Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

"The Hidden Wilderness" is Linda Ann Suddarth's exploration of "other places" as she calls them. Listen to their litany: sacred space, behind a story, where happiness reigns, some wild space, forever, snowy places, enchanted spots. These are places of the imaginal, where reason and rationality struggle to enter." Dennis Patrick SlatteryThese poems are a collection of what is hidden in the natural world and also within. The relationship between nature and the inner self can be reciprocal, if one learns to listen. The poems also include the thorny yet beautiful relationship between humans. The natural world exudes healing, beauty, and honesty giving a place of rest. These poems were conceived in a sacred natural space in the Appalachian region of Virginia, near Charlottesville, where there is the familiar landscape of childhood, and ancient familial spirits of earthy hard-working ancestors. This region is full of enchantment of the old-fashioned variety which is also found in Ireland's sacred spaces, as is alluded to in the poem "Born to Earth: Newgrange." The woods, and tops of mountains, still speak in lovely ways. Much can be learned about how to be human when stepping into the invisible delineations of sacred space.

From the very first poem, where sprawling development drives deer out of their forest home onto into a suburban neighborhood, South Carolina poet, H. R. Spencer's work confronts, too, the human challenge to understand our place in the natural order. The Color After Green crosses unique human territories from the dangerous work of urchin divers in Maine to the manufacture of deadly chemicals that spill into our waters and remain poisonous a half century later. In another poem, the harvesting of horseshoe crabs, where products from their blood are used to create medications, becomes a fable, where the Grandest Horseshoe laments their collective endangerment with a Monarch butterfly and a Red Knot sandpiper. The effects of global warming show up in the title poem and in "Eco-Travel," a vivid description of a trip through the "rainless rain forests" of Costa Rica. Other poems deal simply with the speaker's observations of the world around him, whether kayaking and encountering small epiphanies, such as the water striders "dimpled symmetries" mirroring those of the paddle or the "throaty red luminescence" of the green anole "capturing sunlight" on a button bush. He watches the spider lily, their buds "swell, buckle open at their crown" and explode into a "leafless, botanical firework," or the rats in the corn crib with "wet bituminous eyes." The poet's background as a visual artist lends authenticity to a poem about the last reflections of John James Audubon on his life's work or later where he speaks through the voice of Georgia O'Keeffe describing the emotions behind her flower paintings. Toward the end the book becomes more a personal journey through the poet's own childhood, his rich engagement with the life in and on Virginia's historic James River, and the passing of the generations there. The final two poems are a terrifying description of surviving Hurricane Hugo in 1989 South Carolina and a meditation on the death of his teacher, James Dickey, that unites the spiritual kingdom of the poet with his deliverance back into "the kingdom of ferns, of mosses," with "emotions, pre-vertebrate," and "his motion now the motion of the earth." These poems reflect on the beauty and complexity of nature and Man's relationship to the natural world, but don't hesitate also talk explicitly about our troubled environment and how our foolish, sometimes selfish, attitudes can lead toward its destruction.

Tyler Truman Julian's debut collection of poetry, Wyoming: The Next Question to Ask (to Answer), takes you up and down Wyoming's highways and back and forth across a state obsessed with legacy and the reality that within its borders everyone dies younger. Across these linked poems, Julian introduces you to a story wrestling with questions of both past and present, a family trying to survive, and a speaker seeking to define what it means to be an individual in the least populated state in the rapidly changing American West.

Tracey Daley Brocker brings to her poems the ability to express human nature through the natural world with clarity and a touch of humor.

In this story told through poetry, a gang-rape throws a teenage girl into adulthood on a path of promiscuity and abusive relationships. Giorgio incorporates several poetic forms, including haiku, villanelle and prose poem, to capture the shadow of a difficult past coloring the present and dimming the possibilities for a positive future. When the woman finally finds the courage to say no to abuse and submission, she faces herself and discovers her own worth. She learns to put herself first, even if it means being alone.

The chapbook The Need for a Bridge consists of 20 poems inspired by driving over the Fore River bridge, getting stuck in traffic on the bridge, and researching the history of the many bridges that have covered the Fore River. Wilson explains, "I did not know, until I spent some time reading The Patriot Ledger on microfilm at the Thomas Crane Library in Quincy (Massachusetts) that people have been complaining about the bridge going up and impeding traffic since 1918! We all have our stories about our frustration with the old bridge, and this book has formalized some of mine. It has been a meaningful endeavor to research these poems, present them at readings, and meet those of you who also know the bridge and have been inconvenienced trying to cross it." Alice Kociemba, author of Bourne Bridge, writes "These poems, intricate portraits spanning time and distance, celebrate connections. Through the power of poetry, we come to care about the Fore River Bridge and its people and see how this bridge has the capacity to remember." George Kalogeris, author of Guide to Greece, describes the poems in Wilson's new collection as "quintessentially American in their concern for human connection and formal lyric expression." Her themes span the generations as well as the turbulent history of the region and the nation.

In Elegy & April, Curran submits to the wisdom of the seasonal round to mourn and celebrate ordinary experience. Inhaling grace and exhaling gratitude, these poems find their place in the present.

Novelist Jessica Barksdale's first poetry collection When We Almost Drowned contains award wining poems that grapple with issues of family and love, sisters and parents.

Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time opens with title long poem featuring snapshots of a new parent with a daughter and son, as seen through the lens of someone who attempts to parse honesty from the distorting processes of memory. The book closes with nine children's poems about the moon, stars, and dawn. Mosson is the author of three prior books of poetry, and has won literary fellowships from Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and the Puffin Foundation. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize Nominee. This relatable work should bridge readers of poetry with new parents looking to read, share, and enjoy. Family Snapshot balances domestic themes with experimental form to delight fans of poetry and newcomers alike.

The Scars, Aligned (A Cancer Narrative), Brad Buchanan's new book of poems, follows his amazing yet terrifying journey through the many phases of a cancer patient's experience: uncertainty, paranoia, diagnosis, acceptance, expectancy, crisis, treatment, and finally recovery. The narrative working through these poems is a powerful and universal one, but Buchanan's unique relationship to language (whether it be medical terms, the work of classic poets, or the details of an intensely lived physical and emotional ordeal) make this book far more than a mere succession of unfortunate events. These poems will drag you headlong into heaven and hell, then put you back down gently, with a new gratitude for everyday things. If surviving cancer is worthwhile, then this book is worth reading. And re-reading.