In the world of these poems, no one is innocent; everyone is confined to the complexity, absurdity, and, above all, fallibility of their human condition…. Anchoring the work is a conversational, lyrical speaker willing to implicate herself as part of the political and social constructs she criticizes, as when she depicts a Southern American culture still reeling from its history of social injustice, and even the Civil War: “Don’t tell us/ history. Nobody hearts a cemetery/ like we do.” It’s a fantastic collection; Belieu desires not to dress issues up but confront them.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review“A smart and nettling book of poems — about love, sex, social class and our free-floating anxieties — from a writer who is a comedian of the human spirit. Her crisp free verse has as many subcurrents as a magnetic field.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times"Politics, pop culture, and parenthood appear here along with reflections on our collective moments of hypocrisy and hope. '12-Step,' one of the most resonant entries, begins innocuously with a meditation about lighthouses, then the speaker gathers speed and confidence and reaches a risky but profound one-word stanza—'myself'—before ending with a haunting inversion of the Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Amid the quips and the elegant observations about immortality, Belieu's speakers never forget their responsibilities, or their possibilities." —Booklist"From poem to poem in the smart, savvy Slant Six, Belieu channels an updated American idiom, one of stubborn in-betweenhood. Like the plain-spoken poetry that plumbed the depths of American consciousness in the 20th century, Belieu trawls the shallows of today’s America and finds just as much caught in its oily reflections as in its murkier subcurrents. It’s '[b]etter,' she suggests, 'to forget perfection.'" —The Boston Globe“I’ve never read a poem by Erin Belieu that I didn’t want to immediately rip from its bindings so I could fold it up and carry around in my pockets and read so many times that the paper turned back into pulp. She’s just that good. That honest and brave and beautiful and wise and funny. She writes poems we need. Poems that say who I am and who you are and how and why we got to be this way. Poems that wonder if we can ever change. Poems that know us and show us and grace us. Poems that remember us and forget us and leave us dazzled in their dust. In Slant Six, she’s outdone herself. It’s a spellbinding, heart-opening beauty of a book.” —Cheryl Strayed"Erin Belieu . . . is always ready to surprise, to astonish, and, ultimately, to defy comparison."—Boston Book Review"[One] of America's finest poets."—Robert Olen ButlerErin Belieu's fourth collection, Slant Six, is an inundation of the humor and horror in contemporary American life—from the last saltine cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle. With its prophecies of impending destruction, and a simultaneous flood of respect for Americans, Erin Belieu's poems close like Ziploc bags around a human heart.From "12-Step":I am consideringlighthousesin a completely new light—their butch neutrality, their grandbut modest surfaces.A lighthouse could appearhere at any moment.I have been making this effort,placing myself in uncomfortable positions,only for the documented health benefits . . .

    These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel’s Working approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine’s characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ‘at the borders of dreams.’ One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet . . . very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.” —Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal

    Fountain’s voice is at once deep and loose, enacting the dawning of spiritual insight, but without leaving the daily world, matching the feeling of the “pure holiness in motherhood” with the “thuds the giant dumpsters make behind the strip mall when they’re tossed back to the pavement by the trash truck.” In these wise, accessible, deeply emotional poems, she captures a contemporary longing for spiritual meaning that’s wary of prepackaged wisdom—a longing answered most fully by attending to the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

    It has been an amazing journey for me and I can't wait to encourage you all with what I have learned along the way!With Matthew 6:33 as the basis, this eBook will focus on:Getting rid of physical clutter and organization tipsGetting rid of mental clutterCurriculum choicesSchedulesMeal planningLetting God lead your homeschoolAvoiding the comparison trap, and letting your homeschool be YOUR homeschoolNot letting homeschool become an idol-Keeping GOD firstIt is my desire to encourage others out there to live more simply in all areas of our lives, and this eBook focuses specifically on simplifying homeschooling.When we keep God first in our homeschools, we can have the true JOY that is meant for our families. Excerpt from "Simply Homeschool:Having Less Clutter and More Joy in Your Homeschool""I would rather be with my children sitting at Jesus’ feet, than running around trying to be busy.God has called us to raise our children and raise them up according to His Will. We can’t forget that.I truly believe that if we put the Lord first in all we do in our homeschools, He will bless us. We may worry that we are not doing things just right, or that our kids aren’t learning enough. If my children know the Lord first and foremost, I have done my job."

    With the clock ticking and the summit approaching, the President mobilizes a top–secret unit–Task Force 160 of the Army's Special Operations Air Regiment栮d orders a team of Spec Warriors to rescue the American intel squirrels before the Chinese find out what has happened, cancel the summit, and embarrass the U.S. Then, satellite intelligence reveals that not only have renegade Uzbeks captured the Americans, they have also seized a thirty–year–old, capacitor–fused nuclear device from the Chinese military.Within hours, an ultra–sensitive National Reconnaissance Office FORTAE (Fast Onboard Recognition of Transient Atomic Experiments) Ⲯiffer⟳atellite indicates the IMU has somehow armed the devise. National Reconnaissance Office photos show the nuke and the hostages heading for the Pamirs and Afghanistan, where remnants of the IMU␳ al Qaeda allies still hold out. That is followed by a National Security Agency communications intercept: the Chinese president has secretly dispatched a Zhongdui (Special Forces) unit from the Jin Jiancha Zhu (Tactical Reconnaissance Office) of the People's Liberation Army to hunt down the terrorists and retrieve the nuke.The only good news is that Beijing doesn't know the IMU is holding six American hostages渥t. Now, the U.S. team must not only beat the Zhongdui to the IMU guerrillas so it can extract the CIA team covertly, the rescuers must also take a Department of Energy expert to defuse the unstake nuke without leaving any American fingerprints.

    Eloquence is only a grasping in the space of ineffable air. There are few words or phrases that do justice to the soul singing its own revelations. That place is where Last Psalm at Sea Level lives, where it is as solid as gold burning itself into light. --Afaa Michael Weaver

    Because everyone sometimes finds themselves within the abyss of feeling alone, heartbroken, or depressed, we all need healing words to pull us out, to give us hope and inspiration, and to bring back the courage to love again. Gather strength from these empowering poems and allow yourself to rise again. One day, you will remind yourself, “I am healed. I am whole. I am worthy of love.”

    New work by the best-selling author of XECLOGUE and DEBBIE: AN EPIC. "Consider that we need to drink deeply from convention under faithfully lighthearted circumstances in order to integrate the weather, boredom utopic, with waking life. By 'integrate' we mean: to arc into a space without surface as if it were an inhabitable, flickering event. And by 'convention' we refer to our improprietous infiltration of the long citations of grooming, intimacy, and prognastication. Like flags or vanes, we signify an incommensurability. No elegance is self-sufficient. No-one is old enough to die or to love. The weather is a stretchy, elaborate, delicate trapeze, an abstract and intact conveyance to the genuine future which is also now. Mount its silky rope in ancient makeup and polished muscle to know the idea of tempo as real" - from the Introduction by Lisa Robertson.

    A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father’s fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker “to become something unbreakable.” The presence of these and poetic forbears—Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa—provide a context for strength in the face of danger and anger. At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice.

    Lana’s music and lyrics evoke images of a saturated Kodachrome photograph, so it would stand to reason that she’d now add “poet” to her artist’s kit. Even without music, her words work their way around you, pulling you into a world that’s not unlike a David Lynch movie.[from barnesandnoble.com]

    This enlightening guide uses meaningful text, extensive illustrations and imaginative graphics to make this novel clearer, livelier, and more easily understood than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details about the book that students need to understand. Appropriate for middle and high school students.

    The fairy tale-based works of the tortured confessional poet, whose raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.

    Each chapter serves a different purpose. The chapters are For The Healing, For The Erasing, For the Loving, For the Oppressed, and For the Broken. This book teaches you to love yourself and others. It's better experienced than described, so sit down with some coffee and allow yourself to feel-- and heal.

    The exquisitely rendered poems in this, her fourth collection, reach back to an early affinity for proverbs and riddles and the proto-poetry found in those forms. Taking on epic subjects—time and memory, metamorphosis and indeterminacy, the complicated nature of beauty, wordless states of being—each poem explores a bright, crisp, singular moment of awareness or shock or revelation.  Purpura reminds us that short poems, never merely brief nor fragmentary, can transcend their size, like small dogs, espresso, a drop of mercury.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.