Bücher veröffentlicht von Finishing Line Press

Faith Paulsen vividly captures the intimacies, secrets, and sorrows between beloved family members and friends. In the midst of losses, wonder and compassion abound: a hummingbird is a "trick of the eye" that evokes the speaker's mother sipping tea as it "savor[s] rosewater" in a "call to prayer." In a meditation on a wondrous invention designed to measure every shade of sky, a voice urges, "Make my body an instrument to measure the blues." A mother who transforms her grown son's bedroom into an office lingers in memory and longing until "Missing him / is the dervish bell she whirls in. / Missing him is its own language." Even as her poems lament "Losses [that] swim away / like minnow / as we try to count them," Paulsen's contemplative poems resonate deeply with love and the vibrancy of life.-Dilruba Ahmed, author of Bring Now the AngelsOpening with a pastoral awhirl in whooshing and lush specific detail, Cyanometer grounds readers firmly in the now and gives us poems of presence and attention. We move from now to past, from intimate family moments to times of historical import. A collection so seamlessly organized, I urge readers to read from beginning to end at least once-no skipping around. Poem follows poem on a music-drenched journey from the present to the past and back, from a poignant moment of imagining the future minus a dying mother, to a childhood memory of watching that same mother pin up her hair with its scent of Breck shampoo. The choice to turn a grown son's bedroom into an office becomes a haunting meditation on what it means to miss, or be missing, a study of absence that is its own kind of presence. In Ode to a Fossil, Paulsen brings us an outlook,/ layer on layer/on layer,/a deposition of sediment//mudstone, siltstone, redwall. This is the vista of Cyanometer-a deposition of layers of memory, observation, and, ultimately, well-earned wisdom.-Liz Abrams-Morley, Author of BeholderThe title, Cyanometer, forms the conceit for Faith Paulsen's book of poems that marvel at the many hues of looking inward and looking back. Urgent images and quick flashes of narrative are given in a language so vital and attentive that the strictures of grammar cannot hold back the rush of sense memory and sudden insight into the nature of self seen from "all directions." What capacious observations of her own self are refracted through those of the rabbit, the elephant, the Marianas Trench, her friends, family and, in the final poems of love and loss, her mother. Like the dragonfly of Pompeii which, "with one beat of its lucent wings / left its mark," so Paulsen leaves hers in poems of reflection, lament, and delight.-J. C. Todd, author of Beyond Repair

In Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips, Melanie Hyo-In Han asks what it means to be an outsider to both language and place while returning the reader-cum-witness to the house of poetry. In plain language Han's poems pack and unpack the tender complications of the speaker's puzzling through national belongings whether in Korea, Tanzania, or the United States. The migrating body thrives in rainy seasons, in heartbreak, in alienation, all while baring the intimacy of presence and poetic line.-Rajiv Mohabir, author of Cutlish and The Cowherd's SonThis stunning and moving chapbook puts a map in your hands as you travel from Morogoro to Marrakech, from Korea to Kenya, retracing your steps back home. Melanie Hyo-In Han's mastery of imagery and form demonstrates a playfulness with memory without shying away from the heaviness that often comes along for the ride. Each poem offers an invitation to explore family and place with an elegant assuredness, a tender guide. Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips not only asks, "Can I Roll, Slice, Stack Memories?" but also, "at what cost?"-Livia Meneghin, author of Honey in My Hair

Poems from a life spent up close and personal with nature chronicle humanity's effect on the earth, and just as importantly, the earth's effect on us. A clear-eyed, and open-hearted reckoning with contemporary life in the Anthropocene.

In Which Will Change the Other More? with humanity and dignity, Barbara Boches renders encounters between cultures. These meetings take place in a variety of settings: outside a silk shop in China, in church basements where the speaker teaches ESOL to immigrants and survivors, at a hardware supply company during the swelter of a Florida summer, among others. In each scene the poet records without judgment both moments of connection and moments of missed connections. In "The Asylum Seeker," for example, as the speaker struggles to overcome her resistance to accept her student's painful story, she acknowledges "Our wall, only in part//from different tongues. Other/bricks are mine," and bears witness as the woman "sinks from chair/to floor, her fist like a silent/gavel, up and down." These finely crafted poems all ask, "which will change the other more?" and demand that we be open-hearted and courageous enough to entertain that question without rushing toward an answer.-Kathleen Aguero, author of After That, poetry faculty at Solstice low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative WritingA boundary breaking work, Which Will Change the Other More, homes in on a Beijing alley silk spinner, an urban women's shelter, into the life of a 12th century Chinese divorcee poet, middle school purgatory, and chases down a parrot and runaway "who reeked/ of Marlboros and elephant craps." Boches, a free verse poet, works in a few brilliantly executed hybrid formats, including a metamorphic pantoum, a play/poem in three acts, and multilingual poems that know no borders. It begins "in a basement/ garden of sorts," and ends staring at a WWII "beach with Patton's/ men" snapshot with her closeted uncle on his deathbed murmuring that "Sex isn't/ important at my age." Marvin Bell said that "poetry is a mature art." Linda Pastan said that poets in their middle years write brilliantly of childhood. Boches is a poet of the first order who can tackle anything. This collection is the reason I read poetry.-Roger Weingarten, author of The Four Gentlemen and Their Footman, Premature Elegy by Firelight

In her 4th poetry chapbook, The What of Underfoot, Julia Blumenreich continues to explore through striking painterly images, original forms and direct address the effects of grief, loss, abuse, world politics and the relationship of nature to our lives and the lives of children. There is great sorrow at the death of her husband from a long illness and the unexpected suicide of her only sibling, a brother.There is great love and respect for the 4th graders she's taught for over 30 years and for the natural landscape which sustain her. Read these 27 richly lyrical and image-laden poems and be transported to another approach to understanding the complexities of our world: life, death, violence, abusive parents, the pandemic, the rights of children, and the power of the nature. Her background as a painter and teacher adds an original voice to these powerful poems.

Desire's unexplainable swings between grasping and letting go-such are the divergent courses of this collection. Short rhythmic pieces drenched with the moodiness of lust's confusions as well as the body's clear ache, are interspersed among longer free verse works which tell the stories of lovers in layers of loving and leaving. This is as much a book about desire's sighs as it is about its threads of sorrow. "Your living risks all procedure- / For this moment / Unbehaved." From Something in the Living These poems are conversations between women and men, between a woman and the landscape of her days and nights, between desire's flood and its flight. From the sensuous wanderings of both a woman's longings and the freedoms of her inner life, Jessica Rigney's poems ease us into the intimate space where one is given the choice to grasp or to let go. Both are equally satisfying.

"With ternura profunda Jennifer Rivera sings of our lonely migrations as she documents the bonds of love and the mirage of memories that form and re-form the lives of those who leave. A heart-felt and important debut."-Ana MenendezIn La Interseccion, her first book, Jennifer Mariela Rivera's poems move fearlessly into a world that desperately needs them-to remind us that courage is contagious, language is revelation, and that one young poet sharing her words on the page can light a new path and even open a heart. I recommend Rivera's work both for its gravity and for its play. It is, simply, a joy to read. -Maureen Seaton, author of Sweet WorldIn this first book of poems, Jennifer Rivera navigates both the public and private realms as an extranjera, a woman, and an artist. "I come from black volcanic ash," she passionately asserts, while diving into torn allegiances as "neither immigrant nor American." In "Two Men Walking a Breast," inspired by poem of the same title by Maureen Seaton, and "Wide-Eyed," inspired by Pablo Neruda, she exposes her deep and broad poetic links, as well as her search for validation. "To write is to think," she tells us and indeed her work does just that and much more. This collection by a promising new poet is a must read for its candor, authenticity, and artistry.-Carolina Hospital, author of Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks

After losing two children, the speaker of these poems writes of her deep suffering with openness; and when read one after another, along the trajectory of these poems, hope peeks through-in the form of a lost part of the speaker, a fire-breathing woman who may bring understanding, and in the form of these lines: 'I think there's / still a chance / for me / to believe / in something.'"-Ashley Inguanta, author of The Island, The Mountain, & The Nightblooming FieldIt is rare to find a collection of poems that is both accessibly frank and heartbreakingly true. With her colloquial turns of phrase enmeshed with breathtaking lyricism, J. Andersen's Hot Mess captures the brutal grief of generational trauma and the struggle for stability-in relationships and with oneself-amid concurrent child losses. Andersen doesn't pull punches or pretend that things will magically become better; instead, her poems steep into pivotal moments of conflict and discovery. In each snapshot poem, Andersen expertly distills moments of pain, absence, and even tentative hope and healing with recurring metaphors grounded in the Earth and reaching for the cosmos. These immersive confessionals paint the portrait of an unsteady life rife with pain and potential. Aptly-named, Andersen's cathartic collection serves as an anthem for anyone striving to hold it together.-Leslie Salas, editor of Other Orlandos and co-editor of Condoms & Hot Tubs Don't Mix

"Radical empathy," Jeanie Thompson, author of The Myth of Water, a book of poems written through the persona of Helen Keller, describes the process of work like her own. "Historical persona poetry" is not new, but especially significant in an age in which experts decry the lack of fellow feeling among us and its dark consequences. The Whited Air richly imagines and expresses what it would have felt like for a teenaged girl to leave her father and their farm on her own to join a legion of such girls working in Lowell, MA, at the textile mills, in more contemporary terms, finding oneself in a world utterly unfamiliar, a world that no longer feels like home.The protagonist Mary Paul, a real girl, is experiencing firsthand the great shift in 19th-century America from a rural world of home industry and barter to the economy and factories of the Industrial Revolution. She is working hard and long in a way almost beyond our ability to imagine. But that is the task of The Whited Air. And as exhausted as she is, she is still able to aspire to a more intellectual life, to spiritual fulfillment, even to living in a utopia. The fictional Irish mill girl, Brigid, counters and expresses anger at being invisible to girls like Mary though working alongside her, to the extreme bias the Irish faced upon immigrating here, the alien feeling of being a devout and Irish Catholic among Protestants, finally, a longing for the familiar.The original inspiration for this book is Andrew Hudgins' book about Sidney Lanier, After the Lost War, another group of deeply imagined poems about a historical figure. Mary Paul was not a poet like Lanier whose voice was heard in his own time. I hopeThe Whited Air ensures that her voice, as imagined, and representative of that of so many women, will now be heard.

"Veronica Schorr's Conscious Blue is a book of self-revealing- not of self-discovery, but of discovery of how the self is seen. Consequently, it is also a book of other-revealing. And Schorr reveals with a keen eye. These are thoughtful poems, rooted to an uncommon depth in love, and salutary in a moment when a good deal of what has been called love has proven itself to be shallow." -Shane McCrae, author of Sometimes I Never Suffered and The Gilded Auction Block"Veronica Schorr's poems are kaleidoscopes. Patterns form, shift, and shatter, revealing intensely-hued facets of human connection. She nails the angsty attachment of teens and elders, the awfulness of office banter, the itchy weight of being young, female, and constantly under scrutiny. Most of all, though, these poems strike me with the brilliant queer epiphanies of coming to know one's brightest self though love." -V. Penelope Pelizzon, author of Of Vinegar Of Pearl and Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone is Time"It is rare, indeed, for a debut book to contain more than a few wonderful poems and equally rare to discover a voice that is both unique and infinitely human. This book happily shatters both of these notions. It's quite amazing how Veronica Schorr continually reinvents, from poem to poem, herself as poet. And while her poems are centered, have gravity and are grounded in the real world, they are filled with the unexpected and often arrive at a new and heartfelt vision of the world. This is only the beginning of an important voice; you should listen." -Bruce Cohen, author of Imminent Disappearances, Impossible Numbers & Panoramic X-Rays"This debut works with every breath to affirm the power of love. Sometimes narrative, wickedly hybrid, often voice-driven, experimental, smart, and importantly here-and-there really quite comic, this little book gives us a new voice against the darkness." -Adrian Blevins, author of Appalachians Run Amok¿

Inspired by the tenet of chaos theory that small changes in initial conditions can spark great consequences, the poems in this chapbook exist at the intersection of the environment and politics. With toughness and tenderness, Little Victory calls out dangers of denial in the seats of power and offers hope and energy to face them by celebrating little victories of connection and wonderment.

Shaman Sky's first collection is an exploration of mood tempered by the joy of poetic form-its dance of word, idea, and sound. Whether accepting an "Invitation via Fortune Cookie" or preparing for "Lent in the Time of COVID" these poems operate through the technology of grace. It's a book that is playful in style but has great heart and depth.

Lucinda Marshall's debut poetry collection, Inheritance Of Aging Self, explores our inherited understanding and experience of illness, death, grief, and sense of place.In poems that she began to write during the final years of her parents' lives, Lucinda Marshall's debut poetry collection, Inheritance Of Aging Self, is an exploration of aging, illness, and death, as we witness them in the lives of our elders and loved ones, of grieving and ultimately the impact this heritage has on our sense of identity and place as we in turn age.The title poem of the collection was included in the Maryland State Arts Council's "Identity" exhibit in 2021 and "Winter Beach" was the first-place winner in Montgomery Magazine's 2019 "Montgomery Writes" contest.

Join Meredith Heller as she immerses herself in nature to discover the metaphors that help us navigate and illuminate our human journey.Her poems offer a rich, lyrical, and intimate trail guide of animism, where rocks speak in tongues/ crickets gossip/ the river sings her morning aria/ and an osprey plays two high notes on his golden coronet.Heller casts a spell that transforms herself and her readers into a deeper understanding of our part in the interdependence of all life.True to her poetry, she asks the important questions that are left humming in our hearts, "What kind of watermark will you leave?"Follow her, or better yet, chase her deep into the wood, now, as she learns and shares the ultimate lesson of the river.

Join Meredith Heller as she immerses herself in nature to discover the metaphors that help us navigate and illuminate our human journey.Her poems offer a rich, lyrical, and intimate trail guide of animism, where rocks speak in tongues/ crickets gossip/ the river sings her morning aria/ and an osprey plays two high notes on his golden coronet.Heller casts a spell that transforms herself and her readers into a deeper understanding of our part in the interdependence of all life.True to her poetry, she asks the important questions that are left humming in our hearts, "What kind of watermark will you leave?" Follow her, or better yet, chase her deep into the wood, now, as she learns and shares the ultimate lesson of the river.

"A book of emotional prose and brute fact, Dr. Hernandez shows us what it was like to live through the first throes of the pandemic, through the tired eyes of a newly-minted physician. From the exceptional to the mundane, these quotidian stories from the front lines grapple with the loneliness and isolation of quarantine while taking care of our sickest sick, and remind us that we cannot forget what happened." -Ajay Major, MD, MBA, founder and editor-in-chief emeritus of in-Training "Dr. Ammura Hernandez has sensitively documented the disruptions , fears, and psychological effects of the few months of the corona epidemic in a book written to honor those whose lives were taken by the coronavirus, those whose livelihood was affected by it, and those in the frontlines who took up the fight against it."-George Dunea MD, FACP, FRCP, FASN, President and CEO, Hektoen Institute of Medicine, Editor-in-Chief, Hektoen International "An absorbing diary and meditation on the Covid pandemic by a doctor in training as she witnessed it firsthand, and a narrative of her sometimes fraught romance during Covid."-Felice Aull, author of Mandatory Evacuation Zone, and founder of the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database

You Are Not Lost peels the soft and hopeful places of young life while expertly making applesauce. Jeri Frederickson uses the familiar scaffolding of a sonnet crown and everyday objects as a channel to nurture love and access beauty while questioning the experiences that hold us together. After life's questions receive unfulfilling answers: "press it down" and "Your future life / is free. No refunds" the poems untangle first-loves, family, and climate change by looking inward, turning the questions over and over as the speaker used to do apples: "Tonight are you the crunching sound? / Are you my friend? I'm not ready to miss you." Jim Daniels, author of Gun/Shy, says of these poems "surprise and sustain, keeping us delightfully off-balance with their sharp wit and surprising vulnerability." Even as trauma stitches through experiences, the collection refuses contemporary trauma labelling as adequate. "I have set my childhood nightmares / a place to rest their leather heads." Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge, says "the strength of her poetic voice is a reminder to all who read that within the roots of ancestral wounds, there is space for growth." The speaker in the poems realizes she can't banish trauma or force a resilient narrative. Instead, laughter and hope hold hands with trauma and walk together with the reader, finding their way into the future, not lost.

Though the alpha and omega of Steve Coughlin's poetry remains the single traumatic event that irrevocably unsettled his family decades ago, many of these poems demonstrate a playful, almost absurdist wistfulness, as he lauds the 1990s, cross-examines Ronald McDonald, and imagines his suave, hipster alter ego hobnobbing with Hollywood stars. In Deep Cuts, Coughlin juxtaposes poems of calm and astute journalistic narrative with laugh-out-loud poems of whimsical imagination, hoping perhaps to rectify-to rewrite-all those long-ago moments that went awry.-Cal HitzrotThese poems are chock-full of music and movie stars and the pull of the open road. They are full of the ache of longing, the piercing pain of loss, and the humor that helps us handle both longing and loss. Coughlin's writing is observant, assured, open-hearted, witty, and wise. Life is challenging in these poems, but we come away from them ready to embrace those challenges, prepared to unearth the nuggets of redemption that are surely there as well.-Brad Wilburn

Tiny Anchors is the debut book of poetry from queer, LA based writer Sarah Hulsman. In 21 poems, Hulsman explores the bittersweetness after "coming out" to friends, family and oneself.