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Winnowed from a distinguished career, then distilled, then polished and winnowed again, the poems in You Are Here are Leon Stokesbury’s best from fifty years of published work. The selections from his earlier volumes are as fully realized as one would expect from the winner of the AWP Poetry Competition and the Poets’ Prize. But it is in Stokesbury’s new work, collected under the heading “These Days,” that he reveals something completely different. From a carnival sideshow to Hitchcock’s Mount Rushmore, from John Keats’s backyard to the miseries of a failed crematorium operator, every turned page divulges a particular we didn’t see coming. You Are Here is like a sideshow of this modern world, even when we discover, amazed, our selves looking back at us. “Why do we still only stand here?” Stokesbury asks in one of his earliest salvos. The poems in this collection give such varied answers that readers will have no idea what the next page holds, only that they will find themselves somewhere new.
Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Ralph Adamo -- Betty Adcock -- Claudia Emerson Andrews -- James Applewhite -- Alvin Aubert -- Gerald Barrax -- John Bensko -- Wendell Berry -- David Bottoms -- Cathy Smith Bowers -- Van K. Brock -- Jack Butler -- Turner Cassity -- Fred Chappell -- Stephen Corey -- Kate Daniels -- James Dickey -- R.H.W. Dillard -- Maudelle Driskell -- George Garrett -- Margaret Gibson -- R.S. Gwynn -- Jim Hall -- Andrew Hudgins -- T.R. Hummer -- Mark Jarman -- Rodney Jones -- Donald Justice -- Etheridge Knight -- Yusef Komunyakaa -- Rick Lott -- Susan Ludvigson -- Everette Maddox -- Cleopatra Mathis -- Walter McDonald -- Jo McDougall -- Heather Ross Miller -- Jim Wayne Miller -...
In this selection of poems written over a period of thirty years, Leon Stokesbury sees the horror in death, and in the inescapable process of mutability, but finds also the dark joke at the center of things, and the chance for redemptive laughter.
In this selection of poems written over thirty years, Leon Stokesbury careens through the Maple Leaf Bar and the Restaurant-on-the-Corner, Oklahoma City and Fairbanks, Alaska, consuming and offering up his sweet-and-sour vision of our lot in life. Whether he comes at us in masks as varied as his father and mother, Nick Bottom or John Keats, Senor Wences or Owen Glendower, it is his own Cheshire grin we spy creeping out around the edges. He readily sees the horror in the death of a New Orleans poet, in his own brother's sufferings, in the inescapable process of mutability itself, but he finds also, often enough, the dark joke at the center of things and the chance for redemptive laughter. With each turn of Stokesbury's kaleidoscopic vision, the reader is presented another pattern, cut from the same true glass but completely new and fully realized. The mystery of what it all adds up to gives these poems their strange sparkle. Whether in his own deeply personal voice or in the multitude of idioms from which he is able to draw - southern, midwestern, ShakespeareanStokesbury creates whole landscapes in perfected, formal lines from the shards of memories and dreams.
Dave Oliphant is widely considered the finest poetry critic ever produced by Texas. This volume brings together some 40 years of essays, articles, and reviews on the topic of Texas poetry -- its history as well as addressing individual poets and their books. Only one other book in the last two decades addressed the topic, and GENERATIONS OF TEXAS POETS is larger, more comprehensive, and of superior literary quality. In 1971, Larry McMurtry famously descried the lack of good Texas poetry; Oliphant has spent a lifetime nurturing it, publishing it, and has become its best critic.
This book offers a theory of writing as representational composition, identifying fundamental elements which underlie all principles of writing and textual composition. For students of writing in all areas as well as writers at all levels.
A Study Guide for Ellen Bryant Voigt's "The Lotus Flowers," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
Searing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award–winning author. Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina’s life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city—but the breadth of a country—away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much “a body will hold,” reaching from the border to the poet’s own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.
Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, "The Best American Poetry" is the one indispensable volume for readers eager to follow what's new in poetry today. Sales continue to grow and plaudits keep coming in for this "high-voltage testament to the vitality of American poetry" "(Booklist)." Selected by prizewinning guest editor James Tate, the seventy-five best poems of the year were chosen from more than three dozen magazines and range from the comic to the cosmic, from the contemplative to the sublime. In addition to showcasing our leading bards -- such as John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, and Mark Strand -- the collection marks an auspicious debut for eye-opening younger poets. With comments from the poets themselves offering insights into their work, "The Best American Poetry 1997" delivers the startling and imaginative writing that more and more people have come to expect from this prestigious series.
Georgia Voices Volume 3, Poetry, is the final anthology in a distinctive multivolume set of works by Georgia's most gifted writers. Offering selections from thirty-nine poets, Georgia Voices Volume 3 presents a variety of literary and cultural traditions. While the poems reflect the places and times of their origins, they also reveal the impact of today's global society in their diverse and contrasting themes. With myriad styles and voices, this work is characteristic of the South's blend of tradition and innovation, elegance and angst. As eclectic as it is representative of Georgia's character and heritage, the volume contains works mainly from the twentieth century. In this collection we encounter some of America's finest poets--Sidney Lanier, Conrad Aiken, James Dickey, Alice Walker, Judson Mitcham, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rosemary Daniell, Wyatt Prunty, Charlie Smith, Bettie Sellers, Coleman Barks, Stephen Corey, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and many others. Their works of humor, nature, history, discovery, drama, and strength make Georgia Voices Volume 3, Poetry, a worthwhile addition to any bookshelf or library.