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The Stranger Manual
Catie Rosemurgy - 2009
The poems follow an unlikely character named Miss Peach, an unpredictable, cartoonish shapeshifter, who emerges onto the page dragging the myth of the individual, various gender scripts, and the grand tradition of the poetic persona along with her. She becomes an outsider, a hero, an intruder, a rock star. The town around her, Gold River, is also always in flux—part center and part mirage. The Stranger Manual celebrates the fractious nature of self and society in poems that are fabulist, speculative, and alluring.
Hotel Almighty
Sarah J. Sloat - 2020
Sloat's Hotel Almighty is a book-length erasure of Misery by Stephen King, a reimagining of the novel's themes of constraint and possibility in elliptical, enigmatic poems. Here, "joy would crawl over broken glass, if that was the way." Here, sleep is “a circle whose diameter might be small," a circle "pitifully small," a "wrecked and empty hypothetical circle." Paired with Sloat's stunning mixed-media collage, each poem is a miniature canvas, a brief associative profile of the psyche―its foibles, obsessions, and delights.
Our Numbered Days
Neil Hilborn - 2015
To date, it has been watched over 10 million times. Our Numbered Days is Neil’s debut full-length poetry collection, containing 45 of Neil’s poems including “OCD”, “Joey”, “Future Tense”, “Liminality”, “Moving Day”, and many, many never-before-seen poems.
A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian Ocean
Sarah Outen - 2011
Powered by the grief of the sudden loss of her father and the determination to live life to the fullest, Sarah and her tiny boat successfully negotiated wild ocean storms, unexpected encounters with whales, and the continuous threat of being capsized by passing container ships. Along the way she broke two oars, ate 500 chocolate bars, and lost 20 kg of bodyweight before arriving in Mauritius. She became the first woman and the youngest person to row solo across the Indian Ocean. Life-affirming, funny, and poignant, Sarah's salty tale of courage and endurance will inspire the taste of adventure in everyone.
Sisters' Entrance
Emtithal Mahmoud - 2018
2015 World Poetry Slam Champion and Woman of the World co-Champion Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud presents her hauntingly beautiful debut poetry collection.Brimming with rage, sorrow, and resilience, this collection traverses an expansive terrain: genocide; diaspora; the guilt of surviving; racism and Islamophobia; the burdens of girlhood; the solace of sisterhood; the innocence of a first kiss. Heart-wrenching and raw, defiant and empowering, Sisters’ Entrance explores how to speak the unspeakable.
Bang Ditto
Amber Tamblyn - 2009
Whether she's describing real life info-gathering for a new prime time TV drama ("Role Research") or addressing the crossroads of public perception and private life ("Fell Off"), Amber Tamblyn reveals questions, answers, and more in Bang Ditto, wielding metaphors mercilessly in a wry and talented voice.“Tamblyn’s witty personal accounts and surprisingly lyrical observations go way above the scripted bullsh*t spouted by most of her peers.”—The Onion A.V. Club“Punchy, spiky, and flush with a young writer's love of language, the collection often deglamourizes the acting business. A great find...”—Barbara Hoffert, Library JournalAmber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe Award–nominated actor and poet. She came to fame on the soap opera General Hospital followed by starring roles on the television series Joan of Arcadia and The Unusuals. She has branched out into film roles, appearing in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and many other films. Winner of a Borders Choice Award for Breakout Writing, the author currently resides in New York.
Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
Yoel Hoffmann - 1985
Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined—from the poems of longing of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.
Graffiti (and Other Poems)
Savannah Brown - 2016
Written between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, with examinations of anxiety, death, first loves, and first lusts, Graffiti extends a hand to those undergoing the trials and uncertainty of teenagehood, and assures them they're not alone.
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Jon McGregor - 2002
In a tour de force that could be described as Altmanesque, we are invited into the private lives of the residents of a quiet urban street in England over the course of a single day. In delicate, intricately observed closeup, we witness the hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs of a diverse community: the man with painfully scarred hands who tried in vain to save his wife from a burning house and who must now care for his young daughter alone; a group of young clubgoers just home from an all-night rave, sweetly high and mulling over vague dreams; the nervous young man at number 18 who collects weird urban junk and is haunted by the specter of unrequited love. The tranquillity of the street is shattered at day's end when a terrible accident occurs. This tragedy and an utterly surprising twist provide the momentum for the book. But it is the author's exquisite rendering of the ordinary, the everyday, that gives this novel its freshness, its sense of beauty, wonder, and hope. Rarely does a writer appear with so much music and poetry -- so much vision -- that he can make the world seem new.
Uncaged Wallflower
Jennae Cecelia - 2016
For the people who need an extra dose of positivity in their day. This is not a poetry book for you to read and relate to in a sorrow filled way. It is for you to read and say yes, I can be better, and I will.
Recovery
John Berryman - 1973
Alan Severance wakes up one morning confined to a familiar hospital with no recollection of his arrival. Thus starts Recovery, Berryman's semi-autobiographical tale of "the disease called ‘alcoholism.'" This time, determined to free himself from his disease, Dr. Severance plunges into a rigorous plan for recovery. Following the clinic's advice he confesses his humiliations, defeats, and delusions in an attempt to purge himself and achieve normality. The novel is elevated above the ordinary by Berryman's sharp wit and penetrating intelligence. An alcoholic and critically acclaimed Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Berryman jumped to his death off the Washington Avenue Bridge in 1972 in Minneapolis, abandoning his own attempts to overcome alcoholism as well as the yet unfinished Recovery. The resulting novel is a powerful portrayal of Severance's eternally indefinite attempts to free himself from the grip of addiction. "What he needed for his art had been supplied by his own person, by his mind, his wit."—Saul Bellow "Recovery is a brilliantly written, masterful portrayal of man's battle with himself for survival."—Chicago Sun-Times "What distinguishes Recovery from many fine and powerful fictions about alcoholism are the steps it takes into allegory and art."—Los Angeles Times
Wobble
Rae Armantrout - 2018
If anyone could produce a hybrid of Charlie Chaplin's playful "Little Tramp" and Charlize Theron's fierce "Imperator Furiosa," it would be Armantrout. Her language is unexpected yet exact, playing off the collective sense that the shifting ground of daily reality may be a warning of imminent systemic collapse. While there are glimmers here of what remains of "the natural world," the poet confesses the human failings, personal and societal, that have led to its devastation. No one's senses are more acutely attuned than Armantrout's, which makes her an exceptional observer and reporter of our faults. She leaves us wondering if the American Dream may be a nightmare from which we can't awaken. Sometimes funny, sometimes alarming, the poems in Wobble play peek-a-boo with doom.
Distance from Loved Ones
James Tate - 1990
"Mr. Tate is an elegant and anarchic clown. A lord of poetic misrule with a serious, subversive purpose."-John Ash, New York Times Book Review "Tate brings to his work an extravagantly surrealistic imagination and a willingness to let his words take him where they will. Nonchalant in the midst of radical uncertainty, he handles bizarre details as though they were commonplace facts. [Tate's poetry draws upon] so rich a fund of comic energy that is may well prove an antidote to the anxiety some readers feel with poems that refuse to lend themselves to instant analysis."-David Lehman, Washington Post Book World
The Works: The Classic Collection
Pam Ayres - 2010
For this new edition Pam has written a general introduction, as well as individual introductions to the poems, many of which are now illustrated with specially commissioned line drawings by Susan Hellard. This is the first time The Works has been available in hardback and is certain to delight Pam's fans of all ages. Pam is one of Britain's best-loved personalities and has been a regular on television and radio for more than 30 years—most recently on Just a Minute, The Comedy Quiz, Countdown, and her own series, Ayres on the Air.
The Road Beneath My Feet
Frank Turner - 2015
On the laminantes that listed the tour dates, the entry for 24 September simply read: 'Get a job.'Deflated, jaded and hungover, Frank returned to his hometown of Winchester without a plan for the future. All he knew was that he wanted to keep playing music.Cut to 13 April 2012, a thousand shows later (show 1,216 to be precise), and he was headlining a sold-out gig at Wembley Arena with his band The Sleeping Souls. That summer, they played to 200,000 people at the Olympics opening ceremony warm-up by personal invitation of Danny Boyle.Told through his tour reminiscences, this is a blisteringly honest story of Frank's career from the grimy pub scene where sweat drips from the ceiling, to filling out arenas with fans roaring every word. But more than that, it is an intimate account of what it's like to spend your life constantly on the road; sleeping on floors, invariably jetlagged, all for the love of playing live music.