But they’re real, they’re honest, and hopefully they’ll make you feel a little less alone." -Ashley Dun

    

    It is a recipe for womanhood that changes with the whim of the seasons and the political climate. It is a feverish fistful of musings, a comedy of errors, an instruction manual, a compass, an overheard conversation in the ladies' loo, whispered secrets over a (second) bottle of wine. It is a lamentation, an homage to fellow women, at once a celebration of things to come and a mourning of things lost. It is a redefinition of what it is to be magical and otherwordly. It exposes the complex and contradictory impulses of the human spirit, the ugly tangle of emotions we must deal with in ourselves and also as a wider society. With frankness, humour and a decided fuck-you to fear, Vanessa digs deeper than she ever has to find something resembling sorcery.

    A beloved and gifted artist, Ashbery takes his place beside Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, and Hart Crane in the canon of great American poets. With Quick Question, a new collection of poems published in time for his 85th birthday, John Ashbery proves that his creative power has only grown stronger with age.

    The design of this anthology is inspired by the structure of a sonnet: 14 Poems for 14 Themes Love; Parting and Sorrow; Inspiration; Mystery and Enigmas; Humour and Curiosities; Rapture; A Door Opens, A Door Closes; Memory; Tales and Songs; Nature; Cities; Solitude; Contemplation; and Animals. There are poems for every mood and occasion, and alongside the more famous works, are some lesser known gems of English poetry.Included are masterpieces by Shakespeare, Dickinson, Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Walt Whitman, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Yeats, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Christina Rossetti, and many other outstanding poets. Please view the preview of this book for a full listing.At Elsinore Books we pride ourselves on creating beautiful Kindle Books, and devote great attention to formatting, and ease of navigation. This book contains a cleanly-styled contents page that permits easy movement between poems. You can return at any time to the contents page by clicking on the title of each poem.The Best of Poetry Series:Volume 1: The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that BurnVolume 2: The Best of Poetry: Shakespeare, Muse of Fire Foreword Anthologies of English verse are as abundant as mushrooms after rain. So why create another?Our defence amounts to this: the kind of anthology that we wanted to own did not exist – a collection in which the poems were as carefully arranged as selected; where Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” could ignite the beauty of Hart Crane’s “Brooklyn Bridge”; where the enigmas of Browning’s “Meeting at Night”, and Hardy’s “Once at Swanage” might unravel each other; and the doubts besetting Anne Gregory in Yeats’s poem, find answers in Thomas Moore’s “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms”. In this collection, we have tried to place poems together that will strike fire off one another, and bring new light to familiar lines. We decided to structure the anthology as a sort of sonnet sequence, with fourteen poems for fourteen themes. A two-poem prologue and epilogue bring the collection to exactly two-hundred poems. In selecting which poems to include, our aim was to present the best-loved poems in the English language alongside some less commonly anthologized masterpieces. Committed as we were to a definite fourteen by fourteen structure, there were of course, many wonderful poems that we were unable to include. Shorter, lyrical pieces have generally been favoured over the longer canonical works of English poetry. Each theme in this anthology is introduced by a famous definition of poetry. Taken together, these definitions give some idea of the beauty, enchantment, and richness that poetry can offer. But it is in the poems themselves that the real treasure is to be found. We hope you will enjoy reading them.Rudolph Amsel and Teresa Keyne

    She has a crew of close girlfriends to keep her social calendar active, and is celebrating finally securing employment in her chosen field. While always free-spirited, Kristy is getting tired of the revolving door – or more accurately, bed – of random guys and failed dates, and comes up with a plan to get her act together when it comes to the opposite sex. That idea is quickly shot down by her bestie Breely Laver and replaced with a bet she can’t refuse – a free trip to Paris with her yoga instructor BFF if she can go six months without sex.Enter in charming, sexy, delicious Grey Grahl. Kristy tries to navigate a spicy new relationship without giving away her bet, while also dealing with an incredibly sensitive crisis at her job. Her first year as a full-time elementary school guidance counselor starts off with a devastating situation with a young student, and Kristy finds herself struggling to stay above water in both her professional and personal life. With her girlfriends as a support system, Kristy navigates troubled times at the school and agrees to come clean with Grey. This first book in a six-part girlfriend series introduces you to Kristy, Breely, Nora, Lauren, Tinsley and Scarlett, and takes readers on six individual stories about relationships, career choices, personal conflict and the bond of friendship.

    A man and a woman sit at the same dinner table, an ocean of worry separating them. An iceberg sets out to dance. A sword swallower ponders his dating prospects. "The vessel is simple, a rowboat among yachts," the poet observes in "Ukulele." "No one hides a Tommy gun in its case. / No bluesman runs over his uke in a whiskey rage."Beasley's voice is pithy and playful, with a ferocious intelligence that invites comparison to both Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Parker. In one of six signature sestinas, she warns, "You must not use a house to build a home, / and never look for poetry in poems." The collection’s centerpiece is a haunting sequence that engages The Traveler's Vade Mecum, an 1853 compendium of phrases for use by mail, telegraph, or the enigmatic “Instantaneous Letter Writer."Assembled over ten years and thousands of miles, these poems illuminate how intimacy is lost and gained during our travels. Decisive, funny, and as compassionate as she is merciless, Beasley is a reckoning force on the page.

    He left the Amish to join a biker's club, leaving her heart-broken. However, handsome Amish man, Jeremiah Troyer, fills in the gap that Elijah left; however, there is a major problem: Rachael's grandfather, Ben, keeps comparing him to Elijah. Setting out to prove himself fit for taking Rachael's hand in marriage, Jeremiah moves to Shipshewana to work on her brother's dairy farm. However, there are secrets that Jeremiah is keeping from Rachael. One winter morning, Rachael comes head-first with Jeremiah's secrets and is faced to deal with her own transgressions. Can God help her heal? Will he forgive her for her sins? Will she forgive herself and find true love?

    Holmes’s poems are like little stories, hooking readers while navigating issues like body image, family relationships, loneliness, failed relationships, and finding belonging. Don’t Tell Me Not to Ask Why is a call to introspection, a demand for honesty, and an affirmation of second chances.

    Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.

    More witty and stylish poetic therapy for the Venus and Mars generation.

    A slow flicker at times, a wild dance at others, Taplin stokes the emotions with his usual verbal finesse. Unique to this collection is the story of Charlie Jones, told intermittently in post meridiem hours between smaller flares of poetry and prose. Falling in love has never been so easy, but neither has getting hurt. Taplin’s existential awareness burns throughout, reminding us that our pains and joys are not so different. His thought-provoking dialogues and brief poetic synopses will invite you to admire the human condition from fresh perspectives, teach you about letting go and new growth, and somehow manage to leave you feeling full even after you’ve been completely gutted.Playing with Fire will make the sap crackle from your veins, lift the burning leaves from your limbs in one hot breath, then let the ash fall on the top of your head, soft as snow.

    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 the not-so-gentle hands of Dan Fante, this book of new poetry is more akin to surgery or the body shop than to the techniques of music and painting. Fante excises whole slices of life and lays them bare for us in inspect. Pain and self-mocking humor are the writer's tools here. He pries open and exposes his heart with the kindness of a hammer or crowbar. Indeed, what could be more ego-sizing than to have all pretense flattened, laying bare the raw self underneath? "Dan Fante allows us a glimpse of the Southern California demimonde that surely escaped his father's attention"--Los Angeles Times Book Review.

    Possessed of an unshakeable sense of entitlement and a boundless sense of self-worth, assured of the adoration of all, Matilda can break men's hearts for fun. Agnes-diffident, careworn and poor-can only gape in astonishment at the figure her pupil cuts in the world. Employed to lead and form her, she is instead buffeted about in Matilda's tumultuous wake. She loves her young student-it is impossible not to. But it is hard not to wonder if Matilda's good fortunes will ever end.