Haiku are practiced by poets, lovers, and schoolchildren, by “political haiku” twitterers, by anyone who has the desire to pin preception and experience into a few quick phrases. This essay offers readers unparalleled insight into the living heart of haiku—how haiku work and what they hold, and how to read through and into their images to find a full expression of human life and perceptions, sometimes profound, sometimes playful.

    While she struggles to make it to midnight on New Year's Eve, while she’s starting to hear more eulogies than symphonies, while she’ll forever be disheartened by what she weighs (and forever unable to stop weighing herself), there is plenty to cherish at ninety: hanging out with the people she loves. Playing a relentless game of Scrabble. And still sleeping tush-to-tush with the same man to whom she’s been married for sixty years. Accompanied by Laura Gibson’s whimsical illustrations, Nearing Ninety’s amusing and touching reflections make this collection relatable to readers of all ages. With the wisdom and spunk of someone who’s seen it all, Viorst gently reminds us that everybody gets old, and that the best medicine at any age is laughter.

    The anthology - the 22nd of its kind - is introduced by Jeannette Winterson. If you buy only one poetry book this year, this deserves to be it.

    I read his work with awe and admiration.”—Ben Marcus “Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' . . . But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary—a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible.”—Cal Bedient This clear-eyed new work from a favorite young poet is searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Joe Wenderoth’s determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness. “Luck” So a screaming woke you just in time An animal’s scream, or animals’. What kind of animal it was doesn’t matter, and cannot, in any case, be determined. The point is you are saved. Your mouth has been opened. Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore and is the author of five books of prose and poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

    0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press

    This popular art form is the poetic expression of Zen Buddhism. Traditionally, a haiku poem is just 17 syllables long, which requires the poet, like the follower of Zen, to cut through surface appearances to the heart of an experience. In this collection, translator Jonathan Clements seeks to capture the elusive spirituality that enabled the Japanese poets to preserve their experience of the moment in a mere three lines.

    Whether he is musing on antic glories amid the ruins of the Acropolis or watching a New York child invent games on the city’s sidewalks, Corso is there in it, putting us into it, with the magic of vision, with the senses—awakening images, that transmute reality into something more—insights that let us share his joy and echo his shout of Long live Man!

    A title guaranteed to generate "No, wait, read this one!" responses, "The Armpit of Doom" is more mayhem from one of the masters. (J. Patrick Lewis, US Children's Poet Laureate, author of "Please Bury Me in the Library")Kenn Nesbitt wrote a book of poems A funny one I think. And though it's colored black and white Watch it tickle you PINK! (Douglas Florian, author and illustrator of "Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings")Kenn Nesbitt's brain is the clown car of children's poetry. I don't know how they all fit in there, but they keep tumbling out, one after another, each one funnier than the one before it. (Eric Ode, poet and songwriter. Author of "When You're a Pirate Dog and Other Pirate Poems")I liked "Armpit" (the book) a lot. Armpits aren't my favorite body part. (Bruce Lansky, author of "If Pigs Could Fly... And Other Deep Thoughts" and "My Dog Ate My Homework")Despite the many warnings ("Please Don't Read This Poem!") kids cannot escape the odorous allure of Nesbitt's THE ARMPIT OF DOOM! No problem. They won't want to! Instead they will find "There's only one solution. Here's what you'll have to do: Tell all your friends and family they shouldn't read it too!" (Charles Ghigna, AKA "Father Goose," author of "Score! 50 Poems to Motivate and Inspire")What makes this collection most special are the contemporary details sprinkled throughout (the iPod, XBox, and Kindle, Red Bull, J.K. Rowling, scrunchies, computer woes). Kids will really love the clever nonsense in poems like "On the Thirty-Third of Januaugust" and "It's Fun to Leave the Spaces Out." Teachers, beware: theirsentencesmightlooklikethisforafewdaysafterreadingthisbook!" (Janet Wong, author of "You Have to Write")Fans of Kenn Nesbitt will gobble up this new offering, which combines his infallible command of rhyme scheme with the hilarious--yet oddly contemplative--wisdom of a child pondering the world. (Joyce Sidman, author of "Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature")

    Winner of the 2003 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, judged by Joe Wenderoth, who comments, in his introduction: There are many ways to hear 'it takes off the top of my head.' For me, the most important way to hear it is: it makes me suddenly and oddly aware that I am alive--aware that I am simultaneously at the end and the beginning of my power, which is simply to be there and to say so. Foust's poems do this for me; I feel akin to the mute struggler that lurks all around these poems that eludes so many attempts at saying that and where and how he is. The struggle is, in my view, dignified -- never self-congratulatory, never self-pitying -- and it has produced sounds for us to come back to--sounds for us to set out from--Joe Wenderoth, from the introduction.

    Dystopia has become a reality. This is the new normal in our apocalyptic politics - but if we accept it, our helplessness is guaranteed. To bring about real change, argues activist and political philosopher Srecko Horvat, we must first transform our mindset.Ranging through time and space, from the partisan liberation movements of Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia to the contemporary culture, refugee camps and political frontlines of 21st century Europe, Horvat shows that the problems we face today are of an unprecedented nature. To solve them, he argues in this passionate call for a new radical internationalism, we must move beyond existing ways of thinking: beyond borders, national identities and the redundant narratives of the past. Only in this way can we create new models for living and, together, shape a more open and optimistic future.

    The wit and wisdom of the West, as documented by Dalton Wilcox, poet laureate of the West.

    In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.’” — Sam Pink

    "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.

    Shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2018.Let Me Tell You This is a vital exploration of racism, gender and the sustaining and restorative bonds between women, told with Jassat’s searing precision and lyricism. Her poems seep into the reader, and deliver a punch to the chest."A punchy, powerful debut." - Jackie Kay (Trumpet)"An important collection of poems, incisive, delicate and precise, as it interrogates the trauma of systemic and every day racism. Jassat is unflinching as she delivers lyrical gut punches that stay with you for days." - Nikesh Shukla (The One Who Wrote Destiny)

    There was a woman.There was a cross. But in factthey have hung him too high to be touched.—from "A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus"