It is a dive deep into the circles of emotion, empathy, acceptance, healing and insights into a different perspective towards life. In the voice of a budding adolescent, the book cascades into day-to day-shortcomings, carved into poetry and at the same time, embraces you in silence and stillness of thought. The book is an attempt to connect with the reader, to reflect upon them, unbiased and together and embrace a new beginning. With simplified use of grammar and vocabulary, this book seeks nothing but the companionship of all. With this debut book, the author aims to connect to one and to all in the message and purpose of existence, the aid of spirituality and an ode to a beautiful journey called life.

    Now, a whole new batch of teen writers has emerged with their own unique voices. Leave This Song Behind features the best poetry submitted by those writers to Teen Ink over the last five years. The pieces in this book were chosen because they were so powerful that they stood out from the rest. Teen Ink editors took a deep look into each poem's strengths then divided Leave This Song Behind into seven sections based on the poetic techniques or qualities that moved them most. Vivid sensory details made some poems shine; others caught their attention with simple, sparse language. Still others were chosen because of their thoughtful use of form; compelling stories; strong figurative language; unexpected connections and wit; and fresh writing about familiar topics. Dig in and let these brave young voices capture your heart and mind with their passion, their pain, and their amazing poetry!

    Across the book’s three sequences, we find the black-girl speaker in the midst of a self-imposed exile, going back in memory to explore her younger self—a mixed-race child being raised by her white supremacist grandfather in the shadow of Churchill Downs, Kentucky’s world-famous horseracing track—before arriving in a state of self-awareness to confront the personal and political landscape of a harshly segregated Louisville. Out of a space that is at once southern and urban, violent and beautiful, racially-charged and working-class, she attempts to transcend her social and economic circumstances. Across the collection, Priest writes a horse that acts as a metaphysical engine of flight, showing us how to throw off the harness and sustain wildness. Unlike the traditional Bildungsroman, Priest presents a non-linear narrative in which the speaker lacks the freedom to come of age naively in the urban South, and must instead, from the beginning, possess the wisdom of “the horses & their restless minds.”    FROM "RODEO"   The four-wheeler is a chariot. Horse-wraiths Kicking up a plume of spirits in the dirt behind us. Her arms kudzu around my middle. Out here,   In the desert, everything is invisible. Only the locusts’ flat buzz gives Them away. Everything native & quieting   Perennial & nighthawk black As we ride through: the cowgirls, The witch & the water sky-mirror-split,   The severity of squall lines. Also, the lips Parting air like lightning & the girl Blowing bubbles—in each one                                                 a rainbow.

    They illuminate the gritty idiosyncrasies of immigrant life in urban barrios spanning Los Angeles to Chicago to Harlem. Rodríguez lends powerful voices to those struggling to keep the gas on, to find work, and to keep love.  Populated by a vibrant cast of characters, ranging from the drugged, to the eccentric, to the heartbroken, Rodríguez’s poems protest capitalism, violence, and exploitation while reveling in the potential of compassion.

    A satiric edge, tempered by profound compassion, cuts through many of the poems in Lux’s book. While themes of intolerance, inhumanity, loss, and a deep sense of mortality mark these poems, a lighthearted grace instills even the somberest moments with unexpected sweetness. In the title poem Lux writes, “there’s no reason for God to feel guilt / I think He was downhearted, weary, too weary / to be angry anymore . . . / He wanted each of us, / and all the things we touch . . . / to have a tiny piece of Him / though we are unqualified, / of even the crumb of a crumb.” Dark, humorous, and strikingly imaginative, this is Lux’s most compassionate work to date.

    These intimate moments serve as windows onto a world of innocent voyeurism and surreal misunderstanding, as Lange’s family learns to live with the eccentric little spy in their midst—and vice versa. Lange recalls her older sister bathing nude in the moonlight, she recalls the death of a horse, she recalls how she cried when she was lifted onto a table and dressed as a boy, and yet how she laughed when climbing onto the roof in men’s clothing to throw bricks.Through a veneer of comforting domesticity, these “notes” show us childhood at its most elemental: a laboratory of life in which strangeness, joy, terror, and eroticism combine and collide.

    I SAT on cushioned otter-skin: My word was law from Ith to Emain, And shook at Inver Amergin The hearts of the world-troubling seamen, And drove tumult and war away From girl and boy and man and beast; The fields grew fatter day by day.

    

    depicts different love stories from the initial spark to the last heartbreak and writes in verses the heartache we've all been through. A poetry book to make your heart smile and weep at the same time.

    In his fourteenth collection of poems, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn reveals his concerns, ranging from meditations on salvation and time to the difficulties and pleasures of loving in this "already brutal century." In language that Gerald Stern has called "unbearably fearless and beautiful," Dunn continues to probe the elusive in the lives we live.

    (It was John Findura in Verse Magazine.) She's also been compared to comedian Sarah Silverman, artist Jeff Koons, a 10-year-old who can't keep her mouth shut, and cartoonist R. Crumb. None of these equations is quite right, however. Jennifer L. Knox's work is unmistakably her own: darkly hilarious, surprisingly empathetic, utterly original. DRUNK BY NOON is the eagerly awaited sequel to Knox's first book, A GRINGO LIKE ME, which is also available from Bloof in a new edition. Jennifer L. Knox is a three-time contributor to the Best American Poetry Series and her poems have also appeared in Great American Prose Poems and Great American Erotic Poems. For more information, see www.jenniferlknox.com.

    A few hours ago, his involvement in a sex scandal in NexGen Technologies made headlines across the world. Who is behind the sinister conspiracy that destroyed Vikram Oberoi, the philandering India Head of NexGen? Rivals within and outside the firm? One of his many jilted lovers or the miffed wife? A mysterious conspirator laying out honey traps to sabotage his plans? Or, is it the ghost of a sinful past that continues to haunt the Oberois? The Sinners is a fast-paced thriller with a shocking twist that unravels against the backdrop of corporate warfare, illicit relationships and ruthless seduction games.

    Evie farewelled a nasty break-up, long hours in a demanding job, a hefty mortgage and snatched hours with her daughter for a new life lived outside the lines, spending every day with Emmie exploring the world beyond the suburbs.   They camped on the Great Wall of China, hung in train doorways in Sri Lanka, swam with mantas in Indonesia, donated much-needed blood in Cambodia, spotted wild orangutans and pygmy elephants in Malaysian Borneo, prayed in Buddhist temples in Taiwan and were chased by monkeys everywhere. In their journey toward happiness and self-acceptance, they learnt more about each other and the beautiful world around them than Evie ever expected.  Backyard to Backpack is the inspirational true story that will have you asking yourself, what might be if you took a chance, stepped off the path of expectation and created your own adventure?

    People living happy lives, some not-so-happy lives, people in love, hopeless romantics, people dealing with heartbreak, the ones who believe life is better with a bit of whimsy, this book, hopefully, has a little something that resonates with everybody, lets the reader find the silver lining when needed and discover the joie de vivre even when times are hard.