- Table View
- List View
Swinging On The Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality and Spirit, Second Edition
by Elizabeth Jarrett AndrewA stunning memoir of coming of age and coming out bisexual by award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew. Every story begins with a word. As a young woman, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew carried a word within her so potent that it spread through her every artery and vein. She carried it in secret until she was shown a different way and the word inside her turned restless and eager. Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality and Spirit describes a period of time in award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew’s life when she came to know bisexuality as an embodied manifestation of divinity. Andrew not only reconciles her United Methodist faith with her sexuality but realizes that her body is holy, her sexuality is holy, and the word she carried within her has always been holy. The spark of spirit Andrew identifies in her body she also finds throughout the solid matter of life—in childhood, nature, creativity, loss, death, and especially the coming out process. Andrew brings a distinctly queer feminist lens to Christian teachings and answers the question innumerable young people have posed to her over the years: “Is it possible to be both queer and spiritual?” The act of bringing hidden, personal truths to light is transformative, and for Andrew, a universal calling. This second edition includes a new note from Andrew as she looks back on its twenty-year history and a foreword by Bishop Karen Oliveto, the first openly lesbian bishop to be elected in the United Methodist Church.
Swish
by Joel Derfner Elton JohnA hilarious and deeply moving account of one man's journey from stereotype to truth.Joel Derfner is a knitter, an aerobics instructor, a cheerleader, a go-go dancer, and a musical theater composer, but when he realizes one day that he's a walking gay cliché he embarks on a quest for deeper meaning. A very, very funny quest for deeper meaning. And whether he's confronting the demons of his past at a GLBT summer camp, using the Internet to "meet" men--many, many men--or going undercover to a conference of ex-gays, he discovers that what he's looking for--and sometimes even finds, hidden underneath the surface of everyday life--is his own identity. In the tradition of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, yet with its own particular flair, Swish is a story told with not just wit but humor; not just candor but honesty; and not just compassion but humanity.Swish is the best book about being gay I've ever read. But it's not just about being gay; it's about being human.Elton JohnIn a culture where we disguise vulnerability with physical perfection and material success, Derfner skewers heartache with Wildean wit . . . [Derfner is] the next Noël Coward.Out.comDerfner's writing is perfect. . . . He's your best friend. He's your brother. He is you.EDGE Los AngelesSometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, always clever, and unpredictable.Philadelphia Gay News
Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever
by Joel DerfnerJoel Derfner is gayer than you. Don't feel too bad about it, though, because he has made being gayer than you his life's work. At summer day camp, when he was six, Derfner tried to sign up for needlepoint and flower arranging, but the camp counselors wouldn't let him, because, they said, those activities were for girls only. Derfner, just to be contrary, embarked that very day on a solemn and sacred quest: to become the gayest person ever. Along the way he has become a fierce knitter, an even fiercer musical theater composer, and so totally the fiercest step aerobics instructor (just ask him--he'll tell you himself). InSwish, Derfner takes his readers on a flamboyant adventure along the glitter-strewn road from fabulous to divine. Whether he's confronting the demons of his past at a GLBT summer camp, using the Internet to "meet" men--many, many men--or plunging headfirst (and nearly naked) into the shady world of go-go dancing, he reveals himself with every gayer-than-thou flourish to be not just a stylish explorer but also a fearless one. So fearless, in fact, that when he sneaks into a conference for people who want to cure themselves of their homosexuality, he turns the experience into one of the most fascinating, deeply moving chapters of the book. Derfner, like King Arthur, Christopher Columbus, and Indiana Jones--but with a better haircut and a much deeper commitment to fad diets--is a hero destined for legend. Written with wicked humor and keen insight,Swishis at once a hilarious look at contemporary ideas about gay culture and a poignant exploration of identity that will speak to all readers--gay, straight, and in between.
Swiss in Greater Milwaukee
by Maralyn A. Wellauer-LeniusA few men and women, mostly from German-speaking cantons, pioneered this remarkable Swiss community in the mid-1830s. Thousands who followed in their footsteps participated actively in the development of a vibrant new city, branding it with a unique style of efficiency and progressivism. The immigrants and their progeny prospered and distinguished themselves in various fields of science, commerce, art, and industry. They helped launch Charlie Chaplin's career, produced coumarin used in flavorings and perfumes, wrote a popular guide for 19th-century immigrants, and helped shape the nation's banking industry. Among their finest were Milwaukee's first archbishop, a world-renowned surgeon, an elected governor, an influential radical "free-thinker," a kindergarten pioneer, a wine grower, a successful whiskey distiller, and a prolific architect.
Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening
by John Elder Robison Marcel Just Alvaro Pascual-LeonAn extraordinary memoir about the cutting-edge brain therapy that dramatically changed the life and mind of John Elder Robison, the New York Times bestselling author of Look Me in the EyeNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Imagine spending the first forty years of your life in darkness, blind to the emotions and social signals of other people. Then imagine that someone suddenly switches the lights on.It has long been assumed that people living with autism are born with the diminished ability to read the emotions of others, even as they feel emotion deeply. But what if we've been wrong all this time? What if that "missing" emotional insight was there all along, locked away and inaccessible in the mind? In 2007 John Elder Robison wrote the international bestseller Look Me in the Eye, a memoir about growing up with Asperger's syndrome. Amid the blaze of publicity that followed, he received a unique invitation: Would John like to take part in a study led by one of the world's foremost neuroscientists, who would use an experimental new brain therapy known as TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, in an effort to understand and then address the issues at the heart of autism? Switched On is the extraordinary story of what happened next. Having spent forty years as a social outcast, misreading others' emotions or missing them completely, John is suddenly able to sense a powerful range of feelings in other people. However, this newfound insight brings unforeseen problems and serious questions. As the emotional ground shifts beneath his feet, John struggles with the very real possibility that choosing to diminish his disability might also mean sacrificing his unique gifts and even some of his closest relationships. Switched On is a real-life Flowers for Algernon, a fascinating and intimate window into what it means to be neurologically different, and what happens when the world as you know it is upended overnight. Praise for Switched On"An eye-opening book with a radical message . . . The transformations [Robison] undergoes throughout the book are astonishing--as foreign and overwhelming as if he woke up one morning with the visual range of a bee or the auditory prowess of a bat."--The New York Times "Astonishing, brave . . . reads like a medical thriller and keeps you wondering what will happen next . . . [Robison] takes readers for a ride through the thorny thickets of neuroscience and leaves us wanting more."--The Washington Post "Fascinating for its insights into Asperger's and research, this engrossing record will make readers reexamine their preconceptions about this syndrome and the future of brain manipulation."--Booklist"Like books by Andrew Solomon and Oliver Sacks, Switched On offers an opportunity to consider mental processes through a combination of powerful narrative and informative medical context."--BookPage "A mind-blowing book that will force you to ask deep questions about what is important in life. Would normalizing the brains of those who think differently reduce their motivation for great achievement?"--Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain "At the heart of Switched On are fundamental questions of who we are, of where our identity resides, of difference and disability and free will, which are brought into sharp focus by Robison's lived experience."--Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Effect
Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities
by Richard K. BaerIn 1989, Karen Overhill walks into psychiatrist Richard Baer's office complaining of vague physical pains and depression. Odder still, she reveals that she's suffering from a persistent memory problem. Routinely, she "loses" parts of her day, finding herself in places she doesn't remember going to or being told about conversations she doesn't remember having. Her problems are so pervasive that she often feels like an impersonator in her own life; she doesn't recognize the people who call themselves her friends, and she can't even remember being intimate with her own husband. Baer recognizes that Karen is on the verge of suicide and, while trying various medications to keep her alive, attempts to discover the root cause of her strange complaints. It's the work of months, and then years, to gain Karen's trust and learn the true extent of the trauma buried in her past. What she eventually reveals is nearly beyond belief, a narrative of a childhood spent grappling with unimaginable horror. How has Karen survived with even a tenuous grasp on sanity? Under hypnosis, alternate Karen personalities reveal themselves in shocking variety and with undeniable traits - both physical and psychological. One "alter" is a young boy filled with frightening aggression; another an adult male who considers himself Karen's protector; and a third a sassy flirt who seeks dominance over the others. It's only by compartmentalizing her pain, guilt, and fear in this fashion-by "switching time" with alternate selves as the situation warrants - that Karen has been able to function since childhood. Realizing that his patient represents an extreme case of multiple personality disorder, Baer faces the daunting task of creating a therapy that will make Karen whole again. Somehow, in fact, he must gain the trust of each of Karen's seventeen "alters" and convince them of the necessity of their own annihilation. As powerful as Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve, Switching Time is the first complete account of such therapy to be told from the perspective of the treating physician, a devoted healer who worked selflessly for decades so that Karen could one day live as a single human being. This book includes grim and disturbing, though not grisly descriptions of child abuse. It also contains language that is objectionable to many people.
Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by Richard K. BaerBaer, now medical director for the nation's largest Medicare contractor, had a psychiatry practice for 14 years. He offers a complete account of his 18 year odyssey with Karen Overhill, a seemingly normal wife and mother who came to him for depression and eventually revealed 17 separate personalities. A classic case of multiple personality disorder (MPD), Karen survived a childhood of unimaginable horror and was only able to maintain even a tenuous grasp on sanity with the help of 16 alters who lived inside her--men, women, and children, each frozen at a certain age and stage in Karen's development. Baer draws on 622 pages of progress notes, videos and audiotapes of sessions, and Karen's journal entries and letters to describe their journey into the human psyche. B&w letters and drawings are included, along with an epilogue by Karen herself. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Swords of Lightning: Green Beret Horse Soldiers and America's Response to 9/11
by Jim DeFelice Bob Pennington Mark NutschThe first-person account of how a small band of Green Berets used horses and laser-guided missiles to overthrow the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11.They landed in a dust storm so thick the chopper pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. They were met by a band of heavily armed militiamen who didn&’t understand a word they said. They climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They saved babies and treated fevers, trekked through minefields, and waded through booby-trapped streams—sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who&’d shared food with them hours before. They found their enemy hiding in thick concrete bunkers, dodged bullets from machine-gun-laden pickup trucks, and survived ambushes launched with Russian tanks. They fought back with everything they had, from smart bombs to AK-47s. They overthrew a government, mediated blood feuds between rival commanders, and argued with generals and politicians thousands of miles away. The men they helped called them gods. One of their commanders called them devils. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers. They called themselves Green Berets—Special Forces ODA 595.
Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time
by Jenny UglowFrom Jenny Uglow, one of our most admired writers, a beautifully illustrated story of a love affair and a dynamic artistic partnership between the wars. In 1922, Cyril Power, a fifty-year-old architect, left his family to work with the twenty-four-year-old Sybil Andrews. They would be together for twenty years. Both became famous for their dynamic, modernist linocuts—streamlined, full of movement and brilliant color, summing up the hectic interwar years. Yet at the same time, they looked back to medieval myths and early music, to country ways that were disappearing from sight. Jenny Uglow’s Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time traces their struggles and triumphs, conflicts and dreams, following them from Suffolk to London, from the New Forest to Vancouver Island. This is a world of futurists, surrealists, and pioneering abstraction, but also of the buzz of the new, of machines and speed, of shops and sport and dance, shining against the threat of depression and looming shadows of war.
Sybil Ludington Rides to the Rescue: Courageous Kid of the American Revolution (Courageous Kids)
by Jessica GundersonIn 1777, the American Revolution is well underway. At 16, Sybil Ludington knows the war all too well. Her father is a colonel in the Continental Army, battling for America's independence from Great Britain. Colonel Ludington and his regiment are home for the season when word comes that the British Army is attacking nearby. With her father too ill to ride, it's up to young Sybil to alert the American militia that the British are coming.
Sybil Ludington's Midnight Ride
by Marsha AmstelThe story of Sybil Ludington's ride on horseback to rouse American soldiers to fight against the British who were attacking Danbury, Connecticut during the American Revolution.
Sybille Bedford: A Life
by Selina HastingsThe first biography of the universally acclaimed British writer, Sybille Bedford, by the celebrated author of books about Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.Passionate, liberated, fiercely independent, Sybille Bedford was a writer and a journalist, the author of ten books, including a biography of Aldous Huxley, and four novels, all of which fictionalized her extraordinary life. Born in Berlin, she grew up in Baden, first with her distant, aristocratic father, and then in France with her intellectual, narcissistic, morphine-addicted mother and her lover. She was a child with a German Jewish background who survived two world wars and went on to spend her adult life in exile in France, Italy, New York, and Los Angeles, before finally settling in England.Bedford was ahead of her time in many ways, with great enthusiasm for life and all its sensual pleasures, including friendships with bold faced names in the worlds of literature and food as well as a literary network of high-powered lesbians. Aldous Huxley became a mentor, and Martha Gellhorn encouraged her to write her first novel, A Legacy; in 1989, her novel Jigsaw was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In the 1960s, she wrote for magazines and newspapers, covering nearly 100 trials, including those of Auschwitz officials accused of Nazi war crimes and Jack Ruby, on trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Brenda Wineapple has called Bedford "one of the finest stylists of the 20th century, bar none." In this major biography, Selina Hastings has brilliantly captured the fierce intelligence, wit, curiosity, and compassion of the woman and the writer in all the richness of her character and achievements.
Sybille: Life, Love, & Art in the Face of Absolute Power
by Marion MeadeIn thirteenth-century France, a female poet endures the chaos of the Albigensian Crusade in this novel by the author of Eleanor of Aquitaine. A holy war is sweeping France, razing cities and destroying the peaceful lives of those considered heretics. Sybille d&’Astarac, born to pampered luxury, is a gifted female troubadour. But her poems grow dark as the Catholic crusade seeks to eradicate her sect. In the face of massacre, can Sybille survive the Inquisition? Will her love songs? A work of stunning historical fiction, Sybille displays Marion Meade's pitch‑perfect understanding of strong women facing the harsh realities of life in medieval times. As Robin Morgan, author of The Anatomy of Freedom, writes, this book is &“an inspiration for women and an illumination for all readers.&”
Sydney Camm: Hurricane and Harrier Designer, Saviour of Britain
by John Sweetman&“Looks at the pioneering designer, Sydney Camm and examines his legacy, which was the design of two of our most iconic fighter planes . . . Brilliant!&” —Books Monthly &“This Man Saved Britain&” ran a headline in the News Chronicle on 18 February 1941, in a reference to the role of Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, during the Battle of Britain. Similarly, the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, advised Winston Churchill that to Camm &“England owed a great deal.&” Born in 1893, the eldest of twelve children, Camm was raised in a small, terraced house. Despite lacking the advantages of a financially secure upbringing and formal technical education after leaving school at 14, Camm would go on to become one of the most important people in the story of Britain&’s aviation history. Sydney Camm&’s work on the Hurricane was far from the only pinnacle in his remarkable career in aircraft design and engineering—a career that stretched from the biplanes of the 1920s to the jet fighters of the Cold War. Indeed, over fifty years after his death, the revolutionary Hawker Siddeley Harrier in which Camm played such a prominent figure, following &“a stellar performance in the Falkland Island crisis,&” still remains in service with the American armed forces. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore, as the author reveals in this detailed biography, that Camm would be knighted in his own country, receive formal honors in France and the United States, and be inducted into the International Hall of Fame in San Diego. &“John Sweetman&’s new biography ably recounts the life of one of the most remarkable figures in 20th-century aviation history.&” —Aviation History Magazine
Sydney Noir and New Age: A Memoir of My Spiritual Journey Before My Brother Shot at Prince Charles
by Hae-Lyun KangThis memoir is an exploration of past lives, rebirthing, astrology, numerology, of experiencing God, and of visiting South Korea and Japan before my brother shot at Prince Charles.
Sydney and Violet
by Stephen KlaidmanA long overdue biography of the power couple that nurtured and influenced the literary world of early twentieth-century England "I write primarily to pay homage to a beloved friend, but also in the hope that some future chronicler of the history of art and letters in our time may give to Sydney and Violet Schiff the place which is their due." --T. S. Eliot, in a letter appended to Violet Schiff's obituary, Times of London, July 9, 1962 Largely forgotten today, Sydney and Violet Schiff were ubiquitous, almost Zelig-like figures in the most important literary movement of the twentieth century. Their friendships among the elite of the Modernist writers were remarkable, and their extensive correspondence with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Proust, and many others strongly suggests both intimacy and intellectual equality. Leading critics of the day considered Sydney, writing as Stephen Hudson, to be in the same literary league as Joyce, Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. As for Violet, she was a talented musician who nurtured Sydney's literary efforts and was among the first in England to recognize Proust's genius and spread the word. Sydney and Violet tells the story of how the Schiffs, despite their commercial and Jewish origins, won acceptance in the snobbish, anti-Semitic, literary world of early twentieth-century England, and brings to life a full panoply of extravagant personalities: Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Mansfield, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and many more. A highly personal, anecdote-filled account of the social and intellectual history of the Modernist movement, Sydney and Violet also examines what divides the literary survivors from the victims of taste and time.
Sylvia Browne: Accepting The Psychic Torch
by Sylvia BrowneSYLVIA BROWNE: ACCEPTING THE PSYCHIC TORCH is a brand-new anthology that contains the full text of two of Sylvia's best-selling books: the landmark Adventures of a Psychic, which details how a little girl from Kansas City, Missouri, discovered her gifts and was then led on a decades-long journey to ultimately become "one of America's most successful clairvoyants"; and If You Could See What I See, a handbook on spirituality that is also full of anecdotes from Sylvia's life, both before and after she became a world-famous medium who spends her time writing, lecturing, and appearing on TV. Yet this volume also contains a special treat: an all-new work from Sylvia! Titled Accepting the Psychic Torch, it focuses on the incredibly special relationship Sylvia had with her beloved psychic grandmother, Ada Coil. Drawing on her cherished memories, along with Grandma Ada's numerous letters-many of which are reprinted in these pages-Sylvia gives us a rich portrait of a blessed soul who helped so many. She also delves into her own childhood and teenage years as never before, as she relates how her dear grandmother not only became her mentor, but was indeed the mother she never really had. This is the book Sylvia's fans have been begging her to write . . . and it doesn't disappoint!
Sylvia Earle: Ocean Explorer (Women in Conservation)
by Dennis FertigThis book takes an engaging look at the work of ground-breaking conservationist, Sylvia Earle, and her work to protect oceans and ocean life. It covers Earle's inspiration, her methods, findings, and the impact of her work.
Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism (Women's And Gender History Ser.)
by Barbara WinslowAn extraordinary political biography of English suffragist, feminist, and socialist Sylvia PankhurstAlong with her mother Emmeline, and her sister Christabel, Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the leading women's suffrage activists in early twentieth-century England, working with the militant Women's Social and Political Union. Unlike her family, however, who looked to parliament and spoke to elite and middle-class women's concerns, Sylvia consistently looked to working women and the labour movement as central to her feminist politics.In this illuminating political biography, feminist historian Barbara Winslow recovers Sylvia Pankhurst's life and work for a new generation of socialists and feminists. From Pankhurst's organizing with immigrant and working women in London's East End to her revolutionary communism and growing internationalism and anti-fascism, Winslow gives us the story of a brilliantly inspiring unorthodox feminist and unorthodox socialist.With a preface from internationally recognized socialist feminist historian and activist, Sheila Rowbotham.
Sylvia Plath (Comprehensive Research and Study Guide)
by Harold BloomThematic analyses of The Colossus, The Arrival of the Bee Box, Daddy, Ariel, and Lady Lazarus.
Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 1: 1932-1955
by Carl RollysonSince Sylvia Plath’s death in 1963, she has become the subject of a constant stream of books, biographies, and articles. She has been hailed as a groundbreaking poet for her starkly beautiful poems in Ariel and as a brilliant forerunner of the feminist coming-of-age novel in her semiautobiographical The Bell Jar. Each new biography has offered insight and sources with which to measure Plath’s life and influence. Sylvia Plath Day by Day, a two-volume series, offers a distillation of this data without the inherent bias of a narrative.Volume 1 commences with Plath’s birth in Boston in 1932, records her response to her elementary and high school years, her entry into Smith College, and her breakdown and suicide attempt, and ends on February 14, 1955, the day she wrote to Ruth Cohen, principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, to accept admission as an “affiliated student at Newnham College to read for the English Tripos.” Sylvia Plath Day by Day is for readers of all kinds with a wide variety of interests in the woman and her work. The entries are suitable for dipping into and can be read in a minute or an hour. Ranging over several sources, including Plath’s diaries, journals, letters, stories, and other prose and poetry—including new material and archived material rarely seen by readers—a fresh kaleidoscopic view of the writer emerges.
Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume 2: 1955-1963
by Carl RollysonSince her death in 1963, Sylvia Plath has become an endless source of fascination for a wide audience, ranging from readers of The Bell Jar, her semiautobiographical novel, to her groundbreaking poetry as exemplified by Ariel. Beyond her writing, however, interest in Plath was also fueled in part by the nature of her death—a suicide while she was estranged from her husband, Ted Hughes, who was himself a noteworthy British poet. As a result, a steady stream of biographies of Plath, projecting an array of points of view about their subject, has appeared over the last fifty-five years. Now biographer Carl Rollyson, the author of two previous biographical studies of Plath, has surveyed the vast amount of material on Plath, including her biographies, her autobiographical writings, and previously unpublished material, and distilled that data into the two volumes of Sylvia Plath Day by Day. As the follow-up to volume 1, volume 2 commences on February 14, 1955, the day Plath wrote to her mother declaring her intention to study in England, a decision that marked a major turning point in her life. With brief signposts provided by the author, this volume follows Plath through the entirety of her marriage to Hughes, the challenges of simultaneously raising a family and nourishing her own creativity, and the major depressive episodes that ultimately led to her suicide in 1963. By providing new angles and perspectives on the life of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated poets, Sylvia Plath Day by Day offers a comprehensive image of its enigmatic subject.
Sylvia Plath: Drawings
by Sylvia PlathIn 1956 Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother, Aurelia, 'I feel I'm developing a kind of primitive style of my own which I am very fond of. Wait 'til you see . . . 'Throughout her life Plath cited art as her deepest source of inspiration; yet while her writing is celebrated around the world, her drawings are little known. This publication brings together drawings from 1955 to 1957, the period she spent on a Fulbright fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge. During this time she met and married in secret the poet Ted Hughes, travelling with him on honeymoon to Paris and Spain before their return to the US in June 1957. Plath's drawings in pen and ink are exquisitely observed moments from this period in her life, and include among their subjects Parisian rooftops, trees, churches and a portrait of Ted Hughes. The collection sheds light on these key years in Plath's life and includes letters and a diary entry about her art, as well as an illuminating introduction by her daughter, Frieda Hughes.
Sylvia Plath: New Views on the Poetry
by Gary LaneOriginally published in 1979. Sylvia Plath is one of the most controversial poets of our time. For some readers, she is the symbol of women oppressed. For others, she is the triumphant victim of her own intensity—the poet pursuing sensation to the ultimate uncertainty, death. For still others, she is a doomed innocent whose sensibilities were too acute for the coarseness of our world. The new essays of this edited collection (with a single exception, all were written for this book) broaden the perspective of Plath criticism by going beyond the images of Plath as a cult figure to discuss Plath the poet. The contributors—among them Calvin Bedient, Hugh Kenner, J. D. O'Hara, and Marjorie Perloff—draw on material that most previous commentators lacked: a substantial body of Plath's poetry and prose, a moderately detailed biographical record, and an important selection of the poet's correspondence. The result is an important and provocative volume, one in which major critics offer an abundance of insights into the poet's mind and creative process. It offers insightful and original readings of many poems—some, like "Berck-Plage," scarcely mentioned in previous criticism—and fosters new understandings of such matters as Plath's comedy, the development of her poetic voice, and her relation to poetic traditions. The serious reader, whatever his or her initial opinion of Sylvia Plath, is sure to find that opinion challenged, changed, or deepened. These essays offer insights into a violently interesting poet, one who despite, or perhaps because of, her suicide at age thirty continues to fascinate and trouble us.
Sylvia's Farm
by Sylvia Jorrin Joshua Kilmer-Purcell"For those unfamiliar with Sylvia, discovering her stories is like stumbling into a fully loaded wild blackberry patch--impossible to rush through, sweetly fulfilling, with an immediate longing to return to them again and again."--Joshua Kilmer-Purcell, The Fabulous Beekman BoysThis collection of stories chronicling Sylvia Jorrín's life on the farm provides comfort and inspiration to all those searching for meaning in life's many blessings.The world of Sylvia's Farm is a rich landscape of natural beauty and simple pleasures. Sylvia Jorrín never expected to become the first woman in the New York City Watershed to solely own and operate a large livestock farm. But first the farm, and then farm life, captured her heart as it has captured the hearts of all those who have read her book. Through unexpected surprises and unanticipated hardships, Sylvia Jorrín has grown into the epitome of the one thing she never expected to be: a farmer.With a devoted following of readers inspired by her underlying appreciation of the world around her, Sylvia's Farm is the sort of ageless story that any reader can pick up and enjoy. Sylvia's Farm is, to quote Kirkus Reviews, "The delight-filled education of an out-of-the-clue shepherdess...." consisting of "....fine-grained, honest rural sketches, on a par with Noel Perrin and Don Mitchell."Sylvia's Farm is a contemporary account of rural farm life and all of the sometimes beautiful, always meaningful lessons that it continues to teach. Told in short vignettes that span over more than a decade, it is a journal of growth, persistence, and the unexpected joys that a new day can bring.