Poet in the Grandstand

Poet in the Grandstand PDF Author: Thomas Porky McDonald
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1452073503
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
In the area of ballpark hopping, there have been a number of accounts written, recorded or talked about in recent times, sometimes for a cause or others just as a gimmick. Through Poet in the Grandstand, poet and writer Thomas Porky McDonald gives us a most unique twist on a preoccupation which has grown in the past few decades, in the wake of the closings of classic old yards and the birth of the more entertainment and nostalgia driven open-air parks. From his first trip in 1990, to the fabled Comiskey Park of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill Veeck and the Go-Go Sox, on through to the 2010 opening of Minnesotas fabulous Target Field, featuring the modern M&M Boys, Joe Mauer and Justin Mourneau, McDonald offers up a book that is part travelogue and part poetic tribute to all the places that men and women have gone to over the years for a very personal sense of joy. This journey, done methodically, over two decades, picks up steam as the chapters begin to flow. The effect of McDonald himself clearly growing as a poet through the years is accentuated by the fact that more and more pieces are written in the later trips. The end result is a most interesting volume of not just ballparks, but Americana, as numerous attractions taken in during those ballpark weeks and weekends are also noted and/or dissected. For fourteen seasons on his own and then six more accompanied by friend and confidant Adam Boneker, McDonalds travels, highlighted by over 300 poems, can take the reader back to a simpler time or into the possibilities of the future. In chapter and in verse, Poet in the Grandstand has something for both the baseball enthusiast and the curious traveler. Fans of the game and lovers of the road will each find much to offer within these pages.

Poet in the Grandstand

Poet in the Grandstand PDF Author: Thomas Porky McDonald
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1452073503
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 730

Get Book

Book Description
In the area of ballpark hopping, there have been a number of accounts written, recorded or talked about in recent times, sometimes for a cause or others just as a gimmick. Through Poet in the Grandstand, poet and writer Thomas Porky McDonald gives us a most unique twist on a preoccupation which has grown in the past few decades, in the wake of the closings of classic old yards and the birth of the more entertainment and nostalgia driven open-air parks. From his first trip in 1990, to the fabled Comiskey Park of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill Veeck and the Go-Go Sox, on through to the 2010 opening of Minnesotas fabulous Target Field, featuring the modern M&M Boys, Joe Mauer and Justin Mourneau, McDonald offers up a book that is part travelogue and part poetic tribute to all the places that men and women have gone to over the years for a very personal sense of joy. This journey, done methodically, over two decades, picks up steam as the chapters begin to flow. The effect of McDonald himself clearly growing as a poet through the years is accentuated by the fact that more and more pieces are written in the later trips. The end result is a most interesting volume of not just ballparks, but Americana, as numerous attractions taken in during those ballpark weeks and weekends are also noted and/or dissected. For fourteen seasons on his own and then six more accompanied by friend and confidant Adam Boneker, McDonalds travels, highlighted by over 300 poems, can take the reader back to a simpler time or into the possibilities of the future. In chapter and in verse, Poet in the Grandstand has something for both the baseball enthusiast and the curious traveler. Fans of the game and lovers of the road will each find much to offer within these pages.

Poet in the Parks

Poet in the Parks PDF Author: Thomas Porky McDonald
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1665528796
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 774

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Book Description
After going to various states on the Major League landscape over 21 seasons, poet/writer Thomas Porky McDonald came upon the notion of continuing to tour the rest of the contiguous United States, using Minor League parks as a starting point. A pair of Western tours with his niece Jaclyn and her son Alex, as well as a stop in Graceland with his sister Patti, would be in the mix, with each stop bringing out more of McDonald’s signature poetry. Poet in the Parks is a sequel of sorts, as the earliest trips chronicled feature returns to Major League parks with his Poet in the Grandstand road partner, Adam Boneker, who later hits the Minors trail with McDonald, as well as a stop in New Orleans during the time of a World Pandemic. Ultimately, this second travel/poetry volume is merely a quest to savor the American landscape, no matter how many cities, states, parks and places of interest you pass through along the way.

A Walk in the City

A Walk in the City PDF Author: Thomas Porky McDonald
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 149695937X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A random poem, written on a birthday years before, finds a new life when a series of interrelated profiles come together in a most unexpected way. This is what constitutes A Walk in the City, writer/poet Thomas Porky McDonald's New York City travelogue. A compilation of pieces written originally for an internal website at his workplace in New York City transit, this volume shares brief, yet effective vignettes on a number of various sites in the city--some famous, and others hardly on the radar. It is dedicated to the average tourist and/or the lifetime New Yorker. McDonald's love of the place he's called home for his entire life comes across most vibrantly. Though the outer boroughs are touched upon transiently, this collection of go-to sketches and reminisces is centered mainly in Manhattan, which--as any New Yorker knows--is the place that all those who live in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island call "The City." From the world famous sites, like the Empire State Building and Times Square to hidden jewels like the New York City Transit Museum, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, or the New York City Fire Museum, A Walk in the City provides something for anyone seeking interesting pit stops in New York, whether planned ahead or merely in the course of a day already begun. The book is subtitled An Incomplete Tour since it is McDonald's contention that no one could truly put every point of interest in the city into a single volume. Here, an unencumbered collection of articles attempts to send the reader out in search of something that cannot be explained without actually having the experience of being there. In any case, this is a city wanderers' bonanza, one that should be considered by anyone who aspires to explore the diverse venues located in the greatest city in the world.

After the Dream Poems: 2009-2011

After the Dream Poems: 2009-2011 PDF Author: Thomas Porky McDonald
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1728347211
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The eighth five-book collection of poetry by poet and writer Thomas Porky McDonald, After the Dream: Poems 2009-2011, brings the author even closer to home than in his previous work, with a thought to where the world is headed. The title poems for each of the five books in the mix, Born in the City, The Class of No Return, Touched by Life, Back to Astoria and What Lies Ahead, all speak of a man still searching to incorporate his early life into the realities of the 21st Century. Other notable pieces from each collection include “Friendships to Eternity,” “Together One, as Always” (City), “While the Leaves Blew,” “Always too Old to Change Anything” (Class), “When the Game Simply Took You Away,” “I’ve Never Forgotten About Friendship” (Life), “Scenes From a Lost Neighborhood,” “When Fear Overrides Our Humanity” (Astoria), “Needed in the Land of the Needy” and “A Glimpse of Bernadine” (Ahead). A solid entry from the still wandering and wondering balladeer.

Under the Grandstand

Under the Grandstand PDF Author: Jim Lyons
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475971370
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Those who have lived not just witnessed - the efflorescence of a pivotal culture moment never see the world through veiled eyes again. Jimmy Lyons was there, devising wholly original inventions of words and music while the Beats, the neo-folk troubadours, the post-bop jazz shooting stars, and the tie-dyed psychedelic rockers were scorching through the underbrush and opening new paths of creativity as alternatives to the increasingly bottom line-driven mainstream. Lyons, though, wasnt content to find a niche in one countercultural movement or another. He kept moving, observing, and writing new poems, stories, and songs. But he never gave up on the wry sophistication of the classic American popular song. Indeed, he has dedicated himself to infusing the same hallowed forms perfected by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and others, with his singular fantasias of ingeniously colored and textured wordplay. These plays have a subtext only Lyons can provide, derived from what he calls the rituals of the road and the the circular rhythms of the race track, the beats and pulses of everyday American life that rarely raise a ripple on the surface of American culture. Lyons hears the screams and dreams of his countrymen and woman; from them he creates new modes of expression. He has been changed by each of his open-hearted an open-eared encounters, and this body of work is his way of making those changes sing and swing. Derk Richardson

Calligrammes

Calligrammes PDF Author: Guillaume Apollinaire
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520242128
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
A bilingual edition of one of Guillaume Apollinaire's most important volumes of poetry, with extensive commentary by the translators.

Reaper's Milonga

Reaper's Milonga PDF Author: Lucian Charles Mattison
Publisher: YesYes Books
ISBN: 9781936919543
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Poetry. Latinx Studies. Lucian Mattison's poetry collection, REAPER'S MILONGA, is one that holds Lorca's notion of duende at its core. The reader travels from places, both real and imagined, with the cloaked figure of Death as her guide. Poems range in subject matter, touching on politics, music, love, art, and cultural identity, all with vulnerability, mortality, and sensuality as the pistons driving the whole.

Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002

Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 PDF Author: Martín Espada
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393352072
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"An astonishing collection of political poetry at its finest."—The Progressive, Favorite Books of 2004 Alabanza is a twenty-year collection charting the emergence of Martín Espada as the preeminent Latino lyric voice of his generation. "Alabanza" means "praise" in Spanish, and Espada praises the people Whitman called "them the others are down upon": the African slaves who brought their music to Puerto Rico; a prison inmate provoking brawls so he could write poetry in solitary confinement; a janitor and his solitary strike; Espada's own father, who was jailed in Mississippi for refusing to go to the back of the bus. The poet bears witness to death and rebirth at the ruins of a famine village in Ireland, a town plaza in México welcoming a march of Zapatista rebels, and the courtroom where he worked as a tenant lawyer. The title poem pays homage to the immigrant food-service workers who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. From the earliest out-of-print work to the seventeen new poems included here, Espada celebrates the American political imagination and the resilience of human dignity. Alabanza is the epic vision of a writer who, in the words of Russell Banks, "is one of the handful of American poets who are forging a new American language, one that tells the unwritten history of the continent, speaks truth to power, and sings songs of selves we can no longer silence." An American Library Association Notable Book of 2003 and a 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember. "To read this work is to be struck breathless, and surely, to come away changed."—Barbara Kingsolver "Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors. If it was up to me, I'd select him as the Poet Laureate of the United States."—Sandra Cisneros "With these new and selected poems, you can grasp how powerful a poet Espada is—his range, his compassion, his astonishing images, his sense of history, his knowledge of the lives on the underbelly of cities, his bright anger, his tenderness, his humor. "—Marge Piercy "Espada's poems are not just clarion calls to the heart and conscience, but also wonderfully crafted gems."—Julia Alvarez "A passionate, readable poetry that makes [Espada] arguably the most important 'minority' U.S. poet since Langston Hughes."—Booklist"Neruda is dead, but if Alabanza is any clue, his ghost lives through a poet named Martín Espada."—San Francisco Chronicle

Poems by Divine Appointment

Poems by Divine Appointment PDF Author: Dorothy Turner
Publisher: Elm Hill
ISBN: 1400326214
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Poems by Divine Appointment are poems with purpose. They were written to inspire and to stir up your spirit. You will find some of these poems are quite long while others are very short. Nevertheless, each poem has a message that’s clear and get straight to the point leaving nothing to the imagination. These poems are power packed, and I hope every reader will experience the presence of God through reading these poems. Yes, Poems by Divine Appointment are mine, but they came from God’s creative mind. Now allow me to give you a little peek inside of the book with this poem. What’s In the Sea I’ve seen deep in the sea, Things we are about to see. There are a lot of things in the sea, But it’s nothing that I can’t see. Fishermen are on the sea Trying to catch what they can’t see. The birds of the air; the fish of the sea Will make do with what they see. Don’t be disturbed by what you see, It’s just the beginning of what it’s going to be. I’ve seen deep in the sea, Trouble stirring in the sea. Memphis, Tennessee Will soon be nothing to see. Things are stirring up in the sea, Things you are about to see. When I looked across the sea, I saw things I didn’t want to see. I’ve been fishing in the sea To catch what the fishermen couldn’t see. Who made the sea? The one you cannot see. I’ve seen deep in the sea, Things that’s about to be. Memphis, Tennessee Is about to be nothing to see.

The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley

The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley PDF Author: Madeleine Callaghan
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1783088982
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Byron’s and Shelley’s experimentation with the possibilities and pitfalls of poetic heroism unites their work. The Poet-Hero in the Work of Byron and Shelley traces the evolution of the poet-hero in the work of both poets, revealing that the struggle to find words adequate to the poet’s imaginative vision and historical circumstance is their central poetic achievement. Madeleine Callaghan explores the different types of poetic heroism that evolve in Byron’s and Shelley’s poetry and drama. Both poets experiment with, challenge and embrace a variety of poetic forms and genres, and this book discusses such generic exploration in the light of their developing versions of the poet-hero. The heroism of the poet, as an idea, an ideal and an illusion, undergoes many different incarnations and definitions as both poets shape distinctive and changing conceptions of the hero throughout their careers.