223: The number of homicides in Baltimore City in 2010. 23: The age of Stephen Bradley Pitcairn, one of those victims. Numb, we watch the news from a safe distance. No personal blood is shed. Yet, beyond statistics lie human emotions—pain that cuts deeper than any weapon. Poet Shirley J. Brewer responded to the stabbing death of Stephen Pitcairn, who envisioned a...
Learn MoreWithin these poems, language and memory form a collusion which eulogizes a stuck moment of time even as it reinvents it. The result is a poet whose vision travels as far into the future as it does into the past, mining from both moments which are as compellingly familiar as they are foreign, moments in which it becomes clear that all histories are shared...
Learn More“What we find in Nesting is a well-rounded and clear-sighted perspective on motherhood. Readers will respect the authority and wisdom of the poet. Trondson has situated herself in the solid mainstream of American poetry. The poetry is honest and real, primarily literal with subtle and effective touches of imaginative language and shifts of direction-poetry that is...
Learn More“Katherine Cottle’s poems took me into a world I knew nothing about, but found fascinating.” —Christine Stewart Judge and Director, “Write Here, Write Now” Workshops Details Purchase Reviews/Blurbs About the Author ...
Learn MoreIn this epic poem, Paul Nelson re-enacts the history of Auburn, Washington, originally known as the town of Slaughter. Written in the spirit of William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Michael McClure, A Time Before Slaughterexplores the history of this Northwestern place from the myths of Native people to the xenophobia toward Japanese-Americans, from the urge to...
Learn MoreWith a pilgrim’s ardent aspiration, Charles Hansmann’s poems negotiate the tensions between belief and doubt, the transient and the permanent. With practiced calm, the poet observes and preserves the verities of place, memory, and the passage of the seasons. Whether he is recalling factory work “in air so heavy metal/filings can float on it,” or...
Learn More“Seed Hope. Flower Peace.” Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, and years since the start of the Iraq War, these words by Jesuit priest, poet, peace activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Daniel Berrigan still resonate. Prayer for the Morning Headlines: On the Sanctity of Life and Death pairs select Berrigan poems with luminous photographs of cemetery...
Learn More