Fred Whitehead - Böcker

This long-overdue collection, which gathers together more than two hundred poems written over a span of six decades, along with an extended biographical analysis by Fred Whitehead, permits a comprehensive assessment of the work of a man Thomas McGrath described as "one of the very best of the revolutionary poets."  Don Gordon made his name in the 1930s as a passionate and outspoken political poet, his work being published in the most prestigious American journals. In spite of his growing literary reputation he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House or Representatives in September, 1951. Due to his openly communist views and his reluctance to give the committee names of fellow radical writers, Gordon was blacklisted from employment in the film industry. He devoted his time to writing poems, despite the difficulty of finding a wide audience for them.  Many of Gordon's poems are suffused with themes of revolution and political activism, but this collection showcases the breadth of the subjects he addressed in his sixty years of writing, expressed with a rigorous aesthetic sensibility in a style that incorporates diverse influences, including modernism and surrealism.  "Don Gordon is great," Meridel LeSueur wrote, "because he shows the vigorous and wondrous strength of the people." With this complete collection of his poems, readers can at last experience the full range of this vigorous and challenging writer.

With a voice emerging from class tensions, labor struggles, the Great Depression, and World War II, Vincent Ferrini lived as a people's poet crying out for an end to exploitation and organized greed. Radical Christian gnosis and the conviction that poetry should be more than a display of word-craft distinguished him from poets like T. S. Eliot, infusing his work with dynamic images of Christ as a fighter, a revolutionary, and a martyr in opposing the mighty for the sake of the poor.

This long-overdue collection, which gathers together more than two hundred poems written over a span of six decades, along with an extended biographical analysis by Fred Whitehead, permits a comprehensive assessment of the work of a man Thomas McGrath described as "one of the very best of the revolutionary poets."  Don Gordon made his name in the 1930s as a passionate and outspoken political poet, his work being published in the most prestigious American journals. In spite of his growing literary reputation he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House or Representatives in September, 1951. Due to his openly communist views and his reluctance to give the committee names of fellow radical writers, Gordon was blacklisted from employment in the film industry. He devoted his time to writing poems, despite the difficulty of finding a wide audience for them.  Many of Gordon's poems are suffused with themes of revolution and political activism, but this collection showcases the breadth of the subjects he addressed in his sixty years of writing, expressed with a rigorous aesthetic sensibility in a style that incorporates diverse influences, including modernism and surrealism.  "Don Gordon is great," Meridel LeSueur wrote, "because he shows the vigorous and wondrous strength of the people." With this complete collection of his poems, readers can at last experience the full range of this vigorous and challenging writer.

Cumberland Island is the largest and most beloved of the Georgia barrier islands. Although it can be reached only by boat, more than forty thousand people make the trip each year to enjoy the island's natural splendor and solitude. As on most barrier islands, human activity has long been a shaping force on Cumberland. It is among the few islands, however, that we have let return to a relatively natural state. With its expansive oceanfront beaches, dunes, interior maritime forests, freshwater ponds, tidal creeks, and salt marshes, Cumberland is all the more special for its restored natural environment.In The Seasons of Cumberland Island, naturalist and photographer Fred Whitehead captures the unique allure of the island's flora and fauna in 118 stunning full-color photographs. Moving through seasons punctuated by the comings and goings of such animals as the migratory birds that rest here in autumn and the loggerhead turtles that nest here in summer, the photographs reveal the subtle but important effect of cyclical change on the island's ecosystem. The lush color images, which are often paired with detailed captions, include spectacular views of muscadine vines and Virginia creeper in autumn, a prowling bobcat in winter, a springtime nest of pileated woodpeckers, and a green tree frog announcing an impending summer rain.Featuring a introduction on the importance of the complex ecosystems of barrier islands like Cumberland, the book informs as it enchants. Here is a stunning tribute to Cumberland's sublime treasures that also serves as a thoughtful reminder to respect and protect the wildness of our barrier islands.

This important collection of cultural life in America's heartland will prove indispensable to our understanding of the history of the struggle between the forces of repression and Puritanism on the one hand, and those who raised on high the banner of free thought on the other. The issues and ideas generated by this historical conflict continue to play a critical role on our present-day debates on ethics, education, culture, and the very future of the American people.

Claribel Alegría, born in Estelí, Nicaragua, in 1924, is one of the great voices in twentieth-century Latin American poetry. She left her family’s Nicaraguan coffee plantation to spend her childhood in exile in El Salvador. Her writing of the 1950s and 1960s reflects the views of the “Committed Generation” of Central America, seeking social and political justice for its citizens. She shared the Casas de las Americas poetry prize in 1978 with Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli.In 1979, when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime, she returned to Nicaragua to help it rebuild. While both countries claim her, she credits the 1980 assassination of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero as the pivotal event of her revolutionary commitment.Alegría’s mature work reflects her anger and sense of loss over the murdered and “disappeared” throughout Latin America. “Because of them I called myself a cemetery,” she notes. She praises women poets giving voice to the victims of state terror. Her major works include I Survive (1978), Flowers from the Volcano (1981), Sorrow (1999), and Casting Off(2003). In this volume, published in Madrid as Otredad in 2011, she separates her writing from her daily existence: “She who writes is the other one.”