LITMIR.BIZ

From the poet whose stunning debut was praised as «transcendent» (Kevin Young) and «steadily confident» (Carl Phillips), Dangerous Goods tracks its speaker throughout North America and abroad, illuminating the ways in which home and place may inhabit one another comfortably or uncomfortably—or both simultaneously. From the Bahamas, London, and Cairo, to Bemidji, Minnesota, and Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill interweaves the contemporary with the historical, and explores with urgency the relationship between travel, migration, alienation, and home. Here, playful «postcard» poems addressed to Nostalgia and My Third Crush Today sit alongside powerful reflections on the immigration of African Americans to Liberia during and after the era of slavery. Such range and formal innovation make Hill's second collection both rare and exhilarating. Part shadowbox, part migration map, part travelogue-in-verse, Dangerous Goods is poignant, elegant, and deeply moving.

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With intelligence and crystalline clarity, a chorus of female voices speaks through the poems in Her book, Éireann Lorsung's inspired second collection.From the poet who brought us Music For Landing Planes By, Éireann Lorsung’s luminous voice is distilled through multiple unnamed female speakers in this, her second collection. Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that bring them together. This is also a book about translation (of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space) and conversation (with, for instance, work by Kiki Smith, widely known as a feminist artist). Lorsung writes additionally about her time spent in England and friendships she formed with women there. Together these poems comprise both her book (Lorsung’s), and hers (encompassing all who identify with that word).

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In Fancy Beasts, the author of Hallelujah Blackout and Mosquito takes on California, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism — in short, the modern American media culture, which provides obscene foil for his personal legacies of violence and violation. This pivotal book captures the turning point in a life of abuse, in which the recovering victim/perpetrator puzzles through the paradigm of son-to-husband-to-father. Frenetic, hilarious, and fearless, these poems are a workout — vigorous and raw. Yet they are also composed and controlled, pared down and sculpted, with a disarming narrative simplicity and directness. Even when dealing with toxic content, the point of view is always genuine and trustworthy. This stunning achievement marks Alex Lemon’s best work yet.

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World-renowned Northern Irish photographer, Bobbie Hanvey, captured some of The Troubles' most defining and devastating moments. Bobbie is lauded as much for these photographs as he is for his iconic portraits of figures like Seamus Heaney, Gerry Adams, Brian Friel, and Ian Paisley. In  Reconstructions , these photographs take on even greater resonance when set in context by Bobbie's eldest son, singer-songwriter and poet, Steafán Hanvey. Inspired by the photographs, he often witnessed coming to life in the darkroom, Steafán's memories of a childhood less ordinary are presented in a lyric poetry filled with startling imagery and insights that capture the wit, cadences, anguish, and dreams of the people of Northern Ireland. Reconstructions  daringly conflates the public and the private, and acts as a timely reminder of just how futile and unnecessary internecine conflict really is. But most of all, Bobbie and Steafán, father and son, have produced a book that is a testament to the strength and resilience of ordinary people living through extraordinary times.

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A William Carlos William Award Finalist for 2012A Kansas City Star Top Book of 2012A Library Journal Top Winter Poetry PickA series of semi-mythologized, symbolic narratives interspersed with dramatic monologues, the poems collected in The City, Our City showcase the voice of a young poet striking out, dramatically, emphatically, to stake his claim on “the City.” It is an unnamed, crowded place where the human questions and observations found in almost any city—past, present, and future—ring out with urgency. These poems—in turn elegiac, celebratory, haunting, grave, and joyful—give hum to our modern experience, to those caught up in the City’s immensity, and announce the arrival of a major new contemporary poet.

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Drawing inspiration from the work of Rene Char, Melissa Kwasny in The Nine Senses presents a new kind of prose poem. Casting aside the narrative-plus-moral formula of old, these experiments make each line equal to the next, challenging the way we read sequentially. Dylan Thomas, Roman water lines, Paul Celan, Shirin Neshat, anti-depressants, Buddhism, William Carlos Williams, Trakl, cancer, Beckett, Pound, Breton, the Iraq War, telekinesis, clairvoyance, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Yeats, among many others, appear side by side in these pages.As if liberating the intellect, the prose poem form invites a wave of vivid, colliding images, and allows a comfortable wordiness and word play that is inherently poetic. Raising the ante even further than Reading Novalis in Montana, this book asks how do we tie ourselves to the world when our minds are always someplace other than where we are?As bromides and aphorisms degrade in this new construct, we are left with the realization that we have been misled by culture and politics, which encourages prevarication. Obliquely touching on the cancer of a friend, her own troubled relationship with her father, and the break-up of a nearly thirty-year partnership, Kwasny also questions mortality, temporality, and eternity. Walking the knife-edge between safety and danger, and marveling over the quickness with which the familiar can end, Kwasny posits a new perception of time, in which the work lives on under new direction. Near the end of the book, Kwasny’s signature abstraction melts away in some very direct poems about her own cancer and diagnosis.With this manuscript, Kwasny achieves a new level of artistry. Although form is consistent throughout, the thematic cycle is rich and varied: abstract, elliptic, collaged, and ultimately evolving toward the end into powerful statements that are some of the most direct ever uttered by this author.

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This collection of Japanese haiku by an American expat is an important contribution to the world of poetry.Edith Shiffert, called by Poetry Nippon «one of Kyoto's living nation—and international— treasures,» here writes brief poems in the form of traditional Japanese haiku for each month of the year. Taken as a whole, the poems describe an American woman's twenty five-five year sojourn in KyotoThe poems, over 350 in all, are beautifully complemented by the traditional Japanese ink-paintings of Kyoto-born artist Kohka Saito.

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This book of Zen poetry and art blends simple, haiku-like poetry with bold minimalist ink brush drawings.The unique books of Paul Reps have attracted countless readers since they were first published in the 1950s. His classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones remains one of the most popular books on Zen ever published in English.Zen Telegrams is a collection of Reps's picture-poems," works of calligraphic art and minimalist poetry that first fascinated Japanese,then attracted Western viewers. A lesser artist trying to combine English text and Eastern art might have failed, but Reps was a rare talent, accomplished in a wide variety of literary genres and art forms.American by birth, Reps lived in many countries and traveled throughout the world. He seemed to know no national boundaries, and his unique work appeals to a universal audience.

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The development of Zen in China is really the story of the flourishing of Chinese philosophy, arts and literature beginning as far back as the Han Dynasty and earlier. Master Nan Huai-Chin offers an engaging chronicle of both in this groundbreaking work.The Story of Chinese Zen begins with the premise that the climate during Shakyamuni's founding of Buddhism in India ultimately influence the differences behind Hinayana and Mahayana thought, practice, and methods of seeking enlightenment. From there—beginning with its transmission to China—Master Nan outlines the Zen School, exploring influences on the development of Zen before the early Tang Dynasty, different meanings of studying Zen and pursuing the heart and goal of Zen." He explores the relationship between Zen and new-Confucianism and the inseparability of religion and Zen from Chinese literature and philosophy, especially Taoism.Born in Zhejiang province, China in 1918, Nan Huai-Chin has studied under thirty-two major Taoist and Buddhist masters, including the masters of the Esoteric School of Buddhism in Tibet, from whom he received the title of Esoteric Master. He has published over thirty books and is widely recognized as one of the foremost scholars on Zen and Taoism.

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This collection of Zen koans with extensive commentary will be of great interests to followers of Zen Buddhism.People around the world value the mind-cleansing, spiritually uplifting benefit to be gained through the practice of Cha'an (Zen) Buddhism. Central to Zen is the enigmatic koan (kung-an), a kind of riddle used by masters to shock their students into greater awareness. In this timeless collection from Chinese masters, translations of 100 of these question-and-answer riddles are presented. Each koan is followed by the author's commentary, which provides fascinating insight into the background and deeper meanings of the koans.Pointing at the Moon contains zen koeans from the following four treatises of the Zen tradition: A Selection From the Five Books of the Zen Masters' Sayings The Light of the Zen Sayings Recorded in the Year if Developing Virtue The Zen Sayings Recorded During the Moonlit Meditation An Anthology if Zen SayingsEnhanced by the 85 beautifully sketched Chinese brush paintings, Pointing at the Moon is a text certain to stimulate and challenge anyone interested in learning more about Zen and its tradition of spiritual enlightenment.

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