How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, their bodies, to express ourselves? Danger is everywhere in these poems, but never overwhelms them; the poet is always an anchor on the other side. And his story carries us relentlessly along.

    The poem started out as a simple observation of the snow in moonlight, and turned into a poem with more to offer. I'm offering it free to my readers. I've had it on my blog, where it's gotten much response, and wanted to give everyone another way to access it.

    Searching for work, sex and big-city life is Ted Owen, who quickly finds himself swept into the complicated lives of the young and the jaded, people who thrive in a strange world of hip fashion and surreal night-clubs.

    MacLeod’s young protagonist enters all the bright open avenues of peer-group play and the dark blind alleys of individual and collective terror, as she discovers within herself both the capacity for and the conflict between impulses of good and evil. In thinking back on the history of her own tight-knit group of friends, she begins to see how in the excitement of belonging to a ritualized, secret collective, the self is created by the increasing dehumanization of the other—of both the bully and the victim. The Shape of a Girl goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized Reena Virk murder in 1997 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.Jewel is also based on a real-life catastrophe—the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day, 1982. Three years later, a widow, Marjorie Clifford, at home in her trailer in Fort St. John, British Columbia, begins to take the first step in understanding that the humanity of love, in all of its tentative frailty, uncertainty and promise, can free a life paralyzed and dominated by loss.

    Poetry didn't pay the bills, so he worked on Wall Street, spending his nights at the happenings, underground movie premiers, art shows, and poetry readings that brought the city to life. An intense romantic relationship with Andy Warhol—not yet the global superstar he would soon become—exposed Giorno to even more of the downtown scene, but after starring in Warhol's first movie, Sleep, they drifted apart. Giorno soon found himself involved with Robert Rauschenberg and later Jasper Johns, both relationships fueling his creativity. He quickly became a renowned poet in his own right, working at the intersection of literature and technology, freely crossing genres and mediums alongside the likes of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.Twenty-five years in the making, and completed shortly before Giorno's death in 2019, Great Demon Kings is the memoir of a singular cultural pioneer: an openly gay man at a time when many artists remained closeted and shunned gay subject matter, and a devout Buddhist whose faith acted as a rudder during a life of tremendous animation, one full of fantastic highs and frightening lows. Studded with appearances by nearly every it-boy and girl of the downtown scene (including a moving portrait of a decades-long friendship with Burroughs), this book offers a joyous, life-affirming, and sensational look at New York City during its creative peak, narrated in the unforgettable voice of one of its most singular characters.

    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"

    Revolving around three interlocking lives, it offers, among other things, a detailed inside look at the work of paramedics, and entertaining celebrity gossip.

    Thankfully, the sexy stranger sitting next to me is more than willing to share a few kisses in the name of revenge. It gets even better when those scorching kisses turn into a night of fiery passion.  The only problem? Turns out the stranger's brother is marrying my sister later this week. Tristan: I have one rule: no messing with the guests at my vineyard resort. Of course the one exception I make turns out to be the brother of the woman my brother’s about to marry. Now we’re stuck together for a week of wedding activities, and there’s no avoiding the heat burning between us.  So fine, we make a deal: one week. One week to enjoy each other’s bodies and get it out of our system. Once the bride and groom say I do and we become family, it’ll all be over between us. Right? Brad: When Brad opens his Vegas hotel room door to find a hot police officer waiting on the other side, he assumes crazy Aunt Tilly has sent him a strip-o-gram. But instead of getting naked, Detective Gorgeous pulls out his cuffs — turns out, the badge and uniform aren’t just props, this cop is the real deal. Taming Teddy: Teddy: If there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s commitment. You don’t become an award-winning photographer by staying in one place. I’m always on the road, looking for the next shot, the next award, the next hot body. Which is how I end up on Dr. James Marian’s front porch in the middle-of-nowhere Alaska. He’s known as the Wildlife Whisperer, and I want to photograph him in action. He’s reluctant at first, but I can be persuasive.  Soon enough I have him in bed saying yes over and over and over again, but my ability to shoot and scoot is frozen by a Denali snowstorm. Jamie: I always thought of myself as the marrying type. Until I got left at the altar. Now I have a new motto: never commit and never fall in love. So when a cocky nature photographer decides I’m the key to his next masterpiece, it seems like the perfect arrangement: the hotshot’s only in town for a brief assignment and then he’ll be gone. No commitment, no strings, and no chance of getting my heart broken again. There’s just one problem: I think I’m falling in love. Now I’m afraid that maybe I’m the marrying type after all. And he definitely is not. Jumping Jude: Jude: Reaching the top of the country music charts brings out the crazy, and there’s no one crazier than my ex. Unfortunately, his threats to out me are escalating. Enter the bodyguard of my dreams. I’d probably chafe under his constant presence if his attention to my body wasn’t so… ah… thorough. Now I have to worry about outing myself to millions of fans if I can’t keep my hands off him in public. Derek: Now I’m an ex-Marine turned babysitter. If I have to hear Jude sing his mega-hit Bluebells one more time, I might murder him myself, and after 6 years in special ops, I know my way around a weapon. Unfortunately, so does he. Except his arsenal includes washboard abs and a killer set of pipes.

    Or she is and she isn’t. If you just want to boss people around, you’re a control freak, but if you can joke about it, then your bossiness is leavened by a yeast that’s all too infrequent in contemporary poetry, that of humor.”—New York Times“Shaughnessy’s voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy.”—Harvard Review“Brenda Shaughnessy . . . writes like the love-child of Mina Loy and Frank O’Hara.”—Exquisite Corpse"In its worried acceptance of contradiction, its absolute refusal of sentimentality and its acute awareness of time's 'scarce infinity,' this is a brilliant, beautiful and essential continuation of the metaphysical verse tradition." —Publishers Weekly, starred review“Human Dark with Sugar is both wonderfully inventive (studded with the strangenesses of ‘snownovas’ and ‘flukeprints’) and emotionally precise. Her ‘I’ is madly multidexterous—urgent, comic, mischievous—and the result is a new topography of the debates between heart and head.”—Matthea Harvey, a judge for the Laughlin Award"Seriously playful, sexy, sharp-edged, and absolutely commanding throughout....Here you'll meet an 'I' boldly ready to take on the world and just itching to give 'You' some smart directives. So listen up."—Library JournalIn her second book, winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award, Brenda Shaughnessy taps into themes that have inspired era after era of poets. Love. Sex. Pain. The heavens. The loss of time. The weird miracle of perception. Part confessional, part New York School, and part just plain lover of the English language, Shaughnessy distills the big questions into sharp rhythms and alluring lyrics. “You’re a tool, moon. / Now, noon. There’s a hero.”Master of diverse dictions, she dwells here on quirky words, mouthfuls of consonance and assonance—anodyne, astrolabe, alizarin—then catches her readers up short with a string of powerful monosyllables. “I’ll take / a year of that. Just give it back to me.” In addition to its verbal play, Human Dark With Sugar demonstrates the poet’s ease in a variety of genres, from “Three Sorries” (in which the speaker concludes, “I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all”), to a sequence of prose poems on a lover’s body, to the discussion of a disturbing dream. In this caffeine jolt of a book, Shaughnessy confirms her status as a poet of intoxicating lines, pointed, poignant comments on love, and compelling abstract images —not the least of which is human dark with sugar.Brenda Shaughnessy was raised in California and is an MFA graduate of Columbia University. She is the poetry editor for Tin House and has taught at several colleges, including Eugene Lang College and Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn.

    This is the poetry of a beautiful life.

    M. Forster's famous description of C. P. Cavafy--the most widely known and best loved modern Greek poet--perfectly captures the unique perspective Cavafy brought to bear on history andgeography, sexuality and language. Cavafy wrote about people on the periphery, whose religious, ethnic and cultural identities are blurred, and he was one of the pioneers in expressing a specifically homosexual sensibility. His poems present brief and vivid evocations of historical scenes andsensual moments, often infused with his distinctive sense of irony. They have established him as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. The only bilingual edition of Cavafy's collected poems currently available, this volume presents the most authentic Greek text of every poem heever published, together with a new English translation that beautifully conveys the accent and rhythm of Cavafy's individual tone of voice. In addition, the volume includes an extensive introduction by Peter Mackridge, explanatory notes that gloss Greek historical names and events alluded to in thepoems, a chronological list of the poems, and indexes of Greek and English titles.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expertintroductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

    Exploring his past with humor and astounding insight, Connor reminded his fans of why they first fell in love with him on YouTube—and revealed to newcomers how he relates to his millions of dedicated followers.Now, two years later, Connor is ready to bring to light a side of himself he’s rarely shown on or off camera. In this diary-like look at his life since A Work In Progress, Connor talks about his battles with clinical depression, social anxiety, self-love, and acceptance; his desire to maintain an authentic self in a world that values shares and likes over true connections; his struggles with love and loss; and his renewed efforts to be in the moment—with others and himself.Told through short essays, letters to his past and future selves, poetry, and original photography, Note to Self is a raw, in-the-moment look at the fascinating interior life of a young creator turning inward in order to move forward.

    Set in Montreal, a typical metropolis where strangers meet under varying circumstances and either fall in love or break apart, Julie Maroh’s gentle hues and fanciful vignettes unearth the pleasures, surprises, and complexities of love.

    

    Now, after breaking up with his longtime boyfriend, Smith looks back to his painfully normal childhood to see where all the trouble really began. Like every other American kid, Bob's adolescence was marked by alternating moments of blissful ignorance, hazy confusion, and humiliating self-consciousness. And in these pages, Bob evokes his youth with a vividness that will make you shudder and howl with recognition.In these hysterically humorous pages, Bob Smith introduces readers to his comically unsympathetic grandmother, who makes light of his carsickness: "Bob only throws up because he's near the window and he can"; to his first teacher crush, whose "five-o'clock shadow could plunge a room into darkness"; and to his first brush with fame, when he fainted from his chair during a biology filmstrip ("Way to go, Smith!"). Sharp, observant, ingeniously ironic and wholly satisfying, this new Lambda Award-nominated collection is at once bittersweet nostalgic fun and a testament to the unquestionable gifts of a highly original comic writer.