Hicok gives readers unexpected conjunctions and oddly offbeat thoughts, most darkly whimsical, and has us embrace them wholeheartedly. If he can survive the scary carnival that is this world, we can, too. Highly recommended for a wide range of readers.”— Library Journal, starred review“Bob Hicok is one of my favorite poets. Partly, it’s the movement of his lines, which are both conversational and utterly unexpected, almost as if he (or we) are joining a conversation that extends beyond the framework of the poem…And then there’s his unrelenting vision, a sense of the world as both utterly real and utterly elusive, and heartbreaking because we have to die. Death is at the center of Hicok’s writing—not in a maudlin, self-pitying way, but rather as a vivid presence, infusing everything, even the deepest moments of connection, with a steely sense of loss.”—David Ulin, reviewing Elegy Owed in the Los Angeles Times“This gorgeous collection [Elegy Owed] spans the landscape of loss with unexpected leaps and ripples, as if someone has skipped stones across a lake. …Wordplay, subtle humor and unexpected moments of hope give these lush poems depth and dimension. Hicok’s work is memorable because of the new vistas it creates.” —The Washington Post"Words have weight in Hicok’s poems. They feel nailed in place, and the meter hits like the sure pounding of a hammer. Yet as heft, muscle, and precision draw you forward, Hicok evokes not solidity but, rather, shifting ground, flux, metamorphosis, and, most arrestingly, most unnervingly, death. In his seventh collection, Hicok builds startling images out of the everyday and the surreal, the comic and the sorrowful. Avoiding abstraction and pretension, he cleaves to earth, skin, breath." –Donna Seaman, Booklist“Hicok’s poems [in Elegy Owed] are like boomerangs; they jut out in wild, associative directions, yet find their way back to the root of the matter.” —Publishers Weekly"Seamlessly, miraculously, [Hicok's] judicious eye imbues even the dreadful with beauty and meaning."—The New York Times Book ReviewWhen asked in an interview “What would Bob Hicok launch from a giant sling shot?” he answered, “Bob Hicok.” Elegy Owed, Hicok’s eighth book, is an existential game of Twister in which the rules of mourning are broken and salvaged, and “you can never step into the same not going home again twice.” His poems are the messenger at the door, the unwanted telegram—telling a joke, imparting a depth of longing, returning us finally to a different kind of normality where “the dead have no ears, no answering machines / that we know of, still we call.” There is grief in these poems, though it is a grief large enough for odd awakenings and the unexpected, a grief enlarged by music, color, and joy as well as sober wisdom.“Hicok is funny as hell, in Blake’s sense of the infernal: irreverent, anarchic, undeceived. His bracing ill humor is a vehicle for outrage, longing, tenderness, and a shy cynicism that is the necessary counterbalance to a tenacious sense of hope. He is one of our premier anatomists of contemporary American life, and a wildly refreshing, necessary poet.” —Mark DotyBob Hicok is one of the most active poets writing today, and his poems have appeared widely, including in The New Yorker and Poetry. His honors include the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress and a "Notable Book of the Year" from Booklist. Hicok has worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator, and is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

    The first time the killer thought he had succeeded, and he left Stacy bleeding in her bed. But a few minutes later he must have heard her moaning and returned to her upstairs bedroom. This time he approached the bed, pointed a .22 caliber rifle at her young face, and pulled the trigger again. Then he left.Later that morning, Memorial Day, May 25, 2005, the Logan County Sheriff would declare it a rampage. According to Sheriff Henry, 18-year-old Scott Moody lived on a family farm with his mother and sister; his grandparents lived nearby. The night before his high school graduation something snapped, and Scott went on a shooting spree. He murdered his two grandparents, his mother, a high school classmate who had spent the night after a graduation party, his girlfriend, and then he turned the rifle on himself, committing suicide. He thought he had killed his 15-year-old sister, but she was life-flighted to a hospital in Columbus where she remained in critical condition. Sheriff Henry declared the mystery solved: “It was horribly tragic, a murder/suicide case.”Three days later, Stacy woke up in intensive care. When asked by the county coroner to explain what happened – clearly expecting her to say that her brother, Scott, had shot her – Stacy, in a weak, distressed voice said something else. It was an older man with gray hair, wearing a blue shirt, someone she had never seen before. And then, once again – what everyone suspected but were afraid to publicly talk about – was the Logan County Sheriff’s Office really corrupt?After Stacy was released from the hospital, Detective Jon Stout wanted to interview her in private, away from the influence of her father and stepmother. On a Sunday afternoon he took 15-year-old Stacy in his unmarked cruiser to a shaded parking lot behind the county children services building. It was there he coerced her into taking off her clothes, playfully handcuffing her to the steering wheel, and then forcibly having sex with her. It was only a matter of time before wrongful death actions were filed against Scott’s estate. That’s when Scott’s father, wanting to remove the stigma of his son’s reputation, hired outside experts, who easily refuted the idea that Scott had been the shooter. People in the community knew all along what had happened. The sheriff’s office was corrupt. Underage sex and illicit drugs had finally raised their ugly heads.

    It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed he has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage. In this Book you will also find 7 Bonus works for your enjoymentThe complete interactive table of content includes:THE ODYSSEYBonus book: THE ILIAD OF HOMERMore free Bonuses PARADISE LOST-by John MiltonTHE GOLDEN ASS-by Lucius Apuleius "Africanus"PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES•OEDIPUS THE KING • OEDIPUS AT COLONUS • ANTIGONETHE AENEID-by VirgilAll in one book elegantly formatted for ease of use and enjoyment on your Kindle device. Enjoy!

    More witty and stylish poetic therapy for the Venus and Mars generation.

    Included are such favorites as "My father moved through dooms of love" and "anyone lived in a pretty how town," along with the usual Cummings dazzle of satirical epigrams, love poems, and syntactical anagrams.This edition is published in a uniform format with Is 5, Tulips & Chimneys, ViVa, XAIPE, and No Thanks.

    Selected poetry and prose from 1986.

    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

     Let me test my presumption with a preview of four these ‘old’ stories. If I told you there was once a west coast sex cult with dozens of young girls, single ladies, and married women, who all fornicated with one well-endowed “prophet,” and he occasionally found it necessary to carry-out bondage S&M sessions here and there, you may not be surprised at all. But what if that sex cult began in 1903 and ended in 1906 with a couple of murders and suicides, does that sound like anything you have read about before? Or, how about a cheater who murders his inconvenient wife, disassembles her over a fifteen hour period, then puts her bones in the same stove he cooks breakfast for his sons before sending them off to school? If that doesn’t surprise you, perhaps the ending will–but you’ll have to find out for yourself. In ‘The Dandy and the Squire,’ a smooth-talking peacock from Kentucky visits his northern ‘cousins,’ and charms three of the women into his bed. He’s a big time operator who talks fancy, dresses fancy, and tells great stories of his days as an adventurer, riverboat gambler, and sharp-minded deal maker. He’s so smooth, he’s able to murder the patriarch’s son, make him look like the bad guy, and marry the boy’s tender-hearted sister before the Yankees get wise to his lies. Good thing, too, because he had also talked the father into giving him the family farm. Chapter Five is the stranger-than-fiction story of ‘Shoebox Annie.’ During the early 20th Century, this trollish-looking woman introduced her freakish-looking son to a life of crime. Their decade’s long spree of lyin’, cheatin’, and stealin’ led them to become America’s first mother and son team of serial killers. They were so good at disposing of bodies, none of their four victims have ever been found. If ‘old’ stories sound boring to readers of contemporary true crime, I hope this book will change minds, and fully reveal just how wicked and decadent our ancestors were. And deadly. Volume II in the Vintage True Crime Stories series is a wrecking ball that smashes to pieces that phrase, “The Good Old Days.” Maybe you will believe me when you get to the last page.

    The book's mood is best captured in the closing lines of the title poem, which takes its name from the ship that brought the poet's mother to America: A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.

    Ed Bolian’s memoir recounts his path from a conversation in high school with Cannonball Run founder, Brock Yates to setting the fastest time ever for driving from New York to Los Angeles. The journey explores goal setting, criminal psychology, and spirituality in the pursuit of finding your true purpose and using what makes you unique to achieve something extraordinary.

    

    See the books that made APJ Abdul Kalam

    It has been twenty-five years since you were born. There have been too many Christmases without you . . . 'In the summer of 2000, schoolgirl Sarah Payne went missing from a beach where she played with her siblings. The nation waited with her whole family as the search for the little girl touched the hearts of everyone in the country. After Sarah's body was found, abducted and murdered by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting, her mother, Sara, spoke of how she had survived those terrible times.Now, seventeen years later, Sara wants to tell the full story of how she coped then, and how she has survived. Through a series of letters to her beloved daughter, she takes the reader on a heart-breaking but uplifting journey through every parent's worst nightmare in a moving account of the ultimate emotional survival. It is a story for the little girl who was taken, but a reminder to us all that hope never dies – and love never ends.