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Margo Taft Stever acutely observes and describes human society, past and present. From her compelling and beautiful descriptions of life inside a nineteenth-century private insane asylum to her colorful and often critical depiction of elements of contemporary society, her poems profoundly speak to us. They describe the delicate line between the certifiably insane and the irrationality of everyday life; they depict a society sometimes harsh and ugly, sometimes soft and loving, with stunning visual imagery. Stever speaks to us about our interactions with each other and with the natural world. Each segment tells its own story that captures us and makes us think.
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In 1900, Cincinnatian William Howard Taft successfully completed his tenure as Dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law and began an appointment under President William McKinley as Governor-General of the Philippines. As a federal administrator and diplomat, Taft negotiated amicable trade and cultural interactions between East and West, and in 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched him on a mission to China, Japan, and the Philippines to further improve U.S.-Asian relations. His large entourage included prominent fellow Cincinnatians and the president's daughter, Alice, as well as photographer Harry Fowler Woods and a host of American diplomats. This is the remarkable story of Taft's mission and Woods' fascinating documentary photographs.
A political intrigue of 1960s/70s FBI COINTELPRO clandestine operations written in narrative poetry. The "damage done" in Susana H. Case's remarkable poetry thriller set in late 1960s New York City is of two orders. On the surface, this is the story of Janey, a fashion model whose death under mysterious circumstances serves as an opportunity for a corrupt FBI agent in the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to frame Janey's Black Panther lover for her death, making them both collateral damage in J. Edgar Hoover's clandestine war on anyone he deemed un-American. But on another level, as Case instructs us, the greater damage done is to democracy itself, to trust and faith in government, an enduring legacy of suspicion and division that serves as a cautionary tale at a moment when those divisions and distrust are more enflamed than ever. That's a tall order for a volume of poetry, but Case more than succeeds in this audacious, breathtaking collection. Poetry.
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Margo Stever is receptive without being sentimental, and she penetrates her subjects without pretense. The poems in Frozen Spring center on the strength that survives separation -- a mother from her children, a sister from her brother, a daughter from her father, a rider from her horse. "Unfolding in a series of surprising metaphors and startling linkages, her lyrics move us from the ordinary into a realm of imagination and language whose only name is poetry." -- Billy Collins
Poetry. The middle section of this new poetry collection from Susana H. Case consists of ekphrastic poems inspired by the crime scene dioramas of Frances Glessner Lee, the "mother of forensic science." How appropriate, for this entire collection is an exercise in forensics, as Case deploys her poetic powers of detection to investigate and interrogate life in its minutest details; and all too often she too is depicting acts of violence, committed against women, against migrants, against the marginalized. Early on she questions the "puzzling utility" of her "street light eyes," but those eyes miss nothing, and it seems as well that she has missed no opportunity to learn from what they have see...