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Poetry
In Fighting is Like a Wife, Eloisa Amezcua uses striking visual poems to reconstruct the love story—and the tragedy—of two-time world boxing champion “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valorie Ginn. Bobby took to fighBobby took to fighting the way a surfer takes to water: the waves and crests, the highs and the pummeling lows. Valorie, as girlfriend, then wife, then mother of their children, was proud of Bobby and how he found a way out of the harsh world they were born into. But the brain-sloshing blows, the women, and the alcohol began to take their toll, and soon Bobby couldn’t hear her anymore. With her fate affixed to Bobby’s, and Bobby’s to the ring, Valorie sought her own way out of this dilemma. Using haunting, visceral language to evoke the emotion of the fight, and incorporating direct quotations from sports commentators and Bobby himself, Fighting Is Like a Wife reveals how boxing, like love and poetry, can be brutal, vulnerable, and surprising.
A WASHINGTON POST BEST POETRY COLLECTION OF 2020 A new collection from a poet whose books "are an amazing experience: harrowing, ravishing, essential, unstoppable" (Louise Glück) Joanna Klink's fifth book begins with poems of personal loss--a tree ripped out by a windstorm, a friendship broken off after decades, the nearing death of parents. Other poems take on the cost of not loving fully, or are written from bewilderment at the accumulation of losses and at the mercilessness of having, as one ages, to rule things out. There are elegies for friends, and a group of devotional poems. The Nightfields closes with thirty-one metaphysical poems inspired by the artist James Turrell's Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Arizona that Turrell has been transforming into an observatory for the perception of time. The sequence unfolds as a series of revelations that begin in psychic fear and move gradually toward the possibility of infinitude and connection.
A blistering, expansive debut collection addressing sexual violence, #MeToo, and familial violence from one of the hottest new voices in Korean poetry.
Citizen Illegal is a revealing portrait of life as a first generation immigrant, a celebration of Chicano joy, a shout against erasure, and a vibrant re-imagining of Mexican American life.
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. In her debut short collection, poet Kristin Chang bursts onto the page and into our consciousness like a dazzling, dizzying uproar: "I suck / until my teeth riot / with rot & I have nothing / left in my mouth to keep / quiet." Quiet Chang's speakers are not. In these nineteen poems, the body is personal and communal, hunter and hunted: "My mother says / women who sleep with women / are redundant: the body symmetrical / to its crime. Between your knees / I mistake need for belief / in a father figure: once, we renamed / our fathers by burning them / out of our bodies, smoking the sky / into meat." PAST LIVES, FUTURE BOD...
A book-length poem evokes the horror, anguish, and brutality of 20th century history.
Hands for Language is a groundbreaking poetry collection that expands the dialogue around literary representation. At its core, the collection is a bildungsroman in verse that encompasses postcolonial and diasporic themes. Written by the author at the age of fifteen, Hands for Language is intended to take readers on a journey through the eyes of a young girl of color living in America. She explores themes of transnationalism, migration, language, family, and culture. Organized into four sections, Hands for Language mirrors my path to self-discovery and understanding. The collection is a commentary on the interaction between historical and modern conceptions of ethnicity, gender, and cultural identity. "As a child, I never had the opportunity to read a book or poem about a person who was truly like me, trapped by the duality of culture. It wasn't until adolescence that I discovered the underappreciated realm of diasporic writing. This poetry collection is a retelling of my childhood as a daughter of immigrants, and I hope to help other young people of color to embrace their cultural identity through this work."
Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen’s poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.
Teach Living Poets opens up the flourishing world of contemporary poetry to secondary teachers, giving advice on reading contemporary poetry, discovering new poets, and inviting living poets into the classroom, as well as sharing sample lessons, writing prompts, and ways to become an engaged member of a professional learning community. The #TeachLivingPoets approach, which has grown out of the vibrant movement and community founded by high school teacher Melissa Alter Smith and been codeveloped with poet and scholar Lindsay Illich, offers rich opportunities for students to improve critical reading and writing, opportunities for self-expression and social-emotional learning, and, perhaps the most desirable outcome, the opportunity to fall in love with language and discover (or renew) their love of reading. The many poems included in Teach Living Poets are representative of the diverse poets writing today.