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The Skylark's Song
by Audrey HowardZoe Taylor is born into poverty and hardship. But her beauty marks her out as someone special, and when local schoolmistress Joanna Dale adopts her, Zoe is given her chance for a new life far removed from the violence and squalor of her past. But fate conspires against her, and she is forced back to her old home where her father's violence threatens her yet again. Her only escape is to run away to the wild and rolling moors, and it is there she meets the only man she will ever love, a man forever out of reach ... .
Skylight: Poems
by Carol Muske-DukesPoetry from a writer celebrated as one of the most distinctive voices of her generationAmong the thirty-five poems in Skylight are sonnets, sestinas, and free verse forms on topics ranging from politics to architecture and science. In one volume, Muske-Dukes, National Book Award finalist and former Poet Laureate of California, incorporates multitudes, unified by her lyrical style and rapier-sharp observations. The sonnet "Fireflies" explores a strained relationship that is healed, for one moment, in a nighttime walk lit by the pulsing signals of firefly life. "The Funeral" confronts the stark playground atmosphere in the wake of a child's funeral. In the melancholy and unforgettable title poem, an "apartment in the sky" in New York City spins before the reader's eyes.
Skyscraping
by Cordelia JensenA heartrending, bold novel in verse about family, identity, and forgiveness Mira is just beginning her senior year of high school when she discovers her father with his male lover. Her world-and everything she thought she knew about her family-is shattered instantly. <P><P>Unable to comprehend the lies, betrayal, and secrets that-unbeknownst to Mira-have come to define and keep intact her family's existence, Mira distances herself from her sister and closest friends as a means of coping. <P>But her father's sexual orientation isn't all he's kept hidden. A shocking health scare brings to light his battle with HIV. <P> As Mira struggles to make sense of the many fractures in her family's fabric and redefine her wavering sense of self, she must find a way to reconnect with her dad-while there is still time. <P>Told in raw, exposed free verse, Skyscraping reminds us that there is no one way to be a family.
Slant Six
by Erin BelieuHonored as one of "10 Favorite Books of 2014" --Dwight Garner, The New York Times Honored as a "Standout Book of 2014" --American Poet magazine "Belieu oscillates between dark humor, self-consciousness, and pointed satire in a fourth collection that’s equal-opportunity in its critique. In the world of these poems, no one is inno¢ everyone is confined to the complexity, absurdity, and, above all, fallibility of their human condition. . . . Anchoring the work is a conversational, lyrical speaker willing to implicate herself as part of the political and social constructs she criticizes, as when she depicts a Southern American culture still reeling from its history of social injustice, and even the Civil War: "Don’t tell us/ history. Nobody hearts a cemetery/ like we do. ” It’s a fantastic collection; Belieu desires not to dress issues up but confront them. ”--Publishers Weekly, starred review "A smart and nettling book of poems -- about love, sex, social class and our free-floating anxieties -- from a writer who is a comedian of the human spirit. Her crisp free verse has as many subcurrents as a magnetic field. ”--Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Politics, pop culture, and parenthood appear here along with reflections on our collective moments of hypocrisy and hope. ''12-Step,'' one of the most resonant entries, begins innocuously with a meditation about lighthouses, then the speaker gathers speed and confidence and reaches a risky but profound one-word stanza--''myself''--before ending with a haunting inversion of the Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Amid the quips and the elegant observations about immortality, Belieu''s speakers never forget their responsibilities, or their possibilities. " --Booklist "From poem to poem in the smart, savvy Slant Six, Belieu channels an updated American idiom, one of stubborn in-betweenhood. Like the plain-spoken poetry that plumbed the depths of American consciousness in the 20th century, Belieu trawls the shallows of today’s America and finds just as much caught in its oily reflections as in its murkier subcurrents. It’s ''[b]etter,'' she suggests, ''to forget perfection. ''" --The Boston Globe "I’ve never read a poem by Erin Belieu that I didn’t want to immediately rip from its bindings so I could fold it up and carry around in my pockets and read so many times that the paper turned back into pulp. She’s just that good. That honest and brave and beautiful and wise and funny. She writes poems we need. Poems that say who I am and who you are and how and why we got to be this way. Poems that wonder if we can ever change. Poems that know us and show us and grace us. Poems that remember us and forget us and leave us dazzled in their dust. In Slant Six, she’s outdone herself. It’s a spellbinding, heart-opening beauty of a book. ” --Cheryl Strayed "Erin Belieu . . . is always ready to surprise, to astonish, and, ultimately, to defy comparison. "--Boston Book Review "[One] of America''s finest poets. "--Robert Olen Butler Erin Belieu''s fourth collection, Slant Six, is an inundation of the humor and horror in contemporary American life--from the last saltine cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle. With its prophecies of impending destruction, and a simultaneous flood of respect for Americans, Erin Belieu''s poems close like Ziploc bags around a human heart. From "12-Step": I am considering lighthouses in a completely new light-- their butch neutrality, their grand but modest surfaces. A lighthouse could appear here at any moment. I have been making this effort, placing myself in uncomfortable positions, only for the documented health benefits . . .
Slapstick
by Roger McGoughIf Philosophy is the Why?And Science is the How?Then Poetry is the Wow!In this stunning, brand-new volume, you'll discover poems about poems, poems about life, poems about kangaroos and chameleons and caterpillars (though not in the same verse) and many more. This touching and thought-provoking collection will make you laugh, cry, or simply say 'Wow!'
Slashing Sounds: A Bilingual Edition (Phoenix Poets)
by Jolanda InsanaThe first collection of Italian poet Jolanda Insana’s work to be published in English, featuring transgressive poems that evidence the power of language. Jolanda Insana’s Slashing Sounds uses invectives, fragments, epigrams, and epigraphs to construct poems that pulse with the texture of an idiosyncratic Sicilian dialect. The poems in this collection are ferocious, irreverent, strange, snarky, and otherworldly. Insana’s commitment to contentiousness, her brutal and skeptical eye, and her preoccupation with language make Insana’s poetry particularly arresting. For Insana, there is no subject more worthy of our interest than language’s misfires and contradictory impulses—language being the ultimate arrow, forging a direction in the world and forcing a turn toward whatever reality appears in front of you. The first book-length collection of Insana’s poetry published in English, Slashing Sounds is a powerful offering that addresses a lack of female Italian voices in Anglophone poetry publishing.
Sleep
by Amelia RosselliA major, career-spanning collection of an Italian master's poetry in English, gathered together for the first time. Amelia Rosselli is one of the great poets of postwar Italy. She was also a musician and musicologist, close to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and she waged a lifelong battle against depression. The child of Carlo Rosselli, a significant anti-fascist intellectual who was assassinated with his brother Nello in 1937, Amelia grew up in exile and attended high school in Mamaroneck, New York. English poetry, especially the lyrics and sonnets of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, became a prime reference for her own poetry, which combines modernist experimentation with variations on more traditional forms. The elaborate, archaic, yet thoroughly modern poems, at once stumbling and singing, that Rosselli composed in English and gathered under the title Sleep are a beautiful and illuminating part of her work. Six of the poems were published by John Ashbery in the 1960s but have otherwise been unavailable to English readers. They are published here for the first time outside of Italy.
The Sleep That Changed Everything (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Lee Ann BrownOffering both subtle and immediate pleasures, Lee Ann Brown's generous new book extends her unmistakable, original voice, every bit as Southern as it is avant-garde, gracious without being naive. Abounding in a playfulness of style, including songs and ballads, the poems in The Sleep That Changed Everything are by turns funny, serious, insightful and moving. Botanical and scientific language are used here as collage elements to chart cycles of desire and emotional transformation. Brown is committed to Whitman's idea that we all have many selves; thus her work embraces the immediacy of the New York School, the personal and literary wildness of the Beats, the word play and political astuteness of Language poetry and an eroticism all her own. In poems that are both highly literate and plain-spoken, Brown makes the life of the soul directly available in all its renegade garb.
Sleep Tight, Snow White
by Jen ArenaA Mother Goose for the new millennium: bedtime rhymes for all your favorite princes, princesses, and nursery rhyme characters! Everyone has a hard time nodding off sometimes—from Prince Charming, who snores so loud it&’s alarming, to Hansel and Gretel, who have Sleepytime tea in the kettle. With a good night&’s sleep, even the Wicked Queen can have a new day, fresh and clean! Say good night to your favorite characters from beloved fairy tales and nursery rhymes in this enchanting bedtime book from author Jen Arena with gorgeous illustrations from Lorena Alvarez.
Sleeping Late on Judgment Day
by Jane Mayhall“My heart is bursting with homage as I / head off to a hostile eternity,” writes Jane Mayhall, now eighty-five, who wrote most of these poems in an urgent outpouring over the last few years. From the decades-outdated subway token in the bottom of her shoulder bag, which calls forth earlier days in New York City, to the violin her father practiced among the pantry’s jam jars in her Kentucky childhood, Mayhall plucks small treasures that bespeak her fierce devotion to life, with its clutter of memories and imperfections. In her tightly knotted, beautifully turned short poems, she elegizes a world not quite gone, and brings us into contact with some of her contemporaries, from Lincoln Kirstein to Theodore Roethke. Chief among her cherished memories is her long bohemian marriage, which she recalls in a series of ravishing love poems to her late husband. In lines saturated with feeling she describes how she accommodates her grief at losing him and, as throughout this exquisite volume, how we must continue to greet life, in all its gorgeous strangeness.
Sleeping on the Wing: An Anthology of Modern Poetry with Essays on Reading and Writing
by Kenneth Koch Kate FarrellSelections from the work of twenty-three modern poets, from Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Gary Snyder and Leroi Jones, including translations of poems by five European poets.
Sleeping Preacher
by Julia KasdorfWinner of the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. The poems in this book deal with life in a Pennsylvania Mennonite community and the tensions and conflicts that exist for the speaker as she tries to be true to two worlds, the other being New York City.
Sleeping with the Dictionary (New California Poetry #4)
by Harryette MullenPart of the award-winning New California Poetry Series, Sleeping with the Dictionary is the fifth volume of poetry by Harryette Mullen, a well-respected African American poet.
Sleeping with the Moon (Illinois Poetry Series)
by Colleen J. McElroyPEN Oakland National Literary Award, 2008 Colleen J. McElroy's poetry shoots for the moon, and takes it in, too, in one way after another. The collection’s award-winning poems animate women’s experiences of sex, shopping, and dancing, while offering telling insight into the struggles and silver lining of lust, love, illness, and aging. Rich with vivid imagery and candid storytelling, Sleeping with the Moon takes readers on moonlit adventures under the night sky, through the barroom’s smoky haze, and under the covers. ...Beware: such delicate sights have driven more than one woman to despair instead she watched him breathe-- relishing for a moment that secret space where night grows soft and the moon’s detumescence forgives-- and where if this jeweled light holds they might strip themselves of years if only for one night --from “In Praise of Older Women”
A Sleepwalk on the Severn
by Alice OswaldAn early work from the acclaimed poet of Memorial and Falling Awake, appearing for the first time in the United States. A Sleepwalk on the Severn is a reflective, book-length poem in several registers, using dramatic dialogue. Ghostly, meditative, and characterized by Alice Oswald’s signature sensitivity to nature, the poem chronicles a night on the Severn Estuary as the moonrise travels through its five stages: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon, and moon reborn.
Sleepy Dog, Wake Up! (Step into Reading)
by Harriet Ziefert Norman GorbatyThe bestselling Sleepy Dog now has a sequel! In this Step 1 Step into Reading Reader, Sleepy Dog does not want to wake up! The sun is up, the cat is up--wake up, Sleepy Dog! Every sleepy child will laugh with Sleepy Dog as he shakes off his snooziness and finally gets out of bed, all ready to play. Fans of the original Sleepy Dog will be excited to join in Sleepy Dog's fun morning. Step 1 Readers feature big type and easy words for children who know the alphabet and are eager to begin reading. Rhyme and rhythmic text paired with picture clues help children decode the story.
Sleepyhead Bear
by Lisa Westberg PetersAges 4 up It is a hot summer day, and Bear's eyes are droopy. But . . . BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ pesky bugs are buzzing here and there and everywhere. What is a sleepy little bear to do? He could try a growl. GRRRRRR! He could try a roar. ROAR! He could try swimming and climbing and hiding and running . . . oh, dear! It's a hot summer day, and now Bear really needs a rest. Help!
Sleepytime Me
by Edith Hope Fine Christopher DeniseSplashy sunset paints the sky. Shy moon tiptoes, climbs up high . . . Daylight is fading and night is drawing in. It's time for bed. A drowsy child observes the wide world settling down, coming ever closer to home until at last there are good-night hugs and kisses for this little sleepyhead. Richly painted, evocative scenes illuminate the text, imbuing the whole with mystery and a sense of comfort and warmth, and making this a bedtime story to treasure for all time.From the Hardcover edition.
The Sleeve Waves
by Angela SorbyWinner of the 2014 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye Inspired by thrift store knit sleeves, punk rock record sleeves, and, of course, print book sleeves, Angela Sorby explores how the concrete world hails us in waves of color and sound. She asks implicitly, #147;What makes the sleeve wave? Is it the body or some force larger than the self?” As Sorby’s tough, ironic, and subtly political voice repeatedly insists, we apprehend, use, and release more energy than we can possibly control. This collection includes two main parts#151;one visual, one aural#151;flanking a central pastoral poem sung by Virgilian sheep. Meant to be read both silently and aloud, the poems in The Sleeve Waves meditate on how almost everything#151;like light and sound#151;comes to us in waves that break and vanish and yet continue.
Slide
by Mark Pajak**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE****SHORTLISTED FOR THE SEAMUS HEANEY FIRST COLLECTION PRIZE**'Fresh, urgent, alive... genius' PATIENCE AGBABIThis assured and arresting first collection moves deftly and with purpose into private, hidden places - a locked shed, the dark of a battery farm, a murky riverbed, a late-night bar - to show, unflinchingly and in cinematic detail, what we might otherwise choose not to see. Sight is both a gift and curse, of course: given or taken away in poems of windows and curtains, torches and blindfolds, and yet here - following in the tradition of Oswald and Heaney - each image is freshly minted through a cool, objective eye.Every poem seeks to inhabit those seemingly small but pivotal moments which have monumental, sometimes mortal, consequences. For Pajak, time is fluid: a blink can be 'slow as an eclipse', our lifetimes are fleeting, our deaths often lingering and seldom peaceful or painless.Vivid and visceral, steadily examining violence, sexual encounters, childhood and ageing (a dying grandmother's 'slow pink eyelids, those quick teaspoon breaths'), cars and cities, and Nature - full of wonder and threat - Slide is always asking pertinent questions: illuminating brutality, frailty and tenderness, the responsibility of those who witness - whether voyeur, bystander or reader. This is a charged, beautifully observed and thrilling debut.
Slip: From the Winner of the Northern Writers’ Award
by Amelia LoulliOne in three women in Britain have an abortion. For such a common procedure, it has not been the subject of a dedicated book of poetry - not, at least, until now.'Painful, brave and steadfastly honest' ANDREW MCMILLAN'Original, essential... An unforgettable collection' FIONA BENSONAmelia Loulli opens this fearless, frank, absorbing debut with the words 'I'm going to tell you what happened', and that is precisely what she does. With these careful, generous, insistent poems, we are led through the experience of abortion and surprised at every turn. There is vulnerability and despair, there is the shame and silence too, but there is also the constant, steady pulse of compassion, tenderness and wonder at the world.Slip is a daring book, not just in subject but in style: skilfully worked, integrating the rich terror of nursery rhymes and folk tales with the bland banalities and euphemisms of social interaction, of medical techniques. It is also, sadly, a necessary book - provocative and transformative poetry about women as mothers and survivors. A cry of fury and a cry of love.
Sloan-Kettering
by Abba KovnerIn his final collection of poems, Abba Kovner -- the famed Jewish resistance fighter who led the Vilna ghetto uprising during World War II -- records his battle with cancer and his deep engagement with life up to his last days. A beloved master of Hebrew literature, Abba Kovner was a poet, novelist, and essayist whose work has seldom appeared in English. These clear, spare, luminous verses bring his voice to us in all its fullness. Facing the one fight he knew he would lose, Kovner records in these poems his final weeks, as he was dying of cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York. Weaving together his perceptions of the present moment ("How little we need to be happy: a half kilo increase in weight, /two circuits of the corridors"), sorrow at leaving the world and at the dramatic loss of his vocal chords ("Have I no right to die/while still alive?"), and memories of his heroic comrades in the Baltic forest, Kovner emerges from these pages with yet another kind of heroism. His desire to give a complete account of the gift of life, even as that life is failing, makes these poems deeply moving and unforgettable.
Slope of the Child Everlasting (American Poets Continuum)
by Laurie KutchinsSlope of the Child Everlasting sustains the lyric and imagistic sensibility of Laurie Kutchins’ previous poetry collection, The Night Path (BOA Editions, 1997), while expanding on its exploration of the archetypes that anchor the heart and mind of her poetry. The characters in these poems evoke chaos and regression, as well as song, wonder, and the tenacity of the imagination. Laurie Kutchins is an associate professor of English at James Madison University in Virginia. She lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and spends her summers along the Wyoming-Idaho border. The Night Path won the 1997 Isabella Gardner Award from BOA Editions.
Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems
by Charles Bukowskiin this place there are the dead, the deadly and the dying. there is the cross, the builders of the cross and the burners of the cross. the pattern of my life forms like a cheap shadow on the wall before me. my love what is left of it now must crawl to wherever it can crawl. the strongest know that death is final and the happiest are those gifted with the shortest journey.
Slovenly Love
by Méira CookLonglisted for the 2004 ReLit Awards Slovenly Love is Meira Cook's third book of poetry. A Fine Grammar of Bones and Toward a Catalogue of Falling, both collections of lyrics, are now joined by a fascinating long poem composed of five sequences. Slovenly Love, in its exhilarating renovation of words and forms, gorgeously confirms that.