Author: Jason Koo
Publisher: Prelude Books
ISBN: 9780990703068
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. "No one has written a finer, stranger, more enjoyably various and intelligent long poem than Jason's Koo's 'No Longer See,' the central poem in his splendid new book, MORE THAN MERE LIGHT. Schuyler and Knausgaard, Proust and Ashbery, to name just a few, meld into a poetic performance that is joyfully bent, and as gloriously funny as it is self-castigating. Underscoring all this is a sorrowing sense of self that can't shake free of time--time as it drags or stops or flies during romance and sex and the passage from domestic happiness to failure, and as it marks off the progress of a poetry and a life coming into its full, vital strength. With a cool-eyed detachment from his own drama, Koo has written a book that is unforgettable in its candor, its disabused self-knowledge, and its generosity of spirit."--Tom Sleigh "This book is about falling, a lot. There are good falls and uncomfortable falls and quiet falls and in-between falls and falling in and out of love with other people and yourself--as Koo aptly writes, 'That was a falling.' Koo is brilliant at mastering the often anxious way we talk to ourselves in our heads, as a way to recall moments and construct memories, justify behavior to oneself, and explore the roles of gender dynamics and sexuality within a world full of distractions in an often strange modern technological landscape. Throughout the collection, Koo is wonderfully narrative, bringing us into the speaker's world, full of jazz and biking and Brooklyn and girlfriends and students and conversations with both an overload of self-consciousness and a lack of it all at the same time ('What's okay, okay?'). The speaker's unabashed ability to be excessive while also having the reader rely on silence, on what isn't told, creates a captivating world for the reader to explore--and most importantly, see themselves fully immersed in as they navigate their own bizarre lives and landscapes. Read it over and over and over again, so you can, as Koo says, drop back 'against the light.'"--Joanna C. Valente
More Than Mere Light
Author: Jason Koo
Publisher: Prelude Books
ISBN: 9780990703068
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. "No one has written a finer, stranger, more enjoyably various and intelligent long poem than Jason's Koo's 'No Longer See,' the central poem in his splendid new book, MORE THAN MERE LIGHT. Schuyler and Knausgaard, Proust and Ashbery, to name just a few, meld into a poetic performance that is joyfully bent, and as gloriously funny as it is self-castigating. Underscoring all this is a sorrowing sense of self that can't shake free of time--time as it drags or stops or flies during romance and sex and the passage from domestic happiness to failure, and as it marks off the progress of a poetry and a life coming into its full, vital strength. With a cool-eyed detachment from his own drama, Koo has written a book that is unforgettable in its candor, its disabused self-knowledge, and its generosity of spirit."--Tom Sleigh "This book is about falling, a lot. There are good falls and uncomfortable falls and quiet falls and in-between falls and falling in and out of love with other people and yourself--as Koo aptly writes, 'That was a falling.' Koo is brilliant at mastering the often anxious way we talk to ourselves in our heads, as a way to recall moments and construct memories, justify behavior to oneself, and explore the roles of gender dynamics and sexuality within a world full of distractions in an often strange modern technological landscape. Throughout the collection, Koo is wonderfully narrative, bringing us into the speaker's world, full of jazz and biking and Brooklyn and girlfriends and students and conversations with both an overload of self-consciousness and a lack of it all at the same time ('What's okay, okay?'). The speaker's unabashed ability to be excessive while also having the reader rely on silence, on what isn't told, creates a captivating world for the reader to explore--and most importantly, see themselves fully immersed in as they navigate their own bizarre lives and landscapes. Read it over and over and over again, so you can, as Koo says, drop back 'against the light.'"--Joanna C. Valente
Publisher: Prelude Books
ISBN: 9780990703068
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. "No one has written a finer, stranger, more enjoyably various and intelligent long poem than Jason's Koo's 'No Longer See,' the central poem in his splendid new book, MORE THAN MERE LIGHT. Schuyler and Knausgaard, Proust and Ashbery, to name just a few, meld into a poetic performance that is joyfully bent, and as gloriously funny as it is self-castigating. Underscoring all this is a sorrowing sense of self that can't shake free of time--time as it drags or stops or flies during romance and sex and the passage from domestic happiness to failure, and as it marks off the progress of a poetry and a life coming into its full, vital strength. With a cool-eyed detachment from his own drama, Koo has written a book that is unforgettable in its candor, its disabused self-knowledge, and its generosity of spirit."--Tom Sleigh "This book is about falling, a lot. There are good falls and uncomfortable falls and quiet falls and in-between falls and falling in and out of love with other people and yourself--as Koo aptly writes, 'That was a falling.' Koo is brilliant at mastering the often anxious way we talk to ourselves in our heads, as a way to recall moments and construct memories, justify behavior to oneself, and explore the roles of gender dynamics and sexuality within a world full of distractions in an often strange modern technological landscape. Throughout the collection, Koo is wonderfully narrative, bringing us into the speaker's world, full of jazz and biking and Brooklyn and girlfriends and students and conversations with both an overload of self-consciousness and a lack of it all at the same time ('What's okay, okay?'). The speaker's unabashed ability to be excessive while also having the reader rely on silence, on what isn't told, creates a captivating world for the reader to explore--and most importantly, see themselves fully immersed in as they navigate their own bizarre lives and landscapes. Read it over and over and over again, so you can, as Koo says, drop back 'against the light.'"--Joanna C. Valente
The Book of Light
Author: Lucille Clifton
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1619322897
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 85
Book Description
With a powerful introduction by Ross Gay and a moving afterword by Sidney Clifton, this special anniversary edition of The Book of Light offers new meditations and insights on one of the most beloved voices of the 20th century. Though The Book of Light opens with thirty-nine names for light, we soon learn the most meaningful name is Lucille—daughter, mother, proud Black woman. Known for her ability to convey multitudes in few words, Clifton writes into the shadows—her father’s violations, a Black neighborhood bombed, death, loss—all while illuminating the full spectrum of human emotion: grief and celebration, anger and joy, empowerment and so much grace. A meeting place of myth and the Divine, The Book of Light exists “between starshine and clay” as Clifton’s personas allow us to bear the world’s weight with Atlas and witness conversations between Lucifer and God. While names and dates mark this text as a social commentary responding to her time, it is haunting how easily this collection serves as a political palimpsest of today. We leave these poems inspired—Clifton shows us Superman is not our hero. Our hero is the Black female narrator who decides to live. And what a life she creates! “Won’t you celebrate with me?”
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1619322897
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 85
Book Description
With a powerful introduction by Ross Gay and a moving afterword by Sidney Clifton, this special anniversary edition of The Book of Light offers new meditations and insights on one of the most beloved voices of the 20th century. Though The Book of Light opens with thirty-nine names for light, we soon learn the most meaningful name is Lucille—daughter, mother, proud Black woman. Known for her ability to convey multitudes in few words, Clifton writes into the shadows—her father’s violations, a Black neighborhood bombed, death, loss—all while illuminating the full spectrum of human emotion: grief and celebration, anger and joy, empowerment and so much grace. A meeting place of myth and the Divine, The Book of Light exists “between starshine and clay” as Clifton’s personas allow us to bear the world’s weight with Atlas and witness conversations between Lucifer and God. While names and dates mark this text as a social commentary responding to her time, it is haunting how easily this collection serves as a political palimpsest of today. We leave these poems inspired—Clifton shows us Superman is not our hero. Our hero is the Black female narrator who decides to live. And what a life she creates! “Won’t you celebrate with me?”
Light-Gathering Poems
Author: Liz Rosenberg
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805062236
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
... poems, gathered from all peoples and traditions, that blaze, inspire, and bring forth light.
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805062236
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
... poems, gathered from all peoples and traditions, that blaze, inspire, and bring forth light.
Two Minutes of Light
Author: Nancy K. Pearson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
While describing a descent into addiction, suicide attempts, and self-mutilation, Nancy K. Pearson is a foil to her own self-harm through the very act of writing. In her debut poetry collection TWO MINUTES OF LIGHT, creativity becomes an antidote to destructiveness. IN TWO MINUTES OF LIGHT, Nancy K. Pearson writes about a descent into the madness of addiction and suicide attempts, and the foil to self-destruction is art itself--finding small beauty in unlikely places and transforming it into poetry. With stunning imagination, acute mindfulness, spunk, and not an ounce of sentimentality or gratuitousness, Pearson mines her despair for "minutes of light" that provide rungs toward a more livable life. While immersed in the bleak world of psychiatric wards and crack motels, the poet, almost unnervingly, writes about sea grass, milkweed, ghost crabs, and wild lilies in a way that lifts the reader back to a place of connection, like holding hands with a stranger. Pearson's genius is her ironic voice, the immediacy of her images, and her fearless attitude. What is creativity if not the antidote to destructiveness? "These poems remind me of collecting stones while walking, each one leading the way to a house in the forest. I want to say they spell redemption, but the forest has its own kind of talking and what's extraordinary about this extraordinary book is how that world -- tree, insect, rain, fish, flower, bird -- has its saying and song too. I've never seen the world of human trauma and recovery set in what we call 'the natural world, ' mediated by the human gaze, yes, and so blessedly indifferent to us. I read this book over and over again."--Marie Howe "Nancy Pearson's poems are rife with the urgencies of constructing a self. It is a harrowing, hard-fought project. As one poem asks, 'By what small margins do we survive?' This is a book fiercely in love with the world, a book that unflinchingly examines what can keep someone from inhabiting that world, whole. Two Minutes of Light is a startling, luminous, and moving first collection."--Kim Addonizio "In Two Minutes of Light, Nancy K. Pearson invents visceral, exciting language to enact redemption with stunning clarity. In Pearson's world, there is no sentimentality to redemption, no fear of the negative. She doesn't let absolutes do the work. As with Dante, the voice changes as it travels from hell to the scary possibility of happiness. But there's no urge to create a model, a template for behavior. Pearson works in the moment, with a keen ear and a live, fluid line. I think of the Arab poet who said he would not trade his moment of mortality for God's omniscience. Two Minutes of Light is a dazzling voyage."--D. Nurske Poetry. LGBTQ+ Studies. Women's Studies.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
While describing a descent into addiction, suicide attempts, and self-mutilation, Nancy K. Pearson is a foil to her own self-harm through the very act of writing. In her debut poetry collection TWO MINUTES OF LIGHT, creativity becomes an antidote to destructiveness. IN TWO MINUTES OF LIGHT, Nancy K. Pearson writes about a descent into the madness of addiction and suicide attempts, and the foil to self-destruction is art itself--finding small beauty in unlikely places and transforming it into poetry. With stunning imagination, acute mindfulness, spunk, and not an ounce of sentimentality or gratuitousness, Pearson mines her despair for "minutes of light" that provide rungs toward a more livable life. While immersed in the bleak world of psychiatric wards and crack motels, the poet, almost unnervingly, writes about sea grass, milkweed, ghost crabs, and wild lilies in a way that lifts the reader back to a place of connection, like holding hands with a stranger. Pearson's genius is her ironic voice, the immediacy of her images, and her fearless attitude. What is creativity if not the antidote to destructiveness? "These poems remind me of collecting stones while walking, each one leading the way to a house in the forest. I want to say they spell redemption, but the forest has its own kind of talking and what's extraordinary about this extraordinary book is how that world -- tree, insect, rain, fish, flower, bird -- has its saying and song too. I've never seen the world of human trauma and recovery set in what we call 'the natural world, ' mediated by the human gaze, yes, and so blessedly indifferent to us. I read this book over and over again."--Marie Howe "Nancy Pearson's poems are rife with the urgencies of constructing a self. It is a harrowing, hard-fought project. As one poem asks, 'By what small margins do we survive?' This is a book fiercely in love with the world, a book that unflinchingly examines what can keep someone from inhabiting that world, whole. Two Minutes of Light is a startling, luminous, and moving first collection."--Kim Addonizio "In Two Minutes of Light, Nancy K. Pearson invents visceral, exciting language to enact redemption with stunning clarity. In Pearson's world, there is no sentimentality to redemption, no fear of the negative. She doesn't let absolutes do the work. As with Dante, the voice changes as it travels from hell to the scary possibility of happiness. But there's no urge to create a model, a template for behavior. Pearson works in the moment, with a keen ear and a live, fluid line. I think of the Arab poet who said he would not trade his moment of mortality for God's omniscience. Two Minutes of Light is a dazzling voyage."--D. Nurske Poetry. LGBTQ+ Studies. Women's Studies.
Half of the World in Light
Author: Juan Felipe Herrera
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816527021
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected. Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice. Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development. The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816527021
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected. Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice. Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development. The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about.
House of Light
Author: Mary Oliver
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807095397
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (one of the poems in this volume) Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award Winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the book with one of the available covers.
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807095397
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (one of the poems in this volume) Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award Winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the book with one of the available covers.
Collected Earlier Poems
Author: Anthony Hecht
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780192828033
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Hecht has long been regarded as one of the great modern American poets, and is hailed by many as the unofficial Poet Laureate' of the USA. This volume brings together all the poems contained in The Hard Hours (1967), Millions of Strange Shadows (1977), and The Venetian Vespers (1980), and versions of Joseph Brodsky's early poems, which Hecht was the first to translate. These three distinguished books affirm Hecht's reputation as a technically accomplished poet capable of powerfully expressing deep sentiment and original thought.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780192828033
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Hecht has long been regarded as one of the great modern American poets, and is hailed by many as the unofficial Poet Laureate' of the USA. This volume brings together all the poems contained in The Hard Hours (1967), Millions of Strange Shadows (1977), and The Venetian Vespers (1980), and versions of Joseph Brodsky's early poems, which Hecht was the first to translate. These three distinguished books affirm Hecht's reputation as a technically accomplished poet capable of powerfully expressing deep sentiment and original thought.
A Question of Gravity and Light
Author: Blas Falconer
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816526222
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
It is rare to find contemporary American poetry that speaks to readers with engaging directness, free of pretense or posturing. That is exactly the kind of poetry that Blas Falconer writes. In his first collection, Falconer presents 46 poems that are emotionally forthright and linguistically evocative but written without affectation or subterfuge. Although Falconer is formally trained and is aware of the structures and potential of both free verse and traditional poetic forms, he crafts exquisite, heartfelt poems that surprise us with their simple intensity. Whether writing about the mysteries of childhood or the pleasures of cruising for gay sex in a metropolitan airport, he surprises us with the delicacy of his touch, never obvious or heavy-handed. As a gay man who embraces his Puerto Rican heritage, Falconer stands at an edge of American society, and there is the tension of borders in his work: borders between peoples and nations as well as the less visible, more porous and deceptive borders between family members and lovers. There is not one point of view in these poems but many. It is the quality of their observational power that binds them together. Whether the setting is the hospital room of his dying grandfather or his own backyard teeming with garrulous tree frogs, Falconer transports us to the scene. It is easy for us to imagine what he sees. And we care, deeply, just as he does.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816526222
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
It is rare to find contemporary American poetry that speaks to readers with engaging directness, free of pretense or posturing. That is exactly the kind of poetry that Blas Falconer writes. In his first collection, Falconer presents 46 poems that are emotionally forthright and linguistically evocative but written without affectation or subterfuge. Although Falconer is formally trained and is aware of the structures and potential of both free verse and traditional poetic forms, he crafts exquisite, heartfelt poems that surprise us with their simple intensity. Whether writing about the mysteries of childhood or the pleasures of cruising for gay sex in a metropolitan airport, he surprises us with the delicacy of his touch, never obvious or heavy-handed. As a gay man who embraces his Puerto Rican heritage, Falconer stands at an edge of American society, and there is the tension of borders in his work: borders between peoples and nations as well as the less visible, more porous and deceptive borders between family members and lovers. There is not one point of view in these poems but many. It is the quality of their observational power that binds them together. Whether the setting is the hospital room of his dying grandfather or his own backyard teeming with garrulous tree frogs, Falconer transports us to the scene. It is easy for us to imagine what he sees. And we care, deeply, just as he does.
The Hard Hours
Light While There Is Light
Author: Keith Waldrop
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN: 1564788385
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
One of the unheralded masterpieces of twentieth-century American fiction, Light While There Is Light is acclaimed poet Keith Waldrop's autobiographical novel about the myriad ghosts left behind by his family. Born to a deeply religious mother, the narrator and his siblings are led across the US as she searches for the "right" religious sect—a trip that ends with her speaking in tongues, and finally her total isolation. But no synopsis can do justice to the beauty of Keith Waldrop's measured, wise, and unembroidered prose, illuminating the fear, madness, and destruction within hearth and home—though never repudiating his love for same. In a tradition that stretches back through Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner to Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, Keith Waldrop and Light While There Is Light are American treasures.
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN: 1564788385
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
One of the unheralded masterpieces of twentieth-century American fiction, Light While There Is Light is acclaimed poet Keith Waldrop's autobiographical novel about the myriad ghosts left behind by his family. Born to a deeply religious mother, the narrator and his siblings are led across the US as she searches for the "right" religious sect—a trip that ends with her speaking in tongues, and finally her total isolation. But no synopsis can do justice to the beauty of Keith Waldrop's measured, wise, and unembroidered prose, illuminating the fear, madness, and destruction within hearth and home—though never repudiating his love for same. In a tradition that stretches back through Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner to Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, Keith Waldrop and Light While There Is Light are American treasures.