Delicate Thoughts


M. Ballard - 2017
    Ballard. Written raw and emotionally, it explores heartbreak, depression, and women empowerment.

Perennial


Kelly Forsythe - 2018
    Deeply researched and even more deeply felt, Perennial inhabits landscapes of emerging adulthood and explosive cruelty―the hills of Pittsburgh and the sere grass of Colorado; the spines of books in a high school library that has become a killing ground; the tenderness of children as they grow up and grow hard, becoming acquainted with dread, grief, and loss.

Itself


Rae Armantrout - 2015
    Self and it (word and particle) are ritual and rigmarole, song-and-dance and long distance call into whatever dark matter might exist. How could a self not be selfish? Armantrout accesses the strangeness of everyday occurrence with wit, sensuality, and an eye alert to underlying trauma, as in the poem Price Points where a man conducts an imaginary orchestra but gets no points for originality. In their investigations of the cosmically mundane, Armantrout's poems use an extraordinary microscopic lens--even when she's glancing backwards from the outer reaches of space. An online reader's companion is available at http: //raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.

Tremble


C.D. Wright - 1961
    Wright interweaves familiar, coloquial speech with strikingly inventive language, leaving each poem a distinctive entity, yet interconnected by linked metaphors and images.

Repair


C.K. Williams - 1999
    K. Williams's sensual poems, but it is also an imaginative treatment of the consternations that interrupt life's easy narrative. National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Williams keeps the self in repair despite love, death, social disorder, and the secrets that separate and join intimates. These forty poems experiment with form but maintain what Alan Williamson has heralded Williams for having so steadily developed from French influences: "the poetry of the sentence."

A Conceptual Circus


Kenneth Jarrett Singleton - 2017
    Carry your sword, my prophetess. Obstinate contumacy training. Find the objective that is more draining. More strenuous tasks will make you grow. Pain upon you I bestow. I’ll take it all and nothing less. I claim it back; I repossess. Tip the scale; Turn it over. Mark the unused; What’s leftover. The main part no longer exists; Despite the reduction, it persists. Continued movement; A quest for traction. An opposite and negative reaction. Hex induced metamorphosis; Reoccur once again for us. Physically and internally changing. The process of rearranging. The alteration was so fitting. Now they’re pausing; They’re intermitting. In reaffirming the causation; Keep kempt, and maintain your original explanation. Wear our serpent, prophetess; Prior to you was profitless. The soil was sown with no reaping. Tear our hearts out for your keeping. Beyond the boundaries of what is permitted. Reward me for the sins I’ve committed. My acts were bold; Caress my flesh. I give it all and nothing less. The facsimile will shudder. Express what it is I utter. Amidst psychos and others. Among psychos and others. Live with vigor; Efficiently transfigure. Disfigure; Change his figure. Make it so; Mark the torso. Undergo; Nock the torso. Let it grow; Open the torso. Let him know; Carve the torso.

Let Her Go


M. Ocean - 2015
    M. Ocean explores the depths of love deeply felt and violently lost. For those whose wounds are fresh and hearts still raw with ample emotion, Ocean portrays pain and suffering in apt and heart wrenching candour.

We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress


Craig Morgan Teicher - 2018
    The poet trains to hear clearly and, as much as possible, without interruption, the voice of his or her mind, the voice that gathers, packs with meaning, and unpacks the language he or she knows. It can take a long time to learn to let this voice speak without getting in its way. This slow learning, the growth of this habit of inner attentiveness, is poetic development, and it is the substance of the poet’s art. Of course, this growth is rarely steady, never linear, and is sometimes not actually growth but diminishment—that’s all part of the compelling story of a poet’s way forward. —from the Introduction“The staggering thing about a life’s work is it takes a lifetime to complete,” Craig Morgan Teicher writes in these luminous essays. We Begin in Gladness considers how poets start out, how they learn to hear themselves, and how some offer us that rare, glittering thing: lasting work. Teicher traces the poetic development of the works of Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, Louise Glück, and Francine J. Harris, among others, to illuminate the paths they forged—by dramatic breakthroughs or by slow increments, and always by perseverance. We Begin in Gladness is indispensable for readers curious about the artistic life and for writers wondering how they might light out—or even scale the peak of the mountain.

I Am The Architect of My Own Destruction


Juansen Dizon - 2018
    A collection of poetry about depression, survival, and healing: featuring "Self-Love Manifesto" an inspirational poem that became viral on Tumblr which explores what it truly means to fall in love with your being.

soft thorns


bridgett devoue - 2017
    our darkest times are where we grow the most, so in this book, i share mine, and together, we learn how to heal.

The Opening of the Field: Poetry


Robert Duncan - 1960
    "Structures of Rime" affirms his belief in the universal integrity of the poem itself in the living process of language. Thus in "The Structure of Rime I" he declares: "O Lasting Sentence, / sentence after sentence I make in your image. In the feet that measure the dance of my pages I hear cosmic intoxications of the man I will be."

able is she


R.H. Sin - 2019
    Moods for strong women who are weary from heartache.

Boris by the Sea


Matvei Yankelevich - 2009
    The world was 'somewhere inside his skull. And it hurt.' These poems and dramatic sketches, however, delight even when they hurt" -- ROSMARIE WALDROP"BORIS BY THE SEA was born when Aesop was reading Chekhov, and Chekhov was reading Nietzsche, and Nietzsche was watching The Brother From Another Planet. Actually Matvei Yankelevich wrote this book, but 'wrote' is incomplete... he seems more to inhabit this stateless, beautiful being who uses language to move his body or erase the sea: 'Boris looked over himself and realized there were many parts of him that he could not see. And only a small part of these parts was on the surface.' BORIS BY THE SEA could be a children's fable if it weren't so freakin' real, unreal, hyper-real: 'But people need each other to open each other up and see what is inside.' This is Boris--and he, like Pinnochio--has a clever master." -- ROBERT FITTERMANMatvei Yankelevich's first full-length book, BORIS BY THE SEA, is a work of existential theater that destroys the distance between puppeteer and puppet, between ego and id, between what is real and what is absurd. Consisting of prose, poems, and plays, the book creates its own world and then confronts the loneliness of having to exist within one's own creation. Like Daniil Kharms, Yankelevich has written a children's book for only the bravest of adults.

Rhythms and Roads


Victoria Erickson - 2016
    While her writings in this book radiate a fresh and new wonder, they continue to showcase Erickson's unforgettable and infectious zeal for life. The reader feels called away from the mundane and inconsequential by her trademark blend of poetic grace and electrifying enthusiasm. Rhythms and Roads will do more than enchant one's soul and inspire; it promises to awaken memories long forgotten and to breathe into them a spirit of lively possibility. This exhilarating collection is the perfect companion for anyone ready to break cages and fall into a sea of deep, soulful, courageous living.

A Suffering Soul: Dark Love Poems (Dark Love Poetry Book 1)


Darren Heart - 2014
    Containing a collection of poems by the author that, not only investigates the lighter side of love, but also dares to delve deeper, taking the reader on a journey into the darker aspects of love, such as indecision, rejection, fear, betrayal, loss and finally death. Inspired by his own love story, and subsequent bereavement, the author writes emotionally, and from the heart, often resulting in poems that bring a tear to the eye. For information on more chapbooks in Dark Love Poetry series, please visit the authors website located at www.darrenheart.com