Shelley penned the poem in 1819, after hearing of the Peterloo Massacre, where British cavalry charged peaceful political demonstrators near Manchester. His words would later inspire figures as wide-ranging as Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi—and also Pauline Newman, the woman the New York Times called the “New Joan of Arc” in 1907. Newman was a Jewish immigrant who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and came to be a leading organizer—and the first female organizer—of one of America’s most powerful unions, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. As she marched with tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in the streets, Shelley’s poem never ceased to inspire her. “Shake your chains to earth like dew,” it implores. “Ye are many—they are few.”

    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.

    Everytime, he looked at me, it broke my heart a little bit more.Everytime he went away, I wrote.When he came back, I lived again.And in the end it fell apart.

    "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

    Throughout, Graham seeks out sites of wakeful resistance and achieved presence. From the natural world to human sensation, the poems test the unstable congeries of the self, and the creative tensions that exist within and between our inner and outer landscapes--particularly as these are shaped by language.Beginning with a poem dated June 5th, placed on Omaha Beach, in Normandy--the anniversary of the day before the "historical" events of June 6th--Place is made up of meditations written in a uneasy lull before an unknowable, potentially drastic change--meditations which enact and explore the role of the human in and on nature. In these poems, time lived is felt to be both incipient, and already posthumous. This is not the same as preparing for a death. It is preparing for a life we know we, and our offspring, shall have no choice but to live. How does one think ethically as well as emotionally in such a predicament? How does one think of one's child--of having brought a person into this condition? How does love continue, and how is it supposed to be transmitted? Does the nature of love change?Both formally and thematically poems of ec(h)o-location in space/time, Graham's new poems work to discern "aftermath" from "future"--as the two margins of the form ask us to feel the vertiginous "double" position in which we find ourselves, constantly looking back just as we are forced to try to see ahead.In an era where distrust of human experience and its attendant accountability are pervasive Place calls us, in poems of unusual force and beauty, to re-inhabit and make full use of--and even rejoice in--a more responsive and responsible place of the human in the world.

    A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. [McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon. . . . He is not a writer of half-measures. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger."—New York Times Book ReviewAnd so there was the falling and the falling and then the gasping for air--this love which is only a reminder of death--a spell cast to kill one another. Or perhaps it was from long ago in a play that wasn't a play anymore but an actual garden. And there was a man and there was a woman who were growing old together. And this was their only wish: Let us be young again. I thought about the play and the words of that world.These were not the last lines of a play but words from long ago that someone spoke to a someone--words that sounded like this. I was saying this now.For wherever she was—there was my Eden.The Sarah Book is Scott McClanahan's continuation of the semi-autobiographical portrait he's been writing over the years about his life in West Virginia. This one is the portrait of his love there.Scott McClanahan is the author of Hill William, Crapalachia, and many more. He lives in West Virginia.

    Heine's protagonist is Atta Troll, the revolutionary dancing bear, who embodies all that Heine finds worthy of ridicule. The other poems in the collection are likewise chosen to highlight Heine's gift for lampooning social, political and artistic pomposity, while fighting for his own vision of a just world.

    Incisive and passionate, her poems represent Amber's unique perspective on universal issues of relationships, loss, and self-discovery. This collection provides a glimpse into the mind of a young woman struggling to define her own identity on her own terms.Jack Hirschman provides an introduction that places the poems in a literary context, and Amber prefaces her writing with a personal explanation that gives readers an entry point into her work. This striking collection marks the arrival of an original voice in the realm of young adult literature.

    It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed he has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage. In this Book you will also find 7 Bonus works for your enjoymentThe complete interactive table of content includes:THE ODYSSEYBonus book: THE ILIAD OF HOMERMore free Bonuses PARADISE LOST-by John MiltonTHE GOLDEN ASS-by Lucius Apuleius "Africanus"PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES•OEDIPUS THE KING • OEDIPUS AT COLONUS • ANTIGONETHE AENEID-by VirgilAll in one book elegantly formatted for ease of use and enjoyment on your Kindle device. Enjoy!

    With reverence for the ordinary and in search of the extraordinary, Those Who Ride the Night Winds is Nikki Giovanni's most accessible collection ever. She displays her passion for and connectedness to the people and places that touch her. The reissue of Nikki Giovanni's seminal 1984 collection will once again enchant those who have always loved her poems--and those who are just getting to know her work.As a witness to three generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the civil rights and Black Power movements in the late 1960s, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial figure. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni's poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.Nikki Giovanni is our most widely read living black poet, and in her most accessible collection to date, we become aware of the poet as a human being we can relate to, someone affected by and concerned with events. The title of this collection refers to people who have tried to make changes, people who have gone against the tide, people who were unafraid to test their wings. Included are poems about John Lennon, Billie Jean King, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. There are poems about friends, lovers, mothers, and about the poet herself.Long known as the "Princess of Black Poetry," Nikki Giovanni is as alive and vibrant as ever. Her many readers will find once again in this collection the warmth, wit, passion, and caring about people that have always distinguished her work. Strong, direct, tremendously energetic, visionary, vulnerable, and real, these poems reveal a great spirit among us; a woman in her human dimension; a person all readers can identify with and believe in.

    The book teaches that a person's softness is their biggest strength and that having a big heart is not always a bad thing and that a glimmer of light can be found in the darkest places.A Handful of Stars is raw and unapologetic, soft and kind, reflective and inspirational all at the same time. Some of Ruby's most loved poems are shared within the pages of this book, in hope that they will have the same effect on readers the second time as they did the first.

    From falling in love to overcoming adversity, celebrating a new born or learning to live with dignity: here is a book to inspire and to thrill through life's most magical moments. From William Shakespeare to Carol Ann Duffy, our most popular and best loved poets and poems are gathered in one essential collection, alongside many lesser known treasures that are waiting to be discovered. These are poems that help you to see the miraculous in the commonplace and turn the everyday into the exceptional - to discover, in Kipling's words, that yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.

    Divided into four sections: love, loss, acceptance, and growth- the content serves the purpose of making you feel and finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

    

    As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is out. It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal "Fuzznuts" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs. But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose "gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry." To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.