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Bird Eating Bird: Poems (National Poetry Series)
by Kristin NacaBird Eating Bird is a new collection of poems from Kristin Naca, winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series mtvU prize as chosen by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa. Playful and serious all at once, Kristin’s work explores the richness of her cultural and linguistic heritage and perpetuates NPS’s tradition of promoting exceptional poetry from lesser-known poets.
Bird Lovers, Backyard
by Thalia FieldThalia Field’s third book with New Directions is a tour de force of blending literary genres (poetry, prose, essay, and drama) and examining our control of the natural world. Bird Lovers, Backyard continues Thalia Field’s interrogation of the act of storytelling and her experimentation with literary genre. Field’s illuminating essays, or stories, in poetic form, place scientists, philosophers, animals, even the military, in real and imagined events. Her open questioning brings in subjects as diverse as pigeons, chat rooms, nuclear testing, the building of the Kennedy Space Center, the development of seaside beaches, Konrad Lorenz, the American author and animal trainer Vicki Hearne, and the Swiss zoologist Heini Hediger. Throughout, she intermingles fact and fiction, probing the porous boundaries between human and animal, calling into question “what we are willing to do with words,” and spinning a world where life is haunted by echoes. Story and event survive through daring language, and the elegies of history.
Bird Songs Don’t Lie: Writings from the Rez
by Gordon JohnsonIn this deeply moving collection of short stories and essays, Gordon Lee Johnson (Cupeño/Cahuilla) cements his voice not only as a wry commentator on American Indian reservation life but also as a master of fiction writing. In Johnson’s stories, all of which are set on the fictional San Ignacio reservation in Southern California, we meet unforgettable characters like Plato Pena, the Stanford-bound geek who reads Kahlil Gibran during intertribal softball games; hardboiled investigator Roddy Foo; and Etta, whose motto is “early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise,” as they face down circumstances by turns ordinary and devastating. From the noir-tinged mystery of “Unholy Wine” to the gripping intensity of “Tukwut,” Johnson effortlessly switches genre, perspective, and tense, vividly evoking people and places that are fictional but profoundly true to life. <P><P>The nonfiction featured in Bird Songs Don’t Lie is equally revelatory in its exploration of complex connections between past and present. Whether examining his own conflicted feelings toward the missions as a source of both cultural damage and identity or sharing advice for cooking for eight dozen cowboys and -girls, Johnson plumbs the comedy, catastrophe, and beauty of his life on the Pala Reservation to thunderous effect.
Bird in the Hand
by Paul Hostovsky<P>From the book: <P>Sighted Guide Technique at the <br>Fine Arts Work Center <br>In your hands the poems in their Braille versions grow longer, thicker, whiter. <br>They are giving themselves goose bumps, they are that good. Still they are only as good as themselves. <br>We are two <br>people wide <br>for the purposes of this exercise. <br>Remembering that is my technique, it's that <br> simple. Remembering it well is success. <br>Success is simply paying attention. <br>Like a poem with very long lines <br>we appear a little wider, move a little slower <br>than most of the community of haiku poets <br>leaping past us with a few right words. <br>A word about doors: they open <br>inward or outward, turn <br>clockwise or counterclockwise, depending <br>on something that you and I <br>will probably never grasp. <br>Doorknobs dance away <br>and the songs of the common house sparrow <br>who is everywhere, you say, play in the eaves <br>as we pass together through the door <br>to the world, <br>you holding my elbow, <br>your elbow and mine making two <br>triangles trawling the air <br>for the tunneling, darting, juking, ubiquitous brown birds.
Bird/Diz: [an erased history of bebop]
by Warren LongmireAn innovative new erasure chapbook from Warren C. Longmire, BIRD/DIZ [AN ERASED HISTORY OF BEBOP] navigates the personal and artistic lives of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie through the author’s own roving imagination. stages, it strives to find, in the continued disappearance of Black American contributions to world art, the seed of innovation that never dies.What becomes of a history overwritten, sampled, celebrated and smeared? How do we find creation past erasure? Part new media archive, part visual poetry project, BIRD/DIZ [AN ERASED HISTORY OF BEBOP] is a journey into highs and lows of Black America’s first global music export. Taking biographies of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as a jumping off point, BIRD/DIZ jumps between actual erasures of the written/oral history of Bebop, redacted poems taken from those words, and reflections on historic performances from some of jazz’s chief characters. From St. Louis heroin dins to Copenhagen sound
Bird: And Other Writings
by Susan HawthorneBirds don't fly with leads, says thirteen-year-old Avis when confronted by the limitations imposed on her at school. She has epilepsy and some of the teachers want to stop her participating in the sport she loves most. Susan Hawthorne captures the voice and longings of a child at the edge of self-realisation.This collection draws on the experience of epilepsy mixed with imagination, mythic consciousness and an intense realisation of life.
Birdie
by Eileen SpinelliA relatable novel-in-verse about loss… and what happens afterwardsTwelve-year-old Birdie Briggs loves birds. They bring her comfort when she thinks about her dad, a firefighter who was killed in the line of duty. Life without her dad isn&’t easy, but at least Birdie still has Mom and Maymee, and her friends Nina and Martin.But then Maymee gets a boyfriend, Nina and Martin start dating, and Birdie&’s mom starts seeing a police officer. And suddenly not even her beloved birds can lift Birdie&’s spirits. Her world is changing, and Birdie wishes things would go back to how they were before. But maybe change, painful as it is, can be beautiful too.With compelling verse and a lighthearted touch, Eileen Spinelli captures the poignancy of adolescence and shows what can happen when you let people in.
Birding, or Desire
by Don MckayThis extraordinary book is a celebration –of the quirky plenitude of nature, and of the deep rhythms of family life. Don McKay writes with great technical panache. But his attention to what he loves is so constant and so generous that we are left, not with mere virtuosity, but with a world renewed.
Birds, Beasts and a World Made New: Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov (1908-22) (Pushkin Press Classics)
by Guillaume Apollinaire Velimir Khlebnikov&“Wonderful . . . and full of life. This is a book for discovery, for pleasure and delight.&” – George Szirtes, author of The Photographer at SixteenA revelatory volume of 2 of the 20th century&’s great poetic innovators, Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov, in vibrant new translations by Robert ChandlerOffering a fresh angle on two of the most innovative poets of the 20th century, and grouping poems by theme, celebrated translator and poet Robert Chandler finds surprising connections between Apollinaire and Khlebnikov, from their interest in animal poems and bestiaries to their distinctive approaches to war poetry.Although Apollinaire and Khlebnikov never met, their restless innovations in poetic form shared much in common. Both pushed poetry to its limit, and their experiments proved fertile for generations of poets to come. Khlebnikov became associated with Futurism, though his inventiveness with language moved him far beyond it, while Apollinaire influenced a dizzying array of avant-garde movements, including Surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism.Chandler offers a stimulating selection from both poets&’ work in beautifully vivid new translations. Showcasing these poets&’ exhilarating capacity for innovation as well as their more direct, heartfelt verse, this work offers a surprising journey into the world of two great Modernist poets.Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: outstanding classic storytelling from around the world, in a stylishly original series design. From newly rediscovered gems to fresh translations of the world&’s greatest authors, this series includes such authors as Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Gaito Gazdanov.
Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain
by Russell ThorntonRussell Thornton's latest collection of poems, Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain, explores powerful, primary human relationships through images of two worlds: the natural and the urban industrial.Simple grass is the iron of an invisible forging within nature that involves the human creative consciousness. A scavenger alley crow is the universal creative spirit in brutal primordial disguise. A murderously violent father and son are integrated into a single new man who walks "bright as a song in the air." A young daughter flings up her arms to seagulls that "collect up the world, opening it like a door." An infant son fights the "anger in him ... the death ... with the heaven in living flailing hands."Intensely personal, Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain reveals how essential human identity reinitiates human consciousness in a participatory universe.
Birmingham 1963
by Carole Boston WeatherfordThis book is an emotional tribute to the four girls killed due to the explosion at the baptist church of Birmingham and all those who worked for the Civil Rights Movement, fighting against cruelty, inequality and horror.
Birmingham, 1963
by Carole Boston WeatherfordA poetic tribute to the victims of the racially motivated church bombing that served as a seminal event in the struggle for civil rights. In 1963, the eyes of the world were on Birmingham, Alabama, a flashpoint for the civil rights movement. Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Civil rights demonstrators were met with police dogs and water cannons. On Sunday, September 15, 1963, members of the Ku Klux Klan planted sticks of dynamite at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which served as a meeting place for civil rights organizers. The explosion killed four little girls. Their murders shocked the nation and turned the tide in the struggle for equality. A Jane Addams Children's Honor Book, here is a book that captures the heartbreak of that day, as seen through the eyes of a fictional witness. Archival photographs with poignant text written in free verse offer a powerful tribute to the young victims.
Birth Chart (Excelsior Editions)
by Rachel FederIn Birth Chart, a collection of heartfelt, ruthless poetry, Rachel Feder rethinks the relationship between astrology and motherhood. She asks, if astrology constellates the universe around the moment of one's birth, then how might it serve as shorthand for a vast number of personal experiences and cultural phenomena? How might it speak to and of friendship, motherhood, authorship, the mysteries of literary history, and the wonders of watching a child come into language? Across four sections, including a serial poem in sustained conversation with the modernist poet H.D., Feder's references range from group texts to the Talmud to ʼ90s song lyrics. In her hands—and her inimitable yet familiar, often straight-up funny voice—astrology is less a means of explaining the world than of communicating, of capturing a feeling, of sealing a bond. The result is an equally sentimental and sardonic collection in which "the language of explanation is a heart emoji. It means you know what I mean." And we do.
Birth Marks
by Jim DanielsIn Birth Marks, Jim Daniels examines how our origins mark us forever. From Detroit to Pittsburgh, he explores the lives of ordinary people in a world which often seems tilted against them. His tough, unflinching poems recount family myths, urban decay, his own lies, and the struggle for survival in a post-industrial world as the economy crumbles around us.
Birth Marks (American Poets Continuum)
by Jim DanielsIn Birth Marks, Jim Daniels examines how our origins mark us forever. From Detroit to Pittsburgh, he explores the lives of ordinary people in a world which often seems tilted against them. His tough, unflinching poems recount family myths, urban decay, his own lies, and the struggle for survival in a post-industrial world as the economy crumbles around us.
Birth of Uncool: Poems
by Madeline WalkerYou are at your most uncool now age spotted, raggedy, not giving a shit, saucy, insouciant, real, crackly and juicy at once. —from "Crackly and juicy" Birth of the Cool, a compilation album by jazz great Miles Davis, was released in 1957, the year before I was born. That album defined "cool jazz": elegant, distant, hip, and stylish. Davis and his eight comusicians made it all look so easy. From the time I was very young, I was trying to be as cool as Davis's jazz: aloof, intellectual, desired, mysterious, alluring, and perfect. Only in my fifties did I understand that I had to relinquish this striving and rebirth the uncool parts of me—those bits that are sentimental, awkward, and vulnerable. This book is an eclectic and uncoolly accessible collection of musings on motherhood, childhood, recovery, faith, and love.
Birth of a Notion; Or, The Half Ain't Never Been Told: A Narrative Account with Entertaining Passages of the State of Minstrelsy & of America & the True Relation Thereof
by Bill HarrisA critical look at black identity in American history and popular culture as told from a performative African American perspective.
Birthday Letters: Poems
by Ted HughesFormerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, the late Ted Hughes (1930-98) is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has mythic scope and power. And few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath. The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous verse. Countless books have discussed the subject of this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it is a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.
Birth…: Journey To the Wild Depths of Motherhood
by Veronica Mouletogether we climb the mountain because I climb this mountain for you together we wade through the river together we shelter in the trees gathered with my support crew or standing solo exuding the theatrics of the stage or in the quiet Zen of retreat I unravel myself open myself surrender myself to this bold and broad and astonishing experience that will release you my child into the world and will forge my will my heart my being into the wild depths of motherhood Held in the story of Persephone, we start where all women now begin their birth journey—with Zeus, in the structure of patriarchy. Then we move beyond, through the supportive hold of mother Demeter, then further into ourselves until we find the unique wonder of woman, through courage, strength, and surrender, to the breath and calm and ecstasy she can hold. Written from the embodied experience of home birth mother and GP obstetrician, offering pregnant women and birth attendants insights into the hospital system, and the beauty that can be found in natural birthing.
Bite Down Little Whisper
by Don DomanskiFrom a master poet, meditative lines running like veins through the dark grace of being alive. Governor General's Award–winning poet Don Domanski's new collection, Bite Down Little Whisper, delves into the interconnectedness of all life with spiritual gravitas and powerful mindfulness. These are poems brimming with mythological and scientific energies, with a multi-dimensionality that opens itself to both complexity and clarity. Domanski shows us seams and fastenings that unite our longings with the earth itself, with the nonhuman vitality that surrounds us. The heart's need for unity and reverence is present in these poems as a whisper we hear in occasional moments of quietude, when it's possible to perceive the workings of a larger existence.
Bitter English (Phoenix Poets)
by Ahmad AlmallahImagine you are a Palestinian who came to America as a young man, eventually finding yourself caught between the country you live in with your wife and daughter, and the home—and parents—you left behind. Imagine living every day in your nonnative language and becoming estranged from your native tongue, which you use less and less as you become more ensconced in the United States. This is the story told by Ahmad Almallah in Bitter English, an autobiography-in-verse that explores the central role language plays in how we construct our identities and how our cultures construct them for us. Through finely crafted poems that utilize a plainspoken roughness to keep the reader slightly disoriented, Almallah replicates his own verbal and cultural experience of existing between languages and societies. There is a sense of displacement to these poems as Almallah recounts the amusing, sad, and perilous moments of day-to-day living in exile. At the heart of Bitter English is a sense of loss, both of home and of his mother, whose struggle with Alzheimer’s becomes a reflection of his own reality in exile. Filled with wit, humor, and sharp observations of the world, Bitter English brings a fresh poetic voice to the American immigrant experience.
Bitter in the Belly (Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series)
by John Emil VincentThe past grabs back / what it lets us handleBitter in the Belly reckons with suicide’s wreckage. After John Emil Vincent’s best friend descends into depression and hangs himself, fluency and acuity lose their lustre.Vincent sorts through and tries to arrange cosmologies, eloquence, narrative, insight, only to find fatal limitations. He tries to trick tragedy into revealing itself by means of costume, comedy, thought experiment, theatre of the absurd, and Punch and Judy. The poems progress steadily from the erotic and mythic to the lapidary and biblical, relentlessly constructing images, finding any way to bring the world into the light – what there is of light, when the light is on.In his most personal book, Vincent moves from stark innocence through awful events and losses, to something like acceptance without wisdom – Jonah spit back onto the sand with little to report but that he’s home.
Black Aperture: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)
by Matt RasmussenIn his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother's suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In Outgoing, the speaker erases his brother's answering machine message to save his family from the shame of dead you / answering calls. In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, a flower / of smoldering filaments. A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, a tinfoil lake, vegetables / dying in the crisper. Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.
Black Box
by Erin Belieu"Belieu's poems use a vernacular of their own to suggest a noir world of erotic innuendo and red lights waiting to be run."-Neon. Black Box is a raw, intense book, fueled by a devastating infidelity. With her marriage shattered, Erin Belieu sifts the wreckage for the black box, the record of disaster. Propelled by a blistering and clarifying rage, she composed at fever pitch and produced riveting, unforgettable poems, such as the ten-part sequence "In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral": I root through your remains, looking for the black box. Nothing left but glossy chunks, a pimp's platinum tooth clanking inside the urn. I play you over and over, my beloved conspiracy, my personal Zapruder film-look... When Belieu was invited by the Poetry Foundation to keep a public journal on their new website, readers responded to the Black Box poems, calling them "dark, twisted, disturbed, and disturbing" and Belieu a "frightening genius." All true.
Black Boy, Rise
by Brynne BarnesA bold anthem that celebrates the power and potential of young Black boys by the award-winning creative team of author Brynne Barnes and superstar illustrator Bryan Collier.From the celebrated author of Black Girl Rising and Colors of Me and four-time Caldecott Honor recipient and multiple-award-winning illustrator of Trombone Shorty, Rosa, and many more, this is a picture book to read, share, and cherish across generations.Black Boy, Rise combines gorgeous, moving text—filled with lyrical references to poets and writers whose voices have lifted and defined the Black experience, including Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson—with vibrant, beautifully rendered watercolor images that powerfully reflect the soul and gloriousness of Black boys in all their brilliance: the rich legacy of their past, the grit and grace of their present, and the divine promise of their future.BLACK JOY: This dynamic anthem speaks directly to the need of families, educators, and young readers to see the full beauty, richness, and complexity of Black boys’ experiences reflected in thoughtful, empowering children’s literature that positively portrays and celebrates Black boyhood.A GREAT GIFT: From graduation to birthdays to other milestone events, this book makes a perfect present for anyone looking to celebrate, empower, and inspire the men in their lives—whether sons, grandsons, nephews, cousins, or friends.AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOKS FOR KIDS: For fans of All Because You Matter and Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, Brynne Barnes brings a fresh spin with her rhythmic rhyming text that exhorts readers to “Make beauty. Make joy. Make believe, and pretend. Make wonder. Makes wishes. Make magic begin.”Perfect for:Parents, grandparents, and caregiversTeachers and librarians seeking diverse booksAnyone interested in books about Black joy or Black historyGift-givers looking for a unique and inspiring book for the boys (or men) in their livesReaders who loved Martin’s Big Words, I Am Every Good Thing, and Black Boy Joy