Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

The Siren Sonnets is a collection of sonnets presented through the mythological persona of a Siren. It is a book of poems of longing and desire, thwarted and found.

In her first poetry chapbook, Faith Paulsen explores the nature of symmetry and asymmetry, music, relationship and the works that bleed through new coats of paint. Faith's work has appeared in journals and collections including Musehouse Journal, philly.com, Apiary, Blast Furnace, cahoodaloodaling, Front Porch Review, Literary Mama, MOON, Stoneboat, When Women Waken, Wild River Review, and the collections "In Gilded Frame" and "Three Minus One." This is her first chapbook.

Using images and metaphors derived from her love for birds, and fly fishing, and nature in all its many forms, human and otherwise, Sarah Rossiter in her poetry chapbook, Natural Life With No Parole, describes an emotional and spiritual journey from a place of 'unknowing' and shadow into one of acceptance, integration, and light.

Nothing Is So Lovely is a collection of hard-hitting poems that explores the experiences of a young woman born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains. Candace Butler speaks from her heart and engages the reader with themes of storytelling, place, and tradition. Whether the poem is a canzone about dancing, an ekphrastic pantoum featuring a contemplative angel, or a recipe poem with local masters, Butler's second chapbook of poetry takes you to a place rich with music, the beauty of the mountains, and the traditional heritage of Central Appalachia.

Home Place is a collection of twenty-two poems that pulls the reader into a world of both the seen and unseen. Here, gone things whisper and the present is a layer synchronous with the past. Animals, plants, humans and spirits inhabit a particular place and home where Bluegrass and Appalachia meet.

Staring Through My Eyes is a collection of poems written by an introvert who has a keen and quiet awareness of her surroundings; from the mountainous geography of Pennsylvania, to the urban Mid-West, to the ever evolving landscapes of culture and gender. A kaleidoscope of personal and cultural observation; enjoy these poems "straight down the spine of afternoon."

In this first collection of her poetry, Laurie Elizabeth Lambert includes several "mother poems" and explorations of nature. Here you will also find pieces that nudge us to remember what it is like to begin again, as our lives change with the passage of time. As mother, daughter, friend, and scientist, Lambert's heartfelt response to the world is spilled on every page.

The Lost and the Found by Mary Ellen Geer is a short collection of poems on the themes of memory, loss, and the natural world-its consolations as well as its dark side. Many of the poems have elements of folk tales or fairy tales, with surprising, sometimes surrealistic images.

In the Company of Queens crosses centuries, juxtaposing the lives of sixteenth century British queens with those of today's royal family. Well researched and award-winning, these poems portray women sympathetically. Anne Boleyn dresses with as much care as mistress and as queen as she does on the morn of her execution; Marie de Guise makes the agonizing decision to send her daughter to France; in a fairytale moment, Princess Di dances with John Travolta-even as she hides the truth of a dysfunctional marriage. By focusing on the flesh-and-blood side of these royal personages, In the Company of Queens reveals the kinship that binds all women together.

Katherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII were the "Kate and Will" of England in the 16th century. Young, royal and beautiful they commanded the attention of all of Europe. All they needed to do to extend their reign was to produce a male heir. In Katherine of Aragon, Alice-Catherine Jennings imagines the life and heartbreak of Katherine through a collection of poems inspired by the texts of other poets and writers.

Born of the author's roots in rural West Virginia, Inside the Horse's Eye offers a keen observation of the significant within the small. Clean and concise, Kisner's poems demonstrate a sensitivity that will resonate with readers.

The poems found within Stepping Back capture both intimate and vivid images of nature. They are also poignant glimpses of Barbara's journey in life.

Although the final poem, "Gone," observes "time only flows in one direction/and can never be rewound," Time Travel moves fluidly back through decades of the author's experiences, weaving them into a work of memory and revelation.

Nancy Corson Carter's welcome new book is a rich feast. Accompanied by evocative old photos, the poems recreate how it felt to grow up on a farm in central Pennsylvania. Without sentimentalizing or preaching about a way of life long gone, Carter's poems make your mouth water and your heart expand as her grandparents and parents come to life as we read. The book ends with the lines "I remember! I remember!" and she makes us remember, too. "Their smiles are genuine," she observes of one of the photos-and so are Nancy Corson Carter's poems. -Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida ***Touched by nostalgia, but formed from precise observations, these poems consistently evoke engaging reminders of a nearly vanished way of life. -Gary Fincke, author of Bringing Back the Bones: New and Selected Poems, Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing, Susquehanna University ***In Sunday Dinner at the Farm, Nancy Corson Carter writes of the rich life she remembers on her grandparents' farm. These wonderful poems brim with keenly observed details-heritage apples, spicewood tea, dandelion wine, shoofly pie, garden harvest, dates written in the family Bible. These poems bring to life a previous time and place and especially the two hard-working grandparents: Your worn brass bed:/ under its quilted curves lie/ ghosts of embraces. The family photographs that accompany the well-wrought text give insight into the author's memories and make the collection a delight to read and cherish. -Coyla Barry, author of The Flying Days and two chapbooks, Creature and Creature, winner of the 2001 Harperprints Competition, and Swimming Woman: Poems from Montana

Erin Fristad survived 15 years commercial fishing in Alaska. She went to sea for months at a time living in tight quarters with men she was neither related to nor intimate with. She fended off drunks, heard the confession of many an infidel, and rode the waves of passion like a highliner. She fell asleep to sounds of humpback whales, bathed in hotsprings under the Northern Lights, and saw men reduced to tears by their drive to make living on a relentless ocean. Erin fell in love with a way of life shaped by the natural world and threatened by changing values, environmental destruction and greed. When she thought fishing had proved her hardworking and savvy, she went crabbing and learned she was a greenhorn all over again.These poems bring women to their feet cheering the unflinching honesty with which they portray working is a man's world. And the men of this world, they rise too, offering gratitude as these poems document the wild landscape where they feel most at home, but few people will every understand. These poems look deep into the lives and hearts of commercial fishermen and fisherwomen-into the wild in all our hearts-to praise the bittersweet complexity of what it means to be human.***By this book's light you peer through a porthole of visceral poetry and prose into a life onboard where the hiss of the stove, seething fish-hold, deckhand's mood, rough weather and scant wages all cast you free from landed comforts. You are no longer their prisoner. By choosing the working life, Fristad's fine intelligence has great gifts for the reader's mind. -Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft***With The Glass Jar, Erin Fristad opens for everyone a surprisingly human and direct path into the mind and heart of today's commercial fishing deckhand. Whether it's a consideration of the sublime of the wild, a frank depiction of the ugly side of crewmates or a yawp of praise at being alive one more day, this fierce writing beats with the blood at the heart of all living beings. -Moe Bowstern, writer, artist, fisherwoman and editor/publisher of the award winning zine, Xtra Tuf since 1996.

A sense of the precariousness and preciousness of life shape the poems in Twenty Ways of Looking, Miriam Weinstein's debut chapbook explores themes of memory, home, family and social concerns.

The poems in Stray Gods are notes from a journey about other journeys. They explore identity and place through the lens of a poet based in Pondicherry, India, as the result of a yearlong series of conversations with locals, travelers, and artists. Throughout history, the idea that a journey to an 'exotic' land has prevailed in folktales, religious literature, and pop culture. Stray Gods documents a year of exploring this cultural exchange as people from around the world undergo journeys, whether physical or internal, in search of answers.

The poems in Heart Contracts, Sarah Carey's debut collection, are not simple. Spare as candlelight, they are true and they shine. Do not miss this book.

A celebratory and compassionate collection of poems by Cathy Cultice Lentes that "explores the magic of everyday living," and the sacred connections to be made between people, places, and the natural world.

Nadra Mabrouk's poetic debut, How Things Tasted When We Were Young, is a sleek, visceral volume that disturbs as it enraptures, in the spirit of a young and ever-evolving Adrienne Rich. It seems to me that a talented poet articulates what is most beautiful in the world-"a small body already forming on the lips of the mother, / pink and thick and wanting." A visionary poet does this, too, and also something more. She articulates beautifully that which is not easy to look at, not easy to love: "your skin glows: / glaucous, a halo of ash, dead skin on each cheekbone." An enduring poet does both of these, and also something more. She examines herself in light of all that is beautiful, all that is not: "But I only/ know the tongue of conquerors, the curves of the Arabic alphabet, / as the vowels curl into each other like hooks into flat palms." Nadra Mabrouk is talented and visionary. She writes poems that will endure. Julie Marie Wade, author of Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems and When I Was Straight: Poems *** These are lush, intimate poems, full of rivers and bodies and family secrets. From Florida to Amsterdam to Egypt, Nadra Mabrouk creates a poetic geography by turns tender and sharp-eyed, sorrowful and celebratory. Campbell McGrath

"I don't think anyone has any business writing poetry unless they have the ability to see the world in an entirely new way. Lucy Tiven has this, and then some. (Plus she's really funny.)" ~ Juliet Escoria***"Lucy Tiven's enticingly schizophrenic Dysplasia fjords the uncanny valley between eBay and the author's cervix like a friend you wish would never age. "I'm sorry / I spilled soup on your keyboard," she admits, but goddamn if it's not by 100% direly refreshing." ~ Blake Butler***"I like Lucy Tiven's poetry collection because there's a quote from Eileen Myles at the beginning and I've had a crush on Eileen Myles ever since I saw the Cool for You cover even though I'm not sure the woman on the cover is Eileen. Also, I like Lucy Tiven's poetry collection (I can't remember the title or the title was a word I didn't know or too long of a word or something) because Lucy seems smart and funny like me and the poems reference things I can relate to like where someone was when Michael Jackson died (having sex with 'you') and being in a sanitarium with Alice Cooper and because she titled a poem 'Cul-de-sac.' I just love the word 'Cul-de-sac' because it's so suburban." ~ Elizabeth Ellen

After the Creek is a debut collection of poems that examines place, whether that be city, home, garden, or grave. McClintock employs varieties of tone and voice to interrogate the everyday.

"Sara's poems are less like reading and more like being handed a stack of photographs of people you'd almost forgotten. The images are beautiful, heartbreaking and crystal clear, the edges yellowed with nostalgia. Magic." Amanda Gowin, author of Radium Girls (Thunderdome Press, 2014) *** In Somehow We Remain in the Aftermath, Sara Krueger invites us into a world of strangeness. Above the surface, humans become "metal / from toes to tummy to tongue," to survive. Below the surface, the world looks just as bizarre, with beings "like scattered husks / found after a hard harvest" burrowing to safety as the "sweet, sweet blue / kept on its way to becoming Venus." And while the world might seem alien, it isn't; there's much to recognize here, perhaps most poignant, the beauty in the ugliness, the optimism in the apocalypse, the spark of hope within us all in the next generation--the "new one" with "tiny fists" that "find purchase in this weakened world." Read this book to experience what it means to be human, albeit "with skin so scaly thick / rolling mud balls like a little dung beetle." Katie Hoerth, Poetry Editor of Devilfish Review and author of Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Press, 2014) *** Sara Krueger is a story teller "Spinning yarns / and tall tales too / with digital banjo picking / and firelight / tumbling from our barrel chests." Somehow We Remain in the Aftermath is an enchanting and vibrant new collection-a modern Pandora that offers wry acumen and cleverness. Leah Maines, Publisher, Finishing Line Press