Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Improvise
A document of our days, this collection of poems and flash non-fictions is full of fire and jazz, and documents not only a Midwestern life (Kansas and KC), but captures the spirit of our age both during the pandemic and beyond.
Like Buddha-Calm Bird
Kevin Raba's new collection of poems and stories, Like Buddha-Calm Bird, improves on and riffs off the variable rhythms of the stories we create, revise, and live. Writing the music inherent in changing narratives of the ordinary and extraordinary, Rabas illustrates what a fellow Kansas poet meant when he said, "Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business, anyone who is alive is caught up in the imminences, the doubts mixed with the triumphant certainty, of poetry." Whether writing about Ugandan rain, the Bossa Nova, a middle school drummer, or the T.Rex at a museum, Rabas puts his ear to what wants to be said, then moseys into words slow and deliberate, or explodes into language fast and on the wing. In a sense, much of this collection leads up to the final section, "Eclipse," showing us how we partner with the life force to co-create this world: "the breath of God/comes in a cloud" and "an open/mouth whistles/over and past tall grasses/ from dust, remakes the world." ~Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate 2009-13, and author of Everyday Magic: Fieldnotes on the Mundane and Miraculous.
More Than Words
A book supersedes being a simple collection of words when a poet gets a hold of them. More Than Words by Kevin Rabas is an intimate collection of poetry and micro-fiction that takes a conscientious look inward and closely around us through stages of growing up, connecting with music, navigating romance, interacting with nature, and persisting through social and personal maladies. As Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus, Rabas's expertise and passion show. He can write a poem about anything, and this collection displays his versatility. Each page is a surprise, with some poems educating the reader on historic jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker and other poems ruminating on contemporary social an...
Watch Your Head
Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks and chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism. He has eleven other books, including Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner. Rabas's plays have been produced across Kansas and in North Carolina and San Diego. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize six times. The 2018 Emporia State Roe R. Cross Professor, he also is the recipient of the Emporia State President's and Liberal Arts & Sciences Awards for Research and Creativity. He is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry, the Victor Contoski Poetry Award, the Jerome Johanning Playwriting Award, and the Salina New Voice Award.
Everyone Just Wants to Drum
Kansas Poet Laureate (2017-2019), Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks and chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism. He has ten books, including Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, and All That Jazz.
Watch Your Head 2
In Watch Your Head 2, Kevin Rabas offers more of his poetry of self care while recovering from a brain injury. Even as the poems are older, the reader can still trace back to how they are Kevin Rabas reflections on life, class, position: "I think of the men / I could have been- / if my mother had not / led me to the water's edge / of books." Also in this collection, Rabas shares his playwriting. Just as his poems reflect a Midwestern deep life, his plays do, too. His wit and charm shine, like in "Lemonade." While the conversation between a young man getting a haircut and the stylist turns to Jazz, she asks if Charlie Parker, Miles, Coltrane, Keith Jarrett are any good. His response: "Let me ...
Songs for My Father
From Eat Fast: My father, who brought home good money from his job at the site, kept us well fed, told us to get "desk jobs," urged us to "study up," fattened, lost his mind slumped in blue TV light. Retired, he tried keeping bees, keeping chickens, growing tomatoes, collecting antique crocks. But in the end, he ate chips. His face placid, the light left his eyes/irises, two blue tubes. He walked slow. His speech slurred. He'd shake your hand and say he loved you. But nothing, nothing held. "There is something of the kernel of reminiscence in Kevin Rabas's work, a sense that for all its artfulness, the poems are the purest distillation of memory and feeling. At its heart, this collection pay...
While Away
Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019), Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and playwriting tracks. He has sixteen books, including Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner. Rabas is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry, the Victor Contoski Poetry Award, the Jerome Johanning Playwriting Award, and the Salina New Voice Award. Linzi Garcia can be found frolicking through fields, cemeteries, bookstores, and bars across the states. Her full- length poetry collection, Thank You, was published in 2018 by Spartan Press, and her chapbook about studying abroad in London, Live a Great Story (co-written wit...
All That Jazz
Kevin Rabas chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism at Emporia State and leads the poetry and playwriting tracks. He has eight books, includ- ing Bird's Horn, Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Sonny Kenner's Red Guitar, also a Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Green Bike, Eliot's Violin, Late for Cymbal Line, Spider Face: stories, and Songs for My Father: poems & stories. Rabas writes regularly for Kansas City's Jazz Ambassador Magazine (JAM). Rabas's plays have been produced across Kansas and in North Carolina and San Diego. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize ve times, and Rabas is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry, the Victor Contoski Poetry Award, the Jerome Johanning Playwriting Award, and the Salina New Voice Award.
Late for Cymbal Line
“Kevin Rabas continues his quest for universal truths in his latest collection of poetry and fiction, Late for Cymbal Line. Rabas displays characteristic honesty as he shares his life encounters with music, literature, romance, and family”—Back cover.
