Linda Pastan writes, "the art that mattered / was the life led fully / stanza by swollen stanza." That life is portrayed here, from memories of the poet's earliest childhood and the ambiguities of marriage and love to the surprises that come with age, always with a consciousness of what is happening in the larger world.

    0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press

    Stallings, recipient of the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award, uniquely juxtaposes poetic meditations on mythological themes with poems about the everyday occurances of contemporary life -- such as losing an umbrella or fishing with one's father. In doing so, Archaic Smile continually bridges the gap between these two distant but interrelated worlds with striking insights. James Dickey, having praised the author's accomplished critical skills, also points out that she has "the most indispensable quality that a poet must have: an original way of looking at things." A.R. Ammons aptly characterizes the power of her mythological poems in his comments on "Apollo Takes Charge of His Muses" which he chose for The Best American Poetry: "It delivers the ancient past into our present with such astonishing justness that I'm silenced with appreciation." Archaic Smile is a powerful debut collection by a provacative poet who has found strikingly original ways to personalize our myths and conjure the deep significances of our everyday life.

    The book and the dream are the poet’s primary objects of investigation here. Through deft, quietly authoritative lyrics, Fisher meditates on the problems and possibilities—the frail craft—of perception for the reader, the dreamer, maintaining that “if the eye can love—and it can, it does—then I held you and was held.” In her foreword to the book, Louise Glück writes that Fisher’s poetry is “haunting, elusive, luminous, its greatest mystery how plain-spoken it is. Sensory impressions, which usually serve as emblems of or connections to emotion, seem suddenly in this work a language of mind, their function neither metonymic nor dramatic. They are like the dye with which a scientist injects his specimen, to track some response or behavior. Fisher uses the sense this way, to observe how being is converted into thinking.”

    Lana’s music and lyrics evoke images of a saturated Kodachrome photograph, so it would stand to reason that she’d now add “poet” to her artist’s kit. Even without music, her words work their way around you, pulling you into a world that’s not unlike a David Lynch movie.[from barnesandnoble.com]

    Her poems take us to the flip side of human consciousness, where anything can happen at any time. Tinged with surrealism, her work makes visionary leaps from the quotidian to sudden, surprising epiphanies.

    

    

    About a guy and his punk band. Who start out shitty, but persevere, and eventually become pretty popular. If I mentioned that Ben Foster is better known as Ben Weasel from Screeching Weasel, you'll get a much more nuanced idea about what this book is about, and certainly, what this novel MIGHT be based upon. Regardless, it's a great, rollicking read. Whether or not it's entirely true, or entirely false, anyone with any knowledge of 90s punk in America will recognise large chunks of this. And anyone with any interest in, appreciation of, or experience of being in a band, breaking up with a girl, or punk rock, will thoroughly enjoy. It's that good. Though why he had to kill off his guitarist and best friend at the end I'll leave to his shrink to fathom...

    Every woman should know the feelings of being loved and radiating those feelings back to her mate. This is a beautiful expression of heartfelt emotion using short, gratifying sentiments. If there is a lover in you, you will not get enough of "Her."

    Replacing the slim volume which introduced Stevie Smith to American readers, New Selected Poems is chronologically arranged and contains 165 poems along with many of the author's doodles.

    – Shubhangi Swarup (Latitudes of Longing)

    And he also showed that within him beat the heart of an artist -- a major factor in his resilience and recovery.Now with Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?, his first collection of poetry, Antwone Fisher reveals the inner truths that took him from a tumultuous childhood to the man he is today. The powerful poems presented here range from impressions and expressions of Antwone's years growing up to the love that he has gained from the family he made for himself as an adult.From the title poem -- which is featured prominently in the movie Antwone Fisher -- a plaintive, haunting tribute to a childhood lost to abuse and neglect, to "Azure Indigo," the uplifting and touching poem about his daughters, many readers will find their own feelings and experiences reflected in this lyrical and passionate collection.

    He's set to wrestle and study creative writing at Columbia University in New York. These poems are a look into his early experiences with love and loss, an introspective coming of age tale told in verse.

    By turns sassy and serious, the poems can seem to sprint in two directions at once, managing to make the reader laugh at the same time they are struck by the emotional strength of the work. "Charming, inviting, beguiling and delightful poems in the language of someone who seems alive speaking refreshing riddles to herself." SHEILA HETI"Uptalk is a book of transcribed whale songs. Some scientists gave a whale a microphone and she took it home and stayed up all night under the covers talking to herself about faces and word-parts. I am delighted that Kimmy took it upon herself to transcribe this unique document of marine biology, and my heart goes out to the brilliant, charming whale author, wherever she may be." SARA WOODS