Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Practicing to Walk Like a Heron PDF Author: Jack Ridl
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 081433539X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Poems that delight in discovering the comic, sorrowful, empathic, and spiritual in what is often overlooked. In Practicing to Walk Like a Heron multiple-award-winning Michigan poet Jack Ridl shares lines of well-earned wisdom in the face of a constantly changing world. The familiar comforts of life—a warm fire in winter, a lush garden in summer—become the settings for transcendent and universal truths in these poems, as moments of grief, sadness, and melancholy trigger a deeper appreciation for small but important joys. The simple clarity of Ridl's lines and diction make the poems accessible to all readers, but especially rewarding for those who appreciate carefully honed, masterful verse. Many of the poems take solace in nature—quiet deer outside in the woods, deep snow, a thrush's empty nest in the eaves—as well as man-made things in the world—a steamer trunk, glass jars, tea cups, and books piled high near an easy chair. Yet Ridl avoids becoming nostalgic or romantic in his surroundings, and shows that there is nothing easy in his celebration of topics like "The Letters," "But He Loved His Dog," "A Christmas List for Santa," and "The Enormous Mystery of Couples." An interlude of full-color pages divides Ridl's more personal poems with a section of circus-themed pieces, adding visions of elephants, trumpets, tents, sequins, and sideshows, and the uniquely travel-weary perspectives of jugglers, trapeze artists, roustabouts, and clowns. Practicing to Walk Like a Heronunabashedly affirms the quirky and eccentric, the small and mundane, and the intellectual and experiential in life. This relatable and emotionally powerful volume will appeal to all poetry readers.

Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Practicing to Walk Like a Heron PDF Author: Jack Ridl
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 081433539X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description
Poems that delight in discovering the comic, sorrowful, empathic, and spiritual in what is often overlooked. In Practicing to Walk Like a Heron multiple-award-winning Michigan poet Jack Ridl shares lines of well-earned wisdom in the face of a constantly changing world. The familiar comforts of life—a warm fire in winter, a lush garden in summer—become the settings for transcendent and universal truths in these poems, as moments of grief, sadness, and melancholy trigger a deeper appreciation for small but important joys. The simple clarity of Ridl's lines and diction make the poems accessible to all readers, but especially rewarding for those who appreciate carefully honed, masterful verse. Many of the poems take solace in nature—quiet deer outside in the woods, deep snow, a thrush's empty nest in the eaves—as well as man-made things in the world—a steamer trunk, glass jars, tea cups, and books piled high near an easy chair. Yet Ridl avoids becoming nostalgic or romantic in his surroundings, and shows that there is nothing easy in his celebration of topics like "The Letters," "But He Loved His Dog," "A Christmas List for Santa," and "The Enormous Mystery of Couples." An interlude of full-color pages divides Ridl's more personal poems with a section of circus-themed pieces, adding visions of elephants, trumpets, tents, sequins, and sideshows, and the uniquely travel-weary perspectives of jugglers, trapeze artists, roustabouts, and clowns. Practicing to Walk Like a Heronunabashedly affirms the quirky and eccentric, the small and mundane, and the intellectual and experiential in life. This relatable and emotionally powerful volume will appeal to all poetry readers.

Enemies in the Orchard

Enemies in the Orchard PDF Author: Dana VanderLugt
Publisher: Zonderkidz
ISBN: 0310155703
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Set against the backdrop of WWII, this achingly beautiful middle grade novel in verse based on American history presents the dual perspectives of Claire, a Midwestern girl who longs to enter high school and become a nurse even as she worries for her soldier brother, and Karl, a German POW who’s processing the war as he works on Claire’s family farm. This poignant and moving story of an unlikely connection will stay with readers long after the final page. It’s October 1944, and while Claire’s older brother, Danny, is off fighting in World War II, her dad hires a group of German POWs to help with the apple harvest on their farm. Claire wants nothing to do with the enemies in the orchard, until she meets soft-spoken, hardworking Karl. Could she possibly have something in common with a German soldier? Karl, meanwhile, grapples with his role in the war as he realizes how many lies Hitler’s regime has spread—and his complacency in not standing up against them. But his encounters with Claire give him hope that he can change and become the person he wants to be. Inspired by the little-known history of POW labor camps in the United States, this lyrical verse novel is told in alternating first-person poems by two young people on opposite sides of the war. Against a vivid backdrop of home front tensions and daily life, intimate entries reveal Claire’s and Karl's hopes and struggles, and their growing friendship even as the war rages on. What are their chances of connection, of redemption, of peace? Enemies in the Orchard is: A gorgeously written novel in verse for ages 9 and up Historical fiction based on true events during WWII A heartfelt story that explores connection, trauma, and hope

Night Manual

Night Manual PDF Author: David Hornibrook
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814346634
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
Reflections on grief, family, and faith set against the seasonal changes and landscapes of Michigan. Night Manual is a survival guide for life—all the messy, wonderful, grieving, and self-doubting parts of life. David Hornibrook's debut poetry collection is a book of hours that keeps time through anguish and explores the ineffable borderland of existence. These are poems that seek to get at what cannot be described through a process of negation—to delineate the shape of an absence by writing the things around it. Night Manual is divided into four sections loosely inspired by the four seasons. Each section explores the theme of absence from a slightly different proximity; as a whole, the book progresses from grief to gratitude. A major task of Hornibrook's is to communicate the gravity and perplexity of loss while at the same time charting out a kind of liturgy of joy and wonder at the cycle of life in an ever-changing world. With lines like "My eyes are pulled to the monitor / where a universe expands or contracts, I can't tell which" (from "The Ultrasound") to "Facebook keeps showing Miley with her mouth open / & I keep finding little things wrong with everything" (from "Self Portrait w/ Wrecking Ball"), Hornibrook has created instructions for moving through a world suddenly disoriented by loss, a world with starlings, water birds and aliens, robots and deer, Miley Cyrus and God, black holes, and the quiet morning strangeness of a house when all the people you love are still asleep. Fans of contemporary poetry who want to believe in something again—who need a small dose of absurdity along with their suffering—this collection is for you.

Reading Buechner

Reading Buechner PDF Author: Jeffrey Munroe
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830853146
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Frederick Buechner is one of the most gifted writers of his generation, with an important legacy as a memoirist, novelist, theologian, and preacher. In this book, Buechner expert Jeff Munroe presents a collection of the true "essentials" from across Buechner's diverse catalog, as well as an overview of Buechner's life and a discussion of the state of his literary legacy today.

Divining, a Memoir in Trees

Divining, a Memoir in Trees PDF Author: Maureen Dunphy
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814348432
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Essays exploring the intimate yet universal intersection of one human life with trees. A 2024 selection by the Sierra Club, Wisconsin Chapter Book Club Finalist for the Midwest Book Awards! In sixteen essays, each named after a species of tree, Maureen Dunphy explores the nature of human-arboreal relationships, and how each of these trees has—literally—served as a friend, a confidante, or a place to rest. The depth and diversity of these relationships are revealed through essays that are both intimate and universal, moving and informative. While Dunphy's relationships with trees are unique and personal, her work reveals the deep-rooted complexity that connects all of humanity to our staunch, upright companions in life, the members of the "Standing Nation." Beyond providing oxygen, food, and shelter, trees can be sites of emotional refuge, sources of intellectual enrichment, and a boon to physical, mental, and spiritual health. With essays, such as "Stairway to Heaven: The American Sycamore" and "Rocky Mountain High: The Colorado Pinyon," Dunphy gives readers many ways to reimagine our relationships with nature and self. Within reflections of her personal experience, she skillfully integrates scientific facts to achieve a balance of passion and practicality. While technology, screens, and the stress of the modern world directs our attention elsewhere, Dunphy brings the reader back to the trees right outside our windows.

Anxious Masculinity in the Drama of Arthur Miller and Beyond

Anxious Masculinity in the Drama of Arthur Miller and Beyond PDF Author: Claire Gleitman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350272981
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Staunchly homosocial, vaguely or overtly misogynistic, anxiously homophobic-this study follows the male breadwinner as he is incarnated in Arthur Miller's most celebrated plays and as he resurfaces in different guises throughout American drama, from the 1950s to the present. Anxious Masculinity offers a compelling analysis of gender dynamics and the legacy of this figure as he stalks through the works of other American dramatists, and argues that the gendered anxieties exhibited by their characters are the very ones invoked with such success by Donald Trump. Claire Gleitman examines this figure in the plays of Miller and Tennessee Williams, as well as later 20th-century writers Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, and Sam Shepard, who reposition him in more racially and economically marginalized settings. He reappears in the more recent work of playwrights Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, and collaborators Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, who shift their focus to the next generation, which seeks to escape his clutches and forge new, often gleefully queer identities. The final chapter concerns contemporary Black dramatists Suzan Lori-Parks, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Jeremy O. Harris, whose plays move us from anxious masculinity to anxious whiteness and speak directly to the current moment.

How to Love the World

How to Love the World PDF Author: James Crews
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1635863872
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
What the world needs now – featuring poems from inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith and more. More and more people are turning to poetry as an antidote to divisiveness, negativity, anxiety, and the frenetic pace of life. How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope offers readers uplifting, deeply felt, and relatable poems by well-known poets from all walks of life and all parts of the US, including inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, and others. The work of these poets captures the beauty, pleasure, and connection readers hunger for. How to Love the World, which contains new works by Ted Kooser, Mark Nepo, and Jane Hirshfield, invites readers to use poetry as part of their daily gratitude practice to uncover the simple gifts of abundance and joy to be found everywhere. With pauses for stillness and invitations for writing and reflection throughout, as well as reading group questions and topics for discussion in the back, this book can be used to facilitate discussion in a classroom or in any group setting. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

Chariton Review 36.2

Chariton Review 36.2 PDF Author: Truman State University Press
Publisher: Truman State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Chariton Review Fall 2013

A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia

A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia PDF Author: Todd Davis
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820367516
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Northern Appalachia is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth and home to a broad range of ecological and human cultures. With A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia, editors Todd Davis and Noah Davis recognize and celebrate this diversity and the fact that humans are storytelling creatures who develop relationships with their landscapes at the intersection of art and science. A companion volume to A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, this guide introduces the reader to seventy indigenous species found in Northern Appalachia, a region comprising parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. As a hybrid literary and natural history anthology, the book consists of descriptions and notes on habitat, range, and ecology provided by six scientists with expertise in the region’s flora and fauna. In addition, eleven artists and seventy poets have provided original artwork and poetry that illuminate the lives of the greater-than-human world. Defying easy stereotypes, the guide presents trees, shrubs, wildflowers and mammals, birds and fish, reptiles and amphibians, and invertebrates and fungi. Love and wonder for these ancient mountains and their ever-evolving residents flood the pages of this book, inviting the reader into a deeper way of knowing a place and the lives dependent on it.

The Path to Kindness

The Path to Kindness PDF Author: James Crews
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1635865344
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Following the success and momentum of his anthology How to Love the World (93,000 copies in print), James Crews's new collection, The Path to Kindness, offers more than 100 deeply felt and relatable poems from a diverse range of voices including well-known writers Julia Alvarez, Marie Howe, Ellen Bass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alberto Ríos, Ross Gay, and Ada Limón, as well as new and emerging voices. Featured Black poets include January Gill O’Neil, Tracy K. Smith, and Cornelius Eady. Native American poets include Kimberly Blaeser, Joy Harjo (current U.S. Poet Laureate), and Linda Hogan. The collection also features international voices, including Canadian poets Lorna Crozier and Susan Musgrave. Presented in the same perfect-in-the-hand format as How to Love the World, the collection includes prompts for journaling and exploration of selected poems, a book group guide, bios of all the contributing poets, and stunning cover art by award-winning artist Dinara Mirtalipova. A foreword by Danusha Laméris, along with her popular poem "Small Kindnesses," is also included. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.