Auden might well have penned a poem entitled "Tell me the Truth About Publishing", for the publication of this special, short collection was directly inspired by the runaway success of the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral in which one of Auden's poems was recited. Stretching from October 1932 to June 1948, the poems may have been more revelatory had they been arranged chronologically but commercial demands have placed "Funeral Blues", forevermore known as the poem in the movie, at the end, while "Lullaby", arguably a better poem, is tucked away inside. The period partly coincides with Auden going to America in January 1939 and "Calypso" pulses with the rhythm of a train taking him to his New York rendez-vous at Grand Central. "For there in the middle of that waiting-hall, / Should be standing the one that I love best of all." Many of the poems have the same jolly air and belting rhythm and indeed were written as cabaret songs. "At Last the Secret is Out" must have been tongue-in-cheek considering Auden's sexuality, yet the cover of this slim tome is resolutely heterosexual. But for dipping into Auden's work, this volume serves its purpose. "Funeral Blues" captures the sense of disbelief that the world has the audacity to continue after one has been bereaved. The Cole Porter tone of flippancy and humour--"Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves", makes the understated grief all the more poignant. He declares the emblems of romance redundant. "The stars are not wanted now; put out every one." He swings from the grandiose to the mundane and in doing so, sweeps the reader up in the aura of all-emcompassing love. "He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest.""Lullaby" retains immense mystery and power. Here he evokes the preciousness of one night spent with someone who isn't his. "Let the living creature lie, / Mortal, guilty, but to me, / The entirely beautiful." It leaves much unexplained, yet quite particular, so that it draws one back again and again: "Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm..." What an astonishing opener. --Cherry Smyth

    At once witty and disconsolate -- formally inventive, acutely attentive, insistently alive -- this is a book of fierce vulnerability that explores the ways in which we are educated by the implacable powers of time and desire in a world that constantly renews itself.

    I referred them to Doctor Who's Tardis.'Frank Skinner wants you to read more poetry. Wait, wait - don't stop reading. Whether you're a frequent poetry reader or haven't read any since sixth form, Frank's infectious passion for language, rhythm and metre will win you over and provide you with the basic tools you need to tackle any poem.In this short, easy-to-digest and delightful book, Frank guides us through the twists and turns of 'Pad, pad' by Stevie Smith, a short, seemingly simple poem that contains multitudes of meaning and a deceptive depth of emotion. Revel in the mastery of Stevie Smith's choice of words, consider the eternal mystery of the speaker of the poem and be moved by rhyming couplets like you never have before.Give it a go. You never know, you might even enjoy it.

    Shattered perceptions and shards of narrative recount the events, from wreck through recovery and beyond. In lyric prose, the stories spiral back through generations to touch on questions of mortality and family, immigration and migration, legacies intended or inflicted. In the wake of her near-fatal cycling collision, Peggy Shumaker searches for meaning within extremity. Through a long convalescence, she reevaluates her family’s past, treating us to a meditation on the meaning of justice and the role of love in the grueling process of healing. Her book, a moving memoir of childhood and family, testifies to the power of collective empathy in the transformations that make and remake us throughout our lives. We all live with injury and loss. This book transforms injury, transforms loss. Shumaker crafts language unlike anyone else, language at once poetic and profound. Her memoir enacts our human desire to understand the fragmented self. We see in practice the power of words to restore what medical science cannot: the fragile human psyche and its immense capacity for forgiveness.

     Four lonely shifters looking for love while they battle a mysterious enemy. Trained to be protective guardians, their skills are intimidating and their desire to find a mate is unmatched. Tall, growly and ready to tear apart anything that threatens their fated one, these bears will stop at nothing as they fight the Agency for their lives, and those of the ones they love. Danger, betrayal and violence have been the hallmarks of their lives so far, but from here on out, their stubborn, no-nonsense mates will force them to temper that with love, passion and desire, forging them into the weapon that will lay their enemies low and stoke the fires of a love everlasting. Connor, Justin, Josh and Jared’s stories are all contained in this one convenient, low-priced bundle for your reading pleasure. Follow along as they fight for love, honor and life. Stories contained in this bundle: Bravo Bear Blackblood Bear Silverbullet Bear Kingpin Bear

    The Hellbound Lovers are tough, ride hard, and love fiercely. And when they set their heart on something, There’s nothing stopping them from getting what they want. Especially when that something involves top of the line curves That make their engines rumble and purr like a smooth dream. When these men fall, they fall hard, And when impending danger threatens what they love most They’ll do whatever it takes to protect it. Duty and honor collide with wild passion in this sexy and dirty MC Romance.

    Dawson Inside, you will get the following books: Everly Sarah Beth Maggie's Gift - Short Story EVERLY The terms of her father's will leave Everly with no choice but to marry before her 21st birthday in order to ensure the security of her family. Will she be able to get over her anger towards men in enough time to find someone to marry? Answering an ad for a mail order bride, she finds Ben - a man who needs a woman to help him raise his two nieces left in his care. Can they find love while dealing with both a vindictive stepmother who wants to stop her from marrying, and a meddling woman who is determined to take the children from Ben? They will both have to learn to trust, even as the past threatens to ruin everything. SARAH Always optimistic Sarah believes in happily ever after, even after her own heartbreak. After overhearing a conversation that will affect her future, she decides to take fate into her own hands and answer an ad for a mail order bride. However, imagine her shock when she arrives in Wyoming only to discover the very man who broke her heart is standing there, determined to save her from the man she was coming to marry. Jake swore he would never marry after being left at the alter, but as a favor to his cousin, he meets the train carrying a woman he has vowed to put his distance between. In order to save her from having to follow through with a marriage to the most dangerous man in the state, Jake ends up having to marry her himself. Angry about being forced into a marriage he never wanted, Jake is determined not to make this easy. But, Sarah is also determined, promising to show him that happily ever after isn't just in fairy tales. Sarah and Jake will be put to the test as they struggle to understand their feelings, until something happens that threatens to take away everything they have together. Will Jake be able to realize his love for Sarah before it's too late? BETH Determined not to be a burden on her mother, Beth takes a job working with the local sheriff. Hoping to use her position to help take down the much hated Barlow men, she doesn’t plan on the feelings she will start to have for the man she is working beside. When she is charged with a crime she didn’t commit, can the man she has started to care for help her? Or, will it be even too much for him to save her? Nate Dixon has his own score to settle with the Barlow’s, and doesn’t need interference from a woman getting in his way. As if one woman working with him wasn’t enough to deal with, now he has another woman arriving with the expectation of marriage. Trouble is, she isn’t the woman he is in love with. What will happen when he discovers something from the past that can change everything? And, will this new woman get between what is starting to grow between him and Beth? Together, Nate and Beth will have to find a way to get through the pain of the past and learn to trust each other, while they deal with circumstances that seem determined to keep them apart. MAGGIE'S GIFT - Short Story Fleeing from a man determined to make her his own after the death of her husband, Emma finds herself in Mulder Creek, Wyoming with only her dog for company.

    Manish Chawla is too selfish to be bothered about his wife’s happiness. It’s watching her sister’s closeness to her new husband that actually opens Saloni’s eyes to the lack in her life. Aarav Chopra hasn’t looked at another woman since he fell in love with the seventeen-year-old Saloni. The nine years in-between seem to disappear when he sets eyes on her again at her sister’s wedding. But this time round, his love stretches to include her son too, as Mitesh holds not just Aarav’s finger but also his heart in his little hand. Things come to a head when she flees Chicago to return to Delhi along with her baby son Mitesh.Life throws Saloni and Aarav together as she goes to work in his group of companies while awaiting her divorce. The attraction is as powerful as ever! But Saloni is absolutely clear that she wouldn’t be tied to a man ever again. Will Aarav be able to convince her otherwise?

    During the day he was Michael Semione. He worked, spent time with his family, and did everything young professionals were meant to do. At night, he became Creighton Dian-Cecht, a druid healer in Fjorgyn Online. He was head of a company of crafters and adventurers known throughout the game. Things changed, however, when Michael was killed in real life while playing the game. He was reincarnated in a world based on Fjorgyn a level one, alone and naked in the woods. When he played the game, all he wanted to do was craft and heal. Follow his new life and his new adventures and challenges. See how he reconciles his desire to only heal in this dangerous, new world.

    It tells what happened next in Valerie Poore's life in South Africa's rural Kwa-Zulu Natal in the 1980s. More bittersweet than the first book, Val and her family move down the mountain from the farm where they spent the three happy years described in African Ways. In this second book, life changes dramatically for the author and her small daughters, but the anecdotes she shares are still filled with colour, humour and everything that she loves about Africa and its people.

    To anyone familiar with this writer -- whom the New York Times calls "taut, chillingly ironic," the Washington Post Book World terms "brilliant," and the Village Voice deems capable of "religious intensity" -- it will come as no surprise that before he achieved success as a novelist, Dennis Cooper was best known as a poet. The Dream Police collects the best poems from five of his previous books and also includes a selection of new works. From his darkly erotic early verse to the more refined, post-punk poems that led critics to dub him "the spokesman for the Blank Generation," to his later experimental pieces, Cooper's evolving study of the distances and dangers in romantic relationships has made him a singular voice in American poetry. The Dream Police is a vital addition to Dennis Cooper's riveting and disarming vision of life, love, obsession, and the depths of human need. "There can be no doubt about the power and originality of Cooper's writing." -- The Washington Post Book World; "Cooper's vision is at first intense, nearly minimal, then suddenly it ascends into vision." -- Kathy Acker; "In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper's books would be circulated in secret, explosive samizdat editions that friends and fans would pass around and savor like forbidden absinthe. He would risk his life for them, or maybe he'd just be sent to a mental asylum, like the Marquis de Sade, to whom he has been compared. This is high risk literature. It takes enormous courage for a writer to explore, as Mr. Cooper does, the extreme boundaries of human behavior and amorality, right to the abyss where desire and lust topple to death." -- Catherine Texier, The New York Times Book Review.

    Inside the CIA, changes had to be made. At the center of it all is Dr. Alvin Higgins, an awkward analyst with a dream to be part of the solution. Before he joined C. G. Cooper's Corps Justice tales he had a beginning. This is his story, how he came to the CIA as a bookworm, a green recruit tagged as the one who would fail. Find out how this fish out of water began his march to greatness by impressing his peers with his intellect and humanity, all while building an interrogation apparatus that would support the CIA's efforts in the decades to come.

    Best of all, he's packed us in his suitcase. He represents an ever-changing population of those raised elsewhere who find themselves beckoned by the history, mystique, and magic-makers of New York City. These poems inhabit their own contradictions, and exquisitely navigate the many complicated sides of what it means to be alive. About The Author: Jon Sands has been a professional teaching and performing artist since 2007. He's a recipient of the 2009 NYC-LouderARTS fellowship grant, and has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam. He is the Director of Poetry and Arts Education Programming at the Positive Health Project, as well as a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC. His work has appeared in decomP magazine, The Millions, Suss, The Literary Bohemian, Danse Macabre, The November 3rd Club, and others. He lives in New York City, where he makes better tuna salad than anyone you know.

    For a limited time the book is under dollar or free on KU.

    Her quietly musical poems are intensely moving, compassionate meditations intently probing the life of the heart and spirit. Observing and absorbing small miracles in everyday life, these apparently simple poems grapple with fundamental questions of human existence.