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The thirty-six woodblock prints that were the inspiration for this collection of writings were made by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The pieces show different views of Mount Fuji from various waystations where people would go to look at the beautiful mountain. The writings in this book are haibun, a literary form originating in Japan that combines prose-autobiography, diary entries, essay, or short story-and poetry-often haiku. Hokusai was in his seventies when he produced the Mount Fuji series; the author, Martin Willitts Jr., was seventy years old when he began studying the prints, attempting to merge himself with Hokusai.

Poet J. R. Solonche adds God to his impressive list of published poetry collections. Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J. R. Solonche is the author of thirty-six books of poetry and coauthor of another.

This impressive collection offers intimate, intense engagement with the great horned owl and the natural world. By casting every poem in the second person (every "you" is the great horned), the poems necessarily break into lament, rapture, and other rhythms of thought to meet the moment. Each poem is a healing song. Beneath the surface the reader will encounter grief, personal loss, sober reckonings with mankind and history, but also love, fervor, and always awe for this creature.

In City Full of Fireworks & Blues Stephen Cramer collects a series of lyric poems that explore both love and loss with a taut musicality that enters the reader's very musculature. Though the book often features the emotional or intellectual skirmishes that are common to all, it is far more of a celebration than a dirge. "Let us learn," one of the poems offers, "the way cries inherit our breath, the way 1,000 facets of song can inhabit the mouth."

Abdellatif Laâbi is an internationally renowned poet and activist famous for his support of Arab liberation and unity. He has received numerous prestigious accolades, and his work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, and English. His poetry has been central to post-colonial Moroccan literature and important to the development of Arabic literature generally. In the 1970s Laâbi served an eight-year prison sentence in Morocco for "crimes of opinion" against the Moroccan state after he helped found Souffles-Anfas (Breaths), a central journal in the growing movement of post-colonial Arab literature during the 1960s. Since the 1980s Laâbi has lived in France in forced exile. Laâbi's poems in The Symphony of Resistance address themes of human rights, the history of oppression in colonized countries, globalization, freedom, love, the Arab world after liberation, and the role of the poet. Given events pertaining to and resulting from the Arab Spring, this collection will appeal to readers interested in contemporary poetry, both in academia (students and scholars of North African literature, Middle East Studies, Francophone Studies, etc.) and beyond. The timely questions also have special resonance in the current American context, especially as concerns diversity and social justice.

Soulscapes, the fifth volume in Lee Woodman's "scapes" series, is an exploration of the way we reach for godliness or soul in our lives and relations. As a seeker who admits, discovers, and ponders all gods, the poet has been influenced by aspects of many faiths-Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, Judaic, Native American, as well as worldwide tribal beliefs; and she has investigated many areas of spiritual belief and practice-origin stories, spirit animals, tarot, witchcraft, the occult, past lives, lucid dreaming. The poems in this collection express Woodman's dedication to the exploration of both the scientific fact-based world and the magical, mysterious unknown as elements of an ever-growing faith in the oneness of the universe.

In his third full-length collection, David Denny sings a variety of odes to rescue pups and window spiders, angels and freight trains, Starbucks and the Beatles, film noir actors and post-impressionist painters. In a world besieged by bullies and braggarts, Denny's poetry creates a refuge for the meek, a kind of Zen calm in the eye of the storm. Unique among North American writers, he makes his gentle stand in the heart of the suburban wilderness, excavating the extraordinary within the ordinary, holding up small shiny bits of treasure among the seemingly expansive hodgepodge of invasive junk.

Michael Paul Hogan's writing career began in journalism. After only a year and a half on the job, Hogan realized that the best thing about journalism was the opportunity to meet famous people whose work he admired; in other words, doors opened to him that might not have otherwise. The people he met gave him material to write about, but they also gave him social and artistic connections that led him to worlds unknown. Since then, Hogan's career and life have flourished because of the many artists hs has come to know very well, as friends and colleagues. Artist Descending a Typewriter would not have been written had Hogan not connected in meaningful ways with these thirteen artists-Li Bin, Helen Ivory, Jean Dolande, Victoria Merki, Michael Woods, Kong Ning, Paul Polydorou, Claudia Masciave, Toti O'Brien, Volker Klein, Alexander Christoph Sterzel, Ruben Dominguez Leon, and Erica Capobianco. In this book, Hogan shares conversations, memories, photographs, paintings, and assorted literary and artistic ephemera from his years of both professionally and personally knowing these artists. For the reader, the result is a door that opens onto a uniquely personal view of contemporary art.

A creative nonfiction quest narrative, author Jannet L. Walsh carefully tells the stories that came from her extensive research into her Irish American heritage set in Minnesota and Ireland. Walsh's family was among the first to settle in a series of Catholic colonies established in 1876 by Archbishop John Ireland in De Graff, Minnesota. Her ancestors-farmers, stewards of the soil, and faithful Christians-were chosen to be part of the rural community in Swift County. Descendants of these settlers continue to live and work in the rural farming community in Swift County.

¿¿In Tethers End, written over several decades, poet Jeanne Blum Lesinski grapples with questions of constraint and freedom, the controllable and chaotic in poems that range from traditional forms to lyric prose.

The poems by Susan Jefts in Breathing Lessons are ones of place and spirit, journeying through diverse landscapes full of their own language, music, and agency. A Japanese garden, an Adirondack peak, the view from a train along the Hudson River-in all of these places are distinct images and sensations, but also something else: a presence that feels deep and endless. It might live on a vine in "autumn's half-born light" or in the moan of a cello in April, rising over the city "like a dark bird in flight." And when such moments merge with the author's more human world, small spaces or bardos can form, making an opening for something new to come through, for something just beyond the apparent to be let in. Some of these poems enter that realm of true meeting and possibility, while others stay at the threshold looking in, and both are compelling places to be.

In the spring of 1651, nearly half a century before the infamous witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, a woman known as Goody Bassett was hanged for witchcraft in Stratford, Connecticut. In the spring of 2023, nearly four centuries later, the State of Connecticut absolved all those accused of witchcraft, removing the stigma that their families have needlessly borne. Few facts are known about Goody Bassett and the events surrounding her persecution. This haunting and moving novel, crafted from those few facts as well as detailed accounts of Stratford's early history, tells the tale of young Ruth Paine-later Goodwife Bassett-and how her singular experience beyond the confines of her Puritan world ultimately leads to her demise. Rich in historical insight, The Stratford Devil gives a touching look into the isolated world of an independent woman as she struggles to survive in circumstances beyond her control. With its focus on religion and terror, The Stratford Devil is a parable for our time.

For over thirty years Eric and Doylanne Wade have traveled twice a year to their cabin on a river for an extended stay in the wilds of the Alaska boreal forest. There the adventure-loving couple has built a rewarding life among bear, moose, owls, grouse, and fish. Lately, their interest has been focused on squirrels, specifically the abundant and always amusing Alaska red squirrel. In Squirrelland, Eric writes about his varied experiences with squirrels, both wild and urban, but also layers in the observations of squirrel biologists and researchers as well as the musings of his grand imagination. Doylanne's many photographs make the story engaging and vibrant. Join the Wades on this visit to the Alaska wilderness and learn a few things about the antics of the common squirrel.

Lily Iona MacKenzie's memoir invites readers to join her quest for self-discovery. Since her twenties, she has forged a relationship with her nightly dreams by recording them daily in journals and reflecting on them. At times, she's also worked with Jungian analysts who have helped her go deeper into her dreams. As a result, she's found that the dream world often sheds light on daily events and concerns, leading to insights that we otherwise might not discover. This daily ritual continues, the basis for her writing Dreaming Myself into Old Age: One Woman's Search for Meaning. In her early eighties, she remains determined to age gracefully and thoughtfully. Her memoir not only shows how night dreams have influenced her, but also how all the arts have fed her waking and dreaming self. She's learned that attending to her inner world can help her to meet the changes that aging brings. She also brings readers into the spiritual explorations that answer her hunger for deeper esoteric knowledge.

Inspired by the life and career of Nikola Tesla, When Lightning Strikes (Nikola's Dove) speaks of the life, career, visionary contributions, and personal struggles of the engineering giant who is responsible for the design of the modern electricity supply system. The first part of this fine collection highlights Nikola Tesla's young life and his relationship with his family, and the second part looks at his early experiences as an inventor and the ensuing struggles getting his work and vision accepted. Part three looks at his middle-age years and his move toward isolation and loneliness. Part four presents the demise of Nikola against the background of having his immensely innovative intellectual property pirated. Throughout the story of Tesla, the poet, Tracy Ross, compares and contrasts her own experiences with solitude and neurodivergence with those of Tesla, including vignettes of her life in Detroit and Chicago as well as in the nature-rich Boundary Waters of northeastern Minnesota and the rural farming areas of southwestern Minnesota.

"Trench warfare and lyric poetry are an unusual-pairing. Some readers would doubtless even recoil at the notion of linking the two. After all, the former shows the ugliness and bestiality that mankind is all too capable of inflicting on the world. The latter, on the other hand, shows the beauty and humanity to which the genius of the human mind can aspire and the lasting beauty that it can produce. And yet there are artists who find, if not beauty, then at least eternal verities in cataclysmic events that can inspire them to creative heights. One such artist was the Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970), whose collection L'Allegria was composed while the poet himself was engaged in the brutal, dehumanizing, life-and-death combat of the trench warfare of World War I." (Frank Hugus, University of Massachusetts Amherst) Wally Swist has published over forty books of poetry and prose. This skillful and faithful translation of L'Allegria exposes Swist's love and ardor for the poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti, most especially, L'Allegria, his "cheerfulness" in the face of adversity.

Poet J. R. Solonche adds The Eglantine to his impressive list of over thirty published poetry collections. Of Solonche's poems, poet Sarah White wrote "Sample one by one these epigrammatic, epiphenomenal, Epicurean episodes as if they were puffs from a tower of pastry. Savor the zest of lemon, the pinch of sea salt, the dollop of crème fraiche, and the absence of any more sugar than necessary to ease the ingestion of truth. A feast for fanatics of language and lovers of pith."

Warren Lane Molton was raised in the deep South during the Great Depression, where whispers of lynchings on Saturday night could still be heard on church steps on Sunday morning. Molton started writing in his teens. He went on to be a clergyman, professor, and psychotherapist, and his journey has been deliberately both outward and inward for perhaps all of his ninety-five years. For decades, Molton has traversed his sense of wonder, his fascination at the ephemeral nature of life, love, loss, anger and anguish, memory and expectation, even as he wandered away from the explicitly religious. Molton's son Stephen says of his father: "Poetry is soul work, as he practices it, a kind of spiritual sonar, taking soundings of the Self as it enters and exits the deep." In 95 at 95, we have a record of a lifelong attempt to connect the immaterial with the material for the betterment of both. "In your own way, at your own pace, you might find some epiphanies here yourself, some new inroads to meaning, discovered on your own terms."

Lily Iona MacKenzie's unbounded zest for life sings through the poems in this collection. A writer in her bones and a dreamer in her heart, she discovers the poetry in everything-travel, art, music, nature, past and present-her words and rhythms touch the soul and leave their treasures behind. "Listen closely to these poems' quiet but insistent murmur." (Kathleen McClung)

Joseph Stanton, author of this impressive collection of poems, is a masterful practitioner of art-inspired poetry. His commitment to the ekphrastic genre is evident in Lifelines: Poems for Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, his eighth collection of poems. The chronological presentation of poems inspired by the works of Homer and Hopper serves to capture the trajectory of each artist's life and career and unlocks the secrets of many of their most intriguing images.

In this collection of poems, Brian Glaser offers a tribute to his father's life and work. Memory and elegy are present here, as well as a series of poems on fatherhood, and many meditations on the concern for social justice shared by father and son.

On a rainy-day excursion, poet Marjorie Maddox and her daughter and artist Anna Lee Hafer visit the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where, as never before, they realize how their passions for art and poetry intersect. With this exhibit and Hafer's own surreal paintings as inspiring backdrop, they exchange their responses to joy and trauma more deeply-artist to artist, mother to daughter. These connections between poet and visual artist constitute the core of this ekphrastic collection. In addition, Maddox includes nine poems based on work she saw that day by Antar Mikosz, Greg Mort, Margaret Munz-Losch, Ingo Swann, and Christian Twamley, as well as several later collaborations with Karen Elias.

This collection of essays-both introspective and amusing-documents and examines life's memorable moments small and large, some of which could only be fully understood long after they occurred. Taken together, they are an attempt (essai) at finding patterns and meaning, tugging on threads of memory, and looking at life as a work in progress. The cast of characters in these pages includes family members, friends, and co-workers; but also butter, baseball, birds, and assorted articles of clothing. The essays, which range from short reflections to narratives that span many years, are complemented by artwork created by the author's mother.

Angeline Haen's insightful observations whittle away the ho-hum from everyday circumstances and reveal the ah-ha. The reader will be gently nudged to pause and ponder the prose; to seek the hidden wisdom in the whimsy of wonder. Nourishment for our imagination comes in her natural curiosity to explore joy's simplicity. The book reflects on a wide range of subjects: berry patches dripping with ripe fruit, the love and loss of beloved pets, humorous tales of driving four-year-old children to preschool, a little bit of poetry from the poem pile, and the reveling in the marvel of it all. This uplifting and delightful book will breathe life into a listless spirit, awaken your sense of whimsical wisdom, and leave you feeling wonder full!

Has someplace faraway ever called to you relentlessly, beckoning you to explore? Journey across time and space with the poems in Thousands of Years of Prayers to India. Written as letters and invocations to River Gäg¿, the poems in Thousands of Years of Prayers join an ancient tradition of poetry flowing from River Gäg¿'s grace. The journey that unfolds is both individual and universal as time and space dissolve in inexplicable ways in the abiding presence of River Gäg¿. Flowing with pr¿¿a, the poems invite us into a sacred awareness of the ephemeral nature of life and the divinity that is born when we embrace each moment, each breath, each step of the journey as fully as possible with gratitude, surrender, and faith.

With the attention of a field botanist, Ethereal Flowers explores healing plants, plants in mythology, plants that inspired van Gogh paintings, plants that are poisonous, and plants discovered by Lewis and Clark. By honoring plants and trees, we honor the source of life, and we acknowledge that we are mutually connected, that the survival of one impacts the other. Poet Martin Willitts Jr. gets on his hands and knees to notice the detail of petals, pistils, leaf formation, lateral and bilateral stems, the smell of earth, the bees shuttling in the garden, unearthing a deeper meaning to plants, while planting them firmly in imagination.

In his second published collection, poet Lawrence Gregory writes of the phenomena that both intrude upon and grace our lives. Hunger, devastation, the melting of icebergs, our daily engagement with uncertainty, and a "momentary pandemic." Yet there is sunlight sifting through redwoods, falling snow, dozens of meadowlarks chanting their morning mantras, and best of all, the "chance to experience this life / at the speed of love." Gregory reminds us that "there is no reset / the earth will keep on spinning," and with certainty, we will encounter the next wave of phenomena.

Poet J. R. Solonche adds The Book of a Small Fisherman to his impressive list of over thirty published poetry collections. His poems, says Chase Twichell, "are an extraordinary amalgam of wit, close observation, humor, and clear-seeing. Each one singles out and illuminates an ordinary moment-ordinary, that is, until the poet explodes into a miniature epiphany. Easy of access and frequently profound, J. R. Solonche's poems induce in me a state of delighted surprise."