But I wrote a lot of good poems.”So maintains Anita Liberty, the caustically funny New York City performance artist who was going along happily healing her hurt by hating and humiliating her detestable ex-boyfriend on stage and in print until the unthinkable happened: she had a good date. And one good date deserves another. And another. And another. And, all of the sudden, Anita Liberty finds herself in a predicament. Getting dumped launched Anita’s career–Will falling in love finish it? Who’s more important: her devoted audience or her newly devoted boyfriend? And on top of everything, Hollywood won’t stop calling and Anita can’t figure out if It wants a serious commitment or just a little bit of no-strings-attached fun. From digging mercilessly into the minutiae of her new relationship to dramatically torching every professional bridge she crosses in L.A., Anita refuses to let a big load of bliss get dumped right in the middle of her career path.“He said that my work was amazing and hilarious and smart and that he can’t wait to see me perform.So I had sex with him.”“My boyfriend asked me to change my look.To something other than contemptuous.”{BARGAIN} Whatever Hollywood ends up paying me for the rights to the story of my life.“It’s easier to go back to fantasizing about perfection . . .than to accept that perfection is just a fantasy.”“Boyfriend thinks I’d rather be right than happy.Boyfriend’s right.But I’m not telling him that.”Through blog entries, film scenes, poems, and to-do lists, Anita Liberty documents the perils and pitfalls of dating, sex, relationships, artistic success, and the kind of true love that sucks the creative life out of you to the point where you just end up staring at a blank computer screen and thinking gooey thoughts about your new boyfriend even though you should be writing.

    THE SINGING KNIVES, originally published in 1971 by Broughton's Mill Mountain Press, is Frank Sanford's first collection of poetry. Reprinted by his own press, Lost Roads Publisher, after his death, THE SINGING KNIVES, debuts the work of a twenty-something year old boy way ahead of his time and in a state of unrest, capturing "poetry's more primal and mysterious possibilities"-David Clewell. "It is astonishing to me that I was not even aware of this superbly accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain in the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within"- James Wright.

    In 2014, she represented Chicago as the youngest competitor at the National Poetry Slam. Her work has been published or featured by The Huffington Post, Write Bloody, EverydayFeminism, Button Poetry, Chicago Literati, Banango Street, and Wicked Banshee, among others.

    I was in love. School was going great. I managed to hide the pain, to push it down, but it all came flooding back. The grief was almost blinding, but I saw Eli’s broken heart with perfect clarity the day I drove away from him. This was my year to be selfish. Falling in love with my best friend's brother wasn't part of my plan, but sometimes the best things in life are unpredictable. And the end of Eli’s senior year was anything but expected. EliMy priorities completely flipped when my brother's best friend moved to town. Everything I never knew I needed came in the form of a redhead from California with a heart too big for her own good.But Logan drove away from me, leaving me broken-hearted and alone.With my senior season winding down, it's my last chance to get called up to the NHL, and my dreams are within reach— it's everything I always wanted. But that was before I met her. How much do I need to sacrifice to prove to her that she's my dream too?If she asked me to, I'd selflessly give it all up for her.

    Here is a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language."--Publishers WeeklyStarred Review in Booklist "[C]hoices of poems from each of Harrison's books are passionate and sharp... Of special note is a section from Letters to Yesenin, a book-length poem, and the title poem from The Theory and Practice of Rivers , which contains these echoing lines, 'I forgot where I heard that poems / are designed to waken sleeping gods.' Reading this essential volume, one might imagine that the gods are, indeed, staying up late, reading lights on, turning the pages."Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems is distilled from fourteen volumes--from visionary lyrics and meditative suites to shape-shifting ghazals and prose-poem letters. Teeming throughout these pages are Harrison's legendary passions and appetites, his meditations, rages, and love-songs to the natural world.The New York Times concluded a review from early in Harrison's career with a provocative quote: "This is poetry worth loving, hating, and fighting over, a subjective mirror of our American days and needs." That sentiment still holds true, as Jim Harrison's essential poems continue to call for our fiercest attention.Also included are full-color images of poem drafts--both typescripts and holographs--as well as the letter Denise Levertov sent to publisher W.W. Norton in the early 1960s, advocating for Harrison's debut collection.In his essay "Poetry as Survival," Jim Harrison wrote, "Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak." The Essential Poems is proof positive that Jim Harrison taught his soul to speak."In this unforgiving literary moment, we must deal honestly with [Harrison's] life and work, as they are inextricable in a way that is not true of other poets...These poems bear-crawl gorgeously after a genuine connection to being, thrashing in giant leaps through the underbrush to find consolation, purpose, and redemption. In his raw, original keening he ambushes moments of unimaginable beauty, one after another, line after line...The Essential Poems demonstrates perfectly why we should turn to Harrison again. He lived and breathed an American confrontation with the physical earth, married himself to a universe of bodies and stumps and birds, did not try to shuck his grotesque masculinity and stared hard with his one good eye (the left was blinded when he was seven) at the inescapable, beckoning finger of death." --Dean Kuipers, LitHub"The Essential Poems provides a good introduction--or reintroduction--to the work of this singular writer... these pieces illustrate Harrison's range and his ease with various formats, from lyric poems to meditative suites to prose poems. They also spotlight his deep, rugged kinship with rural landscapes and the natural world, where 'the cost of flight is landing.'" --The Washington Post"Jim Harrison's latest collection, The Essential Poems, contains...engaging and enlightening poems [that] should be taught, learned, and loved. Remember this."--New York Journal of Books"Had he been a chef, all the other foodies would have talked about how Jim Harrison dealt with big flavors. In his poems, they're all there -- love and death, remorse and longing, the rocket contrails of living. There's not a lot of small talk in The Essential Poems... this book grabs you by the collar and tells you in eleven hundred ways to wake up."--John Freeman, Executive Editor, "Recommended Reading from Lit Hub Staff""Jim Harrison had an appetite. He devoured the natural world with gusto and wrote about it with wild energy and sweetly caustic wit...Harrison was also a prodigious poet, and this thoughtfully curated collection [The Essential Poems] showcases him at his best. Like his fiction, the poems observe the collision between civilization and the wildness outside our cities; they act like geocaches both harrowing and beautiful... Organized chronologically, the material here becomes a time line distilling Harrison's signature concerns."--Alta"It is hard-boiled poetry, some of the best of its kind, and one is not surprised to know that Harrison has written very tough novels... His poetic vision is at the heart of it all."--Harper's

    Dan Forrester and Violet Jones are the perfect couple. His devotion to the charismatic, beautiful firecracker has been the envy of their friends since high school. Until the day she throws his love in his face and walks away from them. Watching her change into someone she’s not is the most challenging thing he’s ever done. Loving Dan is impossible until Violet learns who she is. Violet’s concept of true love is shattered when her parents announce their divorce. Doubt taints everything she thought to be true. Fear becomes the reason for every decision she makes. Determined to find out who she really is, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Loving someone often means giving her the time and space she needs. As Dan and Violet smolder in a failed relationship, life takes them in opposite directions. But will love ignite the ashes and bring them back to where they belong?

    

    After the loss of his mother, Omar Holmon re-learns how to live by immersing himself in popular culture, becoming well-versed in using the many modes of pop culture to spell out his emotions. This book is made up of both poems and essays, drenched in both sadness and unmistakable humor. Teeming with references that are touchable, no matter what you do or don't know, this book feels warm and inviting.

    He was the Poet Laureate of the United States in 1990, and currently teaches at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He lives in Chicago.

    Holmes’s poems are like little stories, hooking readers while navigating issues like body image, family relationships, loneliness, failed relationships, and finding belonging. Don’t Tell Me Not to Ask Why is a call to introspection, a demand for honesty, and an affirmation of second chances.

    Brave in its nakedness, her work like a lucid stream enjoys itself as it keeps its surefooted course. Written with the precision only passion can ensure, the poems commend us to the gay gravity of angels. This is a collection to be indeed relished and prized.' - Theodore Weiss

    His unique poetry is now recognized as among Poland's finest. Largely self-taught, he left Poland at the age of 21, moving widely around Europe - befriended by Chopin among others - before travelling to America. Persistently dogged by financial crises, he was forced to return to Paris in 1854. There he spent the rest of his life, dying in a hostel for Polish insurrection veterans in Ivry in 1883. Norwid's work is introduced by Bogdan Czaykowski, the eminent Polish poet, who is also a noted scholar and critic. Adam Czerniawski, born in Warsaw in 1934, has translated widely from Polish (including Tadeusz Rózewicz's selected poetry, They Came to See a Poet', also from Anvil) as well as publishing poetry, stories, criticism and a memoir in his first language. He has lived in Palestine, Lebanon, Germany, England and Scotland, working in a variety of academic and literary posts.

    Impelled by metaphor and lilting repetition, Mulberry seeks a sense of the world, and ultimately, finds a sense of the Infinite. Affording continual discoveries, Mulberry is a major work for the new century by an assured and lavishly gifted poet. Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of North True South Bright and Spell, He is chair of the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency.

    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.

    This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.