Torn Awake


Forrest Gander - 2001
    Proposing models of hybridity, each of the book's major sequences develops a unique subject, rhythm, and form. Bringing to light the molten potential at the core of personality, the poems illuminate ways that language, as history read by anthropologists, discourse between lovers, gestures between parent and child, graffiti in temples, or even language as an event in itself (the very experience of words at play), incarnates presence. Addressing father and son relationships, and venerating erotic love, Gander's poems surge with vitality: the energy of active discovery.

The New Testament


Jericho Brown - 2014
    These poems bear witness to survival in the face of brutality, while also elegizing two brothers haunted by shame, two lovers hounded by death, and an America wounded by war and numbered by religion. Brown summons myth, fable, and fairytale not to merely revise the Bible—more so to write the kind of lyric poetry we find at the source of redemption—for the profane and for the sacred.

Distance from Loved Ones


James Tate - 1990
    "Mr. Tate is an elegant and anarchic clown. A lord of poetic misrule with a serious, subversive purpose."-John Ash, New York Times Book Review "Tate brings to his work an extravagantly surrealistic imagination and a willingness to let his words take him where they will. Nonchalant in the midst of radical uncertainty, he handles bizarre details as though they were commonplace facts. [Tate's poetry draws upon] so rich a fund of comic energy that is may well prove an antidote to the anxiety some readers feel with poems that refuse to lend themselves to instant analysis."-David Lehman, Washington Post Book World

Quotes of Wisdom - 99 Buddha's quotes


Raja Vishupadi - 2013
    These quotes are a source of inspiration and motivation.Read these quotes to meditate and think about all the wisdom they contain.

Unnatural Causes


Tober Charles - 2019
    Matt McRaid, whose ancestors left the island more than a century before, joins a team of ruthless treasure hunters in search of untold wealth. One of their number is killed within hours and others soon follow. At first their deaths are put down to freak accidents but after only a couple of days in this mysterious place it becomes apparent to Matt that the true cause is far more strange ... and much more dangerous both to them and the whole of humanity.

A Collection of Rumi: Quotes and Poetry


Alayna Miller - 2016
    Rumi is one of the greatest poetical geniuses and spiritual masters in human history. His name stands for Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Today, Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the west and has been described to be on par with Beethoven, Shakespeare and Mozart. During a 25 year period, Rumi composed over 70,000 verses of poetry focusing on diverse and varied topics. Rumi’s influence goes beyond nationalities and ethnicities with his work having been translated in numerous languages around the world. His work is mystical and intensely philosophical, with poems of fiery soulful expression, to passionate love verses filled with yearning and desire. Rumi describes the life of mystics as a “gathering of lovers, where there is no high or low, smart or ignorant, no proper schooling required.” He believed in a life journey following a love-based principle free of guilt, fear and shame. The bringing together of a wealthy nobleman and a poor wanderer serve as a reminder to us all that inspiration can come from anywhere and anyone can aid us in advancing our growth.

A Matter of Life and Sex


Oscar Moore - 1992
    From the stirrings of his adolescent libido to his eventual death from AIDS, Oscar Moore's hero confronts his destiny with raw candour, shocking self-awareness, and frightening fatalism.

overheard at waitrose: poetry of the public


Idiocratea - 2018
    104 pages of gossiping, loving and pestering of the British upper class, accompanied by illustrations, will definitely not disappoint.

The Night Listener


Armistead Maupin - 2000
    As Noone's friendship with the dying boy grows, he feels he can unlock his innermost feelings. But troubling questions arise, and he is forced to confront all his relationships - familial, romantic and erotic.

Heaven


Rowan Ricardo Phillips - 2015
    Swerving elegantly from humor to heartbreak, from Colorado to Florida, from Dante's Paradise to Homer's Iliad, from knowledge to ignorance to awe, Phillips turns his gaze upward and outward, probing and upending notions of the beyond. "Feeling, real feeling / with all its faulty / Architecture, is / Beyond a god's touch"--but it does not elude Phillips. Meditating on feverish boyhood, on two paintings by Chuck Close, on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, on a dead rooster by the side of the road in Ohio, on an elk grazing outside his window, his language remains eternally intoxicating, full of play, pathos, and surprise. "The end," he writes, "like / All I've ever told you, is uncertain." Or, elsewhere: "The only way then to know a truth / Is to squint in its direction and poke." Phillips--who received a 2013 Whiting Writers' Award as well as the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award--may not be certain, but as he squints and pokes in the direction of truth, his power of perception and elegance of expression create a place where beauty and truth come together and drift apart like a planet orbiting its star. The result is a book whose lush and wounding beauty will leave its mark on readers long after they've turned the last page.

The First Four Books of Poems


W.S. Merwin - 1975
    I make no prayer. Save us the green In the weed of time.Now is November; In night uneasy Nothing I say. I make no prayer. Save us from the water That washes us away.What do I ponder? All smiled disguise, Lights in cold places, I make no prayer. Save us from air That wears us loosely.The leaf of summer To cold has come In little time. I make no prayer. From earth deliver And the dark therein.Now is no whisper Through all the living. I speak to nothing. I make no prayer. Save us from fire Consuming up and down.Evening with Lee Shore and CliffsSea-shimmer, faint haze, and far out a bird Dipping for flies or fish. Then, when over That wide silk suddenly the shadow Spread skating, who turned with a shiver High in the rocks? And knew, then only, the waves' Layering patience: how they would follow after, After, dogged as sleep, to his inland Dreams, oh beyond the one lamb that cried In the olives, past the pines' derision. And heard Behind him not the sea's gaiety but its laughter.The FishermenWhen you think how big their feet are in black rubber And it slippery underfoot always, it is clever How they thread and manage among the sprawled nets, lines, Hooks, spidery cages with small entrances. But they are used to it. We do not know their names. They know our needs, and live by them, lending them wiles And beguilements we could never have fashioned for them; They carry the ends of our hungers out to drop them To wait swaying in a dark place we could never have chosen. By motions we have never learned they feed us. We lay wreaths on the sea when it has drowned them.

The House of Impossible Beauties


Joseph Cassara - 2018
    Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.As the mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. Told in a voice that brims with wit, rage, tenderness, and fierce yearning, The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love, family, and the dynamism of the human spirit.