Bücher der Reihe Poiema Poetry

You don't have to be a skilled poet to see yourself living In a Strange Land. The poets found in this collection, however, not only recognize it, but express their varying experiences in ways that bring us along with them. We see their experiences--whether similar to our own or completely different--and find their poems ringing true in beautiful, painful, amusing, and fascinating ways. None of these ten poets has previously had a full-length poetry collection of their own--yet--but they are certainly all worthy of that honor. Keep an eye out for these poets in literary journals, chapbooks, and new books over the next while.Contributing poets: Ryan Apple, Susan Cowger, Jen Stewart Fueston, Laura Reece Hogan, Burl Horniachek, Miho Nonaka, Debbie Sawczak, Bill Stadick, James Tughan, Mary Willis

You don''t have to be a skilled poet to see yourself living In a Strange Land. The poets found in this collection, however, not only recognize it, but express their varying experiences in ways that bring us along with them. We see their experiences--whether similar to our own or completely different--and find their poems ringing true in beautiful, painful, amusing, and fascinating ways. None of these ten poets has previously had a full-length poetry collection of their own--yet--but they are certainly all worthy of that honor. Keep an eye out for these poets in literary journals, chapbooks, and new books over the next while.

There was a time in my youth when I would buy and read any and every book I discovered by C.S. Lewis. What I had found was that he wrote in a way that engaged my mind like no other writer. He was respected in a variety of fields, and held passionately to his faith in Christ. Years later, when I began rereading his books, I was surprised to find that many of the ideas I'd held as my own had been planted by Lewis.Each of the poems in Conspiracy of Light springs directly from something Lewis wrote, or from events in his life. The source for some will be obvious, even to casual readers of Lewis. The notes at the end of this book, although unnecessary for reading the poems, direct readers back to the source material. I would be pleased if my poems expand readers' appreciation of Lewis and bring them back to his work.November 22nd of this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis. His is a legacy that will continue to grow as the years pass. Here I honor him, and the one for whom he wrote.

Description:Written over five decades, these poems begin fixed in the human condition, our common experience of an imperfect world. Slowly, under the aegis of the Spirit, they move toward a brighter vision of things: they ask us to ""dream in that fecund darkness until all shapes are shining."" Poetry offers us an experience of union with the alarming and enthralling world we live in, as well as glimpses of what transcends it and is beyond language. It reminds us that all is connected and supports the hope that light will triumph. The author trusts that these poems may do the same as they explore the chain of being from animal to human, from serpent to angel--and that joy is the final dominant note.Endorsements:""Robert Siegel is one of my favorite poets, and I''m frustrated that so many readers are unfamiliar with him. This handsome ''new and selected'' volume is an ideal introduction to his work, and I may just resort to hawking it on street corners, like those ragamuffin kids peddling papers in old movies. You want the latest news? Read Within This Tree of Bones.""--John WilsonEditor, Books & Culture""Robert Siegel possesses the transformational power of a wizard. Whether he casts his eye on a pig or a night crawler, whether he is standing in falling rain or in a swath of sunlight, he can make the world seem more like itself. For forty years now his poetry has been clarifying the world for me. Bob''s new sonnets bring biblical subjects and landscapes into such intimate and vivid language that I will never again think of them in the same way. The things he writes about--as he says in ''The Annunciation''--grow ''more distinct, themselves / in a way beyond explaining.'' That seems to me to be a brilliant definition of what great poetry can do. It clarifies the world beyond any other kind of explanation. This book does that. It is filled with great poetry.""--Jeanne Murray WalkerProfessor of EnglishHead of Creative Writing, University of Delaware""Robert Siegel''s business is tracking whatever order, not chaos, obtains. He knows certainly ''the helpless dance out their fear'' as much as ''the divine tread fall[s] again and again.'' A cornucopia of wise songs, monologues, psalms, prayers, fables, sonnets, and more, Within This Tree of Bones is what I think a career book should be: ambitious, sonorous, eclectic, serious, joyful.""--David J Smith,Professor of Poetry,Johns Hopkins UniversityAbout the Contributor(s):ROBERT SIEGEL (1939-2012) is the author of ten books of poetry and fiction. His poetry includes A Pentecost of Finches, The Waters Under the Earth, In a Pig''s Eye, and The Beasts & the Elders. His poetry has won prizes and fellowships from Poetry, Prairie Schooner, America, the Friends of Literature, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His fiction includes the award-winning Whalesong trilogy. He has taught at Dartmouth, Princeton, Wheaton, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was professor emeritus of English.

About the Contributor(s):Paul J. Willis is Professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. He has published two previous volumes of poetry, Visiting Home (2008) and Rosing from the Dead (2009), along with an essay collection, Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (2005), and a fantasy novel, The Alpine Tales (2010). Learn more about the author at pauljwillis.com.

Description:These poems--selected from the award-winning poet''s output over four decades--more explicitly than any of his prior volumes address the centrality of Christian vision to his aims and aspirations. Lea looks unflinchingly at all that may challenge his faith: the cruelties of both natural and human worlds, the attractions of jolly, good-hearted secularism, the distortions of doctrinaire religiosity, the seeming pointlessness of untimely deaths; but his faith in Christian redemption shines through even the bleakest of his poems.Endorsements:""The life in Sydney Lea''s poems is entirely local, whether the locale is Italy, Montana, or his home in Vermont . . . The making of the soul that occurs in Sydney Lea''s poems is intimately connected with the place where the making occurs . . . Sydney Lea''s poems show us that all spirituality is local spirituality. He is our preeminent poet of the soul''s making among local places and people.""--Mark Jarman Author of Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems ""Sydney Lea''s heartbreaking and heartening poems look, with the utmost honesty, at ''what we may or may not be / here on earth.'' . . . [These] urgent poems give us back the depth of our existence. With intelligence, passion, and humility, Lea embraces the task he has been given: to record those ''warming recollections'' of parents, friends, wife and children, and to acknowledge how this ''splendid universe subsumes . . . his small dumb witness'' into a ''hymn of grateful praise.''"" --Robert Cording Author of Walking with Ruskin""In this book Sydney Lea invites us to take a spiritual journey . . . By the end of Six Sundays, the narrator and the reader step together into radiant light. What is so moving about Six Sundays is not only its wrestling with spiritual questions, but also Lea''s affirmation that life is a spiritual journey and that this journey is of paramount importance.""--Jeanne Murray WalkerAuthor of A Deed to the Light""From his experience of doubt to his affirmation of the Mystery, the poet''s faith shows through honest and eloquent language . . . Lea''s unique gift of language opens up the most ordinary detail of village life in northern Vermont and raises it to universal significance. His compassionate gaze at suffering and loss is balanced by his embrace of nature in all its forms and by moments of ecstatic revelation.""--Robert Siegel Author of A Pentecost of Finches: New and Selected PoemsAbout the Contributor(s):Sydney Lea lately retired after more than forty years of teaching at Dartmouth, Yale, Wesleyan, and Middlebury Colleges, as well as at several European universities. Lea was a Pulitzer finalist for his volume of poems Pursuit of a Wound, and won the 1998 Poets'' Prize. He holds the doctorate in Comparative Literature from Yale. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright Foundations, he founded and for thirteen years edited New England Review, one of the nation''s leading literary quarterlies. This is his tenth volume of poems; he is also author of a novel, A Place in Mind, and two collections of naturalist essays, Hunting the Whole Way Home and A Little Wildness. He is currently the poet laureate of the state of Vermont.

The Turning Aside is about stepping out of our routines--like Moses turning from tending sheep, like a certain man selling his everything to buy a field--to take time to consider the ways of God in the company of some of the finest poets of our time. Turn aside with such established poets as Wendell Berry, Les Murray, Luci Shaw, Elizabeth Jennings, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Christian Wiman--and respond to their invitation for us to muse along with them. Walk with poets from various parts of the planet, even though some of them are less known, whose words have been carefully crafted to encourage us in our turning aside. The Turning Aside is a collection of Christian poetry from dozens of the most spiritually insightful poetic voices of recent years. It is a book I have long dreamed of compiling, and it has grown beyond my mere imagining in its fulfillment.