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Little Boat


Jean Valentine - 2007
    In Little Boat, Valentine continues her exploration of spiritual life, confronting the realities of aging and death in the serene and dreamlike voice so beloved by her many readers. Infusing even the most melancholy subjects with warmth and humanity, Little Boat explores such subjects as grief, ordinary objects, illness, and memory, carrying the reader into disparate worlds, rendering the complexity of our common experience through startling images. The poet's extraordinary juxtapositions blur the boundaries of the material world and the invisible, the given and the assumed, the present and the sometimes recently absent. Readers will find Valentine's quiet epiphanies on rich display here, as this much-heralded poet quietly merges the sorrowful and the sublime.

The Crazy Life of a Kid from Brooklyn


Bill Morgenstein - 2014
    I was on the Stuyvesant baseball team, but because of my working hours, my playing time was limited. My first dream to become a corporate president by the time I was 35 years of age was fulfilled.Experience the ups and downs of a life well lived in Bill Morgenstein's compelling new memoir, The Crazy Life of a Kid from Brooklyn.While first reminiscing upon his childhood in Brooklyn during the depression, Morgenstein traces his life through times of war, peace, and everything in between.At times extremely funny and heartbreaking, The Crazy Life of a Kid in Brooklyn details Morgenstein's enlistment in the US Army, his days running a $55 million dollar company, his despair at losing it all to a scam, and much more.His chance encounters with such historical figures as Sergeant York, Cordell Hull, Sid Gordon, Jomo Kenyatta, and Vince Camuto provide amusing cultural touchstones that reveal a willingness to embrace everything life has to offer.Through all the successful, disappointing, dangerous, educational, and enlightening experiences that have shaped his life, Morgenstein remains philosophical as he explores the roles of ethics, honesty, and unfailing determination in shaping the human experience.

Roots and Branches: Poetry


Robert Duncan - 1969
    The poet has said of himself and his work: "I am not an experimentalist or an inventor, but a derivative poet, drawing my art from the resources given by a generation of masters––Stein, Williams, Pound; back of that by the generations of poets that have likewise been dreamers of the Cosmos as Creation and Man as Creative Spirit; and by the work of contemporaries: Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley and Denise Levertov."

Girly Man


Charles Bernstein - 2006
    Charles Bernstein here proves them alive and well in poems elegiac, defiant, and resilient to the point of approaching song. Heir to the democratic and poetic sensibilities of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, Bernstein has always crafted verse that responds to its historical moment, but no previous collection of his poems so specifically addresses the events of its time as Girly Man, whichfeatures works written on the evening of September 11, 2001, and in response to the war in Iraq. Here, Bernstein speaks out, combining self-deprecating humor with incisive philosophical and political thinking. Composed of works of very different forms and moods—etchings from moments of acute crisis, comic excursions, formal excavations, confrontations with the cultural illogics of contemporary political consciousness—the poems work as an ensemble, each part contributing something necessary to an unrealizable and unrepresentable whole. Indeed, representation—and related claims to truth and moral certainty—is an active concern throughout the book. The poems of Girly Man may be oblique, satiric, or elusive, but their sense is emphatic. Indeed, Bernstein’s poetry performsits ideas so that they can be experienced as well as understood. A passionate defense of contingency, resistance, and multiplicity, Girly Man is a provocative and aesthetically challenging collection of radical verse from one of America’s most controversial poets.

The Words of a Madman


Caitlin Kelly - 2019
    

The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth


Kenneth Rexroth - 1966
    This volume assembles Kenneth Rexroth's shorter poems from 1920 to 1966, bringing together work from seven earlier books and a group of previously unpublished poems.

365 Things People Believe That Aren't True


James Egan - 2014
    Dinosaurs had feathers.The appendix isn’t useless but there are nine body-parts that are.Coliseum gladiators were obese and staged their fights.The first robot was built 2,400 years ago.The Bible never says what The Devil looks like.Leprosy doesn’t exist.This book corrects many misconceptions people have about the human body, books, dinosaurs, words, disorders, quotes, religion, and unsolved mysteries (that have actually been solved.)Read on to find out the real reason why movies were made, how angels are actually described in the Bible, discover what happened to the ancient Mayans, and the answer to the ultimate question: which came first - The chicken or the egg?

Sweet Southern Trouble


Heather McGhee - 2014
     And when her dying grandmother sends her on a wild-goose chase for the truth about the O'Shea heritage, Blabbermouth Becky finds herself knee-deep in a small town with enough scandals, gossip and sickening apple pies to keep her entertained while she investigates her own mystery. But with any great quest, there is usually a man or two standing in the way. As the small town's police chief, Nick Harris typically spends his days playing cupid to bickering old couples and chaperoning bored teenagers. Then Becky O'Shea pops into his station, smelling like fresh-baked cookies, and suddenly he is overrun with problems. Becky just wants to honor her grandmother's memory. Nick wants her out of town as soon as possible. However, long-buried secrets have a way of coming back to life...resurrecting old love stories and creating new ones.

How Joyful People Think: 8 Ways of Thinking That Lead to a Better Life


Jamie Rasmussen - 2018
    What makes the difference when one person responds with joy and the other responds with bitterness? Perspective--the way they think about things. Right thinking matters and, thankfully, it's something we can all learn to employ.In this insightful unpacking of Philippians 4:8, pastor Jamie Rasmussen shows readers how to focus their thoughts and attention on the things in life that God has declared will make a meaningful impact on both a person's outlook and experience. It's the kind of thinking that has the power to change us, pointing us away from self-pity, anger, and resentment and toward contentment and personal peace, which helps us get the most out of life.Anyone who yearns to live a life characterized by joy no matter what the circumstance will benefit from this thoughtful, practical, and inspiring book.

The Longest Night: A Collection of Poetry from a Life Half Lived


Ranata Suzuki - 2018
    The Longest Night combines strikingly poignant quotations, powerfully emotive poetry and captivating silhouette imagery to form a mournful lover's journal that explores a side of love that is deep, dark and hauntingly beautiful.Each of the book's elements are skilfully woven together to reveal fragments of thoughts and feelings that seem almost to belong to the reader as years of painful longing are condensed into the context of a single night.The journal begins with 'Sunset', in which poems convey the initial feelings of shock and loss first felt when a relationship with a loved one ends. As the poetry descends into an emotional downward spiral, the book progresses into its next chapter, 'Darkness', in which emptiness, jealousy, sorrow and despair are passionately portrayed.The concluding chapter, 'First Light', sees the gradual dawning of a new outlook. The final poems express a gratitude for what once was, an acceptance of what now is, and come to the uplifting conclusion that even though a relationship can be fated to end tragically, the memories gained and lessons learned from it are, in their own way, treasured gifts that will last a lifetime.A book for anyone who has found themselves separated from someone they love no matter the circumstance, The Longest Night is a companion for the broken heart on the painful emotional journey that is losing someone you love from your life. Its words serve as a comforting reminder, whether you are travelling this road or have recently completed this journey yourself, that despite the loneliness you may sometimes feel along the way none of us walk this path alone.

God’s Chaos Code: The Shocking Blueprint that Reveals 5 Keys to the Destiny of Nations


Lance Wallnau - 2020
    As the chaos intensifies and the world shakes, God is Speaking! Could a code from the ancient middle east reveal a global pandemic, pending economic crash, and rise in gun sales? Are these signs that America is under judgement? What if God hid an ancient prophetic code in Scripture that predicts this exact moment in history and what is coming next? Could heaven be unlocking the books of Haggai, Nehemiah, Esther, and Ezra to reveal a pattern for us today? Is it possible that this code is being illuminated now so that you and I can have peace and clarity in the midst of shaking? Prepare to be astonished, shocked, startled, and enlightened. God's Chaos Code unlocks the 2,600-year-old code that predicts the exact crisis we are in and our only way out! Lance Wallnau burst onto the scene in 2016 with his national bestselling book, God's Chaos Candidate where he correctly predicted the election of Donald Trump and that Trump would be compared to the biblical King Cyrus. Lance forecast the economic unraveling of 2020 and America's Fourth Turning. As you read his latest book, God's Chaos Code, you will discover Lance's newest prediction: the five keys to the Chaos Code. After you read this, you may never see the world the same.

The Star-Spangled Banner


Denise Duhamel - 1999
    The misunderstandings caused by language recur throughout the book: contemplating what "yes" means in different cultures; watching Nickelodeon's "Nick at Nite" with a husband who grew up in the Philippines and never saw The Patty Duke Show; misreading another poet's title "The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke" as "The Difference Between Pepsi and Pope" and concluding that "Pepsi is all for premarital sex. / The Pope won't stain your teeth." Misunderstandings also abound as characters mingle with others from different classes. In "Cockroaches," a father-in-law refers to budget-minded American college students backpacking in Europe as cockroaches, not realizing his daughter-in-law was once, not so long ago, such a student/roach herself.With welcome levity and refreshing irreverence, The Star-Spangled Banner addresses issues of ethnicity, class, and gender in America.

Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides


Stephen Dobyns - 1999
    "The Himalayas Within Him" finds Heart worrying about the sound of his own heartbeat, wondering why it doesn't "blare like a quartet of trombones" as it reflects his "ardent complexity." In "Goodbye to the Hands That Have Touched Him" Heart, after suffering many sleepless nights, decides "that love exists at the root of his problems. Without love his path would be as smooth as a plate of glass and he'd sleep like a kitten." Dividing the Heart poems is the long "Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate, " a jazzy disquisition on human isolation and inaction in the midst of a planet full of people feeling similarly. Throughout Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides Dobyns has painstakingly sculpted straight-forward language into a distinct sound, creating an unforgettable collection of poems that offers readers unexpected revelations about the complexities of the heart.

The Red Hand


Michael Stephen Daigle - 2019
    Could a serial killer be stalking his hometown of Ironton, N.J.?One by one the bodies pile up. Nine victims are killed over several months, all from different walks of life and different parts of Ironton. Each killed in a different way, forming no clear pattern, as might be expected from a single killer.The Red Hand is the prequel to The Swamps of Jersey, the book that launched the Frank Nagler Mysteries. This investigation takes place before economic hard times, political corruption and a government money scandal hit the former industrial center of Ironton, N.J.This story is atmospheric, moody, dark and thrilling.

Secrets We Told The City: Poems


J.R. Rogue - 2017
    Rogue & Kat Savage.