White Pine Press Distinguished Poets Series – serie

"One of the few poets whose work remains accessible to both scholars of poetry and the casual reader...Her finely wrought free-form verse reads as easily as prose despite its dense, lush imagery."--The Harvard Review "Working in free verse, Murray is a master of the single unforgettable detail. Her accessible image-driven narratives harness the urgency of their moral or social context while staying true to the pacing and music of daily life."--The Poetry Foundation (publisher of Poetry magazine) Swimming for the Ark demonstrates why Joan Murray is praised as one of the leading narrative poets of our time. This career-defining book offers twenty-two new poems along with generous selections from her earlier books: The Same Water (winner of the Wesleyan New Poets Series), Looking for the Parade (winner of the National Poetry Series Open Competition), Queen of the Mist (the Niagara narrative which won her a Broadway commission), and Dancing on the Edge. This highly engaging book vividly dramatizes an urban youth and a rural life, along with deeper concerns about history, art, and injustice.From "Doorway": Of course we said we'd help you-- the cops were after you, you said, and we were rebel girls, weren't we? the four of us fifteen, the same age you said you were, when we crammed together in the doorway of a gated store, the windows full of knives, vibrators, transistor radios. I was the only one who understood: Lemony blond, sweet-voiced for a boy, you hid behind our Tangee lipstick, our teased-up hair-dos, the wispy-angora sweaters I can see in the photo-booth photos I still have here ...Joan Murray is the author of four prize-winning collections (from W. W. Norton, Wesleyan, and Beacon Press). She has been a repeat guest on NPR's Morning Edition and is editor of the Poems to Live By anthologies and The Pushcart Book of Poetry.

"The most recent in a line of great American transcendentalist writers."--The New York Times "Bly's poems flow from ...the great current of longing for reality, true maturity, the devotee's call to the Beloved."--The Nation "Robert Bly changed the course of poetry in America by opening it up to the imagination and the deep-image aesthetic, he is dedicated to reintegrating poetry with life--daily life, the life of the body, spiritual and political life."--Huffington Post The Chinese-influenced strain of Bly's work with its room for movement, spontaneity, and openness is celebrated in Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life and most amply showcased in its over one hundred and fifty poems. The poems, collected from out-of-print books, chapbooks, and uncollected work spanning fifty years, form a companion to his recent Stealing Sugar From The Castle: New and Selected Poems. Like The New Moon I Will Live My Life When your privacy is beginning over, How beautiful the things are that you did not notice before!A few sweetclover plants Along the road to Bellingham, Culvert ends poking out of driveways, Wooden corncribs, slowly falling, What no one loves, no one rushes towards or shouts about, What lives like the new moon, And the wind Blowing against the rumps of grazing cows. Telephone wires stretched across water, A drowning sailor standing at the foot of his mother's bed, Grandfathers and grandsons sitting together. Robert Bly is one of the most influencial poets, translators, and editors of his generation.

"Vibrant with the intensity of blues singers."-Feminist Bookstore News "Patricia Spears Jones is cosmopolitan blues goddess alive on the wind stream of transnational homemade intimate gossip. Her poems are a highly effective antidote to living in a country where caring seems to have been placed on the Endangered Activities list."-David Rivard "Patricia Spears Jones reminds me of those wisecracking, foolproof women in the old films she so lovingly dissects-the ones whose deadsure, replenishing humor and never-fail good sense causes the audience to sit up and clap."-Cyrus Cassells "She has given us a world where music and brains are allowed to co-exist with instinct, where the lyric and the literal may dwell without eyeing the other with suspicion."-Cornelius Eady From "The Perfect Lipstick": It is why I appreciate my favorite shade of lipstick: Sherry Velour. Sounds like the name of a drag queen from the early seventies. One of those strapping Black men who had enough of playing macho, put their feet in five-inch heels and made saints of Dinah Washington, Rita Hayworth and a very young Nina Simone. So, on goes this lipstick. Pretty for parties. Fatal for festivals.Sherry Velour and her hot discoveries: light above the fog, a toy ship. Black men in sequined dresses and the click of new words in the new world where the most dangerous of dreams come true. Patricia Spears Jones was named by Essence.com as one of its "40 Poets [They] Love" in 2010.