Book picks similar to
Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems by Chase Twichell
poetry
issue-8-interviews
collections
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Nightwood
Djuna Barnes - 1936
That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.
The Demon Lover
Elizabeth Bowen - 1945
Kathleen Drover has come back to her house in London to pick up a a few things that were left behind when she and her husband fled the bombing of London by the Germans in 1940-1941. What ensues is not what she expected from this mundane trip.
The Devil's Blaze MC Boxed Set: Books 1-4
Jordan Marie - 2019
Book 1 Captured Skull was immediately taken with the innocent girl he saw in a coffee shop one morning. He quickly became obsessed with her. But will his obsession destroy them both? Book 2 Burned Torch was sent to locate the President's wife and to bring her back, using anything or anyone at his disposal. Katie was only supposed to be a means to an end, but she quickly develops into more. Can these two survive the war around them? Book 3 Released Beth has always loved Skull, but being back in his arms was one place she never thought she'd be. She still loves him, but when he looks at her, all she sees is his hate. Can these two put the past behind them and find a future? Or is it much too late? Book 4 Shafted Bree was forbidden to Jax in every possible way. He should walk away. She's much too young and his president might just end him if he finds out the dirty things Jax is doing to his niece. Jax knows he's playing with fire, but the way he has it figured... Bree is worth dying for.
Story of a Southern Family
J. Keck - 2012
She yanked us out of the bed and over to the wall. The door flew open. There was a huge explosion! Daddy had fired his shotgun into our bed.Minnie leaves boarding school to spend the summer at The Big House, her cherished Grandpa's home. She enjoys adventure, but she also learns of the dangers posed by the land and a river that can seduce the unwary. The arrival of Minnie's great-grandmother provides her with a fearless female role model, as well as tales of the elderly woman's antebellum past and how she survived the Civil War. She also learns of her Grandpa's struggle to build a post-Civil War cotton and lumber empire in a wilderness of swamps, disease, and treacherous men willing to steal and murder.Minnie's valuable lessons: one must face one's fears head-on, and one must never willingly become a victim. At the close of Summer young Minnie experiences devasting upheaval, but her innate courage allows her to face her fears . . . and to eventually triumph over them.A Gold Medal winner of the 2015 Global eBook Awards, this story is poignant, heartbreaking in turns, and empowering, transporting the reader into the heart and soul of a bygone era. A timeless story, it reflects the very best of the American character when confronting adversity.
The Pemmican Eaters
Marilyn Dumont - 2015
Stephansson Award for PoetryWith a title derived from John A. Macdonald’s moniker for the Métis, The Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont’s sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural, and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel.Included in this collection are poems about the bison, seed beadwork, and the Red River Cart, and some poems employ elements of the Michif language, which, along with French and Cree, was spoken by Dumont’s ancestors. In Dumont’s The Pemmican Eaters, a multiplicity of identities is a strengthening rather than a weakening or diluting force in culture.
A Recipe for Sorcery
Vanessa Kisuule - 2017
It is a recipe for womanhood that changes with the whim of the seasons and the political climate. It is a feverish fistful of musings, a comedy of errors, an instruction manual, a compass, an overheard conversation in the ladies' loo, whispered secrets over a (second) bottle of wine. It is a lamentation, an homage to fellow women, at once a celebration of things to come and a mourning of things lost. It is a redefinition of what it is to be magical and otherwordly. It exposes the complex and contradictory impulses of the human spirit, the ugly tangle of emotions we must deal with in ourselves and also as a wider society. With frankness, humour and a decided fuck-you to fear, Vanessa digs deeper than she ever has to find something resembling sorcery.
Dictee
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha - 1982
A classic work of autobiography that transcends the self, Dictée is the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The elements that unite these women are suffering and the transcendence of suffering. The book is divided into nine parts structured around the Greek Muses. Cha deploys a variety of texts, documents, images, and forms of address and inquiry to explore issues of dislocation and the fragmentation of memory. The result is a work of power, complexity, and enduring beauty.
Divan of Shah
Shah Asad Rizvi - 2019
Divan of Shah represents an unconscious longing for union within. It is beautifully illustrated and a wonderful amalgamation of some of Shah’s brilliant work filled with the raw emotion of love as if he himself has spilled his heart onto a canvas and has painted love itself. Shah has tapped into the collective unexplored and perhaps his own realm of dreams.The book meticulously presents so many aspects of love in specific detail which harkens one’s appreciation for love even more than before and some examples of love we may have taken for granted. It shows the limitless power and ways love presents itself and how it can change one’s life for the better or worse.This one is a thoughtful collection of poetic lines that invites the reader into the dimension of love, which happens to be the idea of a reflective mirror having no color yet for all colors of the embodiment are reflected back.never make a lady crypearls are not meant to flowlet them reside within celestial eyesfor even paradise unveils its reflectionthrough the radiance of their glow
The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
Diane Lockward - 2013
Includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 of our nation's finest poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate. An additional 45 accomplished poets contributed sample poems inspired by the prompts in this book. Ideal for use in the classroom, this book has been adopted by colleges and universities across the country. It is equally ideal for individual use at home or for group use in workshops. Geared for the experienced poet as well as those just getting started. Guaranteed to break through any writer's block.This revised edition contains a full Table of Contents and an Index.
My Other Ex: Women's True Stories of Losing and Leaving Friends
Jessica Smock - 2014
There can be so much good, so much power, so much love in female friendships. But there is also a dark side of pain and loss. And surrounding that dark side there is often silence. There is shame, the haunting feeling that the loss of a friendship is a reflection of our own worth and capacity to be loved. My Other Ex: Women's True Stories of Losing and Leaving Friends is a step toward breaking that silence. The brave writers in this engrossing, diverse collection of 35 essays tell their own unique stories of failed friendships and remind us of the universality of loss.
The Lais of Marie de France
Marie de France
Little is known of her but she was probably the Abbess of the abbey at Shaftesbury in the late 12th century, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and hence the half-sister of Henry II of England. It was to a king, and probably Henry II, that she dedicated these poems of adventure and love which were retellings of stories which she had heard from Breton minstrels. She is regarded as the most talented French poet of the medieval period.
Love and Other Poems
Alex Dimitrov - 2020
Taking time, and specifically the months of the year as an overarching structure, Dimitrov elevates the every day and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, NASA’s golden record to the Ouija board, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” While he navigates darkness and fear, loneliness and guilt, Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy even in despair. There is a determined curiosity about who we are as people and a shameless interest in the idea of hope. These poems are obsessed with everything around us, even the terrible and fraught.
F: Poems
Franz Wright - 2013
/ In writing. / I signed my name. / It’s death’s move.” As he considers his mortality, the poet finds a new elation and clarity on the page, handing over for our examination the flawed yet kneeling-in-gratitude self he has become. F stands both for Franz, the poet-speaker who represents all of us on our baffling lifelong journeys, and for the alphabet, the utility and sometimes brutality of our symbols. (It may be, he jokes grimly, his “grade in life.”) From “Entries of the Cell,” the long central poem that details the loneliness of the single soul, to short narrative prose poems and traditional lyrics, Wright revels in the compensatory power of language, observing the daytime headlights following a hearse, or the wind, “blessing one by one the unlighted buds of the backbent peach tree’s unnoted return.” He is at his best in this beautiful and startling collection.
Forever Fifty and Other Negotiations
Judith Viorst - 1989
Now Judith Viorst, in a witty and beautifuUy illustrated book of poems, looks at what it's like to be (gulp) fifty. Judith Viorst's poetry collections, which include When Did I Stop Being Twenty..., It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty..., and How Did I Get to Be Forty..., have articulated our growing pains from single life to midlife, and have continued to delight millions of readers worldwide. Writing with the warmth and authenticity that have become her trademarks, Viorst once again demonstrates her uncanny ability to transform our daily realities into poems that make us laugh with recognition. Whether her subject is the decline of the body ("It's hard to be devil-may-care/When there are pleats in your derrière") or future aspirations ("Before I go, I'd like to have high cheekbones./I'd like to talk less like New Jersey, and more like Claire Bloom"), she always speaks directly to our condition. Her funny, compassionate poems shed a reassuring light on the fine art of aging, and will delight anyone who is now (or forever) fifty.
Nice Hat. Thanks.
Joshua Beckman - 2002
Thanks. is an innovative book based on the recorded improvised poetic collaborations between two award-winning poets, Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer. Nice Hat. Thanks. is a collection of transcriptions of these collaborations, with poems ranging from a few words to several pages.