Book picks similar to
DOWN by Sarah Dowling


poetry
reality-dramatic
small-press
contemporary

Blood Lyrics: Poems


Katie Ford - 2014
    Blood Lyrics is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted, too, but it arrives at a cost: "Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise," Ford writes. "I praise the human, / gutted and rising."

My Irish Billionaires: A Contemporary Reverse Harem Romance (Forbidden Fantasies) Kindle Edition


Sofia T. Summers - 2022
    Loaded with all things taboo, Sofia promises to bring ALL your dirty fantasies to life with these outrageously naughty stories from her Forbidden Fantasies collection.Warning: Adults Only.

Dismantling the Hills


Michael McGriff - 2008
    In a world of machinists, loggers, mill workers, and hairdressers, the poems collected here bear witness to a landscape, an industry, and a people teetering on the edge of ruin. From tightly constructed narratives to expansive and surreal meditations, the various styles in this book not only reflect the poet's range, but his willingness to delve into his obsessions from countless angles Full of despair yet never self-loathing, full of praise yet never nostalgic, Dismantling the Hills is both ode and elegy. McGriff's vision of blue-collar life is one of complication and contradiction, and the poems he makes are authentic, unwavering, and unapologetically American.

Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems


Robert Bly - 1999
    He is a chronicler and mentor of young poets, was a leader of the antiwar movement, founded the men's movement, and wrote the bestselling book Iron John, which brought the men's movement to the attention of the world. Throughout these activities, Bly has continued to deepen his own poetry, a vigorous voice in a period of more academic wordsmiths. Here he presents his favorite poems of the last decades-timeless classics from Silence in the Snowy Fields, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and Loving a Woman in Two Worlds. A complete section of marvelous new poems rounds out this collection, which offers a chance to reread, in a fresh setting, a lifetime of work dedicated to fresh perspectives.

Earthlight


André Breton - 1923
    Bill Zavatsky’s and Zack Rogow’s excellent translation of Breton’s Earthlight (Clair de terre) introduces the English-language audience to the delights—and complexities—of Breton’s amazing poetry. Written to friends and fellow Surrealists such as Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Robert Desnos, Francis Picabia, Pierre Reverdy, and Max Ernst, the poems in the collection date from 1919 to 1936, spanning Breton’s involvement with Dadaism and his founding and development of Surrealism.

The Baby Contract


Shelli Quinn - 2011
    So she decided to get an artificial insemination, but when a mix up occurs at the clinic where she had the procedure done her life is changed forever.Pierce Fabrizio is shocked to find out that the sperm he thought was destroyed had been used to impregnate a woman who is now seven month pregnant with his child.Now all he had to do was get her to agree to marry him right after he got her to sign the baby contract.

The Glimmering Room


Cynthia Cruz - 2012
    Peopled with "ambassadors from the Netherworld"--the orphaned and abused, the lost and addicted--Cruz leads us through this "traveling minstrel show / Called girlhood--" which is at once tragic and magical.

The Letter Opener


Kyo Maclear - 2007
    When her co-worker Andrei, an enigmatic Romanian refugee who has become the object of her fascination, suddenly vanishes, Naiko, an employee in the Undeliverable Mail Office, searches for clues to explain his disappearance and discovers the elusive nature of truth.

F250


Bud Smith - 2014
    For now, he’s squatting in a collapsing house, working as a stone mason, driving a jacked up pickup truck that he crashes into everything. As a close friend Ods in his sleep, Lee falls into a three-way relationship with two college girls, June Doom and K Neon. F250 is a novel equal parts about growing up, and being torn apart."Bud Smith is Nick Hornby if you strapped him to a Tesla coil and launched him into a Sun made of Poetry." --Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and some for the Day

The Golden Rule


Amanda Craig - 2020
    Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train — who could possibly connect them?But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems — not least the care of a half-ruined house and garden. He claims Jinni is a very different person to the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth — and who is the real victim?

The Singing


C.K. Williams - 2003
    . . Reality has put itself so solidly before methere's little need for mystery . . . Except for us, for how we take the worldto us, and make it more, more than we are, more even than itself.--from "The World"The awards given to C.K. Williams' two most recent books--a National Book Award for The Singing and a Pulitzer Prize for Repair--complete the process by which Williams, long admired for the intensity and formal daring of his work, has come to be recognized as one of the few truly great living American poets. Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity--the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events--with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, published forty years ago. The Singing is a direct and resonant book: searing, hearfelt, permanent.The Singing is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Poetry.

Destruction Myth: Poems


Mathias Svalina - 2009
    Expanding the palette of contemporary surrealism while harkening back to the stories and prayers at the origin of poetry, DESTRUCTION MYTH is a series of absurdist myths of creation and destruction that are at times both inventively silly and surprisingly emotionally direct. This book attempts the world again and again, only to find that even the most ridiculous of creations contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Cougars In The Hollow: Complete Series


Sofia Westlake - 2019
    When she zips over to Wicker to have a look at a dead tourist, she’s pretty sure that this is the strangest case she’s ever come across. It doesn’t help that the local sheriff seems unwilling to be helpful. In fact, the only person in Wicker that seems interested in finding the murderer is the guy who owns and runs the local bar. At least Thane Bostick doesn’t tell her to leave five seconds after she introduces herself. Thane is smart and sexy in ways that defy explanation. But Belle isn’t in Wicker to find a man. She’s here to choose. Homicide, Suicide, or Death by Misadventure. Cat’s Cradle Natalie Arrington is just a painter. That’s it. She’s looking for pretty scenery to put on cards and canvases so she can sell them to tourists and make money. When someone leaves a murder victim right in the middle of her scenery, Natalie isn’t amused. Unfortunately for her, neither is anyone in Wicker, Kentucky. It wasn’t like Natalie had intended to be in Wicker. But it seems that once you’re there, you don’t ever leave. Fortunately for Natalie, the local blacksmith doesn’t seem inclined to let the sheriff bully her around. Whoever heard of a blacksmith in this day and age anyway? Cats and Dogs Spencer Evans is having a run of bad luck. Her twin brother has shacked up with his new baby mama in Spencer’s house. There’s no room for her to stick around and she’s too busy trying to pretend that she doesn’t care to admit that she does. Enter Hardison Burlington. The handsome stranger shows up in Wicker and seems to have no respect for boundaries. He shows up in Spencer’s kitchen in the middle of the night without a word of apology. Even worse. He’s charming! When Spencer takes it upon herself to keep an eye on this newcomer to see what he’s about, she finds herself sucked into Wicker’s ongoing battle between the haves and the have nots. But Hardison is too fascinating to leave alone. The man isn’t an average human, but he’s not a cougar shifter either. He’s something else and Spencer cannot imagine how that will ever fit into her life in Wicker. Cats and Kittens Franny Ikenburger is sick and tired of being called the silliest girl in Wicker. If the vicious old gossips in town had anything useful to do, maybe they would stop inventing lies to get Franny into trouble. Then a new rumor starts. But this one doesn’t involve Franny. John Moore is a quiet man who isn’t at all prepared for a whirlwind ride on the rumor mill. As Franny and John are drawn together and sucked into the seedy underbelly of Wicker’s illicit drug trade, they learn to depend on each other for a much needed reality check. Franny might be younger, but she’s not silly. And John is the only one in the world who seems to believe her. Sometimes the love and support of one man can be enough to turn things completely upside down. Cat Scratch Fever Orrin Wilshire is pretty sure he knows exactly who is behind this recent bout of killings in Wicker. He just can’t prove it. Yet. When a state investigator shows up to lend a hand, Orrin doesn’t want anything to do with her. Matilda Harbuck is an outsider. If she sticks around long enough the killer is likely to make her his next victim. But Mattie is no shrinking violet. The woman is peeling back the layers of Wicker like the rotting peel on a piece of fruit.

National Anthem


Kevin Prufer - 2008
    Set in an apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic world that is disturbing because it is uncannily familiar, National Anthem chronicles the aftermath of the failure of imperial vision. Allowing Rome and America to bleed into one another, Prufer masterfully weaves the threads of history into an anthem that is as intimate as it is far-reaching.

In My Head


J.M. Storm - 2017
    Who feel everything and everything has feeling."In My Head, the debut release of one of Instagram's most popular poets whose writing has been liked by millions, dives below the surface of love, loss, and life.J.M. Storm has crafted a haunting yet hopeful poetry collection that is meant to be felt as much as it is read.