Showing titles in Family

A book of short stories coupled with contemporary poetry in different forms.

Following on his exquisite Stones, Young's new collection shapes stories of familial and familiar love, inspired in part by other lives. A central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightngale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into slavery and ill treatment as a “freak” sensation in 1851 and later free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonized, and Young's poem explores their evolving selfhood and self-understanding: “As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.”

Clara Jean Beaman Walker was the third of seven children born to Cora and Clarence Beaman in Knoxville, TN, in 1910. Considered to be “Little Mother” by her siblings, she always gave her best to her birth family and to the family she created with her husband, John Albert Walker. Three sons came from this union: Johnny, Clarence, and Henry. A teacher at heart, Jean saw each child before her and helped them navigate home economics, English, and realizing their potential.

In a working-class family that considers sensitivity a “fatal diagnosis,” how does a child grow up to be a poet? What happens when a body “meant to bend & breed” opts not to, then finds itself performing the labor of care regardless? Why do we think our “common griefs” so singular? Bad Hobby is a hard-earned meditation on questions like these—a dreamscape speckled with swans, ghosts, and weather updates.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like without love? Life is a priceless gift deliberately crafted and packaged for our enjoyment, but it is not a bed of roses. It is a mixture of the good, bad and ugly-including pains and gains, sadness and joy, despair and hope, failures and successes- and it ends in death. Death reminds us we must make the most of this gift before it expires. How can we do this? Love and life are inseparable, dependent and complementary; love powers life while life makes love visible.

The poems in Jailbreak of Sparrows reveal the ways in which the ordinary becomes monumental: family portraits, politically charged reports, and tributes to the unsung. Espada’s focus ranges from the bombardment of his family’s hometown in Puerto Rico amid an anti-colonial uprising to the murder of a Mexican man by police in California, from the poet’s adolescent brawl on a basketball court over martyred baseball hero Roberto Clemente to his unorthodox methods of representing undocumented migrants as a tenant lawyer.

'They have lightning in their souls, thunder in their hearts, chaos in their bones.' Nikita Gill's poetry has captured hearts and minds all over the world; her inspirational words have been shared hundreds of thousands of times online, plastered across placards on international women's marches and even transformed into tattoos. This collection will showcase mostly unseen poetry and prose, delving into ideas about passion, identity, empowerment and femininity. Written and read by Nikita Gill.

With breathtaking lyricism and a vulnerability that pierces the heart, April Gibson journeys through the emotional abysses, the daily pleasures, the frustrations, and the joys of being a Black woman living with chronic illness. Gibson offers a unique perspective on “the body,” viewing disability and healthcare through both feminist and socio-economic lenses filtered by race and faith. Through gorgeous sensory language that migrates memories, from carefree innocence to the ravages formed in its absence, Gibson bears witness to grief, courage, and resistance to redefine herself on her own terms.

In We Inherit What the Fires Left, award-winning poet William Evans embarks on a powerful new collection that explores the lived experience of race in the American suburbs and what dreams and injuries are passed from generation to generation. Fall under the spell of Evans' boldly intimate, wise, and emotionally candid voice in these urgent, electrifying poems. This eloquent collection explores not only what these inheritances are composed of, but what price the bearer must pay for such legacies, and the costly tolls exacted on both body and spirit.

Finding Light in Philadelphia is a collection of poetry and short stories that explore several existential questions and society issues. The book takes the listener on an exciting journey filled with thought-provoking questions, excitement, deep reflection, and self-evaluation.

In her first collection of poems, Ching Yeung Russell captures elements of her youth in rich, vivid snapshots and authentic detail. Listeners of all backgrounds will relate to spirited Yeung Ying, her dynamic family, and her courage in the face of life's obstacles.

The poems in Yanyi’s latest book suggest that we enter and exit our old selves like homes. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our lives that is both ours and not ours. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. Yanyi conjures the beloved both within and without us: the beloved we believe we know, the beloved who is never the person we imagine, and the beloved who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them.

It’s that time of year again. With his signature wit, Brian Bilston returns with And So This is Christmas, fifty-one poems in celebration of the festive season: from bizarre family traditions to the office Christmas party; from voting day for turkeys to the impossible art of gift-giving. So hang your stockings, grab your mistletoe and curl up with this heart-warming collection of Christmas crackers.

The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape - first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say", a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom?

This anthology of twenty poems was Yeats's first major collection after he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.

Beginning with several dozen new poems that have appeared in The New Yorker, among other publications, this volume is a tour through Cynthia Zarin’s five exquisitely made collections, beginning with The Swordfish Tooth, published in 1989. Zarin, a poet in the line of Elizabeth Bishop, allows the listener to experience human truths through a poem's shape and music, bodied forth through intimate images—the turn in the stair, a snow globe, naked birch branches, a vase of flowers—and a propulsive syntax.

The book chronicles, in poetic form, the life of a woman who, in three distinct and significant life events, feels she is “the other woman” to her husband, to her child, and even to herself, rather than the woman who is “good enough” just as she is. Not until she loses her eyesight does she finally allow herself to stop putting herself aside and be who she always has been—a strong, insightful, creative, resilient, faith driven, funny, and fun-loving woman. A resurrected woman!

I often think about our youth. It was indeed a strangely shaped toy, with a short body dragging a very long tail, spreading like wings, refusing to leave. A lamp is still on, but a song has been sung. A play has not ended, a love has reached the end of the road. We salute you. And the new curtain is about to be drawn. Maybe that's what human life is like, ending, starting, starting again, then ending. No matter what, we have to shoulder our suffering and happiness, moving forward, don't turn around.

In her first book, happy-go-lucky YouTuber and Instagrammer Emma Conway explores motherhood in all its glory through the medium of hilarious and uplifting poetry. A mum to two young humans aged seven and nine, she revisits the days of no sleep, potty training and toddler tantrums; dives deep into first days of school, sibling bickering and watching your babies grow into little people; and writes frankly about life after having kids, embracing the mum bod and giving zero sods.

With the same brilliant wit and biting realism that made Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People such hits, John Kenney is back with a brand new collection that tackles the hilarity of life in the office. From waiting in line for the printer and revising spreadsheet after spreadsheet, to lukewarm coffee, office politics, and the daily patterns of your most annoying - and lovable - coworkers, Kenney masterfully captures the warmth and humor of working the "9 to 5" in today's modern era.