Michael Messner, already known for his nuanced explorations of masculinities in sport, here humanely explores the evolving, often confusing dynamics of masculinities between three generations of boys and men. This candid memoir will make engrossing reading for both seasoned scholars and newcomers to gender studies. Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo''s War, Emma''s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq WarFor decades, feminist scholars, memoirists, and novelists have explored the lineaments of mother-daughter relationships, yet the world of fathers and sons has garnered relatively little attention. In his closely observed memoir, King of the Wild Suburb, noted Gender Studies scholar Michael Messner opens up the affective terrain between fathers and sons, and in the process deepens and complicates our understanding of masculinity.Alice Echols, author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American CultureMichael Messner''s reflections on coming of age in the pivotal Sixties deftly captures the fault lines that separated so many young men and women from the lives of their parents and grandparents. It was, perhaps, easier for young women to rebel and choose careers over homemaking than it was for young men to opt out of a culture that made war, guns, and hunting the anchors of manhood. King of the Wild Suburb helps us understand how masculinity has changed, albeit still precariously, making it possible to maintain a fidelity to one''s past while passing on to the next generation a freedom to explore new ways to be a man.Jan E. Dizard, author of Mortal Stakes: Hunters and Hunting in Contemporary America
Ute Carson manages to find universal truths in ordinary things, and clothes them in language that is at once beautiful and profoundly universal. The result is a music that sings in our very core. Leticia Austria, Poet The author employs a number of poetic tools to convey her thoughts, including wonderful imagery and simple yet effective phrasing. Harmony McGlothlin, Publisher & Editor Grace Notes Books and Editor-in Chief of Notes Magazine A gladness for life and family is countered by occasional poem lines of survived horror. Such lines render the poet steeled in mind and intensely honed to mankind's fallacies. Ute Carson's Just a Few Feathers is a collection one wants to keep close by and refer to often. Kaye Voight Abikahled, The Poetry Society of Texas, Counselor for the Austin Area
Haunting, beautiful, mysterious, magnificent, terrible, and so moving. This poet-shaman's theme of myth and memory and violence and abuse and what's real and what isn't, is powerfully informative, is restorative. "Turning, you ask me to come/into your dream as a witness." This is what Karolyn Redoute's Prayers of the Shaman asks of us and the reward for doing so is the solace that all great poetry gives. I remember a number of these poems years after I first read them. "read my glass heart/unbury me." Sharon Doubiago Author of My Father's Love and Love on the Streets In Prayers of the Shaman, Karolyn Redoute forges her spell, and takes the reader deep into a world where myth and reality are united. Her imagination breaks down the invisible boundaries between the mundane and the extraordinary, and we see, through her sharp and compassionate eyes, how the world might be if it were made by poets and dreamers. There is a delicate balance here - love hinged with pain, sanity weighed against madness, magic mingling with the emptiness of the prairie. What Redoute gives us, finally, is a world where we might live, flaws and flourishes aside, just simply live, and uncover the beauty that surrounds us. William Reichard Author of Sin Eater "that is how the shaman sings / fragments first and then belief" Karolyn Redoute's poems are melancholy, born of woman, earth and sky. They look back, and forward with longing. A humble spirit, forming prayers. Redoute's words: cold, snow, grief, bone, blue, blackbird, hawk, raven, rock, desert, plains, fire, and wind, myth, and dream. Words that deliver us to other worlds. Sherry Quan Lee Author, Chinese Blackbird and How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life
The Way Home is a compelling book filled with colorful characters and dramatic images. Widerkehr writes of a difficult, yet deserving father, the plights of fragile mental patients, life's beauty and transience - all with a keen eye and compassionate heart. Craig Lesley, author of Burning Fence and The Sky Fisherman Widerkehr takes us along on journeys through a family member's mental illness and his father's tenderness and cruelty. When his accountant father dies, Widerkehr writes, "I can't divide zero into you and not get infinity." These poems, set in the gray rains of an un-pacific northwest, take us "far away, not on a road, maybe deeper." Peggy Shumaker, author of Gnawed Bones and Just Breathe Normally These sophisticated and gorgeous poems are enlivened by a large spirit, one which fully examines a life marked by both celebration and loss. Widerkehr draws clarity from "a gibberish of twisted roots," and honors the people who have been the fabric of his life. The entire book can be read as a troubled, loving prayer that values the world. James Bertolino, author of Finding Water, Holding Stone "Actions speak louder than words," says the father in one of Richard Widerkehr's poems. Fortunately for us, that can't be the poet's motto. Richard's words possess their own sort of quiet power in poems that surprise with their quirky originality, and their own evocative climate. In a note of irony, Widerkehr, in The Way Home, with only his words, says goodbye to that father. Lynda Schor, author of The Body Parts Shop and Seduction I don't know why this book is so unique and special, but it is. It's not one detail laid down after another, or the shock of tragic events, that captures the reader. It's Widerkehr's voice, his searing questions, his vulnerability, the honest details, Yiddish quotes, surprising images and ultimately the forgiveness that runs through these poems that make them unforgettable. Widerkehr is a poet who knows his craft and his heart. This book delivers both. Gayle Kaune, author of Still Life in the Physical World Richard Widerkehr's poetry comfortably links nature with the cognitive world. Since poets are known to use language as a shortcut to the soul itself, I believe these poems can become essential to readers. I think Widerkehr got it right. Anita Boyle, author of Bamboo Equals Loon
When Professor Robin Greene tells a freshman composition class about her scholarly interest in women's narratives, Samantha Henderson, an African American student, invites Greene to meet her grandmother and to listen to a series of reel-to-reel tapes that both Samantha and her grandmother insist should be part of the official WPA archive of ex-slave narratives. Intrigued, Greene accepts the challenge of authenticating the recordings, but after a full year of unproductive exchanges with historians and archivists, a frustrated Greene decides to transcribe the tapes and to publish the resulting narrative so that readers may judge for themselves if the tapes are-or are not-authentic. In her transcription, Greene presents the first-person account of Sarah Louise Augustus, who comes of age during the Civil War and whose story involves a head-on collision with the moral ambiguities of slavery. Readers follow Sarah Louise as she becomes Augustus-the name she assumes when she takes control of her destiny. Her story begins in the antebellum period and unfolds as Augustus recollects a brutal war and its social carnage. Readers also discover the connections that bind Greene, Sarah Louise, Samantha, and Samantha's grandmother-for these women, surprisingly, share much in common. As a work of historical fiction, Greene's account focuses light on black feminism, on race-specific reactions to historical inquiry, on sexuality and rape, and on the quest for identity. And Greene, who in "real life" teaches English and Writing at Methodist University, becomes Professor Greene, the fictional narrator whose story frames the narrative and whose own scholarly need for authenticity and precision nearly costs her more than she is willing to lose.
Reading David Radavich's poems transported me to the Orient, to its "e;dry and teeming sands"e; and feasts of "e;dates and skewered meats."e; He dedicates Middle-East Mezze to "e;those who suffered and who dream"e; and does not shy away from the woe of the region. He captures the dignity and suffering of the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples. . . . Radavich's poems drew me in with their easy-going, conversational tone. In this collection, every poem is alive with energy and drama. Jean Grant, author of The Burning Veil: A Novel of Arabia Middle-East Mezze is a sumptuous buffet of lyricism and imagery. Radavich takes us to Iraq, Palestine and Egypt and, during our journey, forces us to question how such rich ancient cultures could have fallen into such desperation. A poignant reminder of splendid heritage, these poems foreground the tragedy of war and injustice while at the same time delighting us with the wonderfully ornate complexities that make up the Middle East Mike Maggio, author of deMOCKracy Middle-East Mezze is a book of rare vision and ambition, given its sweeping geographical and historical scope. These poignant poems are finely honed, distilled to the essential. The progression of individual pieces, each complete in itself, seems inevitable, reflecting a keen sensitivity shaping the book as a whole. This collection positively bristles with arresting and unforgettable images, whether evoking the swirl of a bazaar in Egypt, descending ancient catacombs, or making the desolation of an arid landscape palpable. Ultimately, the work offers an unflinching act of witness-of conscience-breaking the silence about the tragic human toll of modern military conflict. Christian Knoeller, author of Completing the Circle
With a bow to recent masters like Justice, Wright, and even Nemerov, John Morris¿s poems explore the uncertain footing of middle age. The characters we meet are clear-eyed, straight-faced, occasionally nonplussed. They¿re uncertain of their allegiance to either comfort or anguish. And their ciphering of the debts and credits of their days creates little dramas we can recognize as something like our own. Cars are ¿rust-colored, late-modeled;¿ poems ¿twist into failing origami;¿ and an old high school yearbook ¿needs a vacation. It needs a drink.¿ The lines dissect moments and events as if each implication must be given its due. Sentences surprise and involve us, somehow intuiting their own inevitable ends. Richard Terrill, author of Fakebook and Coming Late to Rachmaninoff This is the new West¿harsh sunlight shining onto office complexes and strip malls and¿just past the purview of respectable people¿onto pawn shops, Indian casinos and meth labs too. These elegiac poems describe the loneliness of eking out a decent life in an inhospitable context, keeping lassitude at bay, the depleted sense your recent last shot at joy, your grief over someone¿s death by natural causes, the meted-out unhappiness that is our human portion, constitute problems too small, too merely ordinary, to matter. These poems depict transgression and desperation in local headlines but also the transgression and desperation we find as we examine our own quiet, obedient lives. Even while Noise and Stories mines this vein of mute despair, it celebrates life¿s constancy, its ¿motion, texture, smack, & murmur.¿ Debra Monroe, author of Newfangled and Shambles John Morris is a poet of great versatility, sensitivity, and perception. He takes a moment from our lives, crystallizes it into forever. This is lovely work. Rilla Askew, author of Fire In Beulah and Harpsong John Graves Morris¿ first collection of poems is a work of many years where music and image clock one another for all the surprise and sharp edges that poetic voice admits töthese sometimes elevated and lyric voices are both true and memorable. What a wonderful volume. Norman Dubie, author of Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum and The Insomniac Liar of Topo
At the core of this collection, which travels the globe and the neighborhood, is a deep knowledge and respect for both the physical world and the world of the heart. The poems use language, beautifully crafted and finely tuned, to create a space for them to come together.Compassion and craftsmanship come together in that beautiful way that keeps us all crawling back to poetry to learn the truth. Lisa Starr, Rhode Island Poet Laureate The work is clear, spare and moves rhythmically through recognizable grief and celebrates the sweetness of love returned, while acknowledging the real losses of this time. The unanswerable questions become the contradictions we face in reading his work, and Faber¿s poems guide us to new arrivals of meaning, both ironically and iconically altered, with ¿everything in its place¿ anew. Beatrix Gates, poet, teacher, author of several poetry collections, including Ten Minutes There¿s a whimsical, deep sweetness in Lou Faber¿s work, mingled with the toughness of mind required to take a long look at the human predicament. Absences both personal and collective haunt the poems as their speaker mourns the multinational victims of violent injustice. Next yoüll find a lyric voice set dizzily free from the laws of Newtonian physics, or Buddha and Hillel stepping out to enjoy a convivial nosh. It¿s the honesty with which Faber depicts a self fully entangled in the fabric of the world that renders convincing these flickers of canny celebration. Jan Clausen, poet, novelist and teacher, author of several books, inclucing From a Glass House. In this substantial collection of poems, I have come to admire Louis Faber¿s range, wit, and sensibilities. I¿ve had the pleasure of publishing Louis Faber¿s poetry but the real pleasure comes in reading these poems and the unexpected ways of knowing that they make possible. These poems are motivated not by the desire to dazzle the reader so much as to simply get us to see again what we know must exist. James Elkins, editor, Legal Studies Forum
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