I am not impatient—My skin will wait to greet its old complexions.I'll lie here till the world swims back again. —from "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh"Thomas James's Letters to a Stranger—originally published in 1973, shortly before James's suicide—has become one of the underground classics of contemporary poetry. In this new edition, with an introduction by Lucie Brock-Broido and four of James's poems never before published in book form, this fraught and moving masterpiece is at last available.Letters to a Stranger is a new book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, edited by Mark Doty, dedicated to bringing essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print.

    Written as a catharsis in the months following the loss of her father in late 2016, Jessica has taken pen to page to say things he and others will never read, either because they can't, or just won't. Containing entirely new works, this is a can't miss release.

    You paint with words and that is beautiful." "Your words capture a truth some may feel but be unable to word." "Definitely a skilled tongue." Join over 10,000 people who follow and enjoy Andrea Michelle's poetry. Download now for free!

    Political and iconoclastic, Anne Boyer’s poems dally in pastoral camp and a dizzying, delightful array of sights and sounds born from the dust of the Kansas plains where dinner for two is cooked in Fire King and served on depression ware, and where bawdy instructions for a modern “Home on the Range” read:Mix a drink of stock lot:vermouth and the water table.And the bar will smell of IBP.And you will lick my Laura Ingalls.In Boyer’s heartland, “Surfaces should be worn. Lamps should smolder. / Dahlias do bloom like tumors. The birds do rise like bombs.” And the once bright and now crumbling populism of Marxists, poets, and folksingers springs vividly back to life as realism, idealism, and nostalgia do battle amongst the silos and ditchweed.Nothing, too, is a subject:dusk regulating the blankery.Fill in the nightish sky with ardent,fill in the metaphorical smell.A poet and visual artist, Anne Boyer lives in Kansas, where she co-edits the poetry journal Abraham Lincoln and teaches at Kansas City Art Institute.

    What is the difference, he asks, between good and evil, cruelty and instruction, risk and trust? Against the backdrop of the natural world, Phillips pitches the restlessness of what it means to be human, as he at once deepens and extends a meditation on that space where the forces of will and imagination collide with sexual and moral conduct.

    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."

    What he witnessed there, with 10,000 participants, is shocking.In Blue Front, Collins describes the brutal lynching of a black man and, as an afterthought, a white man, both of them left to the mercilessness of the spectators. The poems patch together an arresting array of evidence—newspaper articles, census data, legal history, postcards, photographs, and Collins's speculationsabout her father's own experience. The resulting work, part lyric and part narrative, is a bold investigation into hate, mob mentality, culpability, and what it means to be white in a country still haunted by its violently racist history.

    The poems in this wonderful collection touch all of the events and places that meant the most to Philip Levine. There are lyrical poems about his family and childhood, the magic of nighttime and the power of dreaming; tough poems about the heavy shift work at Detroit's auto plants, the Nazis, and bosses of all kinds; telling poems about his heroes--jazz players, artists, and working people of every description, even children. Other poems celebrate places and things he loved: the gifts of winter, dawn, a wall in Naples, an English hilltop, Andalusia. And he makes peace with Detroit: "Slow learner that I am, it took me one night/to discover that rain in New York City/is just like rain in Detroit. It gets you wet." It is a peace that comes to full fruition in a moving goodbye to his home town in the final poem in the collection, "The Last Shift."

    Her first husband died, leaving her a single parent; her second husband abusive. She has overcome all those difficulties and is now very successful. Julia has everything she could ever want: a beautiful daughter, a loving family, a best friend, and financial security. The only thing missing from her life is a true love, but Julia has given up on ever finding that.Rev. Reginald Pennington is a man with a past that would surprise many. He is ashamed of his past, but he is now a different man. He is a man with a purpose—to spread the word of God. When his path crosses with Julia's, the electricity between them is very evident to everyone but him. He keeps her at arm's length, wanting to be with her but telling himself he has no plans to get involved.Julia and Reggie become fast friends after a business deal between her company and his church. At first, they tell themselves it is merely friendship. Julia's feelings change when Reggie sends mixed signals. Each has a past that they must come to terms with; things for which they must forgive themselves in order to move forward. Life-altering events bring surprises and sorrow that test their faith in God, themselves, and each other.

    Luke loves her with all his heart, but the only thing standing in the way of their happiness is the fact that he could be April’s baby daddy. Scarlett feels hurt and finds herself drawn in an unlikely relationship with Troy as he sets out to win her heart. However, unbeknownst to him, she’s not exactly keeping things completely honest. Nina wants nothing more than to get back with her kid’s father, Stephen. However, Stephen has moved on with an old friend of Nina’s and this union threatens any type of chance that she and Stephen have at being together. Rick continues to lurk in the shadows, definitely making it hard for Nina to ever find happiness with anyone other than himself. Sheila struggles with loving Jay as Jay struggles with losing Scarlett. To add to the confusion, Jay refuses to come to terms with the possibility of being April’s other baby daddy to her unborn child. Sheila is still on a road to redemption, but finds herself questioning Scarlett’s loyalty to her as veiled secrets are slowly being revealed. Will she find out the truth about Scarlett and her father messing around or will the tables turn and reveal some nasty details about herself? There are always two sides to every story. However, in this series, there are numerous sides to a story that only one can imagine… SCARLETT3

    Joaquin and Nayeli grew so close that one without the other began to feel like a disability. Not in the sense of being incomplete separately, but in the sense of being so for each other in oneness that distance feels like a severing of their combined hearts and souls. At first, love was a distraction. One that they both fought to keep away. Now, it’s the only thing they’re fighting to have remain. There’s just one problem – their lack of being completely honest with each other becomes the sever that may separate them completely and permanently. Will that be the case? Or will love find a way to reconnect their tattered souls and tie them to each other for eternity?

    Maurice Manning extolls the virtues of nature and its many gifts, and finds deep gratitude for the mysterious hand that created it all. that bare branch that branch made black by the rain the silver raindrop hanging from the black branch Boss I like that black branch I like that shiny raindrop Boss tell me if I’m wrong but it makes me think you’re looking right at me now isn’t that a lark for me to think you look that way upside down like a tree frog Boss I’m not surprised at all I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute you’re always up to something I’ll say one thing you’re all right all right you are even when you’re hanging Boss

    Beginning with a painting done in 2003, the poems move backwards in time to 1 BC, where an architectural fragment is painted on an architectural fragment, highlighting visual art’s strange relationship between the image and the thing itself. The total effect is exhilarating—a wholly original, personal take on art history coupled with Bang’s sly and elegant commentary on poetry’s enduring subjects: Love, Death, Time and Desire. The recipient of numerous prizes and awards, Bang stands at the front of American poetry with this new work, asking more of the English language, and enticing and challenging the reader.

    African American Studies. CRANIAL GUITAR collects poems that first appeared in The Ancient Rain and Crowded with Loneliness, and includes the entire text of the long-out-of-print Golden Sardine, in the only major collection available of the late poet Bob Kaufman. Kaufman was active (except during a decade long self-imposed silence) in the poetry scenes of San Francisco and New York from the 1950s to the 1980s, and has attained cult status for his place at the forefront of the Beat movement. "Kaufman is also known as one of America's true surrealist poets, a premier jazz poet, and a major poet of the black consciousness movement. So much did he embody a French tradition of the poet as outsider, madman, and outcast, that in France, Kaufman was called the Black Rimbaud."--from the introduction by David Henderson.