Volkman develops a new lyric density that marries the immediacy of image-centered poetry to the rhythmic resources of prose. Her first poem begins, Someone was searching for a Form of Fire, and this wild urge to seek form- and thus definition-in the most uncontainable of elements propels the book forward; each poem maps the mind's evolving positions in response to its variable and perilous encounters. Sometimes the encounter is romantic or purely carnal, a sensual landscape of human relations. At other times, nature itself has an almost humanly emotional connection to the speaker. While very much a living voice, the poems' speaker is not a consistent self but a mutable figure buffeted by tenderness, terror, irony, or lust into elaborate evasions, exclamations, verbal hijinks, and lyric flights. As its title suggests, Spar embodies both resistance and aspiration, while its epigraphs further emphasize the simultaneous allure and danger of the unknown within the sensual and material worlds and in the mind itself.

    White's The Salt Ecstasies—originally published in 1982, shortly after White's untimely death—has earned a reputation for its artful and explicit expression of love and desire. In this new edition, with an introduction by Mark Doty and previously unpublished works by White, his invaluable poetry is again available—clear, passionate, and hard-earned.The Salt Ecstasies is a new book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, edited by Doty, dedicated to bringing essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print.

    Every woman should know the feelings of being loved and radiating those feelings back to her mate. This is a beautiful expression of heartfelt emotion using short, gratifying sentiments. If there is a lover in you, you will not get enough of "Her."

    This is the poetry of a beautiful life.

    . . brings us an often unnerving, but always fresh and exhilarating view of our common experience of the world.”—Charles SimicFans of Lydia Davis and Miranda July will delight in this short prose from a beloved and cutting-edge poet. Here are thirty stories that deliver the soft touch and the sucker punch with stunning aplomb. Ducks, physicists, detectives, and The New York Times all make appearances.From “The Dart and the Drill”:I do not believe that when my brother pierced my skull with a succession of darts thrown from across our paneled rec room on the night of November 18th in my sixth year on earth, he was trying to transcend the notions of time and space as contained and protected by the human skull. But who can fathom the complexities of the human brain? Ten years later—this would have been in 1967—the New York Times reported a twenty-four year old man, who held an honor degree in law, died in the process of using a dentist’s drill on his own skull, positioned an inch above his right ear, in an attempt to prove that time and space could be conquered . . .Mary Ruefle’s poems and prose have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Poetry, and The Next American Essay. Her many awards include NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. She is a frequent visiting professor at the University of Iowa, and she lives and teaches in Vermont.

    It's for the seekers searching for a new home, for the wanderers leaving their old homes, for the lovers creating a home wherever they are. Sometimes you hold on to what is left, sometimes you just let go to start afresh.

    Each chapter serves a different purpose. The chapters are For The Healing, For The Erasing, For the Loving, For the Oppressed, and For the Broken. This book teaches you to love yourself and others. It's better experienced than described, so sit down with some coffee and allow yourself to feel-- and heal.

     Rumi’s popularity has gone beyond national and ethnic borders. He is considered to be one of the greatest classical poets, by the speakers of Persian language in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. His poetry is still read worldwide today and has been translated into a wide variety of languages including Turkish, Persian, Russian, Asian, English and Spanish languages. Likely due to the pure universal natural themes in his poetry, Rumi’s works are simplistic and beautiful at the same time. A collection of 101 quotes of wisdom from Rumi on life, love and happiness. "Anyone who genuinely and consistently with both hands looks for something, will find it. " "Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows." "Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering." “Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.” "Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom." ............... Download this book now to experience essential wisdom from the timeless Rumi.

    Covering topics from love and heartbreak to chaos and self-discovery, each poem is laced in a cozy, magical energy that is sure to hold the reader suspended in the in-between.

    Filling each page with fluids and viscera she plunges into the palpable, pulsating center of our psyche--pulling up fistfuls of nightmares at once strange and familiar. To read this book is to glimpse the ecstasy you always suspected lay at the heart of every rapturous horror.With Deer [Hos rådjur] was Berg's first full-length book of poetry, originally published in Sweden in 1997.

    The poems in this book are polyphonic: they juxtapose the discourses of science and religion, Hollywood and the occasional psychotic stranger. The title poem, which appears in Best American Poetry 2002, leads off with a "sphinx" asking "Does a road / run its whole length / at once? / Does a creature / curve to meet / itself?" Armantrout's work, with its careful syntax bordering on plain speech and meticulously scored short lines, is always struggling with the problem of consciousness, its blindspots and double-binds. The poems whirl like shifting and scattered pieces of the present moment. They attempt to "make sense" of our lives while acknowledging the depth of our self-deception and deception.

    Yum! I hope you like it.

    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

    Proposing models of hybridity, each of the book's major sequences develops a unique subject, rhythm, and form. Bringing to light the molten potential at the core of personality, the poems illuminate ways that language, as history read by anthropologists, discourse between lovers, gestures between parent and child, graffiti in temples, or even language as an event in itself (the very experience of words at play), incarnates presence. Addressing father and son relationships, and venerating erotic love, Gander's poems surge with vitality: the energy of active discovery.

    In this volume of selected prose, Roethke articulates his commitments to imaginative possibilities, offers tender advice to young writers, and zings darts at stuffed shirts, lightweights and fools."Art is our defense against hysteria and death."With the assistance of Roethke's widow, this volume has been edited to include the finest selections from out of print collections of prose and journal entries. Focused on the making and teaching of poetry,On Poetry and Craft will be prized in the classroom-and outrageous Roethke quotes will once again pepper our conversations."You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is."Theodore Roethke was of an illustrious generation of poets which included Sexton, Plath, Lowell, Berryman, and like them he received nearly every major award in poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award. In spite of his fame, he remained a legendary teacher, known for the care and attention he gave to his students, poets such as James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, Tess Gallagher, and Richard Hugo. Roethke died on August 1, 1963, while swimming in a friend's pool."But before I'm reduced to an absolute pulp by my own ambivalence, I must say goodbye. The old lion perisheth. Nymphs, I wish you the swoops of many fish. May your search for the abiding be forever furious."On Poetry and CraftI am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.We can't escape what we are, and I'm afraid many of my notions about verse (I haven't too many) have been conditioned by the fact that for nearly 25 years I've been trying to teach the young something about the nature of verse by writing it--and that with very little formal knowledge of the subject or previous instruction. So it's going to be lik