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These poems sketch a portrait of the author's growing-up years in Montana surrounded by her wheat-farming father, a busy at-home mother, two older siblings, and a lonely grandmother. Moments of strife and stress return, but here you will also find joy and a great deal of love and gratitude for each other, for hard work, for the mystery of life, for the land, and for what the land has endured. Her poems become the embodiment of memories-from eating brown sugar sandwiches, to skipping rocks on a Glacier Park lake, to wandering through dreams and the afterlife-as they offer family stories, tragedies, speculation, and attempts to understand it all."The dust and light filter through as loss and grace in these poems...There is no dogma here, rather a steady gaze on mystery, a soul alert to it, and poems that come to us as gifts and guides." -Catherine Abbey Hodges, author of In a Rind of Light "...delight and satisfaction, all in a voice that is clear, precise, deeply felt, spiritual-an antidote to the confusions of our time." -Joseph Powell, author of The Slow Subtraction ALS "Images rustle as softly and poignantly as the Montana wheat fields with which she grew up... her words shimmer and take us with her, gladly." -Susan Blair, author of What Remains of a Life

The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & ArtThe "Superstition" issue of The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (Issue #13) features poetry by Ellen Bass, James Crews, Andrea Hollander, and Paulann Petersen with poetry and artwork by 76 poets and artists from around the globe. The poems selected for this collection reveal a conversation with each other and also with the artwork. And just as superstitions have a way of innocuously inserting themselves into our everyday lives, the superstition-themed poems in this book weave themselves in and around poems on a multitude of topics. Cover Design by Robert R. Sanders, featuring art "Prowling After Midnight" by artist Beverly Ash Gilbert of Gig Harbor, Washington.Contributing Artists:Beverly Ash Gilbert ¿ Carella Keil ¿ Dale Champlin ¿ Elaine Franz Witten ¿ Estelle Meadoff ¿ Jan Baross ¿ Jeanne Julian ¿ Jone Rush MacCulloch ¿ Judith Skillman ¿ Linda Briskin ¿ Pattie Palmer-Baker ¿ Robert R. Sanders ¿ Romana TarlamisContributing Poets:Jan Ball ¿ K.S. Baron ¿ Jan Baross ¿ Ellen Bass ¿ Jenny Blackford ¿ Rose Mary Boehm ¿ Katy Brown ¿ Paul Bufis ¿ Dale Champlin ¿ Jennifer Clark ¿ Daphne Clifton ¿ James Crews ¿ Steven Dieffenbacher ¿ Susan Donnelly ¿ Ann Farley ¿ Laurel Feigenbaum ¿ Linda Ferguson ¿ Eric J. Forsbergh ¿ Sylvia Freeman ¿ Gabby Gilliam ¿ Tony Gloeggler ¿ Peter M. Gordon ¿ Melanie Green ¿ Jan Haag ¿ Catherine Hamrick ¿ Leslie Hodge ¿ Andrea Hollander ¿ Christopher J. Jarmick ¿ DB Jonas ¿ Tim Kahl ¿ Casey Killingsworth ¿ Tricia Knoll ¿ Sigrun Susan Lane ¿ Abigail Licad ¿ Jone Rush MacCulloch ¿ Carolyn Martin ¿ Joy McDowell ¿ Matt McGee ¿ Hannah Mead ¿ Jessica Mehta ¿ James Merrill ¿ Judith Montgomery ¿ Susan Woods Morse ¿ Charlene Stegman Moskal ¿ Kathy Nelson ¿ MaryJane Nordgren ¿ Francis Opila ¿ Paulann Petersen ¿ Vivienne Popperl ¿ Jeannie E. Roberts ¿ John Rowe ¿ Robert R. Sanders ¿ Shawn Aveningo Sanders ¿ Joel Savishinsky ¿ JoAnna Scandiffio ¿ Penelope Scambly Schott ¿ Allegra Jostad Silberstein ¿ Ona Siporin ¿ Amy Smith ¿ Doug Stone ¿ Shawn Dallas Stradley ¿ Colette Tennant ¿ Michael Waterson ¿ Julia Wendell ¿ Ingrid Wendt ¿ Melody Wilson ¿ Sally Zakariya

In Self Dissection, Amelia Díaz Ettinger takes an anatomical journey through the physical body to find answers about heritage, environment, family, and the nature of being an immigrant. The poems in these pages are written in a crisp pen like in an anatomical text, yet still allows the lyrical and metaphor to scrape the surfaces of the physical reality that is underneath, that ethereal something that is so often hard to embody.

This book is for any woman who has experienced domestic or sexual abuse, for the people that love them, and those who are still seeking a way to escape from an unhealthy relationship or abusive environment. Uprooting: Leaving the Abuse Cycle is a full-color anthology of poems, visual art, and stories from survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. The book is framed around Portia Nelson's famous poem "Autobiography in Five Chapters" (from the memoir There's a Hole in My Sidewalk) and offers helpful information and resources for women looking to leave and recover from a cycle of abuse.Jade Rosina McCutcheon and Kristin Thomas are the curating editors of Uprooting: Leaving the Abuse Cycle. They are passionate about volunteering their time to help women escape dangerous environments and get the help needed to recover from the trauma of abuse. As writers and artists themselves, they know how the act of creation and sharing can be a powerful force for healing, and therefore reached out to their communities to invite poets, writers, and artists to share their work as it relates to this important topic.McCutcheon and Thomas have also done extensive research to include helpful information for leaving the cycle of abuse including how to build healthier relationships, recognize the dynamics of power & control and gaslighting, the effects of trauma on the brain and behavior, healthy exercises for healing, navigating the legal system, uplifting encouragement, and a vast list of resources for finding additional support.Contributing Artists, Poets & Writers:Diana Blackstone-Helt, Candice Campo, Dale Champlin, K. Commander, Frances Greenwood, Summer Harlan, Jarmac, Jayme Sue, Marilyn Johnston, Sherri Levine, Ann L. Lovejoy, RMae, L. Medsker, Kelley Morehouse, Susan Woods Morse, Shannon Rose Riley, Shawn Aveningo Sanders, Rebecca Smith, Cassandra Sumner, and many other brave women who shared their stories but choose to remain anonymous

In Quilting the Loose Edges, Susan Woods Morse honors the travelers and the quilters in her family. These poems illustrate generations of journeys-her grandparents' migration from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the oil fields in Texas, then up and down the west coast to settle in California's San Joaquin Valley, mirrored against her own journey from California to Maine and back west again to settle in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Like a quilt, this collection is a tapestry stitched together-a landscape of the places she has known and the people she has loved. -------------------"Morse showcases a true talent for imbuing the smallest human details with authenticity and layered meanings...both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, written with clear eyes and an open, curious heart." -John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House "[W]e can feel the grit, the biting winter cold, the hope for a new spring...these poems form a well-blocked legacy, leaving behind their long threads of forgiveness." -Marilyn Johnston, author of Before Igniting"The poet's relocations and family relationships are necessarily individual, but they connect with a larger story of Americans' migrations over the past century, and their particulars will reverberate with those of many readers' lives." -Eleanor Berry, author of Works of Wildfire "Part memoir, part love song, part elegy, part travelogue, this collection journeys beyond any common foundation." -Nancy Christopherson, author of The Leaf

Wisdom is written everywhere, but will we know how to read the signs that lead us to the answers we seek? Every path leads somewhere. Whether to ocean, forest, or grasslands there is truth in every step. But who speaks? Our past or future, the grass we trample, sand dunes with our footprints washed away by the next tide, or trees whispering in the wind? We can write down notes to record each thought, but then we must kill the trees whose shelter we seek. These are the questions and revelations Emily Newberry explores in the poetry of Signs. "Put this truth-telling book in your pocket or bag; you will want to keep these poems close." -Annie Lighthart, author of Pax "Compelling, elegant, and remarkably honest, Signs paints an intimate portrait of identity and the ever-present need for empathy..." -John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House "Contemplative and corporeal, this is Newberry's finest." -Jenny Forrester, author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir

2nd Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2022As the increasing complexities of our world press on with their insistent yammering for our attention, it often feels difficult to hear the soft whisperings of our own spirits as they try to encourage us toward those choices which might be most meaningful for our lives. Here in Elemental Things, Michael Glaser employs poetry to grapple with that reality and show how attitudes of both gratitude and wonder might serve as nurturing companions for our journeys.Early Praise:"These poems return us to the sacred in our everyday lives, calling us back to the language of awe, as the poet puts it so gorgeously in the opening poem. These poems feel both elemental and essential themselves, capturing so many holy moments in nature, inviting us into the solitude and presence from which absorbing poetry is born."-James Crews, contest judge, poet, editor of How to Love the World "If pen to paper is a prayer-these are word temples."-Deanna Nikaido, poet, educator, visual artist "Glaser's poems remind us what a gift it is to be alive, even during difficult times."-Elizabeth Lund, reviewer and host of Poetic Lines

1st Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2022In Tracking the Fox, Rosalie Sanara Petrouske weaves a tale of family ties and history. The poems are steeped in her Native American heritage and in the natural lore her Ojibwe father taught her. Skilled in descriptive writing, she allows the readers to see waterfalls, hear winds howling, and smell delicate flowers in full bloom. They will walk with her and her father through fields of native grasses, along snowy animal tracks, and down wooded paths. As you read these poems, Tracking the Fox, draws you into Rosalie's story and leaves you a little closer to the natural world.Early Praise:"The poems in Tracking the Fox unfold at the slow pace of a hike in the woods, inviting the pleasures and joys of nature, while never turning away from the shared struggles and pain of the poet's Ojibwe heritage. Hers is a fearless language that holds it all, like the black ash basket she weaves with her daughter, welcoming every reader with each personal, conversational, and precise poem. This is an ambitious, necessary voice committed to truth-telling and the naming of creatures, large and small, that make up our world. In 'The Sky I Was Born Under,' written in homage to U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's piece of the same name, she describes the scene of her own birth, ending with the lines: 'I wailed for the first time, my voice/ ricocheted in the stillness,/ and all the forest creatures paused to listen.' Tracking the Fox will cause us all to pause and listen to the hard-won work of this poet coming into her own as a Native American woman and mother, promising: 'we shall let our voices be heard.'"-James Crews, contest judge, poet, editor of How to Love the World "Tracking the Fox gives us poems to read and reread, both for the beauty of their immersion in nature and for the way they help to dissolve 'deep...ancestral pain.'"-Dr. Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk, author One Less River,, Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellow "I admire Petrouske's voice, for it holds tension, making the reader eager for every reverberating, often haunting, ending."-Janine Certo, author of O Body of Bliss, winner, Longleaf Press Book Contest in Poetry (2022) "Take these [poems] outside and sit with them and you will be all the better for it. These heal what needs healing."-Michael Delp, Co-editor of Made in Michigan, Wayne State University Press

"Here are the maps for a self of earth and cosmos interconnections, breath, existence and thought-for the new thinker, traveler, philosopher. Bravo, brava!"-Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, EmeritusSoundings, the debut book of poetry by famed storyteller and musician David Gonzalez, is an eclectic collection that dives into five facets of his experience, each one adding a new layer of meaning and color: Nuyorican explores contemporary Latinx life; Rings of Fire, Ice and Jazz focuses on music and myth; Entanglement centers on science and wonder; Above, Below, In Between looks into the natural world; Back to the Beginning moves through birth, death, and redemption.

In Shadow Man, Margaret Chula brings her father out of the shadows where he had been since 1957, the day her mother packed their five children-all under the age of ten-into the car and drove away. Over the years, Margaret comes to accept the differences between a mother who wants China cups with saucers and a father who's content with a Budweiser. Through writing about these awkward, often heartbreaking, interactions with her estranged father, she discovers that there's more than one truth and that each of us must find our own.Advance Praise:"Shadow Man is a deeply touching portrayal of love, loss, and forgiveness."-Penelope Scambly Schott, Oregon Book Award for Poetry"Through Chula's insights, we as readers can understand our own fraught relationships with parents. As adults facing honest memory, we can arrive at the grace of reconciliation that she shows is possible and essential for our own serenity."-Bill Siverly, author of Nightfall

The poems in A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm are an invitation to slow down, to rest deep into quiet and the contemplative. Melanie Green's poetry explores the connection with the numinous-as well as speaking to the difficulty of living with a chronic illness."Haiku-like in their intensity of language, Zen-like in their meditative quality, these lyrical poems invite us to pause, catch our breaths, and marvel at a poet who invites us to Feel/ the psalm/ of lingering/ calm/ in afternoon's/ echo of light." -Carolyn Martin, author of The Way a Woman Knows and A Penchant for Masquerades"A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm is a wise, generous, expertly crafted volume of poems that reminds us how even in the deep/ arabesque/ of night, in the bearable/ dark, we might yet walk/ out of the house of worry into a place where solitude is cherished and heaven is within." -Tim Applegate, author of Blueprints and At the End of Day

A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize Selection - Third Place (tie)In November 2008, a vicious wildfire swept through Santa Barbara, California, forcing many residents to flee in fear, while wondering what would survive the angry flames. These poems tell that story through one woman's experience of loss and her resiliency to rebuild in the aftermath of destruction. Above all, this is a story of hope. My meadow scorched and bleak without the cooling trees. Trenches gape, deep as graves, and the garden chokes under dust and rock. But there see? There: a sapling thrives, a seed that rode in on the fire's wings.

These are poems of memory, thanks, prayer, bliss, dreams and blessings, embedded in color, and, while ethereal, are also rooted firmly to the earth. Hope is the sustaining thread even if some poems veer into darkness. Light is never too far away.

The Secret Land by Patrick Sheils is a collection of poems about purpose. It examines the tension between the individual purpose that propels us to live our day- to-day lives, contrasted against the backdrop of a seemingly purposeless universe governed by indifferent laws. Through this conflict, Sheils strives to find moments we can celebrate while questioning their authenticity. He ponders the effect of a purposeless world on love, sorrow and beauty. Is there any truth to these abstract concepts? How might other individuals at different stages of their life deal with such a schism, and how do those realities dictate the story arc of ones life? Is it possible for one to create a new world by sacrificing the old?Advance Praise for The Secret Land:"Patrick's honest, intimate writing discovers the emotion in imagery, using it to build a bridge between life's moments of mundanity and extreme gravity. In managing to make sense of those seemingly conflicting worlds, he'll make you feel seen and soothed in your own journey for purpose in our climate of escalating chaos." - Kevin Fallon, Senior Entertainment Writer for The Daily Beast "Sheils' debut is a fierce and unrelenting collection of prose that pulls no punches, even until its conclusion." - James D. Deaux IV, Author of The Student Writer's Guide to Avoiding Dead Words

A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize (2018) FinalistTake a peek into the mystery of other people as Sally Zakariya shares stories of those she knows, those she remembers from childhood, and the ones she's merely observed throughout her daily walk in life. Each poem serves as an introduction where the poet invites us to meet this man, this woman, these folks. Not only are we invited to bear witness to their lives, but we come to realize our common ground-our humanity-rather than focusing on the differences.Advance Praise for The Unknowable Mystery of Other People:Sally Zakariya's The Unknowable Mystery of Other People is a revelation. The elegant poems in this collection are each small but vividly drawn portraits of unique characters, from the disabled veteran begging coins to pay for his friend's funeral, to the Aunties baking their distinctive cakes and pies, to the Islamic calligrapher lunching with Allah. And every portrait tells a story-and a truth. We see the famous Irish giant towering above us when she writes: "Black hair, big jaw, coke-bottle glasses./He was so tall his legs refused to fit/in any ordinary car." And we glimpse something of the soul of the watchmaker's one-eyed wife when Zakariya tells us: "Today a watch has died, hands frozen still…/Single-eyed, she resurrects it." Even for the "Nobody," "Death knew his name, called him by it." What seems unknowable becomes known, and the reader cannot help but find the mystery and the humanity in each of her varied subjects.~ Charan Sue Wollard, Author, In My Other Life and The Magician's WifeWith spare but select words, Sally Zakariya reveals the essence of a person and transforms often-ordinary experiences of life into vital vignettes. On the lawn outside a smoldering house "a man sat at a scorched piano…pajamas/soot-smudged…fingers finding solace in familiar keys." Of a homeless vet accepting coins at the intersection she notes "Desert Storm destroyed his legs, the V.A. failed/to fix them, still he jokes with his regulars." Her poetry moves from existential questions arising during an eye exam to sweet memories revealed between lines of cake recipes-on each page, witnessing the extraordinary potential often lying just below everyday encounters.~ Rebecca King Leet, Living with the Doors Wide Open