Beauty / Beauty


Rebecca Perry - 2015
    Beauty/Beauty is a book with tenderness running through its veins, exploring salvation, reparation, and the fullness of being alive; the difficulty of defining what love is, the heartbreak, the faraway friends, the overwhelming abundance of things in museums. It is alive with memories, with old loves hanging around in the corners of dark rooms, ghost mouths hidden inside the mouth you are kissing, and eulogies to dearly departed pets. Each poem creates its own tiny world to be lived in and explored; a stegosaurus is adored, a million silver spiders play dead, a list of flowers is not really a list of flowers, adorable dogs want to be friends, the flightless grow wings, and the stars turn green.

Admit to Mayhem


D.J. Adamson - 2014
    We prefer the charade that we are in control. Lillian Dove, however, is constantly reminded she has very little control over her life and only has the ability to move to the choices that come her way. The Lillian Dove Series is a journey in recovery. While Lillian is a recovering alcoholic, like many who struggle with addictions come to understand, stopping drinking does not mean life returns to normal. However, as this series begins, Lillian does realize she has compulsions and addictions to many things, not just Absolut. How we handle dependency and denial is what allows for choice. In Admit to Mayhem, Lillian needs to admit her life has become unraveled again when she becomes an eyewitness to arson. Probing into a cold case of arson sixty years ago and the arson she witnessed at the beginning of this novel helps her admit to some of her own life’s challenges and successes. Admit to Mayhem, offering comedic dysfunction, is not only a suspenseful mystery but an important step for Lillian’s self-identity--and possibly for the reader’s.Admit: I admit that my life has become unmanageable.

For the Confederate Dead


Kevin Young - 2007
    He opens with the beautiful “Elegy for Miss Brooks,” invoking Gwendolyn Brooks, who died in 2000, and who makes a perfect muse for the volume: “What the devil / are we without you?” he asks. “I tuck your voice, laced / tight, in these brown shoes.” In that spirit of intimate community, Young gives us a saucy ballad of Jim Crow, a poem about Lionel Hampton's last concert in Paris, an “African Elegy,” which addresses the tragic loss of a close friend in conjunction with the first anniversary of 9/11, and a series entitled “Americana,” in which we encounter a clutch of mythical southern towns, such as East Jesus (“The South knows ruin & likes it / thataway—the barns becoming / earth again, leaning in—”) and West Hell (“Sin, thy name is this / wait—this place— / a long ways from Here / to There”). For the Confederate Dead finds Young, more than ever before, in a poetic space that is at once public and personal. In the marvelous “Guernica,” Young’s account of a journey through Spain blends with the news of an American lynching, prompting him to ask, “Precious South, / must I save you, / or myself?” In this surprising book, the poet manages to do a bit of both, embracing the contradictions of our “Confederate” legacy and the troubled nation where that legacy still lingers.

The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson


Jeremy Noel-Tod - 2018
    More and more writers are turning to this peculiarly rich and flexible form; it defines Claudia Rankine's Citizen, one of the most talked-about books of recent years, and many others, such as Sarah Howe's Loop of Jade and Vahni Capildeo's Measures of Expatriation, make extensive use of it. Yet this fertile mode which in its time has drawn the likes of Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein and Seamus Heaney remains, for many contemporary readers, something of a mystery.The history of the prose poem is a long and fascinating one. Here, Jeremy Noel-Tod reconstructs it for us by selecting the essential pieces of writing - by turns luminous, brooding, lamentatory and comic - which have defined and developed the form at each stage, from its beginnings in nineteenth-century France, through the twentieth-century traditions of Britain and America and beyond the English language, to the great wealth of material written internationally since 2000. Comprehensively told, it yields one of the most original and genre-changing anthologies to be published for some years, and offers readers the chance to discover a diverse range of new poets and new kinds of poem, while also meeting famous names in an unfamiliar guise.

Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld


Hart Seely - 2003
    His preferred medium is the spoken word, and his audience has been limited to hard-bitten reporters and hard-core watchers of C-SPAN. Just as The Iliad and The Odyssey were spoken aloud by many bards, in many variations, before Homer captured them on paper, the Rumsfeld improvisations have finally met up with their perfect editor/enabler. Hart Seely, coeditor of O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, uncovers the gems hidden within hundreds of hours of Rumsfeld commentary, in the form of Zen verse, haiku, sonnets, lyric poetry, and free verse. In addition, Seely's sharp sleuthing has uncovered two thematic collections: Rumsfeld's Songs of Myself, and Nine Poems on the Media. The result is a hilarious and irreverently revealing book both by and about one of the world's most powerful men.

Return to evil


John Carson - 2019
    This novel has been re-written and re-branded to feature Harry McNeil as the main protagonist. It has been re-edited and God Complex will no longer be available on or around Dec 26 2019 when it finishes its run on KDP. If you have read God Complex please DO NOT buy this book. It is essentially the same, with editorial revisions. A woman is found in a local cemetery, crushed to death under a gravestone. A production company is there, filming the remake of a classic sci-fi TV show in the grounds, making the investigation more difficult for DCI Harry McNeil. It's his first day in charge of the cold case unit in Edinburgh. After spending four years in Professional Standards, he has little choice but to take the promotion. The Crown Office decides which cold cases should be reviewed, and this time, they've decided the murder of a teenage girl from twenty years ago should be re-opened. A girl who was murdered by somebody pushing a gravestone on top of her... The case gets more complicated when they find out who the latest victim is. Suddenly there are no shortage of suspects. As the filming continues, so does the killing. And McNeil wonders, has a killer been murdering for twenty years? Or is this case completely unconnected? With Frank Miller's help, he's going to find out...the hard way...

As Seen on TV: Provocations


Lucy Grealy - 2000
    With the sheer brilliance of her imagination, Grealy leads us on delightful journeys with her wit, unflinching honesty and peerless intelligence. As Seen On TV breaks the mould of the essay, and is destined, like the memoir that preceded it, to become a modern classic.You are here: a map to this book --As seen on TV --Nerve --Mirrorings --What it takes --Fool in boots --The country of childhood --My God --A brief sketch of myself at fourteen --Written in four voices for the Hungry Mind Review issue on regional writing --The story so far --The right language --The present tense --Twin world --The girls --The yellow house

(w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose


Sara Bawany - 2018
    it is the facade that many of us peruse our lives carrying, often neglecting our pain, our mental health, and most importantly, the way we are more prone to hurting others when we lack this self-awareness. (w)holehearted seeks to encompass as many stories as possible, touching on several topics, namely, spirituality, feminism, colorism, domestic violence, intersectionality, mental health and more. it aims to depict that anyone with the darkest past and pitfalls can still save themselves from drowning in the difficulties that not only plague our world, but also plague our hearts.

Cold Flame


Natalie Hames - 2018
    Hours later his body is discovered in his hot tub, a single gunshot to his head signifying an execution style killing. DI Grace Dalton is called upon to crack the case and bring the killer to justice but the more she investigates, the more she realises his lifestyle and criminal activities have accumulated a long list of enemies. Ploughing through a sea of suspects, Grace is not only under pressure to find the killer but also adapt to a new partner, DS Ryan Nash. A rogue detective with an ambiguous past and a playboy image, he's everything she despises, yet despite her protesting to DCI Harris is given no other choice other than to be his reluctant mentor. To make matters worse, the murder weapon is traced back to a previous crime at the infamous Ringfield Estate, throwing Grace into a precarious position. Known for its gun crime and ruled by the vicious Ringfield Crew, relations between the estate and the police is taut with controversy. With links between Carl and the head of the gang coming to light, Grace finds herself thrown into a confusing maze of suspects and motives. No sooner have the pieces of the puzzle fitted together, the tables of fate turn and send the pieces into disarray. Grace soon realises that if she is to solve the case she must go back to the start where a shocking revelation will reveal how pure, deep seated rage is found in the most unlikely, and quiet places.

Ghost Machine


Ben Mirov - 2010
    This debut full-length poetry collection by Ben Mirov was the winning manuscript in the 2009 Caketrain Chapbook Competition, as judged by Michael Burkard.

Advice from the Lights


Stephen Burt - 2017
    It's part nostalgia, part confusion, and part an ongoing wondering: How do any of us achieve adulthood? And why would we want to, if we had the choice? This collection is woven from and interrupted by extraordinary sequences, including Stephanie poems about Stephen's female self; poems on particular years of the poet's early life, each with its own memories, desires, insecurities, and pop songs; and versions of poems by the Greek poet Callimachus, whose present-day incarnation worries (who doesn't?) about mortality, the favor of the gods, and the career of Taylor Swift. The collection also includes poems on politics, location, and parenthood. Taken all together, this is Stephen Burt's most personal and most accomplished collection, an essential work that asks who we are, how we become ourselves, and why we make art.

Kingdom Animalia


Aracelis Girmay - 2011
    Through Aracelis Girmay's lens, everything is animal: the sea, a jukebox, the desert. In these poems, everything possesses a system of desire, hunger, a set of teeth, and language. These are poems about what is both difficult and beautiful about our time here on earth.Aracelis Girmay's debut collection won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is on the faculty at Drew University and Hampshire College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover


Mark Leidner - 2011
    Ken, the publisher, here. I couldn't be more thrilled to make this book flesh. This collection of aphorisms concise, eloquent truths contains so much poetry and passion and deep thinking, I've been caught by single pages for hours. This book is sharp, funny, tragic, irreverent, wise. All beauty. It puts fire in me. I invite you to enjoy that fire, too."

Poetry in (e) Motion: The Illustrated Words of Scroobius Pip


Scroobius Pip - 2010
    One of the UK’s most exciting up-and-coming hip-hop artists, Scroobius Pip, is a master of the spoken word lyric.From his childhood musings in the school playground to his feelings on the rat race, Pip has selected from his online fan collective artistic collaborations that bring the power of his lyrics to the printed page, creating an innovative multimedia collection of modern poetry.

Mad Honey Symposium


Sally Wen Mao - 2014
    Worldly, wily, wise: Mad Honey Symposium is an extraordinary debut."—Terrance Hayes"[Mad Honey Symposium] has all the delicacy of [Mao's] earlier writing—but now there's also a gritty, world-wise sense of humor that gives her work heavyweight swagger."—Dave EggersMad Honey Symposium buzzes with lush sound and sharp imagery, creating a vivid natural world that's constantly in flux. From Venus flytraps to mad honey eaters, badgers to empowered outsiders, Sally Wen Mao's poems inhabit the precarious space between the vulnerable and the ferocious—how thin that line is, how breakable—with wonder and verve.From "Valentine for a Flytrap":. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .There's voltagein your flowers—mulch skeins, armoryfor cunning loves. Your mouth pins every stickybody, swallowing iridescence, digestinglight. Venus, let me swim in your solarium.Venus, take me in your summer gown.Sally Wen Mao was born in Wuhan, China, and grew up in Boston and the Bay Area. She is a Kundiman fellow and 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholar. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, and West Branch, among others. She holds a BA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Cornell University, where she's currently a lecturer.