) us all." – John Hart Amazon order info |
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Ken Pobo – Bend of Quiet Every culture has its seers and visionaries, who see and hear more than the rest of us. Kenneth Pobo's lyrics reveal the inner lives of fauna and flora. These are healing songs in the tradition of tribal shamans, love songs, clearly articulated in the American Idiom. They wake us, remind us to care for the spirits embodied within us and around us, to live in earth's mystery without destroying it further. Amazon order |
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Meg Pokrass – Spinning to Mars "Meg Pokrass has written an exquisite collection of linked stories. As I read Spinning to Mars, I felt plunged, soaked, immersed ... into a life both deep and wide. This book will spin you off to Mars with its exacting language and biting insight. Here is the kind of compressed writing that I long for and rarely find." ~ Sherrie Flick, author of Thank Your Lucky Stars Amazon order |
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Meg Pokrass – Cellulose Pajamas "In a smattering of sassy, wry words Meg Pokrass creates a universe of love in Cellulose Pajamas. These sexy but wistful prose poems hint at entire constellations of affections, relationships at once sweet, sad, satisfying-and not. The poet's delicately surreal metaphors give her poems so enticing an air that they seem to wear perfume." ~ Molly Peacock Amazon order |
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Michèle Praeger – Baby you can drive my car Michèle Praeger's three previous lives read like a French childhood memoir, an absurdist comedy, and a Henry James novel. "Her debut collection of flash fiction takes you on unexpected journeys. Her stories are brilliant little jewels, which never go quite where you expect them to. I love the French existentialism juxtaposed with joie de vivre in these stories. Delightful to read!" Amazon order |
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Barbara Quick – The Light on Sifnos "Barbara Quick is a novelist of international reputation, and her skills are evident here, with characters we can believe; an atmosphere we can feel; and interior thoughts that deepen her observation. Every poem is a small story with personality and purpose— lines that flow like silk, holding words precise in every note. Quick gives us an island where we can go whenever we want to make beauty our own and rest in the company of flawless writing." – Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate author's site Amazon order |
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Stuart Radowitz – The Simple Changes "Stuart Radowitz is the wise elder we all yearn to walk beside ‑ a gentle companion who has learned to 'see through closed eyes' and hear 'countless souls in the gusts. The poems in The Simple Changes put us on intimate terms with the ever-changing, yet profoundly abiding, natural world. There is a trustable humility in the voice that sings here, one that admits to catching a glimpse of the eternal flame..." (Prartho Sereno) Amazon order |
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Stuart Radowitz – Snow Hangs on the Branches of Evergreens Stuart Radowitz looks to nature as a canvas for spirituality and a portal to our souls. In his beautifully crafted poems, he evokes the shadow architecture of life in ripples of memory, each place a moment with all the contradictions of the natural world and its inhabitants. Through these poems, Stuart takes the ephemeral and makes it immutable. Amazon order |
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James Ralston – Lyrics for a Low Noon James Ralston, in his debut collection, delivers with an edgy honesty and complex humor the difficulties of loving and being loved. His poems explore sex and separation, the highs of intimacy that devolve into something lesser. "A poetry that dares and distills ... as it makes us wince with the pleasure of recognition." - Stephen Dunn, author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry Amazon order |
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Charles Rammelkamp – A Magician Among the Spirits Charles Rammelkamp gets right under Houdini’s skin to create a first person poetic autobiography of sorts that brings the world’s most famous escape artist to life. A Magician Among the Spirits is a fast moving, deeply engrossing story of magic, transformation, drama, mystery, travel, and trauma in 55 poems that trace the course of Houdini’s life. Amazon order |
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Deborah Ramos – from the earthen drum of my body Tells stories about wild women, hungry lovers, and the shaman that rescues road kill abandoned on the side of the road. Within these pages are healings of heart and spirit, journeys of ancient souls that haunt canyons, jungles, and dark castles – some worlds real and some imagined. Amazon order |
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Megan Robinson – No Longer An Ingenue "Megan's writing brings to mind the desert flower, the blossoms that have become tough from fighting the environment. She reaches for the mooring of autobiography and loosens the knot. We can feel the transformation that happens when the decision is made to stand and face the story, the birth cry of a warrior-mother, one who steps hungry into the rite of passage rather than choose the easy path of the coward." – David Hurlin Amazon order |
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Alice Rogoff – Mural Winner of the 2004 Blue Light Book Award, Alice Rogoff lives in San Francisco. She has been an Editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal since 1984, and received an Honorable Award in the Artists Embassy International Dance-Poem Contest. She belongs to the Northern California Media Workers Guild, is the Recording Secretary for the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, and leads drama workshops for low-income adults. Amazon order info |
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Mary Kay Rummel – Little River of Amazements "Stanley Kunitz said Mary Key Rummel’s poems sustain an oracular voice, sometimes prophetic and always lustrous and generous to the reader’s psyche. Her poems are in the voice of her soul speaking." - Lois P. Jones author's site Amazon order |
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Mary Kay Rummel – Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone "Mary Kay takes us on a pilgrimage - as much of mind as of language - past the natural world's apparent surfaces and into those places that flash with a spiritual resonance." - Carl Phillips "No matter the subject, these poems are illuminations." - Lois P. Jones author's site Amazon order |
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Mary Kay Rummel – Cypher Garden In Mary Kay Rummel’s poems there is no separation between the spiritual and the sensual. Even as a child, she writes, I longed to spend my life in praise. Stanley Kunitz said, "Mary Kay’s poems have and sustain an oracular voice"... sometimes prophetic and always lustrous and generous to the reader’s psyche. A spectacular collection to read again and again. author's site Amazon order |
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Mary Kay Rummel – The Lifeline Trembles "The Lifeline Trembles displays the full power of Mary Kay Rummel's poetic gift. Her poems are visionary, erotic and full of light. With elegantly crafted language, these pages are filled with a love that is palpable and shines. The voice of the Wise Woman sings in every poem." – Diane Frank, Author of Swan Light and Yoga of the Impossible author's site Amazon order |
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Mary Kay Rummel – What’s Left is the Singing Mary Kay Rummel spins words into mysticism and magic. "Not to be ordinary," she was drawn into the convent where she was forbidden to read fiction because the Superior didn't like it. She was able to leave when "words whispered in that wind/telling her to go forth and read, to never ask again." Set free, she read and wrote and traveled, visiting early Irish history and myth. Throughout her book, bells chime in celebration as her words become exquisite lyric poems. Rummel's work allows us to feel how. . . "light slips/through fingers into every fold of sky." author's site Amazon order |
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Becky Sakellariou – No Foothold in this Geography In these poems, the cultural and physical landscapes of New England, where the poet was born and raised, and those of the Greek/Mediterranean, where she has lived for so long, mingle, merge and even coalesce in intriguing and often inexplicable ways. Amazon order |
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Barbara Saxton – Dual Exposure At age four, Barbara Saxton flaunted a warrior's stance, challenging Niagara's full force. With that same tenacity, bravery, elegance and honesty, she challenges her readers to experience the forces of alcoholism, the complexity of family relationships, and the beautiful interludes of love and life. Barbara's wit and mastery of expression are woven in every line of this collection. Amazon order info |
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Mylo Schaaf – Blown into Now Blown Into Now carries the reader from deep sadness and loss to compassion, beauty, and spiritual connection. Written after a shocking phone call revealed the passing of her 24-year-old son Alex Lowenstein, Mylo Schaaf’s poems are a guidebook for those who grieve to look for signposts and healing. Mylo worked as a physician engaged in global, low resource settings before she took a left turn into poetry. Alex’s photos of wild beauty accompany each poem. author's site Amazon order info |
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Stephen Schneider – Unexpected Guests “Steven Schneider is an extraordinary poet. Each of the poems in this collection is crafted with inspiration, dedication and a skill that exemplifies the best of contemporary poetry. Unexpected Guests is a powerful and beautifully written book that explores the meaning of faith, remembrance and creativity. ” - Marjorie Agosìn ... "For people who have been fans of Stephen Schneider's poetry all along, Unexpected Guests is the major collection they have been waiting for. For others, this is a wonderful poet to get to know well. It doesn't take long to make friends with these poems, and they'll become friends you'll want to visit again." – Rustin Larson author's site Amazon order |
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Quick Adjustments, micro fiction by Robert Scotellaro “To read Robert Scotellaro’s microfictions is to continually have a smile on your face, marveling at his humor, his wit, his inventiveness with language and story... the man who visits his ex-wife in a lion’s cage, the sewer worker who reinvents his life, the ‘dudes’ in the House of Pancakes discussing infinity, high on LSD. Sheer delight.” – Charles Rammelkamp author's site Amazon order |
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Measuring the Distance, flash fiction by Robert Scotellaro Finalist for the da Vinci Eye Award (for excellence in book design) and received Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award (for excellence in fiction). "From a homeless man stealing sugar, a mime with a gun, crazy Uncle L and a daughter's drunken Skype, to the stunning, aching perfection of 'One Better Than the Next,' Measuring the Distance is the work of a master storyteller. Our favorite collection of 2012." – Boston Literary Magazine. author's site Amazon order |
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What We Know So Far, micro fiction by Robert Scotellaro Scotellaro's flash stories, sentence by sentence, ride disjunction to dazzling heights of hilarity, hard won wisdom, and the sweetest grief. He is the sublime story teller of tiny lives colliding with big moments. These stories take us into small worlds full of big surprises. author's site Amazon order |
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Nothing Is Ever One Thing, micro fiction by Robert Scotellaro Robert Scotellaro is an internationally famous master of flash fiction. These elegant stories shine a slanted light on the high wire act of human existence, with a unique blend of pathos and grit. Robert Scotellaro’s microfictions are breathtaking little epiphanies. author's site Amazon order |
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Cameron Scott – The Book of Cold Mountain "Cameron Scott writes like a river... his is the language of water and gravity, the silence of an empty desert basin, the smell of sage on cool mornings." Amazon order info |
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Christopher Seid – Age of Exploration Christopher Seid has crafted a book for seekers, a collection full of questions small and large and journeys. These poems exist in a force field between wholeness and limitation, between the longing for transcendence and the realities of responsibility and loss. Full of passion, wonder, mystery and joy - the kind of writing that makes you feel happy to be alive and part of it all. Amazon order info |
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Prartho Sereno – Starfall in the Temple “Prartho’s poems are full of the magic and mystery I find in the poems that stay with me for years. They’re written with gorgeous language, and underneath each line, her vision is full of wisdom. They are the kind of poems that make me feel happy to be alive, in a human body, on this planet, even during these very challenging times. If I had to discover poetry all over again, these poems would cause me to take that deep dive into the core of the mystery.” – Diane Frank Amazon order |
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Prartho Sereno – Indian Rope Trick "The magnificent poems of Prartho Sereno reground us in our bodies, in the glistening syllables and scenes surround us. They retune us to a tender, more palpably luminous world we would prefer to inhabit." - Naomi Shihab Nye Amazon order |
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Betsy Snider – View From the Other Side "I am undone, says the speaker in the first poem of Betsy Snider's lush and intimate journey, and at once we are in the thrall of a remarkable energy. Her poems honor and celebrate life fully lived, and challenge the idea of an inevitable end." Betsy Snider was first published in the ground-breaking anthology, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence author's site Amazon order info |
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Mark Tate – Walking Scarecrow Mark Tate’s new book of poems is a microcosm of large‑scale wisdom and beauty. Generously including bits of conversation with the ancients — Basho, Li Po, and others — Tate interweaves deep questions about how to live richly and well with homespun scenes of his simple, rural life. Cold Mountain runs like a gold vein through the quartz of these poems. – Sandra Anfang Amazon order info |
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Sandy Steinman – Eighteen "Eighteen, by Sandy Steinman, is authentic, penetrative, and wise. Here is an amalgam of fiction and memoir, of tradition and culture rendered with a diamond cutter's precision and art… an illuminated manuscript of journeys: personal, yet universal, and supremely captivating." – Robert Scotellaro, author of Measuring the Distance and Ways to Read the World. Amazon order info |
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Paul Stokstad – Some Kind of Miracle Every poem in this book affirms that life itself is Some Kind of Miracle. They are "awake inside, / in an enlightened quiet" – and will continue to speak to us through time, "awake / in the interstellar night." These poems are worth our time as they are sprinkled with the timeless and inform us most reverently of our world. Amazon order info |
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Paul Stokstad – Butterfly Tattoo "Paul is a passionate and somewhat enigmatic man. He speaks in these soft staccato bursts, filled with questioning and wonder, and you can hear this, if you listen close, in his poetry." -Glenn Watt Amazon order info |
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Betsy Snider – Hope is a Muscle In this unusual collection of poems, Betsy Snider takes us back to her youthful years as a nun, her struggle against the convent's strict rules, and the new life she creates in rural New Hampshire. Wrought with precise detail, in deeply felt language, she suffers the silence of both God and love. Her poems read like haunting hymns or prayers to both the physical world and the world of the spirit. author's site Amazon order info |
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Steve Trenam – An Affront to Gravity Steve Trenam is a gravity-defying word-dancer who rambles, romps, canters, and glissades his stories and images into our hearts." ~ Prartho Sereno. "These are poems that hold us spellbound in an ecstasy of pendulous light." ~ George Wallace. author's site Amazon order info |
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Brian K. Turner – The House of Wolves This is a collection of dramatic works, containing haunting passages, grave effects, and dire circumstances. The voice is fresh, the imagery exact and fascinating. This is writing without a filter – not be for the timid. Amazon order info |
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Joyce Uhlir – Mysterious Light Delving beneath the surface of things, Joyce Uhlir's poems explore and shed light on a multi-dimensinal world of nature where sight, sound, feelings, smell and taste mix like paint on a pallet, to the delight of body and soul. Sensuous and spiritual at the same time, this light often seems like x-ray vision, making the opaque transparent and beautiful. Joyce's painting, Bones of Zion, graces the cover of her book. Her poems radiate beauty and wisdom. They paint pictures with words and are filled with "mysterious light." in memory Amazon order info |
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Jane Underwood – When My Heart Goes Dark, I Turn the Porch Light On Forged in the aftermath of a metastatic cancer diagnosis, these intimate poems keep stumbling into wonder. “Sharp, poignant, funny, tough, tart, sweet – like Jane herself, who lived life on her own terms and sang about it.” ~ Alison Luterman. The manuscript of this book was on her nightstand when she died in February, 2016. Her closest friends published it with her blessings. Amazon order info |
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Margo Von Strohuber – Tangled Threads Margo is a poet whose body of work has primarily remained buried in her desk drawer. After teaching for 40 years, Tangled Threads marks her entry into publishing. “What I most admire in these poems is the raw passion and fierce minimalism. Every line is transparent to the emotions. Every poem in this book is jewel.” - Diane Frank Amazon order info |
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Loretta Diane Walker – Day Begins when Darkness is in Full Bloom Loretta Diane Walker wrestles with the world as it is and emerges again and again with clear, rich poems that wash the soul in light. This is a collection of healing and hard-won hope. Her poems lead both poet and reader to praise this life, to celebrate the time we each have in our world. Amazon order info |
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Loretta Diane Walker – Word Ghetto "Loretta Diane Walker writes with compassionate wisdom and insight-her poems restore humanity." -Naomi Shihab Nye. "Loretta Walker's Word Ghetto is an astounding book, full of wisdom, compassion, and masterfully woven word magic. Her language speaks with a rich tapestry of emotion, and her poems sing like a saxophone playing the music of her soul. Loretta Walker's vision is huge - she speaks for a whole community of people who are marginalized by the circumstances of their birth. Her poems offer healing, vision and hope." -Diane Frank, Author of Blackberries in the Dream House and Entering the Word Temple. Amazon order info |
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Loretta Diane Walker – In This House Loretta Diane Walker's house of poems is majestic and delicate at once - immense in depth of vision and perception and tenderly sensitive in all the ways human beings need a house to be. Her vibrantly descriptive poems honor the hardest days and rooms of being and believe in the beams of light coming back to us, once again, through the windows... poems as rich and wise as a profoundly conscious life. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye Amazon order info |
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Will Walker – Wednesday After Lunch "Will Walker has written a collection of poems so intelligent and clear that reading them I wake up-and find myself alive in the world. This is what art can do – and every time it happens it's a miracle. Here is a miraculous book-awake to what the Buddhists call the "full catastrophe" of living right now. If you want to feel yourself alive and in great company, buy this book and read it, and then pass it on." – Marie Howe "He writes with a keen eye, a generous heart, and an expansive spirit, both embracing the everyday and transcending it. His poems always make me see with new eyes. They are love poems to the world." –Thea Sullivan author's site Amazon order |
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NYC From the Inside – anthology selected by George Wallace The inner voice of America's greatest city spoken aloud – the poets' State of the Union Address, the spirit and mind of 8.8 million people looking themselves square in the eye and telling it like it is. The poets slice the Big Apple into a montage of essential moments, across cultural clusters and neighborhood nooks. If you want to know the value of the human heart in our great and enduring city, read this book. Poems by Andrei Codrescu, Martin Espada, Marie Howe, Hettie Jones, Yusef Komunyakaa, Quincy Troupe, Anne Waldman and many other celebrated poets. Plus late legends Miguel Algarin, Robert Bly, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jack Hirschman. praise Amazon order |
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George Wallace – Resistance is a Blue Spanish Guitar "In Resistance Is a Blue Spanish Guitar, George Wallace shows us, with lines lyrical and wise, how intricate the gearworks of our humanity truly are. There is a power of place and language in these poems. Metaphors that bedazzle and inform. There is holy text here. A tumbling word-jazz. And there is nothing less than the insistent, illuminating quintessence of our living in the offering." - Robert Scotellaro, author of Measuring the Distance. Amazon order info |
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George Wallace – Smashing Rock And Straight As Razors George Wallace is Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace (2011‑present), first poet laureate of Suffolk County NY, and author of 30 books of poetry. A seminal figure on the New York City poetry performance scene, Wallace maintains an active international schedule of workshops, lecture presentations and poetry readings. Amazon order info |
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Glenn Watt – Walking the Refuge Through his keen eye and exquisitely musical line, Watt creates not just a fine homage to the mysterious life of birds, but offers a deeper commentary on the nourishing power of time spent alone in nature, an increasingly rare luxury these days. Amazon order info |
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Florence Weinberger – These Days of Simple Mooring: New and Selected Poems "Some poetry simply must be written. It has an urgency that stops us and makes us reflect about our lives, our collective histories, our pain, our joy. Weinberger’s narrative voice seems effortless, filled with compelling images that magnify her thoughts and emotions. Her poetry grabs us because it’s informed by a life fully lived, with all of its hardships and pleasures.” – Stewart Florsheim, author of Amusing the Angels Amazon order info |
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Pearl Werbach – What the Wind Taught Me Pearl Werbach's debut collection of poems have a gift for glimpsing into the world beyond the obvious. Playful and full of soul, you’d never guess that the author is only eleven years old. Highly recommended for young and adult readers. Her poems will call you to you see the world in a different way. Amazon order info |
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Martin Willitts Jr. – The Temporary World In this lovely collection of poems, one could almost refer to them as meditations or contemplations, Martin Willitts, Jr. helps us to see time and our relation to it in fresh ways. Present, past, and future create a fresh music. Amazon order info |
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Francine Witte – Dressed All Wrong for This A splendid demonstration of the depth and range of the short‑short story, an art form whose relevance and influence are rapidly growing in this digital age of compressed communication. Francine Witte brilliantly illuminates nuanced truths of the human condition, truths that could be expressed in no other way. Amazon order info |
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Gary Young – Red Cedar, Red Pine "There's glow, wonder, in all his writing, even the poems of terrible pain, where wonder bathes the strangeness of the circumstances themselves, bathes the strength of spirit that allows those circumstances to be survived. He's become one of our most piercing, luminous prose poets." – Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash Amazon order |
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Andrena Zawinski – Something About "These are strong poems, brave works that are not afraid to identify pain- these poems come from an 'examined life'- we have a Book of Hours here that connects and wildly chronicles the 'givens' of a woman." – Rosaly DeMaios Roffman ... "The poems here are full of elegant and perceptive surprises; they are exacting in the way they seek out and find new uses for the language we know." – Susan Kelly-DeWitt. Amazon order info |
A list of chapbooks is available on the Contest
Winners page. |
