The Syracuse University Libraries congratulates all of our staff, students, alumni, and faculty on their publications! This page is only a small sampling of titles authored by our campus community, and we are always looking to grow the collection and share the creative works and knowledge that our campus has fostered.
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Fair Ball by
From his perspective as a journalist and a true fan, Bob Costas, NBC's award-winning broadcaster, shares his unflinching views on the forces that are diminishing the appeal of major league baseball and proposes realistic changes that can be made to protect and promote the game's best interests. In this cogent--and provocative--book, Costas examines the growing financial disparities that have resulted in nearly two-thirds of the teams in major league baseball having virtually no chance of contending for the World Series. He argues that those who run baseball have missed the crucial difference between mere change and real progress. And he presents a withering critique of the positions of both the owners and players while providing insights on the wild-card system, the designated-hitter rule, and interleague play. Costas answers each problem he cites with an often innovative, always achievable strategy for restoring genuine competition and rescuing fans from the forces that have diluted the sheer joy of the game. Balanced by Costas's unbridled appreciation for what he calls the "moments of authenticity" that can still make baseball inspiring, Fair Ball offers a vision of our national pastime as it can be, a game that retains its traditional appeal while initiating thoughtful changes that will allow it to thrive into the next century.
Safire's Political Dictionary by
When it comes to the vagaries of language in American politics, its uses and abuses, its absurdities and ever-shifting nuances, its power to confound, obscure, and occasionally to inspire, William Safire is the language maven we most readily turn to for clarity, guidance, and penetrating, sometimes lacerating, wit. Safire's Political Dictionary is a stem-to-stern updating and expansion of the Language of Politics, which was first published in 1968 and last revised in 1993, long before such terms as Hanging Chads, 9/11 and the War on Terror became part of our everyday vocabulary. Nearly every entry in that renowned work has been revised and updated and scores of completely new entries have been added to produce an indispensable guide to the political language being used and abused in America today. Safire's definitions--discursive, historically aware, and often anecdotal--bring a savvy perspective to our colorful political lingo. Indeed, a Safire definition often reads like a mini-essay in political history, and readers will come away not only with a fuller understanding of particular words but also a richer knowledge of how politics works, and fails to work, in America. From Axis of Evil, Blame Game, Bridge to Nowhere, Triangulation, and Compassionate Conservatism to Islamofascism, Netroots, Earmark, Wingnuts and Moonbats, Slam Dunk, Doughnut Hole, and many others, this language maven explains the origin of each term, how and by whom and for what purposes it has been used or twisted, as well as its perceived and real significance. For anyone who wants to cut through the verbal haze that surrounds so much of American political discourse, Safire's Political Dictionary offers a work of scholarship, wit, insiderhood and resolute bipartisanship.
Murder on Tour by
Clark's "American Bandstand" has been televised since the late '50s. Now he puts his intimate knowledge of rock 'n' roll on display in a witty and entertaining tale of murder and intrigue among the rock world's movers and shakers.
Settle for More by
Whether it's asking tough questions during a presidential debate or pressing for answers to today's most important issues, Megyn Kelly has demonstrated the intelligence, strength, common sense, and courage that have made her one of today's best-known journalists, respected by women and men, young and old, Republicans and Democrats. In Settle for More, the NBC News anchor reflects on the enduring values and experiences that have shaped her--from growing up in a family that rejected the "trophies for everyone" mentality, to her father's sudden, tragic death while she was in high school. She goes behind-the-scenes of her career, sharing the stories and struggles that landed her in the anchor chair and taught her to ask the tough questions. Speaking candidly about her decision to "settle for more"--a motto she credits as having dramatically transformed her life at home and at work--Megyn discusses how she abandoned a thriving legal career to follow her journalism dreams. Admired for her hard work, humor, and authenticity, Megyn sheds light on the news business, her time at Fox News, the challenges of being a professional woman and working mother, and her most talked about television moments. She also speaks openly about Donald Trump's feud with her, revealing never-before-heard details about the first Republican debate, its difficult aftermath, and how she persevered through it all. Deeply personal and surprising, Settle for More offers unparalleled insight into this charismatic and intriguing journalist, and inspires us all to embrace the principles--determination, honesty, and fortitude in the face of fear--that have won her fans across the political divide.
Promise Me, Dad by
The Instant #1New York Times Bestseller From President Joe Biden,Promise Me Dad is his deeply moving memoir about the year that would forever change both a family and a country. "Biden splices a heartbreaking story with an election story and a foreign affairs story. And in so doing, he offers something for everyone, no matter which strand draws you in."--The New York Times Book Review In November 2014, thirteen members of the Biden family gathered on Nantucket for Thanksgiving, a tradition they had been celebrating for the past forty years; it was the one constant in what had become a hectic, scrutinized, and overscheduled life. The Thanksgiving holiday was a much-needed respite, a time to connect, a time to reflect on what the year had brought, and what the future might hold. But this year felt different from all those that had come before. Joe and Jill Biden's eldestson, Beau, had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor fifteen months earlier, and his survival was uncertain. "Promise me, Dad," Beau had told his father. "Give me your word that no matter what happens, you're going to be all right." Joe Biden gave him his word. Promise Me, Dad chronicles the year that followed, which would be the most momentous and challenging in Joe Biden's extraordinary life and career. As vice president, Biden traveled more than a hundred thousand miles that year, across the world, dealing with crises in Ukraine, Central America, and Iraq. When a call came from New York, or Capitol Hill, or Kyiv, or Baghdad--"Joe, I need your help"--he responded. For twelve months, while Beau fought for and then lost his life, the vice president balanced the twin imperatives of living up to his responsibilities to his country and his responsibilities to his family. And never far away was the insistent and urgent question of whether he should seek the presidency in 2016. The year brought real triumph and accomplishment, and wrenching pain. But even in the worst times, Biden was able to lean on the strength of his long, deep bonds with his family, on his faith, and on his deepening friendship with the man in the Oval Office, Barack Obama. Writing with poignancy and immediacy, Joe Biden allows readers to feel the urgency of each moment, to experience the days when he felt unable to move forward as well as the days when he felt like he could not afford to stop. This is a book written not just by the president, but by a father, grandfather, friend, and husband.Promise Me, Dad is a story of how family and friendships sustain us and how hope, purpose, and action can guide us through the pain of personal loss into the light of a new future.
I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like by
Bill Viola (b. 1951) is one of today's premier video installation artists whose apparently straightforward imagery belies a decades-long investigation into the human imagination and its various states of consciousness. This unique and accessible guide to Viola's work provides new insights into the artist's creative processes by drawing on his own writing, as well as texts that have inspired his creative vision. John G. Hanhardt, an expert on Bill Viola, explores how the artist's work relates to literature, philosophy, poetry, and mysticism. Kira Perov, Viola's wife, artistic collaborator, and the manager of his studio, offers her own intimate insights into his work and studio production. Beautifully illustrated, this book imparts a fresh take on Viola's art, originality, and celebrated creativity.
Dropped Names by
New York Times Bestseller "This uncommonly eloquent book is enjoyable for the panoply of great names who turn up. . . . A natural raconteur, [Mr. Langella] seems to fit precisely Henry James's famous description of the novelist as one 'on whom nothing is lost.' " --Charles Isherwood, New York Times Rita Hayworth dancing by candlelight; Elizabeth Taylor tenderly wrapping him in her Pashmina scarf; streaking for Sir Laurence Olivier in a drafty English castle; terrifying a dozing Jackie Onassis; carrying an unconscious Montgomery Clift to safety on a dark New York street... Captured forever in a unique memoir, legendary actor Frank Langella's myriad encounters with some of the past century's most famous human beings are profoundly affecting, funny, wicked, sometimes shocking, and utterly irresistible. With sharp wit and a perceptive eye, Mr. Langella takes us with him into the private worlds and privileged lives of movie stars, presidents, royalty, literary lions, the social elite, and the greats of the Broadway stage. We learn something, too, of Mr. Langella's personal journey from the age of fifteen to the present day. Dropped Names is, like its subjects, riveting and unforgettable.
Lights Out by
In this New York Times bestselling investigation, Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America's power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared. a Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before.a It isn't just a scenario. A well-designed attack on just one of the nation's three electric power grids could cripple much of our infrastructure-and in the age of cyberwarfare, a laptop has become the only necessary weapon. Several nations hostile to the United States could launch such an assault at any time. In fact, as a former chief scientist of the NSA reveals, China and Russia have already penetrated the grid. And a cybersecurity advisor to President Obama believes that independent actors-from "hacktivists" to terrorists-have the capability as well. "It's not a question of if," says Centcom Commander General Lloyd Austin, "it's a question of when."a And yet, as Koppel makes clear, the federal government, while well prepared for natural disasters, has no plan for the aftermath of an attack on the power grid.a The current Secretary of Homeland Security suggests keeping a battery-powered radio. In the absence of a government plan, some individuals and communities have taken matters into their own hands. Among the nation's estimated three million "preppers," we meet one whose doomsday retreat includes a newly excavated three-acre lake, stocked with fish, and a Wyoming homesteader so self-sufficient that he crafted the thousands of adobe bricks in his house by hand. We also see the unrivaled disaster preparedness of the Mormon church, with its enormous storehouses, high-tech dairies, orchards, and proprietary trucking company - the fruits of a long tradition of anticipating the worst. But how, Koppel asks, will ordinary civilians survive? With urgency and authority, one of our most renowned journalists examines a threat unique to our time and evaluates potential ways to prepare for a catastrophe that is all but inevitable. From the Hardcover edition.
Fools' Paradise by
A pictorial depiction of Thousand Islands life accompanied by recollected conversations, evocative impressions and decades of historical research, reconstructing the incredible, vanished international resort as it was a hundred years ago.
Space Framed by
From one of his earliest projects for Heiner Friedrich and Philippa de Menil, founders of the Dia Art Foundation in New York, Richard Gluckman has closely aligned his work with the world of art and artists. Over the past twenty years, Gluckman has created distinctive spaces for numerous art galleries and museums and developed installations with such notable contemporary artists as Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Jenny Holzer, and Walter de Maria. But Gluckman's vision extends beyond art world commissions to include residential, commercial, and public projects. Deeply informed by the minimalist and site-specific artists Gluckman has encountered throughout his career, his work displays a consistent restraint that, as Gluckman himself writes, "allows for more emphasis on the basic architectural components: structure, scale, proportion, material, and light." The result is an architecture of powerful simplicity that has been applied to a wide variety of projects throughout the world. Space Framed: Richard Gluckman Architectpresents thirty-eight buildings and projects with carefully composed photographs and detailed presentation drawings. Featured projects include various buildings for the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the renovation and addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum Competition, the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, and the Museo Picasso in Malaga, Spain. In addition to generous illustrations and an introduction by the architect,Space Framedfeatures an insightful essay by noted critic Hal Foster.
Framework by
Richard Gluckman is an architect who creates spaces comparable to minimalist art. His careful consideration of the basic components of architecture—structure, scale, proportion, material, and light—produces buildings and interiors that heighten the perception of physical space and what is contained in that space. Subtle design elements, all drawn from a vocabulary of modernism, characterize his distinctive projects. More than fifteen projects for artists, collectors, and museums are presented in this volume, including the Gagosian and Mary Boone Galleries in New York; the Mori Arts Center in Tokyo, Japan; the Museo Picasso Malaga in Spain; the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the recently completed expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and the design for the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio in San Francisco. Gluckman has designed a wide range of other building types, all influenced by his exploration of the relationship between art and the space it inhabits. Included here are residential works (a loft in Tribeca; a house in Austin, Texas; and his own weekend house on Long Island); a library for P.S. 192; the renovation of Kenyon Hall at Vassar Colle≥ and One Kenmore Square, a downtown New York apartment building with an undulating facade.
MOS by
Their work has been described as experimental and innovative, qualities front-and-center in their previous collectionEverything All at Once. In just ten years, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample have established MOS as one of the leading young architecture practices in the country.Selected Works, the first monograph on the built work of the New York-based firm, follows the design studio's evolution from their earliest works to their most celebrated houses and institutional buildings. The thirty-two projects featured range from the sophisticated to the absurd--from the serene Floating House in Ontario, Canada, and the sustainable Kathmandu Orphanage in Nepal to the playful puppet theater at Harvard's Carpenter Center and the appropriately named Rainbow Vomit installationin New York, a digital, interactive, computational heap of building blocks in a constant state of near collapse. The collection also includes a selection of the couple's unorthodox writings, including their satirical "Office Policy" employee manual.
What If..? by
Widely admired for his sophistication, creativity and exuberance, David Rockwell is one of the leading architects, interiors architects and set designers working today. For over 30 years, he has explored his desire to imagine new worlds, to tell stories and to engage with others. This interest is rooted in his sense of play and possibility--an endless curiosity that continually drives him to ask, "What if?" What if you could step inside a crystal goblet? What if your environment transformed with every step? What if a restaurant could vanish at a moment's notice? What if your ultimate escapist fantasy was real? What If...? presents a wide array of Rockwell's brilliant explorations of the rich intersection between architecture and theater. Through immersive imagery and behind-the-scenes details, Rockwell introduces readers to 35 projects, from initial driving idea through physical realization. Works include the famed Nobu Fifty Seven and the newcomer TAO Downtown in New York, the W Paris Opéra, the West Lobby at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and the newly opened TED Theater in Vancouver; set designs for the Academy Awards, Kinky Boots and Hairspray; the Hall of Fragments at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale and Jamie Oliver's traveling teaching kitchen, the Food Revolution truck. Engaging texts by Tony Award-winning playwright and screenplay writer John Guare, Tony Award-winning director and producer Jack O'Brien and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Justin Davidson--written specially for this publication--and a conversation between Rockwell and acclaimed architect Elizabeth Diller round out this spectacular, celebratory volume.
Introduction to Architecture by
Introduction to Architecture: Global Disciplinary Knowledge provides students with a holistic exploration of the history of architectural discourse. The anthology features select readings in architectural theory, which are supplemented by clear introductory remarks to help guide students through critical concepts and themes. The book expands the repertoire of traditional Euro-American based theory anthologies by presenting texts from an explicitly global perspective. It engages a diverse range of debates on the built environment throughout history and around the world. The collection addresses the what, how, and why of architecture and architectural theory, specifically addressing the following questions: What is architecture? What are the ideas behind some of the most significant buildings in history? How does architecture manifest cultural values and aspirations in different contexts? Why is all of this important in the first place? To answer these questions, the anthology offers students readings on architectural thought and theory from some of the most renowned and revered architects and theorists of their time. The text also provides students with case studies and images of exemplary buildings to help them connect the dots between theoretical concepts and constructed works of architecture. Designed to serve as a supplementary text, Introduction to Architecture is a cross-disciplinary anthology well suited for foundational courses in architectural history, architecture, theory of architecture, cultural studies, anthropology, and urban studies.
Maintenance Architecture by
An inventive examination of a crucial but neglected aspect of architecture, by an architect writing to architects. Maintenance plays a crucial role in the production and endurance of architecture, yet architects for the most part treat maintenance with indifference. The discipline of architecture values the image of the new over the lived-in, the photogenic empty and stark building over a messy and labored one. But the fact is: homes need to be cleaned and buildings and cities need to be maintained, and architecture no matter its form cannot escape from such realities. In Maintenance Architecture, Hilary Sample offers an inventive examination of the architectural significance of maintenance through a series of short texts and images about specific buildings, materials, and projects. Although architects have seldom choose to represent maintenance--imagining their work only from conception to realization--artists have long explored subjects of endurance and permanence in iconic architecture. Sample explores a range of art projects--by artists including Gordon Matta-Clark, Jeff Wall, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles--to recast the problem of maintenance for architecture. How might architectural design and discourse change as a building cycle expands to include "post-occupancy"? Sample looks particularly at the private home, exhibition pavilion, and high-rise urban building, giving special attention to buildings constructed with novel and developing materials, technologies, and precise detailing in relation to endurance. These include Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House (1929), the Lever House (1952), the U.S. Steel Building (1971), and the O-14 (2010). She considers the iconography of skyscrapers; maintenance workforces, both public and private; labor-saving technology and devices; and contemporary architectural projects and preservation techniques that encompass the afterlife of buildings. A selection of artworks make the usually invisible aspects of maintenance visible, from Martha Rosler's Cleaning the Drapes to Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's The Kiss.
An Unfinished Encyclopedia of Scale Figures Without Architecture by
More than 1,000 representations of the human figure in architectural drawings by architects ranging from Aalto to Zumthor, removed from their architectural context.Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, and MOS present their rich findings on the human presence in architectural drawings not in any chronological or other linear order, but based on the convention of the encyclopedia, thus presenting (and perhaps deliberately condoning) surprise encounters made possible by the contingency created by alphabetical order..... From the contemporary perspective of a pluralistic world, the form of the encyclopedia may be particularly apt to represent such a vast body of material as is presented here- defying any linear historical account or master narrative, it invites the reader to construct his or her own readings of the material by establishing relationships between individual drawings. -From the foreword by Martino StierliThroughout history, across radically different movements in Western culture, the human figure appears and reappears, in multiple guises, to remind us, the observers, of architectural purpose and of our mutual position in the world....This encyclopedia has enlarged or reduced all figures to the same approximate scale. Meredith, Sample, and MOS have gathered them here in an unprecedented, intoxicating way, like being at a fabulous party. -From the afterword byRaymund RyanArchitects draw buildings, and the buildings they draw are usually populated by representations of the human figure-drawn, copied, collaged, or inserted-most often to suggest scale. It is impossible to represent architecture without representing the human form. This book collects more than 1,000 scale figures by 250 architects but presents them in a completely unexpected way- it removes them from their architectural context, displaying them on the page, buildingless, giving them lives of their own. They are presented not thematically or chronologically but encyclopedically, alphabetically by architect (Aalto to Zumthor). In serendipitous juxtapositions, the autonomous human figures appear and reappear, displaying endless variations of architecturally rendered human forms.Some architects' figures are casually srcawled; others are drawn carefully by hand or manipulated by Photoshop; some are collaged and pasted, others rendered in charcoal or watercolors. Leon Battista Alberti presents a trident-bearing god; the Ant Farm architecture group provides a naked John and Yoko; Archigram supplies its Air Hab Village with a photograph of a happy family. Without their architectural surroundings, the scale figures present themselves as architecture's refugees. They are the necessary but often overlooked reference points that give character to spaces imagined for but not yet occupied by humans. Here, they constitute a unique sourcebook and an architectural citizenry of their own.
Boldt Castle by
After the sudden death of his wife Louise in 1904, George Boldt halted construction on the couple's dream house on the border of New York state and the province of Ontario. Boldt Castle now attracts millions of international visitors each year. Malo (emeritus, Syracuse U.), who writes on historic buildings of New York state, tells the story of the Boldts and their building project as a series of informal interviews with Boldt family members and others with firsthand information. B&w historical photos augment the text. Distributed by Syracuse University Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The bride comes to Yellow Sky by 
The Western Writings of Stephen Crane by 
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane by 
The red badge of courage. A facsimile reproduction of the New York press appearance of December 9, 1894, with an introd. and textual notes by Joseph Katz by 
The Sullivan County sketches of Stephen Crane by 
The war dispatches of Stephen Crane by 
American Melancholy by
A new collection of poetry from an American literary legend, her first in twenty-five years Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most insightful observers of the human heart and mind, and, with her acute social consciousness, one of the most insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history. Oates is perhaps best known for her prodigious output of novels and short stories, many of which have become contemporary classics. However, Oates has also always been a faithful writer of poetry. American Melancholy showcases some of her finest work of the last few decades. Covering subjects big and small, and written in an immediate and engaging style, this collection touches on both the personal and political. Loss, love, and memory are investigated, along with the upheavals of our modern age, the reality of our current predicaments, and the ravages of poverty, racism, and social unrest. Oates skillfully writes characters ranging from a former doctor at a Chinese People's Liberation Army hospital to Little Albert, a six-month-old infant who took part in a famous study that revealed evidence of classical conditioning in human beings.
The Accursed by
A major historical novel from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation)--an eerie, unforgettable story of possession, power, and loss in early-twentieth-century Princeton, a cultural crossroads of the powerful and the damned Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the twentieth century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man-a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil, and who spreads his curse upon a richly deserving community of white Anglo-Saxon privilege. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up. When the bride's brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people, from Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House and retired to town for a quieter life, to soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, president of the university and a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power; from the young Socialist idealist Upton Sinclair to his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain-all plagued by "accursed" visions. An utterly fresh work from Oates, The Accursed marks new territory for the masterful writer. Narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling supernatural elements to stunning effect.
Black Dahlia and White Rose by 
Black Girl/White Girl by 
Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart by 
First love : a Gothic tale by 
A Garden of Earthly Delights by 
The Gravedigger's Daughter by 
Haunted : tales of the grotesque by 
The Man Without a Shadow by 
Pursuit : a novel of suspense by 
Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates by 
Joyce Carol Oates by 
Once upon a Quinceanera by
The bestselling author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents explores the phenomenon of the Latina sweet 15 celebration. An enlightening and entertaining portrait of contemporary Latino culture, this title also takes a critical look at the social consequences of the quince parties.
The Ancient Economy by
"Technical progress, economic growth, productivity, even efficiency have not been significant goals since the beginning of time," declares M. I. Finley in his classic work. The states of the ancient Mediterranean world had no recognizable real-property market, never fought a commercially inspired war, witnessed no drive to capital formation, and assigned the management of many substantial enterprises to slaves and ex-slaves. In short, to study the economies of the ancient world, one must begin by discarding many premises that seemed self-evident before Finley showed that they were useless or misleading. Available again, with a new foreword by Ian Morris, these sagacious, fertile, and occasionally combative essays are just as electrifying today as when Finley first wrote them.
Politics in the Ancient World by
The business of politics - the vital process of conducting government through the dynamics of argument, conflict and decision-making - offers us one of the most revealing areas of insight into any society. Sir Moses Finley's exploration of politics in the city states of Greece and republican Rome yields insights into the arenas of political debate which have made a major impact on our understanding of the ancient world. The early political involvement of the free lower classes, the effect of war and conquest on political stability, and the ideological pressures which influenced the course of internal conflicts are salient themes in this stimulating investigation of the nature of government in Greece and Rome.
Vita Nova by
Receipient, 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship Dante's Vita Nova (circa 1292-1295) depicts the joys and sorrows, the discoveries and conflicts of Dante's early love for Beatrice--who would achieve later and even greater fame in Commedia--starting with his first sighting of her and culminating in his prevision of Beatrice among the beatified in heaven. Award-winning translator and poet Andrew Frisardi channels the vigor and nuance of Dante's first masterpiece for a modern audience. The "little book," as Dante calls it, consists of thirty-one lyric poems--mostly sonnets--embedded in a prose narrative, which both recounts an apparently autobiographical set of events also evoked in the poems and offers analysis of the poems' construction in the medieval critical tradition of divisio textus, or division of the text. Dante selected poetry he had written before age twenty-eight or so and wrote the prose to shape it into a story. The poems anthologize Dante's growth as a poet, from the influence of his earliest mentors to the stylistic and thematic breakthroughs of his poetic coming-of-age. The interplay of poetry and prose in Vita Nova, along with the further distinction in the latter between autobiography and critical divisioni, presents a particular challenge for any translator. Frisardi faithfully voices the complex meter and rhyme schemes of the poetry while capturing the tone of each of the prose styles. His introduction and in-depth annotations provide additional context for the twenty-first-century reader.
Selected Poems by
A major new translation of one of Italy's greatest modern poets Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) was a pioneer of the Modernist movement in Italian poetry and is widely regarded as one of the leading Italian poets of the twentieth century. His verse is renowned and loved for its powerful insight and emotion, and its exquisite music. Yet, unlike many of his peers, Ungaretti has never been adequately presented to English readers. This large bilingual selection, translated with great sensitivity and fidelity by Andrew Frisardi, captures Ungaretti in all of his phases: from his early poems, written in the trenches of northern Italy during World War I, to the finely crafted erotic and religious poetry of his second period, to the visceral, elegiac poetry of the years following the death of his son and the occupation of Rome during World War II, to the love poems of the poet's old age. Frisardi's in-depth introduction details the world in which Ungaretti's work took shape and exerted its influence. In addition to the poet's own annotations, an autobiographical afterword, "Ungaretti on Ungaretti," further illuminates the poet's life and art. Here is a compelling, rewarding, and comprehensive version of the work of one of the greatest modern European poets.
Light and Heavy Things by
Light and Heavy Things provides US readers an opportunity to discover the late Pakistani poet Zeeshan Sahil. Sahil's work conveys his post-modern sensibility with plain language, presenting political realities of Pakistan in personal terms. Be afraid of poets They have hand grenade dreams If you let your words slip They will throw them against the wall If you try to snatch them back They will hide them under water Zeeshan Sahil was born in Hyderabad, Sindh, in 1961. He published eight collections of poetry in Urdu as well as critical articles and texts for broadcast on radio.
Garage by
Aaron Fagan's debut collection glitters with contemporary life, from poems on love, travel, cartoons and shopping, sitting alongside lyrics on channel surfing, philosophy and God. Gathering together work from over a decade of writing, Fagan takes us on tour through his metaphoric Garage, the title signaling his musical forbears in punk and electronic music. On our way, through improvisations, trials and errors, we join him in a world where invention and failure are indistinguishable parts of the journey, and Fagan makes the ideal companion, in love with the world and its characters, filled with hope and humor.
We've Already Gone This Far by
A heartfelt, vital collection; the debut of an exciting new talent already hailed as one of George Saunders' "favorite young American writers" In Patrick Dacey's stunning debut, we meet longtime neighbors and friends--citizens of working-class Wequaquet--right when the ground beneath their feet has shifted in ways they don't yet understand. Here, after more than a decade of boom and bust, love and pride are closely twinned and dangerously deployed: a lonely woman attacks a memorial to a neighbor's veteran son; a dissatisfied housewife goes overboard with cosmetic surgery on national television; a young father walks away fromone of the few jobs left in town, a soldier writes home to a mother who is becoming increasingly unhinged.We've Already Gone This Far takes us to a town like many towns in America, a place where people are searching for what is now an almost out-of-reach version of the American Dream Story by story, Dacey draws us into the secret lives of recognizable strangers and reminds us that life's strange intensity and occasional magic is all around us, especially in the everyday. With a skewering insight and real warmth of spirit, Dacey delivers that rare and wonderful thing in American fiction: a deeply-felt, deeply-imagined book about where we've been and how far we have to go.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by
"A joy to read."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters--Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía--and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father's role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home--and not at home--in America.
In the Name of Salomé by
In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another. Camila Henriquez Urena is about to retire from her longtime job teaching Spanish at Vassar College. Only now as she sorts through family papers does she begin to know the woman behind the legend of her mother, the revered Salome Urena, who died when Camila was three. In stark contrast to Salome, who became the Dominican Republic's national poet at the age of seventeen, Camila has spent most of her life trying not to offend anybody. Her mother dedicated her life to educating young women to give them voice in their turbulent new nation; Camila has spent her life quietly and anonymously teaching the Spanish pluperfect to upper-class American girls with no notion of revolution, no knowledge of Salome Urena. Now, in 1960, Camila must choose a final destination for herself. Where will she spend the rest of her days? News of the revolution in Cuba mirrors her own internal upheaval. In the process of deciding her future, Camila uncovers the truth of her mother's tragic personal life and, finally, finds a place for her own passion and commitment. Julia Alvarez has won a large and devoted audience by brilliantly illuminating the history of modern Caribbean America through the personal stories of its people. As a Latina, as a poet and novelist, and as a university professor, Julia Alvarez brings her own experience to this exquisite story.
Saving the World by
Latina novelist Alma Huebner is suffering from writer's block and is years past the completion date for yet another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband, Richard, works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to the health and prosperity of developing countries and wants her help on an extended AIDS assignment in the Dominican Republic. But Alma begs off joining him: the publisher is breathing down her neck. She promises to work hard and follow him a bit later. The truth is that Alma is seriously sidetracked by a story she has stumbled across. It's the story of a much earlier medical do-gooder, Spaniard Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain's American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he required live "carriers" of the vaccine. Of greater interest to Alma is Isabel Sendales y Gómez, director of La Casa de Expósitos, who was asked to select twenty-two orphan boys to be the vaccine carriers. She agreed-- with the stipulation that she would accompany the boys on the proposed two-year voyage. Her strength and courage inspire Alma, who finds herself becoming obsessed with the details of Isabel's adventures. This resplendent novel-within-a-novel spins the disparate tales of two remarkable women, both of whom are swept along by machismo. In depicting their confrontation of the great scourges of their respective eras, Alvarez exposes the conflict between altruism and ambition.
The Woman I Kept to Myself by
75 Poems by the Author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies The works of this award-winning poet and novelist are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: those of the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life. In these seventy-five autobiographical poems, Alvarez's clear voice sings out in every line. Here, in the middle of her life, she looks back as a way of understanding and celebrating the woman she has become.
Something to Declare by
"Julia Alvarez has suitcases full of history (public and private), trunks full of insights into what it means to be a Latina in the United States, bags full of literary wisdom." --Los Angeles Times From the internationally acclaimed author of the bestselling novels In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents comes a rich and revealing work of nonfiction capturing the life and mind of an artist as she knits together the dual themes of coming to America and becoming a writer. The twenty-four confessional, evocative essays that make up Something to Declare are divided into two parts. "Customs" includes Alvarez's memories of her family's life in the Dominican Republic, fleeing from Trujillo's dictatorship, and arriving in America when she was ten years old. She examines the effects of exile--surviving the shock of New York City life; yearning to fit in; training her tongue (and her mind) to speak English; and watching the Miss America pageant for clues about American-style beauty. The second half, "Declarations," celebrates her passion for words and the writing life. She lets us watch as she struggles with her art--searching for a subject for her next novel, confronting her characters, facing her family's anger when she invades their privacy, reflecting on the writers who influenced her, and continually honing her craft. The winner of the National Medal of Arts for her extraordinary storytelling, Julia Alvarez here offers essays that are an inspiring gift to readers and writers everywhere. "This beautiful collection of essays . . . traces a process of personal reconciliation with insight, humor, and quiet power." --San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle "Reading Julia Alvarez's new collection of essays is like curling up with a glass of wine in one hand and the phone in the other, listening to a bighearted, wisecracking friend share the hard-earned wisdom about family, identity, and the art of writing." --People
Off Message by
In fiber-optic-fast meditations on everything from Marxism to the Marianas Trench, Off Message probes the troubling corners of our globalized lives with humor, pathos, and verve. Political without being preachy, contemporary without being cloying, funny without being flip, these poems are unafraid to implicate themselves: like us, their speakers are part of the problem, and their struggles highlight the absurdities of broadband capitalism. What should we think of televised warfare, crackdowns on Twitter, and factory farms? What pages should we take from our history books? Off Message wrestles with questions like these by overlaying the near and the far, the lyric and the encyclopedic. Each poem is a mixtape, an abandoned essay, a satire of modern conscience.
Among the Missing by
In this haunting, bracing new collection, Dan Chaon shares stories of men, women, and children who live far outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to this place. Chaon imagines today's family instinctively trying to stay together, only to find itself lost in the throes of a chaotic, modern world.
In "Safety Man," a young widow and her children become increasingly attached to an inflatable protector-doll, as the world outside seems to grow ever more threatening; "Big Me" follows a lonely, imaginative twelve-year-old boy who believes an older (slightly creepier) version of himself has moved in next door; In "I Demand to Know Where You're Taking Me," a man blinded by love for his imprisoned brother ignores the warnings of his distant wife and a talking parrot who both witness things he's never seen; and "Among the Missing" explores how the death of a family, found buckled in their car at the bottom of a lake, casts a shadow on a small town and intrudes upon the narrator's relationship with his aging mother. A writer of enormous talent and emotional depth, Dan Chaon mines the psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Each story radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion. Among the Missing lingers in the mind through its subtle grace and power of language.
Await Your Reply by
Three disparate characters and their oddly interlocking lives feature in this novel about lost souls and hidden identities. Chaon intertwines a trio of story lines, showcasing his characters' individuality by threading subtle connections between and among them.
Stay Awake by
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post * San Francisco Chronicle Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection--and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations. A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors--and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkab≤ a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of "empty-nest syndrome"; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes--on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there's something off, something sinister, in his late parents' house. Dan Chaon's stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm--in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake. Praise for Stay Awake "Eerily beautiful . . . [Chaon] is the modern day John Cheever."--Boston Sunday Globe "Powerful and disturbing . . . The shocks in this collection are many."--The Washington Post "Chaon is able to create fully realized characters in mere pages. . . . This collection is further proof that Chaon is one of the best fiction writers working right now."--Omaha World-Herald "There are not many fiction writers who can do what Dan Chaon can do. . . . [He is] a literary force."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Intense and suspenseful . . . a highly recommended work, not to be missed."--Library Journal (starred review) "Mesmerizing . . . gripping, masterful fiction."--The Plain Dealer "Superbly disquieting."--The New York Times Book Review
You Remind Me of Me by
With his critically acclaimedAmong the MissingandFitting Ends, award-winning author Dan Chaon proved himself a master of the short story form. He is a writer, observes theChicago Tribune, who can “convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so.” Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. You Remind Me of Mebegins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaonexplores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of “ordinary” people.
Nightshift Belonging to Lorca by
Poetry. "Yes, these poems glow with what is most tender in Lorca; but they also strut with what is most wiseass in O'Hara; they brood with what is most earnest in Akhmatova. In this book one hears the footsteps of all the teachers and friends and loved ones and strangers that people Sean Thomas Dougherty's mind (the blood's library) and heart (the blood's dancehall); one recognizes them as the footsteps of our own wide-opened, inescapable world"--Terrance Hayes.
Love song of the young couple, the dumb job : poems by 
The mercy of sleep : poems and drawings from the Saint Catherine of Siena Project by 
Whereas by
Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn examines the difficulties of telling the truth, and the fictions with which we choose to live. Incisively capturing the oddities of our logic and the whimsies of our reason, the poems in Whereas show there is always another side to a story. With graceful rhythm and equal parts humor and seriousness, Stephen Dunn considers the superstition and sophistry embedded in everyday life: household objects that seem to turn against us, the search for meaning in the barrage of daily news, the surprising confessions between neighbors across a row of hedges. Finding beauty in the ordinary, this collection affirms the absurdity of making affirmations, allowing room for more rethinking, reflection, revision, prayer, and magic in the world.
Different Hours by
A wise and graceful new collection by one of our "major, indispensable poets" (Sidney Lea). The mysteries of Eros and Thanatos, the stubborn endurance of mind and body in the face of diminishment--these are the undercurrents of Stephen Dunn's eleventh volume. "I am interested in exploring the 'different' hours," he says, "not only of one's life, but also of the larger historical and philosophical life beyond the personal."
Here and Now by
Full of grace and masterful precision, the poems in Stephen Dunn's sixteenth book of poetry attest to the contradictions we live with in the here and now, both political and metaphysical, and the essential human comedy of getting through the day.from "The House on the Hill" . . . from out of the fog, a large, welcoming house would emerge made out of invention and surprise. No things without ideas! you'd shout, and the doors would open, and the echoes would cascade down to the valleys and the faraway towns.
Insistence of Beauty by
"Beauty isn't nice. Beauty isn't fair..." So, in part, states an epigraph for this stunning new collection, his thirteenth, by the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry (2000). First traversing betrayal and loss, Stephen Dunn then moves to speak of new love, with its attendant pleasures and questioning. The title poem, perhaps emblematic of the book as a whole, is evocative of beauty's often surprising manifestations--even in the light of tragedy--as on that terrible day "when those silver planes came out of the perfect blue."Because beauty jars us, makes us look twice, it is as startling as a good poem, and as insistent. Fortunately, it is never too late to search for the right words for what we've seen, felt, endured. With quiet authority Dunn enacts what it feels like to be a particular man at a particular juncture of his life--struggling not to deny, but to name, then rename.
Loosestrife by
In this tenth collection, Stephen Dunn turns his "wise, well-practiced eye" (Library Journal) on an America growing ever more stringent with its daily mercies. Not content merely to observe the world, Dunn's stance is always dual, complicit. And as he navigates through each paradox of his moral and aesthetic and erotic selves, this poet, described by Sydney Lea as one "who remains open to contradictions," travels to a place of exact and complicated vision.
Walking Light by
Committed to exploring the role of poetry and poets in our culture, Stephen Dunn provides new, expanded versions of the essays originally published by W. W. Norton in 1993, now out of print. InWalking Light, Dunn discusses the relationship between art and sport, the role of imagination in writing poetry, and the necessity for surprise and discovery when writing a poem. Humorous, intelligent and accessible,Walking Light is a book that will appeal to writers, readers, and teachers of poetry. Stephen Dunn is the author of eleven collection of poetry. He teaches writing and literature at the Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey, and lives in Port Republic, New Jersey.
What Goes On by
"Good poems are triumphs over the unlikely," Stephen Dunn says. "They make us pay attention in new ways." In his second new and selected collection, Dunn subtly enlarges our sense of possibility. His new poems, suffused with affection and rue for our world, occasionally address the metaphysical, as in these lines--from "Talk to God"Ease into your misgivingsAsk him if in his weaknesshe was ever responsiblefor a pettiness--some weather, say,brought in to show who's bosswhen no one seemed sufficiently movedby a sunset or the shape of an egg.Ask him if when he gave us desirehe had underestimated its power.
Rides of the Midway by
Meet Mississippi teenager Noel Weatherspoon: ghost-seeing insomniac, endearing dopehead, wanna-be erotic photographer, and possible Baptist faith healer. Noel, who prefers The Exorcist to Ecclesiastes, must navigate a world of Bible-thumpers, born-again Christians, and a stepfather who bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham. Darkly comic and lyrically moving, Rides of the Midway introduces a formidable new talent in contemporary fiction.
I Will Say Beauty by
The thrilling new collection from the Pushcart Prize-winning poet "I will say beauty," Carol Frost boldly says in one of her new lyrical poems, beauty being for her and all of us elusive-in and out of nature. The phrase is meant as a cri de coeur, and the poems are arranged to offer a fresh way to look at--and exist within--nature. For Frost, beauty is a far cry from the decorous and social. Frost sets many of these poems in Florida's Cedar Keys, amidst the nesting areas of birds, cottonmouth snakes, wetlands, and tidal rhythms. The reader undertakes a journey through a tropical summer, where strange scents and sounds are signs of the transient beauties the imagination may possess for a moment. Drawing brilliantly from nature and from art, from the rhythms of life and the furies of emotion, Frost rejects standard responses and dares to ask: how do we perceive the world? When is beauty not enough? Can we imagine Paradise? And, when nature ordains that death must come, and we weaken, how do we die?
Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto by
A brilliant and unnerving debut novel about the mysteriously ill patients at a remote hospital in Finland In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto, a curving concrete example of austere Scandinavian design. It is the 1920s, and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. On the lower floors are the stoic Finnish women; on the upper floors are foreign women of privilege--the "up-patients." They are tended to by head nurse Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism. On a late-summer day a new patient arrives on Sunny's ward-- a faded, irascible former ballroom-dance instructor named Julia Dey. Sunny takes it upon herself to pierce the mystery of Julia's reserve. Soon, Julia's difficulty, her tightly coiled anger, places her at the center of the ward's tangled emotional life. This fraught dynamic animates Maile Chapman's ambitious first novel. As summer turns to fall, and fall to a long, dark winter, the patients hear rumors about changes being implemented at Suvanto by an American obstetrician, Dr. Peter Weber, who is experimenting with a new surgical stitch. Their familiar routine threatened, the women are not happy (they were not happy before), and the story's escalating menace builds to a terrifying conclusion.
Twenty Grand by
In this dazzling literary debut, Rebecca Curtis displays the gifts that make her one of the most talented writers of her generation. Her characters--young women struggling to find happiness, love, success, security, and adventure--wait tables, run away from home, fall for married men, betray their friends, and find themselves betrayed as well. In "Hungry Self," a young waitress descends into the basement of a seemingly ordinary Chinese restaurant; in "Twenty Grand," a young wife tries to recover her lost fortune; in "Monsters," one family's paranoia leads to a sacrifice; and in "The Witches," an innocent swim on prom night proves more dangerous than anyone could have imagined. With elegant prose and a wicked sense of humor, these stories reveal Curtis's provocative and uncompromising view of life, one that makes her writing so poignant and irresistible.
Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes by
The poems in Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes are survival songs, the tunes you whistle while walking through the Valley of Shadows, to keep your fears at bay and your spirit awake. The shadows here are many--cancer, poverty, a lost love, famine, suicide, war, an ever-encroaching existential angst. But so are the saving graces--a drag queen waitress whose "painted-on eyebrows arched like a bridge / toward starlight," "strawberries / grown fat around dimpled gold seeds," Pink Floyd's "'On the Turning Away' sent through my car / radio like the ghost voice of a beloved long dead," black phoebes rattling "winter / thistles, swollen throats percussing: / this is this is this is . . . " Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes reminds us that where there is shadow there must, necessarily, also be light.
In Praise of Falling by
The poems in this collection are the proverbial spring bulbs abandoned in the basement, growing toward a slim crack of sunlight. They are both aware of the limitations of social structures and forcefully committed to breaking out of those traps, urging toward a better way of living. The characters in these poems resist the twenty-first century's prescription for a life of emotional-spiritual bankruptcy, reaching toward an ever-elusive glimmer on the horizon.
The Weary World Rejoices by
Poetry. LGBT Studies. "Steve Fellner is not afraid to be unlikeable, which is precisely why I trust him completely. These are poems of rage and shame, confession in its purest sense—not employed to elicit sympathy or shock but because the stakes are very high: tell the truth or cease to exist. Prepare for journeys to psych wards and ERs; know that your guides will be Miss Piggy and meth, cyberspace and the shadows of the dead. Know, too, that you will meet forms of the divine, and forms of deeply earnest love. Steve Fellner fully understands—especially in his haunting cycle of poems to Matthew Shepard—the distance respect requires, and the intimacy poetry demands"—Lia Purpura.
When Mystical Creatures Attack! by
In When Mystical Creatures Attack!, Ms. Freedman's high school English class writes essays in which mystical creatures resolve the greatest sociopolitical problems of our time. Students include Janice Gibbs, "a feral child with excessive eyeliner and an anti-authoritarian complex that would be interesting were it not so ill-informed," and Cody Splunk, an aspiring writer working on a time machine. Following a nervous breakdown, Ms. Freedman corresponds with Janice and Cody from an insane asylum run on the capitalist model of cognitive-behavioral therapy, where inmates practice water aerobics to rebuild their Psychiatric Credit Scores. The lives of Janice, Cody, and Ms. Freedman are revealed through in-class essays, letters, therapeutic journal exercises, an advice column, a reality show television transcript, a diary, and a Methodist women's fundraising cookbook. (Recipes include "Dark Night of the Soul Food," "Render Unto Caesar Salad," and "Valley of the Shadow of Death by Chocolate Cake.") In "Virtue of the Month," the ghost of Ms. Freedman's mother argues that suicide is not a choice. In "The Un-Game," Janice's chain-smoking nursing home charge composes a dirty limerick. In "The Hall of Old-Testament Miracles," wax figures of Bible characters come to life, hungry for Cody's flesh. Set against a South Texas landscape where cicadas hum and the air smells of taco stands and jasmine flowers, these stories range from laugh-out-loud funny to achingly poignant. This surreal, exuberant collection mines the dark recesses of the soul while illuminating the human heart.
Dark Thirty by
Writing sometimes in dialect, sometimes in gunshot bursts, sometimes in sinuous lines that snake across the page, Santee Frazier crafts poems that are edgy and restless. The poems in Dark Thirty, Frazier's debut collection, address subjects that are not often thought of as "poetic," like poverty, alcoholism, cruelty, and homelessness. Frazier's poems emerge from the darkest corners of experience: "I search the cabinet and icebox--drink the pickle juice / from the jar. Bologna, / hard at the edges, / browning on the kitchen / table since yesterday. / I search the cabinet and icebox--the curdling / milk almost smells drinkable." Dark Thirty takes us on a loosely autobiographical trip through Cherokee country, the backwoods towns and the big cities, giving us clear-eyed portraits of Native people surviving contemporary America. In Frazier's world, there is no romanticizing of Native American life. Here cops knock on the door of a low-rent apartment after a neighbor has been stabbed. Here a poem's narrator recalls firing a .38 pistol--"barrel glowing like oil in a gutter-puddle"--for the first time. Here a young man catches a Greyhound bus to Flagstaff after his ex-girlfriend tells him he has fathered a child. Yet even in the midst of violence and despair there is time for the beauty of the world to shine through: "The Cutlass rattling out / the last fumes of gas, engine stops, / the night dimly lit by the moon / hung over the treetops; / owls calling each other from / hilltop to valley bend." Like viewing photographs that repel us even as they draw us in, we are pulled into these poems. We're compelled to turn the page and read the next poem. And the next. And each poem rewards us with a world freshly seen and remade for us of sound and image and voice.
Return to Sender by
After Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, his family is forced to hire migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure. Tyler isn’t sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but also increasingly connected her American life. Her family lives in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities and sent back to the poverty they left behind in Mexico. Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences? In a novel full of hope, but no easy answers, Julia Alvarez weaves a beautiful and timely story that will stay with readers long after they finish it.
Lucky by
In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit-as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."
