Composed while Wendell Berry looked out the multipaned window of his writing studio, this early sequence of poems contemplates Berry’s personal life as much as it ponders the seasons he witnessed through the window. First designed and printed on a Washington hand press by Bob Barris at the Press on Scroll Road, Window Poems includes elegant wood engravings by Wesley Bates that complement the reflective and meditative beauty of Berry’s poems.
Best known as a novelist, Nicholas Christopher began publishing poems in The New Yorker in his twenties, and has published eight collections, praised over the years by poets and critics as being among America’s most important poets. Reviewing his selected poems, Crossing the Equator, published eight years ago, The Washington Post said, “To read his richly honed and sensuous work, which has so much tensile strength, is to visit other worlds and then to return to our own disturbed by time, but also refreshed and reawakened.”On Jupiter Place is his first book since that collection, and it contains material that is perhaps his most personal, autobiographical and intimate work yet. Beautifully made and carefully constructed, one might be reminded of Keats thinking that his poems were “little machines” of feeling. And everywhere in this book are moments of disorientation, where the wonder of the poem transcends understanding and leads its readers back into themselves slightly startled and richer for the effort. As Merwin has written, “his poems are vibrant with light and the surprise of recognition. He shows us again and again the luminous nature of the familiar.”The Washington Post, reviewing his Crossing the Equator: New & Selected Poems, reported that "Nicholas Christopher is a fabulist…His fiction often puts me in mind of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, two time-travelers who are his great precursors. His poetry tends to build on the work of Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill. Like them, he has a taste for the exotic, the faraway, the displaced, the imaginary.
Holly Sloan is a never-married, educated, independent woman. Holly struggled sporadically with self-worth and value as a never-married. As a person who acknowledges gratitude on a daily basis, she has felt thankful in many ways for never having been married, especially based on feedback from various married peoples' stories. When Holly realized her negative self-value judgments were a result of outside comments and opinions, she wanted to appreciate the assets of bachelorette status openly. Holly also finds the humor in the stereotypes of being a never-married woman. When she found kittens in her yard at age 40, she felt that God left them specifically for her to get a laugh and told Him, «Well played.» Holly thought that the rhymes that have played in her mind for two years might be worth sharing when she reflected on how many friends she has who have never married. For the record, if ever proposed to by the right person, Holly would say «yes.»
Body of Render explores the internal and external impacts on our humanity when political, national, and societal decisions strip away our basic human rights. What does it mean to be an underrepresented individual in a country where the most powerful seat in the land unashamedly perpetuates racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and classist behaviors? The voices document a journey before and after the last presidential election. These poems cry out for reconsideration of our broken systems to find common and safe ground rooted in equitable treatment of each other as human beings. How do we exude love when being a person of color or underrepresented person in this country means the dominate white-male-able-bodied-heterosexual narrative continues to threaten our voices? This collection carves at the physical, the political, the intimate, and the structural with poems that simultaneously create and encourage voice to seek a path toward collective mending.
The Skin of Meaning is award-winning poet Keith Flynn’s sixth and most wide-ranging collection, seeking to find the tangible analogs and visceral meanings hidden behind the daily bombardment of digital information and hoping to restore the mystery in our involvement with language. From the etymologies of pop culture, history, astronomy, and rock and roll, these poems fan out into a bold multiplicity of voices and techniques. Flynn’s work illustrates the meaning that is also created through tense collisions and is populated with figures in resistance to the status quo, a gathering as varied as Caravaggio, Nina Simone, Gaudí, Villon, Wonder Woman, and Manolete. The final section examines America’s fascination with violence and death, revealing that “a human being in love with mystery is never finished.” This collection constantly challenges our assumptions about the world we think we see and is teeming with evidence of another invisible world bristling like an underground river beneath our feet.
RAU-prys vir skeppende skryfwerk (2001) In 'n paar opsigte verskil hierdie digbundel van Antjie Krog se vorige werk: vir die eerste keer beweeg die verse ook buite Suid-Afrika – elders in Afrika en ook Europa. Die verse staan in die teken van 'n soeke na identiteit op die kontinent en die vind van 'n plek binne die Afrika-bestel. Soos in haar vorige bundels hanteer Krog ook in hierdie bundel die persoonlike, die politiese en die land(skap).
In Katastrofes, Breyten se eerste gepubliseerde prosawerk, is bekende elemente wat in sy digkuns ook figureer. Die gepynigde ek bevind hom in ’n absurde wêreld waarin alles aan die verrot is, op soek na identiteit, verwesenliking en troos. Soortgelyke tegnieke as in sy poësie word ook gebruik, soos aaneenskakeling van oënskynlik onverwante assosiasies, gebruik van fantasie, saamvoeg van teenoorgesteldes, alles weergegee met uitsonderlike beeldingsvermoë. Die prosa wyk af van normale perspektiewe en beeld nie noodwendig katastrofes aan soos wat dit normaalweg verstaan word nie. Dit is eerder flitse of fragmente waar sonderlinge gebeurtenisse as gewoon aangebied word of ’n fantasiewêreld as realiteit voorgehou word, met die mens as oorsaak van die katastrofes. Verder is daar mildelik gebruik gemaak van die paradoks, met ontsteltenis wat volg op die doodgewone en die gruwelike wat begroet word met geen verwondering nie. In die Afrikaanse prosa is hierdie stukke uniek, aangesien dit beweeg op ’n paralogiese vlak waar die betekenis redelike begrip ontwyk, maar die impak tog betekenisvol is.
Eugène Marais-prys (2007), Ingrid Jonker-prys (2007), Universiteit van Johannesburg-debuutprys (2007). In die buitenste ruimte handel oor gedigte wat o.a. inspeel op ‘n verblyf in Duitsland en die mooi komiekstrip-buiteblad van Karlien de Villiers vang iets van die vervreemding van die gedigte op. Die titel speel eweneens in op Jacques Derrida, die dekontruksie-filosoof, se siening van teks: dat daar geen buite-teks bestaan nie en elke gedig van Danie Marais praat met ‘n bekende popliedjie, herinnering, liefdesvers, motto sodat die vers inspeel, uitspeel op soveel assosiasies.