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(w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose


Sara Bawany - 2018
    it is the facade that many of us peruse our lives carrying, often neglecting our pain, our mental health, and most importantly, the way we are more prone to hurting others when we lack this self-awareness. (w)holehearted seeks to encompass as many stories as possible, touching on several topics, namely, spirituality, feminism, colorism, domestic violence, intersectionality, mental health and more. it aims to depict that anyone with the darkest past and pitfalls can still save themselves from drowning in the difficulties that not only plague our world, but also plague our hearts.

We Take Me Apart


Molly Gaudry - 2010
    Oh cabbage leaves, oh roses, oh orange-slice childhood grins: this book broke my heart. Its sad memory-tropes come from fairy tales and childhood books. With language, Gaudry is as loving and careful as one is with a matchbook . . . when wishing to set the whole world on fire.” —KATE BERNHEIMER“Molly Gaudry’s debut evokes the spirit of iconic fairy tales that have transported readers for centuries. Her variations on these themes delineate the psychological journey from girlhood to womanhood. But We Take Me Apart is more than a retelling. In it, Gaudry reconstitutes the essence of what makes fairy tales compelling, and she does so imaginatively and with great attention to language, the earmarks of poetry.” —CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY“If you consider her novella poetry, then it borrows much from prose. And if you see it as prose, it allows for a poetic flavor. Gaudry walks this line with great poise and in that poise we find her greatest strength as a writer.” —THE BROAD SET WRITING COLLECTIVE“A Molly Gaudry word is so precise, it feels like a sentence.” —GREAT TWIN CITIES POETRY READ & ROAD SHOW“An epic poem of epic mastery, We Take Me Apart centers on a girl who grows into a woman who grows into a heroine.” —PRICK OF THE SPINDLE“This incredible verse novel(la) is infused with fairy tales and Gertude Stein, not to mention Gaudry’s own dreamlike, luscious voice. An almost visceral delight.” —FLAVORWIRE“Gaudry’s mastery of language, [her] use of . . . silence, the wet white space around the burn of language, reads at times as if a character from Beckett had crawled or hobbled into a fairy tale—the kind of Beckett character that keeps his or her silence, only to suddenly wax eloquent in manic bursts.” —AMBER SPARKS“A cross between silence and fairy tale, Gaudry’s Beckettian narrative sews bright bits to near-faint whispers, slowly swaddling us in quiet and darkness.” —BRIAN EVENSON“Amid this stark environment, Gaudry’s gorgeous lyric voice guides us through.” —ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE FANS“Molly Gaudry must have revised this gem of a novella over and over and over to get the wording, the rhythms, the images, etc. just so. . . . Not a word is out of place, nothing is missing, no extra words are added. Molly Gaudry has worked this section, and every other section in the book, to the very essence of what is necessary to capture her readers and not let them go.” —EMERGING WRITERS NETWORK“[Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian] is famous for its poetic prose and unflinching violence, but there’s a void of femininity. . . . Enter Molly Gaudry. . . . [Her] prose, steeped in poetry as much as McCarthy’s, spirals upward, elevating and exploding. The creators and destroyers, the beautiful and the gory, and the mythical and contemporary all thrive in balance. To read Molly Gaudry is to read Angela Carter’s cutthroat narrative spoken through the hopelessly hopeful characters of Lydia Millet, all arranged in space with the care of an impressionist painter.” —HOBART“We Take Me Apart is a dazzleflage of a book. The stuttering disrupted language of this cubist concoction disappears before your ears, sinks into your eyes. This aggressive dress camouflage reweaves Gertrude Stein’s rewoven grammar of worsted silk-screened gabardine into a fully ripped patois-ed pattern of stunning wonder.” —MICHAEL MARTONE“Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart works ‘thread into lace.’ . . . Especially vivid in this book-length work is the mother’s entrance and exit, where the ragged lines swell and turn sonnet-like with love.” —TERESE SVOBODA“In Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart, the ordinary becomes mythical, what may be autobiographical becomes a fable, and simple lines or sentences ring with ominous music. Even the empty space between the lines seems to resonate with invisible narrative. A stunning debut.” —RICHARD GARCIA “White space, planes and planes of it. . . . We Take Me Apart is a novel’s answer to a room. . . . I read it three times . . . inhaling its perfume. . . . The scent is delicate and leaves a trace of itself. . . . The book details grace. . . it will haunt like a remembrance of fragrance or swoosh of hair or panoply of mother as tart then sweet and suddenly elusive as memories of one’s own.” —AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW“Gaudry’s work implies that life, at its most essential, is the memory of love, hope, and the rooms it has occupied. . . . We Take Me Apart is an exercise in empathy for the reader. It is pure song and story. This book is a gift.” —[PANK]

The Well and the Mine


Gin Phillips - 2008
    But I kept hearing the splash." So begins The Well and the Mine, a magnificent debut novel set in 1930s Alabama. The place is Carbon Hill, a small coal-mining community, in the midst of the Depression. The Moore family, a loving brood of five, is better off than most, generous to their less fortunate neighbors. But darkness arrives at their doorstep when a mysterious woman throws a baby down the Moores' well, and the story slowly unfolds, through the alternating voices of nine-year-old Tess (who witnessed the crime); her older sister, Virgie; her brother, Jack; and her parents, Albert and Leta.The mystery of the baby and why the Moores' well was the chosen location for its disposal is the catalyst of this intimate novel -- the splash whose ripples widen to reveal a community divided by race and class. The revelation of this shadowy side of life in Carbon Hill is leavened by the awakening conscience of a family that survives adversity with pluck and determination. In her first novel, Phillips has found beauty, depth, and the promise of salvation in one strong Southern clan.

Lighthousekeeping


Jeanette Winterson - 2006
    I was born part precious metal, part pirate."), an orphaned girl who is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of a lighthouse on the Scottish coast. Pew tells Silver stories of Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit and a private one bathed in the light of passionate love. For Silver, Dark's life becomes a map through her own darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love.One of the most original and extraordinary writers of her generation, Jeanette Winterson has created a modern fable about the transformative power of storytelling.

The Willies


Adam Falkner - 2020
    These poems are honest, vulnerable, and unflinching in their ability to look into the speaker's complications. The poems trace the author's childhood, adulthood, and hopeful future, all of them asking the central question of how a person continues to love themselves, even as all they know evolves and vanishes.

The Dark Between Stars


Atticus Poetry - 2018
    In his second collection of poetry, The Dark Between Stars, he turns his attention to the dualities of our lived experiences—the inescapable connections between our highest highs and lowest lows. He captures the infectious energy of starting a relationship, the tumultuous realities of commitment, and the agonizing nostalgia of being alone again. While grappling with the question of how to live with purpose and find meaning in the journey, these poems offer both honest explorations of loneliness and our search for connection, as well as light-hearted, humorous observations. As Atticus writes poignantly about dancing, Paris, jazz clubs, sunsets, sharing a bottle of wine on the river, rainy days, creating, and destroying, he illustrates that we need moments of both beauty and pain—the darkness and the stars—to fully appreciate all that life and love have to offer.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls


Alissa Nutting - 2010
    One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley.

Bastards of the Reagan Era


Reginald Dwayne Betts - 2015
    Within these poems, we see the city as distant lover, we hear "the sound that comes from all / the hurt & want that leads a man to turn his back to the world." We see that and we see each reason why we return to what pains us.

Great Tales and Poems


Edgar Allan Poe - 1966
    Poe's melancholy brilliance, his passionate lyricism, and his tormented soul would make him one of the most widely read and original writers in American literature. Here, in one volume, are his classic short works: masterpieces of horror, terror, humor, and adventure -- and the finest lyric and narrative poetry of this ill-fated genius whose influence on both prose and verse continues to this day. Pocket Books' Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. This edition of Great Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe contains the original Pocket Books introduction, first published in 1951, along with an updated selection of critical excerpts, and suggestions for further readings.

Deviant Propulsion


C.A. Conrad - 2005
    The title refers to the idea that those who are deviant propel the world forward at top speed. Delving into the center of the endless webs of repression against our bodies, desires, politics, and imaginations, are those whose actions and motion cut away at the systemic limitations of society. This collection of poems was written with the inspiration and work of these people in mind.As a working class queer poet, Conrad has had to fight through different stratifications of oppression his entire life. His poems vibrate with the flamboyant desire that manifests itself in queer culture, where the right to act on basic desires can become a battleground, and everyday acts of love and devotion must be enacted as a political form of defiance. The poems that emerge from this life long struggle illustrate the sharp edge of that defiance and desire, where joy is closely linked to death. In a world ruled by those who govern with fear, and in a landscape barbed with those who are terrified of desire, moving at speed of deviants is the only way to transform potential into action, and desire into positive change.

Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008


Hoa Nguyen - 2005
    Her poems comprise some of the most inviting lyrics I've found in a living poet."—Bookslut"Phrase by phrase Nguyen's work can be conversational, playful, funny, angry, acutely self-aware, and loaded with sensory information."—Anselm Berrigan, from the introductionRed Juice represents a decade of poems written roughly between 1998 and 2008, previously only available in small-run handmade chapbooks, journals, and out-of-print books. This collection of early poems by Vietnamese American poet Hoa Nguyen showcases her feminist ecopoetics and unique style, all lyrical in the post-modern tradition.[BUDDHA'S EARS ARE DROOPY TOUCH HIS SHOULDERS]Buddha's ears are droopy touch his shouldersas scarves fly out of windows and I shriekat the lotus of enlightenmentTravel to Free Street past Wacoto the hole in the Earthwearing waterI'm aiming my mouthfor apple pieBorn in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC, area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint. She is the author of eight poetry books and chapbooks and lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she teaches poetics at Ryerson University and curates a reading series.

Alibi School


Jeffrey McDaniel - 1995
    This book contains the poem “Grace”, which the Poetry Society of America chose for their Poetry in Motion series to entertain public transit passengers in major metropolitan areas.

Book of Matches


Simon Armitage - 1993
    . . it is possible that he will attain the sort of proverbial status Larkin now occupies.' Sean O'Brien, The Deregulated Muse

What Kind of Woman


Kate Baer - 2020
    In her poem “Deliverance” about her daughter’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?”Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. As easy to post on Instagram as they are to print out and frame, Kate’s words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.

Autobiography of Red


Anne Carson - 1998
    As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is."A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."  -- The Village VoiceA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARNational book Critics Circle Award Finalist