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In the foreword to his new book, What the Furies Bring, acclaimed poet and essayist Kenneth Sherman asks, in the wake of 9/11, `What help is writing to the writer? What help to the reader?' Examining the works of authors who have lived and written under great duress, Sherman suggests how writing can serve as `equipment for living.' He contemplates Primo Levi's desire to tell his story -- a yearning that kept the Holocaust survivor writing through periods of crushing depression. Sherman's insight into the ways diary writing afforded Chaim Kaplan and Anne Frank a means to keep their sanity and humanity under the most harrowing conditions will prove inspirational to readers. In `The Angel of Di...
Kenneth Sherman's collection Words for Elephant Man delves into the fascinating life of Joseph Merrick, the titular `Elephant Man' who came to prominence as a sideshow curiosity in England in the late nineteenth century. Sherman's spare, captivating verse gives a voice to Merrick's fraught and complex existence, and couples it with a genuine compassion quite distant from the chill of a gawking public.
‘Man is a / fascinating animal’, Kenneth Sherman writes, and it is this fascination that drives the narrative in Words for Elephant Man. Written in the voice of Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’ plagued with a disfiguring condition that ravaged much of his body, Sherman reveals his subject to be more than just a living fascination. Sherman’s Merrick, acutely observant, is equally fascinated by those around him. Using found lines from historical record interwoven with his own beautifully rendered verse, Sherman’s collection triumphs as a haunting, eloquent portrait of a man whose body was both disabler and enabler, a man who was both a commodity and a salesman, mechanical and organic, and whose extraordinary circumstances overshadowed the remarkably ordinary desires he shared with humanity. Sherman’s Merrick is observant, clever and authentic, and possessed of a voice that resonates through the years and into the hearts and minds of readers.
With wit and moral acuity, with language as persuasive as a river's broad current, Kenneth Sherman confronts the anguish of our past and of our present, and offers us `a harsh contrivance of spirit against death'. Black River is a poetic myth for our time.
When poet and essayist Kenneth Sherman was diagnosed with cancer, he began keeping a notebook of observations that blossomed into this powerful memoir. With incisive and evocative language, Sherman presents a clear-eyed view of what the cancer patient feels and thinks. His narrative voice is personal but not confessional, practical but not cold, thoughtful and searching but not self-pitying or self-absorbed. The author’s wait time for surgery on a malignant tumour was exceptionally long and riddled with bureaucratic bumbling; thus he asks our health-care providers and administrators if our system cannot be made efficient and more humane. While he is honest about what is good and bad in our...
Ecosystem Management and Sustainability analyzes myriad human-initiated processes and tools developed to foster sustainable natural resource use, preservation, and restoration. It also examines how humans interact with plant, marine, and animal life in both natural and human-altered environments. Experts explain the complex ecosystem relationships that result from invasive species, roads, fencing, and even our homes by addressing topics such as fire and groundwater management, disturbance, and ecosystem resilience. Because most people in the 21st century live in urban environments, the volume pays special attention to the ecology of cities, with detailed coverage on topics ranging from urban agriculture to landscape architecture. The volume focuses on how ecosystems across the world can be restored, maintained, and used productively and sustainably.
Cincinnati Magazine taps into the DNA of the city, exploring shopping, dining, living, and culture and giving readers a ringside seat on the issues shaping the region.
Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to N...
This book places contemporary problems of ocean use management in historical context beginning with the time of Hugo Grotius, whose seminal 1609 work The Freedom of the Seas was the basis of ocean law for the next three centuries. Individual use problems are dealt with in detail and include overfishing, migrating fish stocks and fish wars, oil drilling, deep sea mining and marine pollution. Throughout the author notes the need to seek solutions in ocean management from a more integrated perspective. Emphasis is placed on the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and the resulting agreements. This book therefore presents a unique breadth of view which will make it salient to policy makers, diplomats, scholars and ocean users.