Bücher veröffentlicht von Finishing Line Press

Midrashim are Judaic interpretations of scriptures, which often elaborate the stories found only in skeleton form there. In this spirit, contrary to the ways of Roman Catholic dogma, Lutz examines the social-spiritual effects of historic Catholic interpretations, including a child's mind's understanding. She turns the biblical stories on their head, with then pierces them with a deeper, more authentic meaning of the gospels'-including Mary Magdalene's and the Yoga Sutras' and Buddha's-message of nonviolence. At the same time, the poems expose the Church's patriarchal and punitive thought systems and contradictions.The scriptural dissections alternate with poems of a fraught relationship between a rebel daughter and a pious mother, ranging from the pathos of the mother's loss of faith when her parish priests' pedophilia is revealed to the sweetness of the daughter's joy when her mother gives up self-punishment for Lent. Lutz spins tragicomedy from imagined fills in the gaps of the gospels and from the increasing absurdity of the mother and daughter's debates about birth control and abortion as the mother sinks into dementia.Careening between sass and earnestness, the poems rail against religion, while struggling to recover an authentic spirituality. Lutz doesn't argue with God as much as she argues against religions' big lies.It's kind of like Oscar Wilde and Richard Rohr walk into a bar/monastery, which is something like a bookstore/café, and find God's glass is more than half empty(ness).

Katherine E. Schneider's first poetry chapbook, I Used to Remember the Story of How, engages faith, love, and humanity. The poems are featured from first to last as if passing from day to night. Light, colors, the warmth of connection-as well as the absence of these-are palpable, and they shift from beginning to end. In lyrical free-verse, she shares a revelation about a friend beside her in a pew at church and captures images and memories of awe, connection, and loss. Then, in the midst of these, she shifts back to the ancient near east to look over the shoulders of King David, John the Baptist, Jesus, Judas, and an unnamed disciple. From poems capturing the breath of a moment, to poems imagining Biblical narratives, the reader is invited to pause and feel.

"Harbinger" is a book of contemporary poetry invoking images and themes from history (such as the Salem witch trials), pop culture (from Seventeen Magazine to the Sopranos), the urban and natural world (from New England to Queens, NY, to southern California), and the domestic realm (the kitchens and dirty floors we all inhabit). These poems-one of which has been nominated for Best of the Net 2019-explore mental health, feminine roles, and the power of fear and how fear can germinate in the everyday. "Goldfinch," the book's opening poem, was nominated for Best of the Net 2019.

"Leaving Santorini" opens in the middle of a woman's story filled with sorrows-the death of her mother, the end of an abusive marriage-and turns it into a story of renewal, hope, joy, and rediscovery of her words, her powers, and her children. The poems in the book reveal the unfolding of sadness into joy, through the healing journeys of traveling to islands and learning who she can be in the world.

Brettanomyces is a memoir of time spent seeking the self in the marginal lands of America's agrarian foundations. From the dry, serrated edges of the New Mexican high desert, to the verdant tranquility of Virginia's young vineyards, these poems tell the story of looking for home amidst a sea of disparate, yet inextricably beautiful vistas. Connecting each work is a sense of food-as-place, and place-as-self. The making of wine becomes an act of connection and desire, while dry plateau treks become lenses of reflective depth, drawing parallels to mundane, modern problems. These poems speak to the emotive side of sustainability as it pertains to our food systems, to the brokenhearted toil of industrial production, and to the very literal cultural genocide of colonial advancement.

One Clean Feather depicts survival from illness and sexual violence, and also paints a portrait of the artist striving to find living, literary mothers and sisters. In poems "sharp as silver, clean and stunning" and locations ranging from the Midwest to Paris, Knowlton invites her readers on a flight from darkness into the light of autonomy, poetry, and hope- "the thing with feathers."

Waiting for the Wood Thrush, a first poetry collection by Ashley Memory of Asheboro, North Carolina, includes 23 poems united by the themes of love and longing, through the lens of nature. She invites you into her own back yard where you can relive the triumphant and sad life of a magnificent Northern Red Oak; hear the eerie and evocative song of the wood thrush; and even learn how to see a ghost. Take a trip through history and visit the Old Burying Ground in Beaufort, N.C., fall down the steps again with Addie Hash Warp, the stuntwoman for Vivien Leigh in the movie Gone with the Wind; and even travel to the Montmartre section of Paris, where you can rent the apartment of the mysterious Elisabeth still pining for an old lover. And if love is on your mind, read the love story of two donkeys torn apart and reunited or the unrequited love of a 1948 high school couple from Chapel Hill, N.C. These poems have placed in numerous contests, including winning first and second places in competitions sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize sponsored by the N.C. Writers' Network twice.