Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

"A book of emotional prose and brute fact, Dr. Hernandez shows us what it was like to live through the first throes of the pandemic, through the tired eyes of a newly-minted physician. From the exceptional to the mundane, these quotidian stories from the front lines grapple with the loneliness and isolation of quarantine while taking care of our sickest sick, and remind us that we cannot forget what happened." -Ajay Major, MD, MBA, founder and editor-in-chief emeritus of in-Training "Dr. Ammura Hernandez has sensitively documented the disruptions , fears, and psychological effects of the few months of the corona epidemic in a book written to honor those whose lives were taken by the coronavirus, those whose livelihood was affected by it, and those in the frontlines who took up the fight against it."-George Dunea MD, FACP, FRCP, FASN, President and CEO, Hektoen Institute of Medicine, Editor-in-Chief, Hektoen International "An absorbing diary and meditation on the Covid pandemic by a doctor in training as she witnessed it firsthand, and a narrative of her sometimes fraught romance during Covid."-Felice Aull, author of Mandatory Evacuation Zone, and founder of the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database

You Are Not Lost peels the soft and hopeful places of young life while expertly making applesauce. Jeri Frederickson uses the familiar scaffolding of a sonnet crown and everyday objects as a channel to nurture love and access beauty while questioning the experiences that hold us together. After life's questions receive unfulfilling answers: "press it down" and "Your future life / is free. No refunds" the poems untangle first-loves, family, and climate change by looking inward, turning the questions over and over as the speaker used to do apples: "Tonight are you the crunching sound? / Are you my friend? I'm not ready to miss you." Jim Daniels, author of Gun/Shy, says of these poems "surprise and sustain, keeping us delightfully off-balance with their sharp wit and surprising vulnerability." Even as trauma stitches through experiences, the collection refuses contemporary trauma labelling as adequate. "I have set my childhood nightmares / a place to rest their leather heads." Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge, says "the strength of her poetic voice is a reminder to all who read that within the roots of ancestral wounds, there is space for growth." The speaker in the poems realizes she can't banish trauma or force a resilient narrative. Instead, laughter and hope hold hands with trauma and walk together with the reader, finding their way into the future, not lost.

Though the alpha and omega of Steve Coughlin's poetry remains the single traumatic event that irrevocably unsettled his family decades ago, many of these poems demonstrate a playful, almost absurdist wistfulness, as he lauds the 1990s, cross-examines Ronald McDonald, and imagines his suave, hipster alter ego hobnobbing with Hollywood stars. In Deep Cuts, Coughlin juxtaposes poems of calm and astute journalistic narrative with laugh-out-loud poems of whimsical imagination, hoping perhaps to rectify-to rewrite-all those long-ago moments that went awry.-Cal HitzrotThese poems are chock-full of music and movie stars and the pull of the open road. They are full of the ache of longing, the piercing pain of loss, and the humor that helps us handle both longing and loss. Coughlin's writing is observant, assured, open-hearted, witty, and wise. Life is challenging in these poems, but we come away from them ready to embrace those challenges, prepared to unearth the nuggets of redemption that are surely there as well.-Brad Wilburn

Tiny Anchors is the debut book of poetry from queer, LA based writer Sarah Hulsman. In 21 poems, Hulsman explores the bittersweetness after "coming out" to friends, family and oneself.

Flock's The Scientist's Wife is a solution, not a resolution: The many variables of enduring love float in a murky suspension-what do we know, how do we transact, what are the impediments within the boundaries of commitment?-that Flock's poems, one by one, clarify. Her work is what science terms "elegant": shrewd, exacting, and necessary.-Michael J. Rosen, author, poet, and painter

These poems open the door to the mysterious, sensual, and luminous place that sustains and gives dimension to our everyday lives-where our dreams keep watch over our possible selves, the music of words lullabies what we may have forgotten or excluded, and we find healing in intimate connection with other lives. The journey up glass mountain is both a slippery and a revelatory one that lifts our glass to the light-- making transparent both our wounds and our climb toward joy.

"A voice rich enough to carpet the walls and warm enough to provoke the fondest of memories. Each of his poems is knee-deep in history; his poems are fingerprints of his life...."-Monica L. Piñon-Austin Chronicle"Whether he is writing of his grandmother in "La Partera" or of the way the rain speaks on a summer night, Robert René Galván is a poet who senses the link between music and language in a deep and intimate way."-Susan Hansen-San Marcos Daily Record"Robert René Galván has the gift of intuition every true poet should have; he knows instinctively how to pace the images embodied in his word sequences....he is able to fit the eye of the seer to the soft yet strong tissues of melody, sometimes even when pierced by the nature of cicadas."-Miguel González-Gerth"The poet is gifted with a fine ear and a keen eye. Intelligence and imagination are at work everywhere....Galván's is a rich voice, moving between simplicity and grandeur, a voice that speaks and sings, in turn, and almost always in praise of the life it finds."-David Wevill

Neil Kennedy's new book, A Jigsaw Puzzle is like no other book of poetry I have ever read. From the very beginning-Flower on the floor./Somebody has lost their bloom./I am very careful.-Kennedy pulls you in, though really, as with any jigsaw puzzle, you can enter anywhere and find yourself unable to stop being enchanted by this world that gets put together one tercet at a time. Birds of all species, one chickadee setting up its home into two birdhouses, music from next door, problematic snow, little Jesus at the gas station, hourglasses, cats and dogs, timepieces and shoelaces, software malfunctions in the forgiveness machine, hammer and teacup going home together, hesitating clouds deciding whether to cast shadows or not, daffodils breaching their contract, card catalogue in the junkyard with one drawer open-this poignantly quiet rhythm and boldly observant eye unfold a landscape that is defined often by the spaces between places and moments in time. In one of the occasional breaks of the tercet form the poet writes "Behind one man's voice" and then then there's space and then "Another man's voice." In the poems to which we turn for insight and illumination we often sense poet and shadow self, the two voices talking to each other and including us in the conversation. Kennedy's A Jigsaw Puzzle, offers you a conversation to which you will want to return again and again.-Christopher Bursk, author of The Improbable Swervings of Atoms

Marianne Brems writes of many unsung offerings with the poet's eye for telling detail; the glory of dandelions reviled by gardeners but with myriad unexpected talents and uses, the hidden gifts of smaller shapes nestled among mountains "who speak through softer edges/and quieter voices/to reflective observers/no cameras in hand." You will find many unsung offerings in this perfectly titled book. Luckily for us, Brems plucks them up and sings them into being. These offerings we keep in our mind's eye; the journey of a leaf, the travels of a dandelion, the revealing of greater truths.-Lisa Meltzer Penn, author of Travelers Tales: Spain, Fabula Argentea and the novel The Siren DialoguesI adored this collection of elegant, witty, and insightful poems that sharpened my world view. By offering a wide range of observations on the world around her, Brems provides a deeper commentary for us as readers. Her defense of nature rings true as she asks us, in fact challenges us, to honor our living environment. Savor these gems!-Korie Pelka, author of the popular blog site, 3rd Act Gypsy

Supremely inventive, exact, and shivery in its timely connection to the language of an ancient civilization, Margaret Lee's Someone Else's Earth takes us to a place and time we have never belonged yet have always belonged; to the beginnings of lyric expression and the telescoping in and out of the world of isolated despair. Reading this intricate and deeply moving series of poems as human existence is threatened to be erased, Someone Else's Earth is constructed of bits and pieces of what remains of Sappho's verse, almost as sherds of pottery being fit back together. Keep this book by your bed, under your pillow, within easy reach. Someone Else's Earth awakens the Possible for everyone in every time.-Susan Kay Anderson, author of Mezzanine and Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast.Erasure is much in vogue these days as a literary technique, but Margaret Lee knows erasure is what has happened to almost all of the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. So, guided by the needs of our present moment, she has crafted a debut book of striking poems - erasure in reverse - poems that flesh out Sappho's fragments into her own (Margaret's) personal myth. Savor these poems and get a sense of an emerging poet whose life-long studies of ancient Greek language and literature inform a book displaying a love of language and deep thirst for purpose at a time we need it most.-Paul E Nelson, Founder of SPLAB, Author of A Time Before Slaughter/ Pig War: & Other Songs of CascadiaWhenever I read Sappho my heart breaks upon the fragments. With a few poems my heart takes off, but with many bits and pieces I am dashed upon the meagre debris. Margaret Lee adroitly, eloquently and relentlessly "knits up the ravell'd" remains of some of Sappho's scraps, weaving nothing less than a stunning damask. In so doing, Lee caresses those ancient words, ingeniously transforming remnants into revelations. Sappho's fragments become Lee's starting blocks. Lee runs with what is left as her words gather their own momentum and reach triumphantly what the Greeks would recognize as word-weaving par excellence.-Arthur J. Dewey, Professor Theology at Xavier University, is the author of Wisdom Notes: Theological Riffs on Life and Living.Sappho's lyrical poetry emerged in Greece more than 25 centuries ago, influencing early Romans like Horace and Seneca, and later poets who exploited her themes and syllabic patterns in their own work. Known as the Tenth Muse, she fascinated early European poets as well as modern scholars across the globe. Margaret Lee's debut collection does not attempt a rerun of the past, but instead riffs freely on Sapphic fragments in 21st century poems that are a delight to read. You will savor this delicious book.-Sandra Soli, poet and author

Mapping moments of deep attention and wonder, Forty Days in the Wilderness, Wandering invites its readers to contemplate the natural world, sacred wilderness, and devotional wandering through the 2020 Lenten season and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.Largely composed in conjunction with walks through Wisconsin's national forests and state parks, the collection began as a Lenten intention - a creative response to Muthupandiyan's desire to find the divine in a world that has largely destroyed wilderness - the natural places which, within many religious traditions, devotional wandering has historically occurred.Several days into the project, however, the themes of wilderness and devotional wandering took on new depth and urgency while the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and the world began collectively negotiating its way through various spiritual, emotional, and physical deserts of solitude, bewilderment, alienation, and fear.Each of the poems and illustrations included within this collection was written and drawn during the first forty-five days of quarantine. The collection serves as a writer's journal on the deep wilderness and profound time of spiritual formation that humanity entered as the pandemic took hold. Read together, they chart a poetic apogee from joy to grief, exultation to death, desire to love without hope.Poems and illustrations from this collection have also appeared in Chitro Magazine and the anthologySheltering With Poems: Community and Connection During Covid (Bent Paddle Press)

"A glowing and enticing little book! Marvelous stories by a gifted writer whose work I've read with fascination since she was my student more than 50 years ago."-Jonathan Kozol, National Book Award winner and author of Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace."Martha Patterson is an incredibly talented, prolific and imaginative writer with an awe-inspiring range of stories to tell. As a fellow-writer, I am fascinated, and oftentimes even awe-struck, by Martha's ability to create characters who we immediately "get". She then takes us on their journeys... journeys that captivate us throughout the entire ride. Her wit, sensitivity and humanity shine through on every page. There is a certain M. Patterson signature built into each work whether it is a comedy, a drama, a mystery or a farce. I am never disappointed, and I am usually terribly envious of the talent of this astonishing creator."-Donald Loftus, Playwright, Dress Blues and The Wayland Nocturne"Martha Patterson's characters are tender and lonely, her writing is succinct and moving."-Evan Guilford-Blake, Author of the novels Animation and The Bluebird Prince, and the story collection American Blues

Emily Bowles has taken the Virginia Woolf we know and unbound her. The Virginia who walks these pages is edged with mist, a ghost that goes on changing and living in ethereal verse. From mermaids to madness, from blooms to bodies, Bowles traverses the landscape of the delicate and the dark. We should all be so lucky to make such a journey.-Holly Lyn Walrath, author of The Smallest of BonesThe Satisfactory Nothing of Girls is a clever entwining of two women living more than a century apart. Bowles "develops strange affection" for Miss Rachel Vinrace in Virginia Woolf's 1915 book, The Voyage Out. The sheltered life of Rachel, confined to "a ship in the Amazon," is parallel to Bowles' "sheltering in" during COVID19 awaiting a "shipment from Amazon." This collection of word-play poetry compares their "satisfactory and unsatisfactory nothings." Women coming of age/aging, body image, fitting in, how women are treated, and the drain of "shut-in-ess" are revealed within Covid19 confines, linked back to Woolf's book. Bowles muses as Emily Dickinson's reflection meets Nicole Kidman's nose; "Roomsical Women" fold "into the absence of self from life", and "Prismprisons" playfully passes time." Her double entendre, contrasts, and turn of words all make for an interesting read.-Annette Langlois Grunseth, author of Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family's Journey of Gender TransitionEmily Bowles gazes out a lonely Covid window while hearing-and at times becoming-women writers from centuries ago, including Virginia Woolf who said the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time, it expands later. Oh, that she had met Emily's untamed anxiety while shut-in, her 'beginending' when she uses inventive language on a modern mythical, mystical voyage with flowers, nose jobs, and mermaids, where there is not 'a ship on the Amazon' but a 'shipment from Amazon'. Travel the landscape of Emily's wry consciousness-'She flatters him / He flattens her'-as she untangles desire, the ongoing struggle of the collective feminine self knit together by Emily with erudition and wit. Whether 'violence at midlife' or 'violets at midlife', she gets the answer right by writing an answer for all women because 'that's the story of hers most mine'.-Kathryn Gahl, author of The Velocity of Love

Poet Brenda Nicholas believes her regular yoga and meditation practice has healed her anxiety and periodic depression by calming her nerves and keeping her centered and energized, helping her maintain a peaceful outlook in the face of everyday stress. She shares her beautiful and inspiring yoga poetry in her debut collection. If you teach yoga or simply do yoga at home on your own, you may be looking for inspiring words to share with your class or to meditate upon before beginning your practice. Reading yoga poems before or during a yoga class is an excellent way to invite a calm, soothing, reflective mindset. This, in turn, helps relax and prepare the body for the many benefits of deep stretches and asanas in a yoga class.

Kathleen Gregg's debut poetry collection, Underground River of Want, is a frank and unflinching account of devastating loss, bad choices, divorce and growing self-awareness. Be prepared to be heartbroken right along with the teenaged narrator after the sudden death of her father. Emotionally adrift and grief-stricken, the young girl launches a search for love and attention that becomes a destructive pattern in her life. After living through a dysfunctional marriage ending in divorce, the mature narrator picks herself up and faces the future with a new attitude and a strength that she finally realizes has always been there. The reader will cheer her along as life changes for the better; and the kind of love that has eluded her, now enters her life. The poems in this collection are evocative and engaging, lush with imagery, laced with musical references The last poem, Rolling with the Stones, is a joyous summation. Kathleen's poems will draw you in and then take you along on this somewhat biographical journey to self-discovery.

Weeks-Rogers moves between the sacred and the profane, the high and the low, the light and the dark. Self-Anointment with Lemons is concerned with the spaces between individuals, both the literal and the metaphorical, but also the spaces individuals explore within themselves. The ritual of coming back to oneself, time and again, to interrogate these spaces comprises the bulk of her concern: we very often turn ourselves inside-out on the road to self-examination. Why not, instead, anoint the self, and pay homage to the process? This collection convinces the reader that such a thing is possible. -Jay Szczepanski, poetry instructor at Flagler CollegeSelf-Anointment with Lemons is an eternal wound in search of healing. A pneuma in mourning and translation. A flor de muerte dressed in "incredible orange." A "spell against what words bloom from decayed ground." A palimpsest of unexpected crossings. An incantation of "silent homage" and "Cardinal feather" inside our beloved throats. An elegy of voices submerged with reassembled bone. Weeks-Rogers writes: "There is no white spell to recover language." But in these pages, our broken hearts mend amidst the backdrop of sun and earth and song. Each segment of yellow and pith against the acidic rind renders the body as open discourse. This book is a ritual inside the liminal space between grief and tenderness. A light made sacred. -Michelle Naka Pierce, author of Continuous Frieze Bordering Red (Fordham University Press)Nearly each poem in this collection enacts the tension of language: its ability to simultaneously present and obliterate. We begin with The Lost, a sign to identify friends who died, and deep keening over lost meanings. Hollow signs interlock with the silent dead. Language "can't put sensations into words / when years of life-force arranged from back / to front now furl front to back again." Yet while language falls short, the poems' expression of language's failure manages to describe, as in to mark out, with polyphony and vivid color, The Lost's presence in everyday life. As Weeks-Rogers writes so beautifully "There's nothing empty in all that penetrating velvet / blue-black, when you gaze long enough." -J'Lyn Chapman, author of To Limn / Lying InKristiane-Weeks Rogers' Self-Anointment with Lemons feels like a scrolling index as narrative to these fractured times, each line popping with the sensual-poems teeming with the pop and hiss of the present. If that sounds in any way formulaic the poems are anything but-ecstatic, soulful, exuberantly ongoing. What's here is what I want from poetry, immediacy so absolute I can't stop tasting and breathing and hearing the world-landscapes luminous with sand and blue water, Our Lady of Guadalupe tattoos and Mariachi music, Envidia and Toloache, Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, language so deep in its bilingual ache we long to burst into flame due to the thrill of mere sound. I couldn't get through a couple poems at a time without wanting a salt-rimmed glass and a trip to a museum so I could stand once again in front of a Barnett Newman painting or to sit myself down for a Tarot reading. How can language so easily be the thing, the place? I love the electricity in these pages, the duende leaping off the page as if each poem were a recipe for immersion in the unapologetic act of living the day. -David Dodd Lee, Author of Orphan, Indiana and Animalities

Whether Margaret Barkley is remembering, reflecting, lamenting or celebrating, the poems in her chapbook, Ribs, express a life acutely observed. "She doesn't mind waiting like a new winter fox with taut muscles at the edge of a rabbit hole." These are poems that tell the truth as she fearlessly investigates the profound predicament of being a fully alive human.-Les Bernstein, AuthorMargaret Barkley's poems are rich in what it means to be human, with specific individuals and elements from the natural world emerging not only as definitive as an artist's rendition, but by her magic, elevated to the universal. Margaret takes every personal experience and puts it into a new perspective in her poetic world. We, her readers, are the richer for it.-Fran Claggett-Holland, Poet, Teacher, Educational Consultant, Author of four books of poems plus, many books on teaching literature and writing, Founder of The Poetry CollectiveMargaret Barkley's poetry, always accessible, ranges from the mundane to the sacred. She does not shrink from truth-even when raw-exploring the predicament of living in a body. Her words startle, driving the reader ever deeper. She is, simply, my favorite poet.-Skye Blaine¿