The Occupant isa collection of persona and prose poems that explores the “inner lives” of common household objects, along with that of “The Occupant” of the house, their human keeper. Taken together, their shifting perspectives engage questions of time, mortality, and the nature of consciousness itself, reminding readers of the beauty and strangeness that lurk under the surface of ordinary thought—the “other world” that, as Paul Éluard noted, “resides in this one.”

Playful love poems to kids, coral reefs, and crowsWinner of the 2024 Cardinal Poetry PrizeFive-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem is the inaugural winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize, selected by renowned poet Robert Pinsky. In free verse and invented poetic forms, Rachel Trousdale explores how the interplay between the mind and body illuminates our most important relationships, whether with other humans, wild spaces, or works of art. Inhabited by crows, yetis, coral reefs, and aliens, these poems playfully examine the intensity and conflict of romantic love; the entropic joys of parenthood; illness and grief; and the ways our physical loves and intangible losses teach us responsibility to the world around us. [Sample Poem]Love Poem With Dereliction of DutyIt's true—I like you more than I like the Marquis de Sade; God that mid-April afternoon in 1995, when I said, "let's take a walk" and you said "sure" and we circled the New Haven Green saying who the hell knows what because if we had seen all this falling in love stuff coming, we would have paid more attention; I just know it took two hours, past the churches and the porn shop and over to the cemetery with all those skull-topped slabs leaning memorially against the brownstone wall; round and round we went like marbles dodging the traps in a game of labyrinth; and finally back to campus through that big stone gate which we entered just as the prof of the philosophy class I was skipping came out and I said oh the pain the pain I can't take it any more and doubled up laughing

Archiving stories of dissonance and curating connection inside the imagined museumThis extraordinary debut poetry collection by Dena'ina poet Annie Wenstrup delicately parses personal history in the space of an imagined museum. Meticulously refined and delicately crafted, Wenstrup's poems weave together the lived experiences of an Alaskan Native person and the histories of unresolved colonial violence in "an authorial reckoning//with what remains." Outside the Museum of Unnatural Histories Ggugguyni, the Dena'ina Raven, and The Museum Curator collect discarded French fries, earrings, and secrets—or as The Curator explains, together they curate moments of cataclysm. Inside the museum, their collection is displayed in installations that depict the imagined Indigenous body. Every artifact contains competing stories, while some display cases are left empty.Into this "distance between the learning and the telling," Wenstrup inserts The Curator and her sukdu'a, her own interpretive text. There, The Curator questions the space between her familial history and colonial constructs of authenticity. In particular, the poems explore how women experience embodiment when they are seen through filters of race, gender, and class: "Always, I've known I embody that which harms me." At the heart of the sukdu'a is the desire to find a form that allows the speaker's story to be heard.Through love letters, received forms, and found text, the poems reclaim their right to interpret, reinvent, and even disregard artifacts of their own mythos to imagine a future that exists despite the series of disasters and apocalypses documented inside the museum. Eventually it begins to dawn on us that this museum may not be separable from the world, and that there may be no exit from its unnatural histories, composed of beauty and foil wrappers, wilderness and contaminated waters. Here, it is up to each one to "decide/who you must become."[Sample Poem]Ggugguyni in the Museum Parking LotI watch her crow. Not as a crow crows but as herself. She's not here for the art. She's here for the minivans that devourdiaper bags, car seats, children. She waits for the doors to retract and expel fruit, Goldfish, and fries. Free for the taking.She scavenges in lurching, crab-like steps. Like me, she won't appear human here. While her legs bring her from one deliciousscrap to another, I work my own inventory. Once my parents named me Swift Raven— a real Indian Princess name.I flew unblinded, my hair in a blue-black braid down my back. Now, I'm ungainly, more harpy than girl. My mouth, a curvecalling for carrion. I'm not here for the art. I'm here for the mirrors, here to unpair earrings and unclasp foil from gum. My beakready to unbind carapace from quiver. Like Ggugguyni, I'm a scavenger lurching from one disaster to another.See how we curate cataclysms' aftermath. While we work, Ggugguyni tells me a story. Once, my grandfather said, a long time agothere was a raven. He opened a door and it was day. Then he drew his wing shut. What Ggugguyni didn't say, but what I heard: oncehe closed the door and it was night. Today I'm telling you this story instead: my mouth is a comma, my mouth is exclamation,my mouth is my body holding open the door. Witness my body create day. See how the light appraises my collection. See how the sunlight exposes how shadow bleached everything white.

Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us /> />The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with "this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world" in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who "check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked" to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: "We name things/ to know where we are. " Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. "It's true things fall apart." Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up." /> />Sample Text /> />HYPER-VIGILANCE /> />Hilarious, /> />the way a crab's slender />eye-stalks />stand straight up /> />from its scuttling />carapace— /> />the way vigilance />takes many forms? /> /> * /> />That bird check-marks morning />once more /> />like someone who gets up />to make sure /> />the door is locked. /> /> * /> />I sound />like I know />what I'm talking about. /> />I sound like a comedian.

In Literacy as Conversation, the authors tell stories of successful literacy learning outside of schools and inside communities, both within urban neighborhoods of Philadelphia and rural and semi-rural towns of Arkansas. They define literacy not as a basic skill but as a rich, broadly interactive human behavior: the ability to engage in a conversation carried on, framed by, or enriched through written symbols. Eli Goldblatt takes us to after-school literacy programs, community arts centers, and urban farms in the city of Philadelphia, while David Jolliffe explores learning in a Latinx youth theater troupe, a performance based on the words of men on death row, and long-term cooperation with a rural health care provider in Arkansas. As different as urban and rural settings can be—and as beset as they both are with the challenges of historical racism and economic discrimination—the authors see much to encourage both geographical communities to fight for positive change.

The story of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion—the notion of perennial conflict or warfare between the two—is part of our modern self-understanding. As the story goes, John William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) constructed dramatic narratives in the nineteenth century that cast religion as the relentless enemy of scientific progress. And yet, despite its resilience in popular culture, historians today have largely debunked the conflict thesis. Unravelling its origins, James Ungureanu argues that Draper and White actually hoped their narratives would preserve religious belief. For them, science was ultimately a scapegoat for a much larger and more important argument dating back to the Protestant Reformation, where one theological tradition was pitted against another—a more progressive, liberal, and diffusive Christianity against a more traditional, conservative, and orthodox Christianity. By the mid-nineteenth century, narratives of conflict between “science and religion” were largely deployed between contending theological schools of thought. However, these narratives were later appropriated by secularists, freethinkers, and atheists as weapons against all religion. By revisiting its origins, development, and popularization, Ungureanu ultimately reveals that the “conflict thesis” was just one of the many unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation.

The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature examines the defining role of plants in cultural expression across Latin America, particularly in literature. From the colonial georgic to Pablo Neruda’s Canto general, Lesley Wylie’s close study of botanical imagery demonstrates the fundamental role of the natural world and the relationship between people and plants in the region. Plants are also central to literary forms originating in the Americas, such as the New World Baroque, described by Alejo Carpentier as “nacido de árboles. ” The book establishes how vegetal imaginaries are key to Spanish American attempts to renovate European forms and traditions as well as to the reconfiguration of the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Such a reconfiguration, which persistently draws on indigenous animist ontologies to blur the boundaries between people and plants, anticipates much contemporary ecological thinking about our responsibility towards nonhuman nature and shows how environmental thinking by way of plants has a long history in Latin American literature.

Summer 1942. Defeatism hangs in the air. Britain stands alone. Winston Churchill is determined to strike back and has ordered the formation of a special operations force, dubbed "Commandos", with the mission to "set Europe ablaze." U.S. Marine Captain Jim Cain and his Gunnery Sergeant Leland Montgomery are surprised to receive orders to the British Commando training center in the Scottish Highlands. There they are put through the brutal specialized training that will hone their fighting skills and physical endurance. Pitiless forced marches, dangerous live fire exercises and hazardous assault courses separate the men from the boys, while building a strong sense of brotherhood among the British soldiers and the two Marines. Lucky to be quartered in the spacious home of the Commandos' CO, Cain has the pleasure of meeting Loreena. The stunning auburn-haired daughter of the CO is secretive about her work in London. Before Cain can learn more about her, the training course is interrupted. He and the commando squad are sent on a special mission to destroy a German radar station on a Nazi-held island off the coast of France. The site is defended by a squad of second-rate garrison soldiers who are no match for the highly trained and motivated commandos. A reaction force of infantry, led by a blooded German combat veteran, joins the fight. The action is fierce and bloody and there are heavy losses on both sides. The surviving raiders are able to withdraw to Royal Navy motor torpedo boats, as a marauding squadron of Schnellboots (E-Boats) lies in wait. The Commandos: Set Europe Ablaze is rich in detail and military accuracy which makes the story "come alive" and enables the reader to easily visualize the characters, the settings and the action scenes.

Classic and new work by poet and jazz writer A. B. Spellman /> />A.

Inventive poetry explores Jewish identity in America /> />"How can I teach a prayer / I only know how to recite?" "America, whose death / didn't you come from?" These are some of the questions that poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller wrestles with in his beautiful, gripping new collection. By turns experimental and documentary, Dybbuk Americana draws out the questions around Jewish identity in the United States, and what it means to pass on Jewish identity to one's child. This hybrid text draws on art, mysticism, and history, taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor. A dybbuk is a restless spirit who inhabits another's body, and as a possessing spirit the dybbuk is often treated as a demonic force, but it can be read as merely trying to climb the ladder of the afterlife. In other words, a kind of striver. Enacting the idea of competing selves in one body, Dybbuk Americana plays with form via a series of text boxes that create a multi-channel effect on the page. The body of the poem can be read with surrounding and intercutting text boxes to generate multiple interpretations. This innovative poetic technique maintains a dialogue with Jewish literary lineages: Talmudic commentary and interpretation of the oral law, as well as the fragmented nature of geniza, a place where Jews store sacred documents when they fall out of use. Dybbuk Americana weaves together the father-son arc within a larger socio-political commentary and historical narrative. Poems move deftly between the ironic and the mystic, from aphoristic questioning and inventive narratives, to interview, oral history, and archival materials. In these lines, "the angels./ They get as close as they can." Witty, curious, warm, and searching, Dybbuk Americana signals a fresh voice in Jewish-American poetry. [sample text] CHAIN MIGRATION It took ten men />to make a minyan, /> />but only one name />of G-d for us to share, /> />so we settled on />America, one by one, /> />we settled on America, />man and woman. /> />My grandfather />earned his way over /> />shoveling coal />in the hold of a boat. /> />Grandmother sewed />gold into her coat. In secret /> />they sewed, they sold, />they glowed. I dream of /> />gold. G-d's name in gold />milked and honeyed /> />in the dust />beneath our boots— /> />our dust. And when they made />a minyan and didn't /> />realize it? And when />they married in /> />and didn't realize it? />No matter: they sewed, /> />they sold, they glowed. />Yes, they sold /> />their solid gold, sold gold />into gold, sewed gold /> />together into dust. />When I was born /> />they gave me />a dead man's name. /> />But that's true />for everyone.

Intimate and sweeping poetry that examines race and lineage.Room Swept Home serves as a gloriously rendered magnifying glass into all that is held in the line between the private and public, the investigative and generative, the self and those who came before us. In a strange twist of kismet, two of Bingham-Risher's ancestors intersect in Petersburg, Virginia, forty years before she herself is born: her paternal great-great-great grandmother, Minnie Lee Fowlkes, is interviewed for the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives in Petersburg in 1937, and her maternal grandmother, Mary Knight, is sent to Petersburg in 1941, diagnosed with "water on the brain"—postpartum depression being an ongoing mystery—nine days after birthing her first child. Marrying meticulous archival research with Womanist scholarship and her hallmark lyrical precision, Bingham-Risher's latest collection treads the murky waters of race, lineage, faith, mental health, women's rights, and the violent reckoning that inhabits the discrepancy between lived versus textbook history, asking: What do we inherit when trauma is at the core of our fractured living?[sample poem]XI. the more ground covered, the more liberated you becameI am scared my mind will turn on me.I am scared I will be naked in a burninghouse. I am scared my children won't outpace me.I am scared my children (who aren't made by me)believe I am a sad imitation of the others.I am scared I will gather in a roomwhere everyone will ask me to rememberand when I don't lie they'll say I'd hate to be you.I've lived long enough to be scared my kidneyswill give out on me. I've lived long enough to know justwhen they should. I have never shared my fearswith anyone; I am scared they will map the landand take liberties. Will the women be ashamed?I'm scared to ask. What will live again? What will die with me?

New poetry by the author of acclaimed 2023 novel Take What You Need faces the complexities of life on a swiftly heating earth./>/>Idra Novey's first collection in a decade, since Patricia Smith chose Exit, Civilian for the National Poetry Series, brings a lyric intimacy to the extremes of our era. The poems juxtapose sweltering days with children in a city with moments from a rural childhood roaming free in the woods, providing a bridge between those often polarized realities. Novey's spare, contemporary fables move across the Americas, from a woman housesitting in central Chile, surrounded by encroaching fires, to a man in New York about to give birth to a panda./>/>Other poems return to the Allegheny Highlands of Appalachia, where Novey revisits the roads and creeks of her childhood: "Maybe we knew we only appeared/to be floating, but soon and wholly/we'd go under" Like Lydia Davis and Anne Carson, Novey draws from the well of her work translating myriad authors, from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector to Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, and from her own award-winning novels. These are deeply lived poems, evoking both a singular life and the shared urgencies of our time, a collection of great inventiveness and wit, conjuring our "bit part in the history of the future."/>/>[sample text]/>/>The Duck Shit at Clarion Creek/>/>We liked to stick it in a BB gun and shoot it./>/>We tattooed with it./>/>We said Hallelujah, the poor man's tanning lotion./>/>Then the frack wells began, something black capping the water and we got high watching a green-backed heron die./>/>We got funny at Clarion, flung each other's underwear into the trees./>/>Why was it we got naked there like nowhere else?/>/>Maybe we knew we were getting rusted inside as the trucks we rode into the water./>/>Maybe we only appeared to be floating, but soon and wholly we'd go under, get sucked to the bottom./>/>We'd sink and become creek bed; its deep mud would claim us, hold us hard and close.

No time like the present, not even the glorious pioneering decades between 1870 and 1930, has seen such a high number of able and enthusiastic contributors to Syriac studies. 'Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling ancient and modern vocabularies' brings together contributions from many different corners of lexicology and lexicography, and testifies to the richness of such subjects, which still offer scholars many possible approaches and research trajectories. This volume is the result of a round table 'Lexicologie et lexicographie syriaque', which took place at the 13th Syriac Symposium, held in Paris in July 2022.

Anthology of new work honoring the legacy of a celebrated African American poet/>/>This carefully and generously curated mosaic of essays, letters, and poems reveals the profound impact that poet Yusef Komunyakaa has had on poets, educators, and readers worldwide. The anthology brings together creative and critical offerings from fellow poets, former students, literary entities, and other admirers. There are emerging and established voices—from previously unpublished writers to Pulitzer Prize winning poets. Together these pieces honor one of the most influential writers of the last half century, one, it turns out, who is as beloved for his teaching as he is celebrated for his creative work. Contributors include Terrance Hayes, Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forché, Toi Derricotte, and Martín Espada, among others. Dear Yusef affirms Komunyakaa's transformative influence, showcasing how his mentoring has ignited creativity, nurtured passion, and fostered a sense of belonging among countless individuals. Through the artistry of these testimonials, we witness the transformative power of poetry and the enduring legacy of a true literary icon./>/>Sample Poem:/>/>from "Reading Yusef," by Major Jackson/>/>Over powdered beignets,/>over a demitasse of chicory/>near Royal, I came to grips I am the lonely sort/>for I am ever seeking potions,/>my head sideways, a book winged/>in my hand, its words from the chitlin circuit,/>fried dough going cold and congealing,/>passing tourists drowned out,/>a sullen look on my face. It is when I most/>want to make love./>/>Dostoevsky was a way out of my confusion,/>as was Baraka whom I gave my reverence freely./>/>Nothing I believed stayed, and thus, my melancholy/>deepened though banjos and clarinets played/>the streets through late afternoon rain, maybe/>Black Bottom Stomp, eucalyptus and live oaks/>aging against arpeggio-runs./>/>from "The Forty-Fourth Poem," by Jennifer Grotz/>The first student in my correspondence course who completed the final lesson on Dien Cai Dau was, like many students in that course, incarcerated in the Indiana State Penitentiary. In his essay, he wrote that Dien Cai Dau was the first book of poems he'd ever read. He'd been so taken with the experience that he'd proceeded to read poems from it aloud to his fellow inmates, after which they'd exchanged stories about being in the military, about Vietnam. He wrote about what it was like to witness violence. About what it was like to be numb, or to want to be numbHe also wrote about appreciating beauty, especially natural beauty, and of an awareness of gratitude for some grace that had nonetheless kept him alive, about how the poems still gave him hope. Dien Cai Dau had had a profound effect on him./>/>from "Dear Yusef," by Emily Jungmin Yoon/>The framework of your class was always care. Because you cared for us, we cared for one another. From then on, my poetry was always about love, even when it spoke through ugly histories, because I wanted to love the people in those narratives.

Northern Voices: Forty Years on the Poetry Beat, tells the story of journalist, Mike Pride’s relationships with several poets who lived and worked in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont from the 1970s through the present. Mike transformed the New Hampshire newspaper The Concord Monitor into a prizewinning paragon of regional journalism, mentoring generations of reporters and editors, defying the trope about the dying small-town newspaper and exerting an outsize impact on his profession. He carved out for himself, “The Poetry Beat,” befriending poets including Charles Simic, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Maxine Cumin, Hayden Carruth, Wes McNair, and Sharon Olds. among many others, whom he wrote about with regularity. Sadly Mike died before his “poetry memoir” Northern Voices was published. But in true Mike-style, he completed the manuscript and readied it for press.