Author: Campbell McGrath
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060527366
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
Part fable, part diatribe, part elegy, part love song, this extraordinary fifth collection by Campbell McGrath makes poetry of the most unlikely of materials -- his home state of Florida. While at times poignantly personal, McGrath also returns for the first time to the characteristically comic and visionary public voice displayed in the renowned "Bob Hope Poem." Moving effortlessly from prehistory to the space age, he catalogues Florida's natural wonders and historical figureheads, from Ponce de LeÓn to Walt Disney, William Bartram to Chuck E. Cheese -- "the bewhiskered Mephistopheles of ring toss,/the diabolical vampire of our transcendent ideals." In the brilliant sociohistorical monologue of "The Florida Poem," McGrath employs the Fountain of Youth as a mythic symbol for both the tragic consequences of a society built on greed and cultural erasure and the diverse human potential, "which must become the fountain/for any communal future we might dare imagine." Place-bound and tightly focused, Campbell McGrath's message is nonetheless universal, as his penetrating vision of Florida is also a vision of America -- its history and hopes, failings and fulfillments, and the eternal force that transcends it all.
Author: Laurence Donovan
Publisher: Pineapple Press Inc
ISBN: 1561642843
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
The title poem of this book records a sojourn to a small island off the Florida Panhandle. Reachable only by boat, Dog Island provides a quiet respite where Miami poet-artist Laurence Donovan contemplates the sea, sand, and sky and transforms them into words and etchings. Donald Justice, in his foreword, calls Donovan "doubly gifted" in both his poetry and his art. This volume presents both, the latter in fifteen of his etchings. He was also known for his linocuts, represented here by the small scorpion at the end of the book.
Author: Tyler Gillespie
Publisher: Burrow Press
ISBN: 9781941681312
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A lyric mix of journalism, science, family lore, and lived experience reveals the complex realities of Florida and a redemption that's wondrously messy and surprising.
Author: Aaron Fogel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
Poetry. Both funny and serious, this second poetry collection by Aaron Fogel matches stories with joltingly non-narrative poems. It mixes traditional forms like the villanelle with counter-forms like double alliteration, nine-syllable lines, words with all the vowel-letters crushed into them ("unsynchromadice"), and words with numbers interrupting the letters ("we5re"). Fogel's poems amount to what used to be called pasquinade or menippean satire, a lower-middle class art that refuses to buy into the easy caricatures of that class. The book includes a poem about a young man named Brat who breaks a sculptural portrait of himself done by his father; a prose-poem about Yiddish; and a set of comic sketches about the mock-sorrows of academic life, family aging, and the place of low jokes in poetry.
Author: Richard Blanco
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822978393
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 102
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Book Description
Family continues to be a wellspring of inspiration and learning for Blanco. His third book of poetry, Looking for The Gulf Motel is a genealogy of the heart, exploring how his family's emotional legacy has shaped—and continues shaping—his perspectives. The collection is presented in three movements, each one chronicling his understanding of a particular facet of life from childhood into adulthood. As a child born into the milieu of his Cuban exiled familia, the first movement delves into early questions of cultural identity and their evolution into his unrelenting sense of displacement and quest for the elusive meaning of home. The second begins with poems peering back into family again, examining the blurred lines of gender, the frailty of his father-son relationship, and the intersection of his cultural and sexual identities as a Cuban-American gay man living in rural Maine. In the last movement, poems focused on his mother's life shaped by exile, his father's death, and the passing of a generation of relatives, all provide lessons about his own impermanence in the world and the permanence of loss. Looking for the Gulf Motel is looking for the beauty of that which we cannot hold onto, be it country, family, or love.
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0394729455
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
My Mother's Body, Marge Piercy's tenth book of poetry, takes its title from one of her strongest and most moving poems, the climax of a powerful sequence of Poems to her mother. Rooted in an honest, harrowing, but ally ecstatic confrontation of the mother / daughter relationship in all its complexity and intimacy, it is at the same time an affirmation of continuity and identification. "The Chuppah" comprises poems actually used in her wedding ceremony with Ira Wood. This section sings with powerfully female love poetry. There is also a sustained and direct use of her Jewish identity and faith in these poems, as there is in a number of other poems throughout the volume. Readers of Piercy's previous collections will not be surprised to encounter her mixture of the personal and the political, her love of animals and the Cape landscape. There are poems about doing housework, about accidents, about dreaming, about bag ladies, about luggage, about children's fears of nuclear holocaust; about tomcats, insects in the rafters, the influence of a name, appleblossoms and blackberries, pollution, and some of the ways women objectify one another. In "Does the light fail us, or do we fail the light?" Piercy writes with lacerating honesty about our relationships with the elderly and about hers with her father. Some of the most moving poems are domestic, as in the final sequence, "Six underrated pleasures," which finds in daily women's tasks both pleasure and mystery, affirmation of serf and connection with the mother. In all, My Mother's Body is one of Piercy's most powerful and balanced collections.
Author: Jane Anderson Jones
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The first comprehensive anthology of Florida poetry from some of the earliest European encounters with the peninsula to the experiences of contemporary poets.
Author: Stephanie Burt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737873
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
The variety of contemporary American poetry leaves many readers overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, he presents 60 poems, each with an original essay explaining how the poem works, why it matters, and how it speaks to other parts of art and culture.
Author: Kevin M. McCarthy
Publisher: Pineapple Press Inc
ISBN: 9781561640126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 524
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Book Description
"Here is the book lover's literary tour of Florida, an exhaustive survey of writers, books, and literary sites in every part of the state. The state is divided into ten areas and each one is described from a literary point of view. You will learn what authors lived in or wrote about a place, which books describe the place, what important movies were made there, even the literary trivia which the true Florida book lover will want to know. You can use the book as a travel guide to a new way to see the state, as an armchair guide to a better understanding of our literary heritage, or as a guide to what to read next time you head to a bookstore or library."--Publisher.
Author: Laura Purdie Salas
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781507573013
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
“What does this poem mean?” “How should I read it?” “How do we talk about it?” “What do I DO with it?” “What's the best way to assess it?” “How do I meet standards?” “When can I possibly fit it into my already over-packed day?” Have you ever asked these questions about poetry? The 30 Painless Classroom Poems series makes it easy for you, the elementary school teacher, media specialist, or reading specialist, to share poetry with your students. Whether you already love poetry or you fear or even actively dislike it, these books are for you. The poems, Notes from the Poet, extension activities written by experienced classroom teachers, and tips for using poetry in your classroom will have you sharing poems in no time. In Wacky, Wild, and Wonderful: 50 State Poems, award-winning poet Laura Purdie Salas (author ofBookSpeak!, Water Can Be…, and more) offers up a poem for every state, covering a wide variety of poetic forms, moods, and topics. Extension activities by teacher Catherine Flynn share ideas for spring-boarding from these poems into deeper learning across many content areas. Sample: Pennsylvania: Celebrity Weatherman Phil has no thermometers And no advanced degrees He only knows a cold front By its snapping, chapping breeze He can't interpret radar He's surprised by winter snows But Phil foretells the birth of spring Because his shadow knows ? Note: Every year since 1877, on February 2, a groundhog--who is always named Punxsutawney Phil--comes out of his hole in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. If he sees his shadow, tradition says, that means six more weeks of winter. If he does not see his shadow, that means winter is over. Thousands of people go to Gobbler's Knob, a hill outside the town center, each year to see Phil's Prognostication, and reporters around the country spread word of the results. A Note from the Poet: As high-tech as we are, we still love our traditions and superstitions. I love that every February 2nd, on Groundhog's Day, newspapers and news shows still report on whether Phil sees his shadow or not. Up here in Minnesota, we ignore Phil's prediction because there's no chance winter is going to end before mid-March! See all of the 30 Painless Classroom Poems at www.30PainlessClassroomPoems.com. Disclaimer: For those of you collecting all my 30 Painless Classroom Poems books, please note that some information, such as Why Poetry Matters and Classroom Poetry Tips, is repeated from book to book. The introduction to the book, the poems, the Notes from the Poet, and the classroom activities are unique to each book.
