American Poetry

"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Canell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty-most of them in someone else's body." -USA TodayJohn Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth-and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries…<BR><BR>As the nineteenth century comes to a close, the illustrious Vanderbilt family dominates Newport, Rhode Island, high society. But when murder darkens a glittering affair at the Vanderbilt summer home, reporter Emma Cross learns that sometimes the actions of the cream of society can curdle one's blood. . .<BR><BR>Newport, Rhode Island, August 1895: She may be a less well-heeled relation, but as second cousin to millionaire patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt, twenty-one-year-old Emma Cross is on the guest list for a grand ball at the Breakers, the Vanderbilts' summer home. She also has a job to do--report on the event for the society page of the Newport Observer. <BR><BR>But Emma observes much more than glitz and gaiety when she witnesses a murder. The victim is Cornelius Vanderbilt's financial secretary, who plunges off a balcony faster than falling stock prices. Emma's black sheep brother Brady is found in Cornelius's bedroom passed out next to a bottle of bourbon and stolen plans for a new railroad line. Brady has barely come to before the police have arrested him for the murder. But Emma is sure someone is trying to railroad her brother and resolves to find the real killer at any cost. . .

With calm elegance and precise language, Rivers in My Veins is a work of lyric courage celebrating the connection we all share to the earth. Kara Briggs' poems sing her people, Sauk-Suiattle and Yakama, onto the pages. "Land we live on land," she writes, calling us to embrace our kinship with the earth. As a career journalist, Briggs uses documentary poetry to expose the false settler-colonial narratives while innovating rhythms from the social dances of her tribes in poems that take the reader to the dance circle. She received the 2024 James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poetry for "Acknowledgement Two," a poem in this collection about her uncle who fought for fishing rights. Her fierce love of lands, waters, and stories of her peoples are carried in familiar poetic forms-sonnet, pantoum, and haiku-as vehicles to carry the readers on a journey through our shared world of literary - and deeply alive - landscapes.In groundbreaking forms of her ancestors and for future generations, Briggs introduces profiles of a Yakama treaty fisherman, a great-great-grandmother basket maker, and a Sauk-Suiattle leader calling for accountability, sharing the humanity and modernity of Native peoples. She uses sonnets, pantoums, and haiku as familiar vehicles for readers as she carries them into unfamiliar history and perspectives. She questions our relationship with words about Indigenous peoples by exploring their etymologies. She engages literary ancestors, poets Carolyn Kizer and Janice Gould, re-examining their poetics in her own. Kara Briggs works on environmental issues with tribes on the West Coast and has a background in journalism and higher education. She is a former president of the Native American Journalists Association. She graduated in 2024 with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. This is her first poetry collection and her first publication with St. Julian Press.

With the attention of a field botanist, Ethereal Flowers explores healing plants, plants in mythology, plants that inspired van Gogh paintings, plants that are poisonous, and plants discovered by Lewis and Clark. By honoring plants and trees, we honor the source of life, and we acknowledge that we are mutually connected, that the survival of one impacts the other. Poet Martin Willitts Jr. gets on his hands and knees to notice the detail of petals, pistils, leaf formation, lateral and bilateral stems, the smell of earth, the bees shuttling in the garden, unearthing a deeper meaning to plants, while planting them firmly in imagination.

Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku analyzes the ways in which Moore combines haiku with other traditions: African American storytelling, jazz poetry, ekphrasis, and elegies. The author argues that Moore’s engagement with haiku and his prolific publication history solidify haiku as an established form in African American poetry.

Once, in a park, I saw a little girl and her dad playing and laughing as she swung to and fro. I once saw a little boy, with a candy cane smile, ask an old man for a smile. I once climbed a mountain just to see what was on the other side. I once picked a flower and gave it to a friend. These are my moments, my reflections, on how we need to think, write and dream of the joyful and positive sides of life. To dwell on the negative is not a healthy and good way to live. These are choices we all must make and, in that regard, I committed myself to write lines that would not only make me feel good but lines that would help others overcome these most trying of times. The poems in this book reflect the way I chose to endure the COVID pandemic as well as the PTSD syndrome that is brewing as I write these words. It's all about laying strong foundations for building bridges over those valleys of despair that are ingrained in our souls. Make no mistake about it - some days were good and some tore the roof off my head. So, if you have a few moments, feel free to join me on this happiness journey.

In the struggle within and without, between war and love, poet Emanuel Kane wanders through the world of conflict and peace that defines our lives. From souls lost in the battlefield to children lost in times too quiet, the author uncovers the horror of humanity's worst instincts and the redemption brought in the peace of home.Praise for Emanuel Kane's poetry:"The poems have a pleasing grace, a fierce urgency . . . a talented poet."-Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning poet"[His] voice brings sanity and respect to our continent."-Leonard Koza, South African poet, translator, and literary critic"Stylistic recitation of meaningful [and] ... universal truths."-Desire Grogan, District of Columbia Public Library"A brilliantly conceived poetic feast. The poet demonstrates a remarkable breadth of knowledge and a stirring imagination full of tropes and metaphors that truly make this a great book." -Prof. Molefi K. Asante, Temple University, author of 87 books"Here is a poet of obvious high quality - a voice of pain and truth."-Blyden Jackson, University of North Carolina "There is blood on many of the pages. It's a reminder that the present is a dangerous place to live. [Kane] knows the beautiful ones have yet to be born."- E. Ethelbert Miller, Editor of Poet Lore magazine & Fulbright Scholar"This is poetry for the struggle for justice and peace."-Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner

Hallelujah Science comes at you like a muted fever and suddenly you find yourself wanting to stomp and shout. Kane’s level of insight, revelation, and economy becomes a spiritual exodus to the lands of being Black, white, a poet, a woman, a shadow, and a human being. To be sure, when we use the phrase "dropping science," Kane drops it on a regular basis in this book. Welcome to the science of living as a celebration to be questioned, laughed at, examined, and cut with verse so exact that you have to be willing to bleed to live. Willie Perdomo, The Crazy Bunch, winner of the New York City Poetry Award

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

An Amiable Reception for the Acrobat, Jon Davis's sixth full-length collection of poems, is jarring and beautiful, and in both cases necessarily so. In her praise of its wisdom and irreverence, Pam Houston has described these poems as "a map to hold in our hands as we fly off the end of the world." We advise keeping a copy handy.

In Soft Launch, Aaron Belz takes what might seem normal to other people-a 1/3 full bottle of Prell left in a musty shower stall of a mountain cabin, for instance-and turns it over in the light until its true self emerges, a thirsty dolphin lost in the piney woods. Or so he claims. Regardless, in these poems, the sentimentalized experience of middle-age is about not just connectedness but overconnectedness, and to all the wrong things. Hyperaware, hypervigilant, and abundantly alert, Belz surveys the banal, the grinding quotidian, and asks not, "Is this all?" but rather "Isn't this not all?" And then he bows his head either to pray or to nap.

*The brand new poetry collection from the internationally bestselling poet and TikTok phenomenon, Whitney Hanson*the love of my life is a poetry collection that traces the process of rediscovering a love for life after change, disconnection, and personal upheaval. Using the metaphor of fires, the book is structured in three sections Burning, Ashes, and Reclamation-to reflect the cycles of destruction, numbness, and renewal that accompany deep inner work. Through themes of identity, loss, healing, and emotional reconstruction, the collection explores what it means to unlearn inherited beliefs, confront the weight of the past, and slowly rebuild a relationship with oneself, others, and the world. This is not a book primarily about romantic love, but about reengaging with life by confronting the past and reconnecting with a sense of self.Readers love Whitney Hanson'This book is everything I needed and more' 5* reader review'A phenomenal writer and she portrays the truths of life so beautifully' 5* reader review'This book did wonders for my mental health and heartbreak' 5* reader review'I felt like she was talking about my own experiences' 5* reader review'Best poet out there' 5* reader review'I felt such an emotional connection to these poems' 5* reader review'Gave me literal goosebumps' 5* reader review

'I am Black because I come from the earth's insidenow take my word for jewel in the open light.' Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection faithfully captures the complex interiority of the self. With insight and great feeling, these poems explore racial and sexual politics, liberation and love; they are strongly autobiographical (including poems about Lorde's children, her sister and her parents, as well as an elegy for a dear childhood friend). These timeless poems resonate down the years.

In Sharon Wang's thrilling and corporeal geometry, touch dominates, if often in its 'aftermarks': singes, whiffs, folds of fabric, echoing gestures between bodies. With generous language and quicksilver intelligence, Wang expresses 'a hunger so large it stops the mouth.' Her poems describe what is 'hard and brilliant,' the spaces between objects, and what's left in the wake of losses. "Despite its attunement both to elegy and to witness, the mode is praise: 'He loved the world. He loved it suddenly / and without reason.' . . . As the poet works to understand, 'If in fact it wasn't possible to build / the world anew,' she does build--extravagantly, judiciously, lovingly. The result is a book of radiant integrity." - from the judges' citation for the Kundiman Poetry Prize.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England (published 1 September 1773) is a collection of 39 poems written by Phillis Wheatley, the first professional African-American woman poet in America and the first African-American woman whose writings were published. Phillis Wheatley broke barriers as the first American black woman poet to be published, opening the door for future black authors. James Weldon Johnson, author, politician, diplomat and one of the first African-American professors at New York University, wrote of Wheatley that "she is not a great American poet-and in her day there were no great American poets-but she is an important American poet.

An anthology of emerging and acclaimed poets that remind us we are more connected than we think.<BR><BR>Volume Three of The Central Avenue Poetry Prize showcases a dynamic chorus of voices from around the world—each one offering a unique window into the human condition. This anthology brims with feeling: loss and yearning, joy and curiosity, the quiet beauty of everyday existence. Every poem is a glimpse into a life, a moment, a truth.<BR><BR>From sharp observations to tender recollections, from lyrical portraits to bold declarations, this collection is a celebration of poetry’s enduring power. It reminds us that writing is not just an art, but a way of being—a means to uncover ourselves and forge deeper bonds with others.