Bücher veröffentlicht von Finishing Line Press

In poems both brutal and beautiful, Karen Poppy traces the interconnectedness-symbiotic, antagonistic, and metaphorical-of the endangered antelope and human worlds. All the grace and violence of both worlds is here in poems that are moving, necessary, and ultimately life-affirming. I could not put down this powerful book. -Steve Bellin-Oka, author of Instructions for Seeing a GhostPoppy is a poet of the 21st Century. Her pen is compelling, pointing out the crucial need for human, animal, and environmental rights and respect. Her poems inspire transformation. -Lynne Cox, American long-distance open-water swimmer, New York Times best-selling author, and speakerThis glowing collection of Karen Poppy's verses reads at once as spare and abundant, elegant and generous. Her lines stretch and shrink, experimenting with a wide range of forms, and her best rhymes read like plot twists. our own beautiful brutality asks what all readers and writers ask each other across the resonance of words: "how in sudden shift did I become you?" -Betsy Cornwell, New York Times best-selling author and founder of The Old Knitting Factory: making space for single moms to make art in a 1906 knitting school in Connemara

Judith's poems are close to the bone, earthy, organic. As they acknowledge grief, loss, suffering, they elevate and transform it. From coal, comes the diamond. From loss comes the light. -Jan Phillips, Author, Speaker, Artist and Activis"In the Geography of Loss, Judith Prest reminds us "Sometimes it takes /a dark day/ for me to find/ my own light", as she maps those departures folks both must endure and overcome as best they can. Great aunts, both parents, a beloved dead grandmother whose spatula goes missing and creates an absence memory fills. Despite death's "discordant notes," we go on these poems say, it is what we do as human beings, until even "Beneath the now, outlines of ghost trees stand sentinel, bear witness." -Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of The Second O of SorrowJudith's poems speak elegantly yet simply about loss and life and love. Her poignant words about her personal experiences tap into the universal experience of what it is to be human, to connect, to love, to lose and to carry on. Held in her words, one can feel deeply, perhaps cry, maybe laugh, and most certainly be changed. -Trish Ford, Hospice Medical Doctor

Readers of Speech in an Age of Certainty by J. Khan might want seatbelts for the high-speed chase of his intense poems. He writes sometimes about life as a Midwesterner of South Asian descent, which is a complicated diaspora that includes London and rural Missouri. His poems are stories and songs of resistance-and not to be missed.-Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09 Colliding voices animate the parallel worlds of those who feel oppression and those who oppress in this urgent collection of verse by J. Khan. The backdrop is a damaged, devasted earth. While exposing the limits of witness, "I scarcely fathom the howl," the poet compels our attention (and hopefully our action) in these vivid, reflective poems.-Catherine Anderson, author of Everyone I Love Immortal Speech in an Age of Certainty is a colorful collection of timely pieces by J. Khan that tackles police brutality, identity, history of our sins and finding balance. Khan offers reflective, lyrical poems that question one's place in the world. A lovely collection that captures the voices of many who are silenced-Rosalyn Spencer, editor Rigorous Magazine

Acclaimed author and music critic Sean Murphy's new poetry collection is a searing and timely take on American culture that finds perspective on the present by interrogating our past. The Blackened Blues offers a powerful glimpse into the human psyche, exploring the minds of artists and visionaries, addicts and trauma survivors, searching (as we all are) for "some way to live." We leave this book with a heavy dose of truth, but also of the kind of beauty that makes such truth bearable.

In her debut collection, poet R.B. Simon paints a compelling canvas of identity one poem at a time. With evocative, lyrical language, these poems of loss, identity, and ultimately recovery, show that the complex fabric of our lives often weaves together something more beautiful than we could foresee. The Good Truth offers an accessible and poignant look at the forging of a woman through hardship and alienation, and her quiet, forceful return to the home of herself. The Good Truth is that each one of can join her on the journey.

A collection of prize winning poetry, The Moon Over My Mother's House, explores family, aging, enduring and bittersweet love, loss, and connections. The poet ponders how the natural world reflects human nature. The poet muses on her original axiom that every poem is a journey, every journey, a poem. Poems such as Waving Not Drowning (featured on LKMNDS Podcast), Infinite Tenderness (Featured in Roanoke Review's 50th Year Anthology), Self Portrait (Nominated for Best of the Net), and Darnella's Duty (Selected for Black Lives Matter Anthology) depict various types of self awareness journeys.The titular poem, The Moon Over My Mother's House has been selected by Moment Poetry to be produced as a broadside. The story behind this poem is a reflection on every woman's journey:"The Moon Over My Mother's House is based on an early childhood memory. I must have been five or six, and I was in the kitchen watching my mother take clothes out of the washing machine and hanging them on the clothesline. The clothesline seemed to touch the sky, and I thought I saw God watching us. When I told my mother that I saw God, she replied that one can never see God. I thought her answer was so sad. This poem attempts to recognize the many women, who because of societal restrictions, live with no hope of seeing their inner god."

Storyknife is a tool used by Yup'ik girls to carve the stories of their village in the earth. Related to Loon: a first year teacher in Tuluksak is Jackie McManus' storyknife. A true adventure of a white teacher in a remote village in Alaska carved through the medium of poetry that covers culture and climate with both humor and pathos.

The Shomer explores the role of the watchman and guardian in the context of daily routines and significant life events. In Jewish tradition, the Shomer serves in the role of watchman. Among his/her responsibilities, the Shomer is charged with safeguarding the body of the deceased against desecration before burial. According to biblical commentaries, the human soul is somewhat lost and confused between death and burial, and it hovers over the body for several days until interment. While watching the body, the Shomer comforts the spirit of the departed by reading, meditating, and praying. More generally, the term Shomer has been used to describe an individual who acts as a guardian in the context of both daily routines and significant life events. The goal of the Shomer is to witness, to attend, and to protect those who can no longer protect themselves. Under the best of circumstances, the Shomer gains a glimpse into the liminal, into what happens in the space between love and loss, hunger and fulfillment, forgetting and remembering. The Shomer's poems seek to illuminate the vigil we all keep as witnesses to our own lives and the lives of others and to expand upon the stories we share to safeguard love, hope, history, and a belief in art's power to heal.

Ocean Currents follows the tumultuous ebbs and flows of Rousselot's struggles and triumphs living with mental illness. Rousselot doesn't pull any punches; her writing is raw, vulnerable, and leaves the reader rattled. Rousselot uses vivid imagery and unexpected parallels to imbue Ocean Currents with a relatable voice while tackling deeply personal topics. Ocean Currents invites the reader into Rousselot's inner world, but it also invites the reader to examine their own relationship with the self. From Samantha Fain, author of Coughing Up Planets: "(Rousselot) tackles mental illness incisively, showing how vulnerability can be both a triumph and an act of violence." Ocean Currents draws the reader in, and then leaves them on the shore soaked and sun kissed.

In Margaret Vann's You Can't Get There from Here, the writer takes the reader on a journey, both literal and metaphorical. Vann's road trips take place in the 39 Ford sedan named "Betsy" that took her from her childhood home in rural Georgia all the way to relatives' homes in Ohio and Colorado. The poet remembers carsickness, the magic of a moon "slipping through the slash pines," and once, picking up "a hitchhiking priest" who rode the tailgate to Amarillo, Texas. There are bathroom breaks-too few, and falling rocks-too many. There were rules of the road ("Don't sit on the edge of the seat, you may fly off and be killed"), and rules of the heart (Savor the chocolate Daddy sent home from the war, one square at a time). Vann's interior journey explores passionate love relationships, strong family connections, and that which sustains this poet's soul: the natural world of native hydrangea, nodding trillium, and fluttering butterflies which instruct the reader to "Go out! Hit the road again, Enjoy the show!" Readers will do just that, savoring the poems like chocolate melting on the tongue. -Beth Thames, Free-lance writer and columnist for al.comAre we there yet? Thus begins a kinesthetic journey through childhood road trips, matriarchal advice that can't be ignored, aging, loss, both natural and cultural landscapes, passion, love grown cold-the pleasures and perils of being human. Witty, wise, fond of wordplay, Margaret J. Vann's immediately recognizable voice is sure and formally astute. Tones shift from humorous to deeply ironic; from conversational storytelling toward ritual and incantation: these poems invite reflection and remembrance, repetition and savoring. To read this collection straight through is like embarking on a long, cross-country trip with a trusted fellow traveler, reminiscing and sharing histories, philosophies, considerations small and large along the way. It is also to participate in the author's travels through her memory and life to arrive where she belongs. You can't get there from here, these poems suggest, in the sense that "there" is elusive, always changing (as "here" changes), somewhere on the horizon; and a goal reached may or may not resemble what it looked like from a distance. At the same time, reading, writing, and exploring are exemplary forms of "getting there." This engaging and thoughtful gathering stands as proof. -Susan Luther, Breathing in the Dark: PoemsThe well crafted poems of You Can't Get There from Here richly demonstrate that life is a journey to a place we can never reach. Moving freely between the literal and metaphoric, we pleasure-ride in Valdosta, take road trips to Ohio and Colorado, globe-hop from Cuba to China. A recurring theme is love, both physical-"a rising heat within"-and something more expansive, including family, friends, "woods set afire with . . . blooming forsythia." The obstacles are many-cliffs, car wrecks, sexism, racism at a Southern swimming pool, war, a train carrying soldiers to their death. The journey-joyful if challenging-moves with grace and confidence through memory, myth, art, music, all the seasons of nature. The greatest challenge is absence, emptiness after loss-family members disappearing from old photos; more specifically, "my presence without you"-the haunting possibility that there is "nothing to discern." In the end, getting "there" is not the point. "Here"-in the heart, where all roads begin, where we live and love and grieve and hope and relish every mile-is finally enough. "It is here," the poet concludes, "I belong." -Harry Moore, author of Bearing the Farm Away and Beyond Paradise: The Unweeded Garden

In the best pastoral tradition, Orchard Days reveals its deceptively simple pastoral landscape-apple orchards, barns, and mill ponds-to be a place for pondering life's greatest complexities. In this world that is "almost Eden," where marriage, childbirth, and filial relationships are typically romanticized, the poet explores domestic violence ("The most dangerous time for a woman is the time when her Abuser realizes she might leave"); the mortality rate of labor and delivery ("the most dangerous thing a woman can do in America is give birth" ); and paternity uncertainty. As with Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill," apple boughs and green grass momentarily mask the truth that time holds us "green and dying." The beauty that Heather Corbally Bryant locates in the landscape, over which a harvest moon "close to tangerine" shines, makes that particular truth easier to bear. -Donna L. Potts, Professor and Chair, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman WAHeather Corbally Bryant is an incredible wordsmith. The poems in Orchard Days, her tenth collection, are artfully crafted, deeply thoughtful, and keenly observant. Whether showing appreciation for the smaller things in life or delving into larger issues, her poems brim over with crisp imagery. Further, Bryant challenges readers to embrace both the positive and the negative of life with outstretched arms. For example, there is a strong sense of radical self-acceptance in the following lines from the poem Last Summer: "As I slip into the ordinary, I am struck by the fact I will only / Be here a short while-" These lines, as well as many others exemplify how Heather Corbally Bryant needs only a few words to achieve the maximum effect. The poems in Orchard Days and Beyond are stunning and heartfelt. The book is a must-read. -Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram, Host, Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio, www.blogtalkradio.com/ql_pOrchard Days conjures the natural world and, as suddenly as real nature itself, the sense of foreboding overtakes you, and the human reality of her story turns savage and cold, but at times also comical, absurd. The effortless yet measured breath of Bryant's lyric voice belies a fractured universe of intimate violence. You read this collection as you do a Gothic novel of suspense; the speaker leaves myriad small clues to an abusive and cloistered marital life for the reader to find. Does the speaker need to be rescued? No, because she has already escaped, through the redemptive power of her own perception, and the wonder of motherhood, recollected in a globetrotting travelogue rendered in the watercolor of Bryant's lines. But a menacing, distorted shadow looms over this pastel canvas, this Gothic novel in verse, even if the monster has already been vanquished. The twilight portrait of his darkened will oppressing hers-and here the biblical Eve is often invoked-blurs the glimmer of redemption promised by the "humbling" beauty of children and prelapsarian Eden. Through the blur of tears, a gifted poet has found her voice. Bryant's voice is at times Plath-like, other times reminiscent of Mary Oliver, Marie Ponsot, even modernist masters Eliot, Frost and Williams. For, the plenitude of modern American poetry fills the sails of her verse, as the seashell echoes the sound of the sea, her speaker reclaims herself by listening to the quiet rhythms of her experience, cloistered and cosmopolitan as it is. Bryant's Orchard Days is a crepuscular canvas of pastoral trauma, humble motherhood, self-recovery, and ultimately self-liberation. -Octavio R. González, author of The Book of Ours (2009) and Misfit Modernism (2020), Associate Professor, English & Creative Writing, Wellesley College

No Place I Would Rather Be is a collection of free-verse poems and prose poems on the importance of place in the human psyche. Here are places where people come together and places where people can't be found, places that don't stay still, where mountains fit inside rooms in houses and husbands hide behind the knees of their wives. Here are places of environmental degradation, war and peace. These poems deal with our coming together and drifting apart in a variety of settings. Despite its moments of anxiety and regret, No Place I Would Rather Be is a celebration of being human in a human environment.Some of these poems previously appeared in publications such as Meat for Tea and The Bicycle Review.

Bialer's poem Maze takes the reader on a circuitous expedition exploring memories, reflections and shifting time and place. Compelling lines and phrases resurface over and again serving as a drumbeat egging the reader deeper into Bialer's journey of love for and loss of his wife. Facts and memories link "bandits and burial grounds' in Tombstone, Arizona to the Siege of Sarajevo, illuminating how painful the mere act of remembering can be. "Memories are like snipers". With the knowledge that life is fleeting, Maze keenly succeeds at reminding the reader of the sacredness of living in the present moment. -LORETTA OLECK, author of PAPER CHAINSIn his beautiful and poignant elegy Maze poet Matt Bialer summons loving memories of his late wife Lenora to conjure the strain of Covid and politics, turning angst and sorrow into a song of life. -SEB DOUBINSKY, author of THE INVISIBLE and MISSING SIGNAL

Elia Hohauser-Thatcher's debut chapbook, The Prophet's Toothbrush, explores and deconstructs masculinity, coming of age in Detroit, and familial inheritance through the sacred and mundane. These intense, tough-minded poems offer as many bleak truths as they do opportunities for vulnerability. From this text, a speaker emerges who seeks to do the painstaking work of exploring and rejecting the violent expectations our world places on manhood.

A sacrament is the visible sign of inward grace. In Intermittent Sacraments, Mary Hills Kuck presents poems that lead us to recognize these signs in the objects and events of every day: bread, raspberries, plum tree blossoms, a train ride, a cell phone that inspires "glory, glory, glory." Intermittent suggests that sacraments are not always visible. Several poems express the wish for a sign that does not come: in an exorcism at a distant seminary, in the deaths of the author's sister and her parents. Together, the poems suggest that the expectation of grace enhances and makes rich our mundane experiences.Mary Hills Kuck was born and raised in the American Midwest, and spent most of her adult life on the East Coast until she moved to Jamaica, West Indies, to teach English. She lived there with her family for 23 years. If you listen carefully, you will hear echoes of those years in her poetry, especially in "The Luck of Pigs," yet she remains rooted in Illinois and Missouri. The unreliable spring in "Deception," the moonlight in "A Poem," the succulent raspberries in "Advice from a Housewife" betray her Midwestern roots that still define her work.

A richly engaging collection, Poems for the End of the World explores climate change, heartbreak, a pandemic, grief, race, and growth all woven together. In these poems, Suzi Q. Smith meditates on trees, fires, her best friends, her grandmother, and the love of it all. Smith offers us humor and warmth in the midst of grief, courage in the face of fear, and celebrations of small beauties. Poems like "How to Make Love" remind us how to care for ourselves and our loved ones, while "Ocotillo" and "the found women" feel like an encouraging conversation with a best friend.

Nan Ottenritter's poems have guts. They dare to confront the evils of our time, to insist on history too many of us have forgotten, to face our mortality, and to fly as lyrically as Baryshnikov without fear of falling. -James Penha, editor of TheNewVerse.NewsThrough a prism of artistes, heroines, and mother figures, Nan Ottenritter peers behind the drapes of history, grief, age, and survival itself. Familiar figures Agatha and Eleanor come to life from dusty pages, and we find new humility and understanding from Florence and Camille. Little Lincoln's mother catches us at our core, and the author's own battle with cancer catches at our breath. It is a book that celebrates the female, that alchemical mix of perseverance and grace with the potential to "raise a daughter full of sparks dying // on their way to the heavens." A book that will make you want to call your mom. -Joanna Lee, author of Dissections and founder of River City PoetsEleanor, Speak celebrates women, among other things-from Camille Claudel to a greasy-spoon waitress, from an oncology nurse in Boston to Notre-Dame de Paris herself. Nan Ottenritter roams history and observes life with equal parts intelligence, compassion, and restless curiosity. In her acknowledgments she thanks "the written and spoken word," noting "what an excellent puzzle it is to translate life into symbol and sound." Indeed-and how exciting it is to watch this poet emerge from her chrysalis, stretch her new wings, and take dazzling flight. -Douglas Jones, author of Songs from Bedlam

At first, John Guzlowski's Ikky¿ reminded me of Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu. But Guzlowski broke away from the tradition of Western poets translating Asian texts. These Ikky¿ poems were not originally written by the great Japanese Buddhist monk; rather, they were playfully invented, forged by the vast and imaginative mind of Guzlowski. Like any Zen text, Guzlowski's Ikky¿ is a journey into contradictions, where laughter and sadness commingle, where meaning is embedded in meaninglessness, where sound is found in silence, where from winter comes spring which is followed by fall. There is both simplicity and depth in this little book. And in the center of it, the life force of these poems, is the still point, one that we desperately need in our chaotic world of strife, confusion, and ignorance. -Bunkong Tuon, writer and critic at Union CollegeJohn Guzlowski traces the journey of the mad monk poet Ikky¿ from the sea to the temple in a series of startling, luminous, precisely imagined, brief, interlocking poems-poems in the spirit of Ikky¿, certainly, but in a voice all his own; poems that make us laugh at ourselves even as they lead us deeper into an acceptance of the seasons of life and the inevitability of death. Each of these poems is a small lantern lighting the way toward wisdom and faith, revealing the world's beauty along the way. -Cecilia Woloch, author of CarpathiaI met Ikky¿ today, fifteenth-century mad-monk, long thought dead, but as alive as possible in the words of John Guzlowski's The Mad Monk Journeys from the Sea to the Temple. Guzlowski claims these are not Ikky¿ words, but Ikky¿'s final bit of mischief may be his invasion of the author's twenty-first-century pen to prove his influence is eternal-Eternal like the zen and humor in these poems. Eternal like reading this is a master class on the Tatami mats of Kyoto. John Guzowski gives a glimpse into an ancient poet's journey with a sensibility that reins with an endearing modern simplicity. It's a journey well worth taking. -Rick Lupert, author of The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express

An opalescent book, the prose poems of Recoveries weave philosophy, spirit, relationships, and psychiatry. The poems follow interactions between a doctor and patients, yet shimmer with wonderment and enigmatic possibilities. Within the narrative arc, Peter Snow has added sparse love poems, leading both the characters and us readers toward glimpses of higher consciousness. This posthumous book is a singular work from a wise storyteller.

"Radigan's work...turbocharged by her terrific way with dialogue... (has) the effect of honoring the character's autonomous, layered and mysterious being: wonder, the opposite of condescension." -Robert Pinsky, former US Poet Laureate

The poems in LIBERTY are a capsule of the summer of 2020, a summer of fear-- of what was within and of what was outside.****************"How long can a human sustain on fear?" The poems in Liberty scrape back layers of historical and contemporary suffering to expose the root of this question and others. Arceneaux skillfully traces connections between race, identity and survival while searching for a way out-a life after grief. -Amanda Johnston, Poet, Author of Another Way to Say EnterThe poems in Liberty are relentless. Relentless in confronting injustice. Relentless in naming names. Relentless is mining the self for signs of pain and endurance. Relentless in seeking clarity through image and word. Amiri Baraka relentless. Cherrie Moraga relentless. They demand response, and action. Read the book, then go out and work for change. -Steve Wilson, author of The Reaches

In the chapbook epigraph, Diane R. Wiener's Flashes & Specks invokes Walt Whitman: "The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time-the curious whether and how, / Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?" Whitman's phrasing opens the door to a broad variety of poems that offer themselves as flashes and specks.The collection creates a cross-temporal landscape and waterscape of intermittent and overlapping themes, including friendship, familial alliances-both chosen and sanguineous-ecology, ephemerality, and equity. These themes co-mingle with and manifest via elements of irony, play, magic, and fantasy. The poems employ whimsy and seriousness simultaneously.Climate change, life at home, and myriad animals and other beings in nature center-and are centered by-the collection's orientation toward memory, mysticism, and hylozoism. While interpretations are always up to the reader, the poems are underscored by neuroqueer sensibilities. Contemporary local and global events, including social violence, oppression, and wildfires, are exposed through wordplay and metaphysical approaches toward cerebrality, emotional variance, and matrix-like thinking.Like the steampunk watercolor and ink chapbook cover by artist Lucy Wales, a new world is imagined in these poems that fuses with while separating from its own past. On both personal and macro-level scales, mourning and honoring the old accompany hoping for the new; cautious optimism engages with critique, to suggest not nostalgic but reflective concurrent truths in a fragile present and plausible future. Society, family, and self are described in a context where nearly everything is or might be welcomed-except fascism.Erasing while underscoring distinctions, centering Crip consciousness and Disability cultures, and believing in the possibility of sentience everywhere, the poems range from koan-like to lyrical narrative in the context of a time imploded by political crises, social unrest, a global health emergency, and the changing of the guard.

Mo Corleone's brilliant debut collection Around the Lake begins boldly. The scorching poems that follow-ghazals, pantoums, abecedarians, nonets, and others-capture the energies and sounds swirling in Oakland's 2020 streets. Activists, musicians, workers, people in masks, people in traffic-all clamor to be heard in Corleone's impassioned poems of "fists in electric air," helicopters, motorcycles, drummers, DJs, "candles flowers screams." We come to understand how "my soul is rattled from battle/ true justice may not be something i see/ in this life." Yet the quest for justice and peace echoes urgently throughout Mo Corleone's artistry within these powerful pages. -Kathleen McClung, author of A Juror Must Fold in on Herself and Temporary KinUniquely Oakland in flavor, her poems, like 100% dark chocolate, are dense, rich, and delightfully bitter. And gone far too soon-the taste remaining on the tongue dissolves, revealing a mastery of form. Savor this book. Every poem rewards rereading, and sharing aloud with a friend. -Elaine Watt, Lake County Poet Laureate EmeritusThis extraordinary work of art penned by Mo Corleone is literary genius, authentic and honest. The poems capture the emotions and thoughts that so many of us are experiencing. Mo isn't afraid to speak her truth, blending the cold realities of today with the hopefulness of a brighter tomorrow. As a fellow artist and activist, it's empowering. -LaDasha-Diamond, Community Leader, Educator, and Entrepreneur

Through formal sestinas, pantoums, and other verse just skirting the edge of terror and grief we travel into a kind of daily survival.***********************A caesura is a pause in a line of poetry using the rhythms of natural speech rather than of meter. In Taut Caesuras, Dionne uses pauses to bring home the mighty punches of addiction, of loss, of biological predispositions, and ultimately enlightenment. -Sheila Bender, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief"Part eulogy, part interrogation, in the poems of Taut Caesuras Dionne stares down the familial ravages of mental illness and the fragility of the body. Are our genetics prophecy or opportunity? How much of our suffering is in the mind and in our history? Harnessing the power of multiple poetic forms, Dionne urges the reader to reconsider just how much free will we actually have against the brain's demands. But more importantly, how do we love well despite ourselves?" -Lauren Davis, author of Each Wild Thing's ConsentThe last line of her final poem, Mt. Elinor, could be an epigraph for Pamela Moore Dionne's entire collection ...by the time I reach you/I've considered/what I've done to save myself. What Ms.Dionne has done, is place the pickaxe of her intellect and memory into personal experience. The emotions contained within these carefully crafted poems build and infuse this brilliant collection. We climb our way with her through formal sestinas, pantoums, and other verse just skirting the edge of terror and grief. A crown of sonnets details her adored brother's life and suicide. Another poem describes the birth of a grandchild with a devastating disease. This collection gathers a taut wisdom that is earned through the exploding intellect and tenacious restraint of a survivor. As Dionne says, "Each of us breathes, the now that we are given." We can all learn and grow from reading these fine poems. -Gayle Kaune, author Noise from Stars and All the Birds Awake

Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed got its title before the collection of poems came together. Through poetry, Alexis Cameron Stark wrote her way through difficult and uncomfortable emotions and experiences from her first-year post-grad. Growing up in Metro Detroit, Michigan, Stark took her first leap towards independence by attending the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, before moving to Grand Rapids in 2019. Learning to cope with life changes and starting over is challenging and requires familiarity with identity and life goals. Accepting the light and dark parts of herself proved to be a cathartic first step. Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed introduces readers to a quirky, introverted poet, who comfortably shares her struggles with forgetfulness and the inability to keep plants alive but shies away from calling to order food or meeting new people. The author also boldly provides her opinions on her mom's ugly knit sweater in "My Mom's 90s Sweater" and the social construct of gender norms introduced early in childhood with the whimsically titled "Super-patriarchal-color-me-heteronorma-docious." Lighthearted and imaginative poems move into a darker middle, where the poems begin to grapple with a lack of control in "Intuition" and "Red Light, Green Light." "Mantra for Recovery" was inspired by the inmates of the Richard A. Hanlon Correctional Facility, where Stark facilitated writing workshops alongside students from MSU's Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. The collection's title poem "Learning to Sleep in the Middle of the Bed" confesses Stark's commitment to healing and coping with anxiety through therapy. Alongside her therapist, she processed heartbreak, "Trust Issues," and a new job in a new city. She leaned into her faith along the journey, as described on "Serenity Prayer," and to her physical strength through weightlifting, in "Church in the Wild." The collection concludes with the author's musing on writing her legacy and how she wants to be known as a writer. Poems from this collection have also been featured in the East Lansing Art Festival Poetry Press.¿

Half a century after viewers first watched a father and son walking to the local fishing hole, whistling a simple, yet unforgettable, tune, The Andy Griffith Show remains one of the most popular sitcoms in the history of American television. Tens of millions of viewers have seen the show either in its original run, its ongoing reruns, on DVD, or on the internet. A small cottage industry has even developed around the teachings of the show's episodes. One of the first episodes centers on a stranger who, having heard so many good things about Mayberry, intends to adopt it as his hometown. The stranger, Ed Sawyer, knows as much about Mayberry as any of the natives. While doing research in the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina for his book on The Andy Griffith Show, A Cuban in Mayberry, Gustavo Pérez Firmat came across "The Mayberry Chronicles," a collection of poems by Ed Sawyer about the characters in the show, from Andy and Barney to Mr. Schwump and the Fun Girls. Even the pounded steak at Morelli's makes an appearance to utter one word: Ouch!

Peter Vanderberg's, celestial navigation, is inspired by his years serving in the U. S. Navy before, during, and after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. These poems explore themes of survival, fatherhood, and war, why also seeking spiritual awareness and peace. In conversation with the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina, as well as Taoist philosophy and military survival manuals, celestial navigation charts a course through conflict toward transcendence.

"I look for hidden meanings in incidental moments, poet Bill Ratner says in "Try My Luck," one of many intriguing poems in To Decorate A Casket. These highly original poems stir things up-a wild concoction of exploration, confession, and surreal fantasy, each topped with a soupçon of wry wit. Whether mourning the early demise of his beloved parents and older brother, or riffing on being the one left behind to come of age on his own, Ratner's poems find life's humor and sweetness. They kick off their shoes and dance with Death." -Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Junkie Wife, Poetry editor of Cultural Weekly"Reading these poems, one can't help wondering if Ratner is a storyteller at heart who's found the form of the poem to convey the snapshots and short tales of his life, or if he's a poet who, like Homer, poured his dactyls into the epics of his time. Like a good storyteller, Ratner sidles up to you, whispers the opening of a tale, then brings in the big guns of poetry to make it all work. These poems are masterful, touching, evocative, and Ratner himself is a master-builder at work, a man who shapes words out of airy nothing and commands them to speak." -Jack Grapes, Last of the Outsiders, Chatwin Press"Bill Ratner's poetry is fearless and irreverent: bullets don't scare me / I survived one for my mother's breast / one for my brother's kidneys / one for my father's heart. He has gone through the tunnel and lived to tell the tale. Ratner holds nothing back, true to his own words, There is nothing so intimate / as a stranger's body / near you in the water. He invites you, the reader, to leave the shallow waters and meet him in the deep end." -Kohenet Rachel Kann, How to Bless the New Moon, Ben Yehuda Press