The poet has faith in economy and trusts in images to transfer knowledge that speech cannot. In Curses and Wishes the short, simple lines add up to a thoughtful book possessed with lyrical melancholy, a harmony of sadness and joy that sings: May happiness be a wheel, a lit throne, spinning / in the vast pinprick of darkness. By the close of this ambitious work the poet has inspired readers to see the multifaceted effects of our human connections.

    Prissy leaves and Premier is dead set on getting her back no matter what he has to do. The thing is, there may be nothing that he can do. Zeus is trying to stay on the straight and narrow now that he’s in a relationship with Doe. However, after being attacked by the police, he’s finding it hard not to revert to his usual ways and retaliate. Will he be able to do the right thing or end up in deeper trouble? Nadia is finally over her infatuation with Chino, but her past mistakes still manage to catch up to her. Even worse, it’s all unfolding while she’s smitten with her new boo, Logan. Can she get it together in enough time to prove to him that her past is just that, the past? Things are going smoothly with Ross and Trinity until she receives a surprise visit which causes a downward spiral of their relationship. While on the outs, Ross makes a bad decision that may not end well, while Trinity has a secret of her own to reveal. Find out in this finale what will come of the couples who are set on being with who they want regardless of the drawbacks. They say it’s hard enough to love but even harder loving a savage.

    a grave, attentive holding of a light” by the contest judge, the distinguished poet W. S. Merwin. The poems are set above and below the Cave Country of south central Kentucky, where McCombs lives and which is home to thousands of caves. The book is framed by two sonnet sequences, the first about a slave guide and explorer at Mammoth Cave in the mid-1800s and the second about McCombs’s experiences as a guide and park ranger there in the 1990s. Other poems deal with Mammoth Cave’s four- thousand-year human history and the thrills of crawling into tight, rarely visited passageways to see what lies beyond. Often the poems search for oblique angles into personal experience, and the caves and the landscape they create form a personal geology.

    During that time, some of these poems appeared in various journals and on Web sites, including The Poetry Daily site, which ran thirty of Lehman's poems in as many days throughout the month of April 1998. For The Daily Mirror, Lehman has selected the best of these "daily poems" -- each tied to a specific occasion or situation -- and telescoped two years into one. Spontaneous and immediate, but always finely crafted and spiced with Lehman's signature irony and wit, the poems are akin to journal entries charting the passing of time, the deaths of great men and women, the news of the day. Jazz, Sinatra, the weather, love, poetry and poets, movies, and New York City are among their recurring themes. A departure from Lehman's previous work, this unique volume provides the intimacy of a diary, full of passion, sound, and fury, but with all the aesthetic pleasure of poetry. More a party of poems than a standard collection, The Daily Mirror presents an exciting new way to think about poetry.

    And for about fifteen years, she was right. Until her happy marriage goes down the drain and she's left with no one but herself to blame. On a quest to become the world's next best-selling author, to find her voice, Savannah makes a difficult choice.    She has to run—again.    She quits her job and packs a bag. And then she sets out to find the inspiration that she's never had. Only she finds herself in the one place she never expected to be. Home—in the South; reminded of pain and secrecy. A sin is still a sin, even if no one knows. And a secret is still a secret even if no one told. Bonds are broken, truths are spoken, and no one around her can be trusted.    Who killed her mother?     Who is her father?     Who knows the truth about the small-town barber?    Savannah discovers that 'Southern Charm' is just for show. What really matters in the South are the lies you tell and the secrets you know!

    The book's mood is best captured in the closing lines of the title poem, which takes its name from the ship that brought the poet's mother to America: A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.

    . .--from "The Window"Lynda Hull's Collected Poems brings together her three collections--long unavailable--with a new introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, and allows, for the first time, the full scale of her achievement to be seen. Edited with Hull's husband, David Wojahn, this book contains all the poems Hull published in her lifetime, before her untimely death in 1994.Collected Poems is the first book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, which brings essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print. Each volume--chosen by series editor Mark Doty--is introduced by a poet who brings to the work a passionate admiration. The Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series brings all-but-lost masterworks of recent American poetry into the hands of a new generation of readers.

    Cole's most recent poems have a daring sensitivity and imagistic beauty unlike anything on the American scene today. Whether they are exploring pleasure or pain, humor or sorrow, triumph or fear, they reach for an almost shocking intensity. Cole's fourth book, Middle Earth, awakened his audience to him as a poet now writing the poems of his career. Pierce the Skin brings together sixty-six poems from the past twenty-five years, including work from Cole's early, closely observed, virtuosic books, long out of print, as well as his important more recent books, The Visible Man (1998), Middle Earth (2003), and Blackbird and Wolf (2007). The result is a collection reconsecrating Cole's central themes: the desire for connection, the contingencies of selfhood and human love, the dissolution of the body, the sublime renewal found in nature, and the distance of language from experience. "I don't want words to sever me from reality," Cole says, striving in Pierce the Skin to break the barrier even between word and skin. Maureen N. McLane wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Cole is a poet of "self-overcoming, lusting, loathing and beautiful force." This book will have a permanent place with other essential poems of our moment.

    Those who truly want and deserve to have their hearts protected always seem to come up short. That has been Simira’s experience and for that reason her focus is on the only person who has ever loved her unconditionally, her son.Ebo and Simira have given up all hope but that is when things begin to turn in their favor. When you stop looking for and expecting love, it occasionally finds its way to you.

    Too bad his wife is already in that spot! Her love for him has her lowering her standards to maintaining her side chick status. But Kara wants more… She becomes demanding and gives Jazz ultimatums proving she is over his games. His empty promises and lies show her he isn’t the man he claims to be. But like most women, Kara is determined to fight for her love… Jazz is hooked on Kara’s young love. After witnessing his best friend and wife having sex, he’s confused and unsure of who he can trust. His life is flipped upside down by drama and tragedy, once the set up of his best friend comes back to haunt him. “Zen” aka Zenayia struggles to love her husband Jazz… She’s gotten lost in her feelings for his best friend Damon. Her affair with Damon ultimately puts her in a compromising position when she is deemed with an unexpected pregnancy. Her marriage is on the line resulting in her hiding secrets are unmasked. The ultimate betrayal of his best friend Jazz leaves Damon questioning those around him. He is jealous of Jazz and wishes he had his lifestyle. Their friendship will be tested, pushing Damon to make drastic decisions to keep his affair with Zen under wraps. He is determined to find out who set him up, but he has no idea his enemy is right under his nose…

    The poems in Accepting the Disaster range from lyric miniatures like "The Crossroads," a six-line sketch of an accident scene, to "The Orange Bottle," an expansive narrative page-turner whose main character suffers a psychotic episode after quitting medication. Mehigan blends the naturalistic milieu of such great chroniclers of American life as Stephen Crane and Studs Terkel with the cinematic menace and wonder of Fritz Lang. Balanced by the music of his verse, this unusual combination brings an eerie resonance to the real lives and institutions it evokes. These poems capture with equal tact the sinister quiet of a deserted Main Street, the tragic grandiosity of Michael Jackson, the loneliness of a self-loathing professor, the din of a cement factory, and the saving grandeur of the natural world. This much-anticipated second collection is the work of a nearly unrivaled craftsman, whose first book was called by Poetry "a work of some poise and finish, by turns delicate and robust."

    

    The poem started out as a simple observation of the snow in moonlight, and turned into a poem with more to offer. I'm offering it free to my readers. I've had it on my blog, where it's gotten much response, and wanted to give everyone another way to access it.

    Hejinian's characteristic linguistic intensity and philosophical approach are present in this book- length poem. "Reading Lyn Hejinian's HAPPILY can make one imagine a second, somewhat happier Stein telling stories in single long or short lines that are aware of one another as they go about their own affairs."--Bob Perelman "HAPPILY"...is a series of aphoristic statements interrogating 'hap' or, more prosaically, one's lot in life, one's fortune. This notion of chance as it is expressed through its root form, as in to happen, happenstance, happenings, haphazard, happenchance, happily, and happy happiness, becomes the generator that enlivens this ontological exploration of language's relationship to experience."--Claudia Rankine

    I needed a Viking. I needed someone who wasn't afraid of my strengths or of my needs. I chose wrong in the past...Beloved contemporary poet Alfa is back with a brand-new collection of more than 180 heartfelt poems on the theme of woman warriors and the masculine heroes they long for. In gorgeous, compelling, and intimate prose, I Needed a Viking takes us on an emotional journey of a woman searching for strength in the midst of a storm.