Book picks similar to
Renaissance by Ruth Forman


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Smokes and Whiskey


Tejaswini Divya Naik - 2018
    I hope that this book makes everyone feel what I felt while writing it, and that love is a universal thing, and my story is not unique. And I hope that this makes them see that there is a beyond and that they can come out happy and clean. And, that this makes them braver than they already are, and gives them that little extra push and strength that they probably need

Midnight Milkshakes: Ice Cream And Suicide Vol. II


Jack Ray - 2018
    The book features raw, blunt, and in your face poems depicting the darker side of relationships. Readers will find themes such as lies, cheating, and heartache abundant in much of this collection. Midnight Milkshakes, being the second volume of Ray's Ice Cream And Suicide, is great for returning readers to the series. The book focuses on much of the same style and mood that is common in his writings.

Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems


Rita Dove - 2021
    Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls’ night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali’s conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history’s grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine’s Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book’s final section, “Little Book of Woe,” which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you’ll hear in return is “a lifetime of song.”

Ultima Thule


Davis McCombs - 2000
    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.

Fast Animal


Tim Seibles - 2012
    Like a "fast animal," the poet's voice can swiftly change direction and tone as he crisscrosses between present and past.Built like one single sustained song, Fast Animal is alive with music, ardor, and wit that flow in utterances that are uniquely [Seibles'] and his alone."—Laure-Anne Bosselaar, author of The Hour BetweenFrom "Delores Jepps"It seems insane now, butshe’d be standing soakedin schoolday morning light,her loose-leaf notebook,flickering at the bus stop,and we almost trembledat the thought of her mouthfilled for a moment with bothof our short names. I don’t knowwhat we saw when we sawher face, but at fifteen there’sso much left to believe in… Tim Seibles, who teaches at Old Dominion University, is the author of six previous books, including Body Moves and Hurdy-Gurdy. His poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry 2010. Seibles has been the recipient of an NEA grant for poetry and Open Voice award.

Poet Be Like God


Lewis Ellingham - 1998
    He died in 1965 virtually unrecognized, yet in the following years his work and thought have attracted and intrigued an international audience. Now this comprehensive biography gives a pivotal poet his due. Based on interviews with scores of Spicer's contemporaries, Poet Be Like God details the most intimate aspects of Spicer's life-his family, his friends, his lovers-illuminating not only the man but also many of his poems. Such illumination extends also to the works of others whom Spicer came to know, including the writers Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Helen Adam, Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, Philip K. Dick, Richard Brautigan, and Marianne Moore and the painters Jess, Fran Herndon, and Jay DeFeo. The resulting narrative, an engaging chronicle of the San Francisco Renaissance and the emergence of the North Beach gay scene during the 50s and 60s, will be indispensable reading for students of American literature and gay studies.

Joker, Joker, Deuce


Paul Beatty - 1994
    In these poems, which explore aspects of race, identity, and popular culture, Beatty was honing the comic, satirical voice and vivid imagination that came to full realization in his acclaimed fiction. Joker, Joker, Deuce "moves to fierce urban rhythms, both cool and hot," writes Jessica Hagedorn. "A rush of intense visual images and electric word music."

The Weary Blues


Langston Hughes - 1925
    From the opening "Proem" (prologue poem) he offers in this first book-"I am a Negro: / Black as night is black, / Black the depths of my Africa"-Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans, at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As his Knopf editor Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 volume, illuminating the potential of this promising young voice, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race...Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal" and, he concludes, they are "the expression [of] an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, sometimes with shocking confidence and clarity: "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies / That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers/ Of the world."

Mastering Photographic Histograms: The key to fine-tuning exposure and better photo editing.


Al Judge - 2016
     Photographic Histograms are unique to Digital Photography. Most books on the subject of Photographic Histograms only discuss the Luminosity Histogram that is projected on the LCD screens of Digital cameras. There are three other types of Histograms that you should know about -- RGB, Colors, and Color Channel.Most books also only describe the basics of how to use the Luminosity Histogram to set exposure. In this relatively short but fact filled book you will learn how histograms are created and their significance to photography.Though they did not exist in the days of film photography, they are closely related to the Exposure Zones System created by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer around 1939. Can you identify with any of these experiences? Do your eyes glaze over when people talk about histograms? Do you feel that histograms are too technical for you? Are you enthused about photography but confused by all the technical jargon? Do you wonder how professional photographers get such great images? Are you tired of well-intentioned friends giving you bad advice about photography? If you answered yes to any of these questions, end the frustration. Just scroll up and grab a copy today.

The World's Stupidest Signs


Bryony Evens - 2000
    On a cruise ship - Please do not lean on the widow. In a hotel - A sports jacket may be worn to dinner, but not trousers. In a London department store - Bargain basement upstairs.

A Little Book of Love and Companionship


Ruskin Bond
    

Pieces of Air in the Epic


Brenda Hillman - 2005
    Pieces of Air in the Epic is the second book of a tetrology that takes the elements--earth, air, water, fire--as its subject. As Hillman's previous collection, Cascadia, explores "earth," the present collection considers "air"--the many meanings of the word and the life-giving medium we breathe--to test a reality that is both political and personal.These formally inventive poems reexamine epic and lyric, braiding fact and dream, the social with the self. Hypnotic, spare verses use air on the page as a matrix for cultural healing; some are presided over by a feminine presence and address war in human history, while others are set in streets, parks and wilderness. There are meditations on auras, dust motes, and reading in libraries as acts of restorative memory. This work fuses animist consciousness with cautionary prophecy, and belongs to the mode of H.D. and Robert Duncan. Hillman's poetry continues to explore ways in which human life might be redeemed by imagination.

Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker


Susan Howe - 2013
    Scribble grammar has no neighbor. In the name of reason I need to record something because I am a survivor in this ocean.

The Tradition


Jericho Brown - 2019
    Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we’ve become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown’s mastery, and his invention of the duplex―a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues―testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.

Straw Bale Gardening


Joel Karsten - 2013
    He has perfected the perfect way for anyone to have a garden without weeding, bending over, or using chemicals. If you follow his step by step methods and suggestions you will be assured to grow a beautiful and productive garden this year, even if you have never gardened before. The best part is that if the soil in your backyard is less than productive it doesn't matter at all. If you have sunlight and water, you will have a great garden this year. From the Arctic Circle in Northern Alaska to the heat of the desert in Saudi Arabia, people are using this method, and having great success. The booklet is full color with 78 pages, and has a perfect bind booklet binding.