Under Ground


Megan Marsnik - 2015
    Her parents have died, her food is dwindling and the rent is due. When a stranger arrives bearing a note from an uncle, inviting Katka to join him and his wife in America, she leaves all that she has held dear to rebuild her life across the ocean. On the voyage to New York, she becomes friends with the stranger and begins to fall in love. But at Ellis Island, they are separated when he is detained by authorities as a suspected anarchist. Alone, Katka continues her journey to her uncle’s house on the rough and tumble Iron Range in northern Minnesota. Soon she is immersed in a lively community of iron miners and begins publishing an underground newspaper about their struggles and the heroism of the women on the Iron Range, as they are swept into a tumultuous strike that will change their lives forever. “Under Ground” is a work of fiction inspired by true events.

Cold Mourning - Part 1


Brenda Chapman - 2013
    Stonechild, who is from a First Nations reserve, is a lone wolf who is used to surviving on her wits. Her new boss, Detective Jacques Rouleau, has his hands full controlling her, his team, and an investigation that keeps threatening to go off track.Old betrayals and complicated family relationships brutally collide when love turns to hate and murder stalks a family.

Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod


Traci Brimhall - 2020
    In this ambitious collection, Traci Brimhall corresponds with the urges of life and death within herself as she lives through a series of impossibilities: the sentencing of her friend’s murderers, the birth of her child, the death of her mother, divorce, a trip sailing through the Arctic. In lullaby, lyric essay, and always with brutal sincerity, Brimhall examines how beauty and terror live right alongside each other—much like how Nod is both a fictional dreamscape and the place where Cain is exiled for murdering Abel. By plucking at the tensions between life and death, love and hate, truth and obscurity, Brimhall finds what it is that ties opposing themes together; how love and loss are married in grief. Like Eve thrust from Eden, Brimhall is tasked with finding meaning in a world defined by its cruelty. Unrelenting, incisive, and tender, these poems expose beauty in the grotesque and argue that the effort to be good always outweighs the desire to succumb to what is easy.

The Beautiful Life


Mark Anthony - 2017
    This is the poetry of a beautiful life.

To The Bravest Person I Know


Ayesha Chenoy - 2021
    

Selling Manhattan


Carol Ann Duffy - 1987
    Her awards include first prize in the 1983 National Poetry Competition; three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards; Eric Gregory, Somerset Maugham and Dylan Thomas Awards in Britain and a 1995 Lannan Literary Award in the USA. In 1993 she received the Forward Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award for her acclaimed fourth collection Mean Time. On May 1, 2009 she was named the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

And to Each Season...


Rod McKuen - 1972
    Rod McKuen's most personal book of poetry.

Atlantis


Lauren Eden - 2017
    Heartbreaking and humorous, Atlantis is a journey about picking up the pieces from the ruins of a life they said would be good for you.

Black Book of Poems II


Vincent K. Hunanyan - 2018
    Hunanyan, the #1 bestselling author of Black Book of Poems, comes his highly-anticipated second collection of poetry.

The Whetting Stone


Taylor Mali - 2017
    She was a teacher, and it was morning on the first day of school. In this haunting new collection of poems, Taylor Mali, once a teacher himself, explores her life and their love as well as the shape and texture of his own guilt and resilience.

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass


Lana Del Rey - 2020
    Lana’s music and lyrics evoke images of a saturated Kodachrome photograph, so it would stand to reason that she’d now add “poet” to her artist’s kit. Even without music, her words work their way around you, pulling you into a world that’s not unlike a David Lynch movie.[from barnesandnoble.com]

One Stick Song


Sherman Alexie - 2000
    Native American Studies. "Whether slyly identifying irony as a white man's invention, or deftly moving from prose-like multilayered narratives to formal poetry and song structures, this fifth collection from poet, novelist, and screenwriter Alexie demonstrates many of his skills. Most prominent perhaps is his ability to handle multiple perspectives and complex psychological subject matter with a humor that feeds readability: 'Successful non-Indian writers are viewed as well-informed about Indian life. Successful mixed-blood writers are viewed as wonderful translators of Indian life. Successful Indian writers are viewed as traditional storytellers of Indian life.' Poems such as the title one, a haunting chant for lost family, and 'The Theology of Cockroaches, ' do some vivid scene setting: '...never/woke to a wall filled with cockroaches/spelling out my name, never/stepped into a dark room and heard/the cockroaches baying at the moon.' At times Alexie allows his language, within the lineated poems almost exclusively, to slacken into cliche. The opening, multipart prose piece 'The Unauthorized Biography of Me' is arguably the strongest in the book, juxtaposing roughly chronological anecdotes with 'An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian' and the formula 'Poetry = anger x imagination.' Other poems tell of 'Migration, 1902' and 'Sex in Motel Rooms'; describe 'How It Happens' and 'Second Grief'; and develop 'The Anatomy of Mushrooms.' Alexie's latest is as powerful and challenging as his previous excellent books, and should only add readers to his ever-widening audience" Publishers Weekly."

Readings from the Book of Exile


Pádraig Ó Tuama - 2012
    Hailing from the Ikon community in Belfast and working closely with its founder, the bestselling writer Pete Rollins, Padraig's poetry interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith. Padraig's poems are accessible, memorable profound and challenging. They emerge powerfully from a context of struggle and conflict and yet are filled with hope. Full Text - Short

Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?: Poems


Antwone Quenton Fisher - 2002
    And he also showed that within him beat the heart of an artist -- a major factor in his resilience and recovery.Now with Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?, his first collection of poetry, Antwone Fisher reveals the inner truths that took him from a tumultuous childhood to the man he is today. The powerful poems presented here range from impressions and expressions of Antwone's years growing up to the love that he has gained from the family he made for himself as an adult.From the title poem -- which is featured prominently in the movie Antwone Fisher -- a plaintive, haunting tribute to a childhood lost to abuse and neglect, to "Azure Indigo," the uplifting and touching poem about his daughters, many readers will find their own feelings and experiences reflected in this lyrical and passionate collection.

Rig Warrior


William W. Johnstone - 1987
    In a busted marriage, he learned how to be a survivor. And in Washington, he learned how to make big money, consulting with the U.S. government on weapons. Then he got a message from home. Someone had come after his old man -- and turned Barry Rivers into the deadliest enemy of all...Now Rivers is back behind the wheel of a midnight blue Kenworth -- a hard-swearing, hard-driving, tightly-packed blonde named Kate and his dog named "Dog" by his side. With a few good trucking friends. Rivers has the fire-power to take on an army. He'll need it. Because a contract to haul Sale Secure Transport has plunged him into a world of betrayal, corruption, and violence that is killing everyone around him. And the only way to stop a coming war is to start one first -- behind the barrel of an uzi.