Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

Deborah Kahan Kolb was born and raised in an insular Hasidic community in Brooklyn, NY, and many of the poems featured in her debut chapbook Windows and a Looking Glass are reflective of her strict religious upbringing. Ultimately, she left the constraints of the community and has written poetry informed not only by her uniquely challenging past, but also by family and community, marriage and children, and shared histories and experiences. Windows and a Looking Glass is the poet's first offering - a gathering of anecdotes, snippets, and glimpses of characters and stories that populate the childhood and adulthood of this first-time author. The poems take the reader on a modern and edgy, autobiographical and biographical, observant and experiential excursion through childhood and community, relationships and marriage, and back to childhood and parenting on the other end.Poems included in this collection are winners of the Queens College James E. Tobin Poetry Award, "Zhou Ling," a finalist for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award, and "Eldest Daughter," a piece that highlights the oppression of women in Hasidic communities (in Veils, Halos & Shackles).

An island that emerges, disappears, reemerges, green trees in flames, sheep that change color--death is considered here in the mythical realm of change and possibility. Rooms are never entirely empty of those who once inhabited them, and even window smudges take on the visage of a lost loved one. McCoy's poems are a richly hued consideration of "mysterium tremendum / through a shadow of glass." -- Marilyn McCabe, author of Glass Factory and Perpetual Motion

The uttering of painful secrets wash upon the shoreline of The Drowning Book's poems, and sometimes memory is a wreck smashed beyond recognition. Half-promise and half-prayer, The Drowning Book is meditative, nostalgic, and personally-reflective at first. But as water cannot be contained when it continues to overflow a vessel, the collection becomes a larger petition. It is a baptismal ritual, a beckoning to others to be cleansed and submerged alike. Drawing from the "drowned" voices of silenced minorities, strangers, forgotten ancestors, and even the child-self, Cristina J. Baptista crafts a personal voice with all-too-familiar, universal feelings rising to the surface. Indeed, this collection is a celebration of what has sunk beneath the surface of history and what is worth preserving. Each line lifts a moment, memory, or message once thought inconsequential from a watery grave and breathes new life into its lungs. In particular, the voices of women are echoed here, resolutely and hauntingly, as if bubbling up from some sea-chamber like tempting sirens unaware of their power. Newspaper headlines find footing among the skipping stones of childhood observations. Biblical allusions wrap around pop culture stories. Discussions between parents and children draw readers from the oftentimes magnificently threatening natural world into the no-less ambiguous domestic sphere. Every poem is like a rock ready to be lifted, a little life beneath waiting to be prodded, examined, and discussed. Ultimately, The Drowning Book invites readers to dwell in the dark possibility that to drown in new discoveries and recollections alike may mean to linger and look with more discerning eyes. It is a collection about memory and questions-a collection interested in provoking honest confessions from its readers. If The Drowning Book feels like a confrontation, it is-one that offers a watery mirror into which readers are invited to stare and consider the reflection of themselves.

Alms for Oblivion is divided between a retrospective look at Americans abroad in summer study at Oxford and a glance back at films and popular icons of the Twentieth Century.

Wayword traces a path along the northern edge of Spain to the pilgrim's goal of Santiago de Compostela. With a poem for each stop on the road, Anna Polonyi's first chapbook serves at once as a sensual field-guide, an intimate meditation on walking, and a textured album of voices, whether human, animal or elemental, encountered along the way.

These poems capture a unique and strange detour in the life of the author Joyce Sweeney, who, along with her husband, felt compelled to try and take in a depressed, drug-addicted woman named Irene, in 2008. For three years, the Sweeneys struggled to get Irene help, but she had been suicidal all her life and the battle was lost in January of 2011. Joyce has always turned to poetry to heal her wounds and understand her life. Her first chapbook, IMPERMANENCE (Finishing Line 2008) was her attempt to make sense of her mother's Alzheimer's disease. When Irene took her life, the pain and shock took form as these poems. Ironically, Irene always said that when she was gone, no one would remember her. Sweeney hopes that as she shares her own experiences, she will help heal others and not let people like Irene be forgotten. Joyce is the author of fourteen young adult novels, many of which were award winners. The most popular among these are PLAYERS, Winslow Press 2000, Free Fall, Delacorte Press, 1998 and Shadow, Delacorte Press 1996. In addition she has another collection of poetry published by Finishing Line Press, IMPERMANENCE, 2008. Joyce is an active member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Editors, and teaches online writing classes at www.sweeneywritingcoach.com. She is also a founding member of The Playgroup LLC, which produces original work by South Florida Playwrights. Joyce lives in Coral Springs, Florida, with her husband Jay and cat Nitro. She plans to use part of the proceeds of this book to help organizations that counsel potential suicide victims and survivors.

100 MILES OF HEAT, a new chapbook by Mark B. Hamilton, explores the relationship between people and the contemporary environment. Praised by scholars, writers and editors, these poems beautifully express a journey down the historic Ohio River. The poems have been recognized in contests and by publication in such journals as New Letters, We Proceeded On, The Listening Eye, Ship of Fools, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Written River. This chapbook is a sampling from his book-length manuscript "OYO," a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize, 2015. Comments on "OYO" include: "… written beautifully … a wonderful adventure." -David Remnick, editor, The New Yorker "…remarkably told in trenchant verse … a wail and a love-song …. -Robert Michael Pyle, PhD, environmentalist and author "You have added a major text to American environmental literature." -Darlene Mathis-Eddy, PhD, Professor Emeritus, BSU

Find love, loss, and all manner of plant and beast in Clara Bush Vadala's debut collection of poems, Prairie Smoke: Poems from the Grasslands. The poems in this book whisper of longing, of hope, and of a fragile world which still blooms with the beauty of perseverance. Follow Vadala as she searches for "home" in the tallgrass prairies of the north, in the language of landscape the native tongue of Texas, and the wildness of North America's own megafauna, the moose. Even as these poems explore the ethereal quality of animals, from toads to moose, roadside skunk to elusive black bear, the human presence is ever felt and closely examined. "Longing" invites the reader to feel the need for companionship even in the tranquility of nature, "Three Things" imparts the necessity of keeping to ourselves, even as we long to explore the world around us. Open Prairie Smoke: Poems from the Grasslands to discover the natural history of the prairie, as told by the creatures within.

Transition, transience, relocation-as our world shrinks, the worldwide web connects us, and transportation becomes more affordable for many, we are increasingly a global nation of transplants. Welcome to life in the millennium!Migrations are spawned by war, famine, or some primal instinct in us; one may be forced into exile or simply sense that it is time to move on. Pilgrimages have been been a staple in the spiritual landscape of many faiths. A loved one dies or a job ends, and you are plunged -transplanted-into transition. Transplants experience all the dynamics of transition and perhaps culture shock, as they move from place to place-possibly against their will. Flexibility, adaptation, language or jargon learning, anger and grief management-these are the skills to be mastered if one is to survive in a learning curve that may be unwanted, fast-paced, or in a hostile environment. Emotional stability is not a given; emotional shipwreck is common.As explored through poetry, Transplants tackles the chaos of transition: the joys, confusions, freedom and frustration of moving between places, cultures, and friends, while trying to maintain a sense of identity and home. To be human is to experience transition; you will find a companion for the journey in Transplants.Pat Butler is your tour guide. A native New Yorker, Pat has transplanted from New York to New England, France, and the South, and currently resides in Florida. Transition is a way of life for Pat, and the major theme of this chapbook, her third with Finishing Line Press. (Two previous chapbooks, Poems from the Boatyard and The Boatman's Daughter, explored themes of place, identity and home.)Observations on Southern culture are mixed with those of an ex-pat returning after 12 years overseas. The poems, written mostly in Georgia, emerge through the lens of re-entry shock. The Boatman's Daughter finds herself on a new shore; America has changed, as she has. And the South is not the North.The urban rat race slows to small town crawl and contemplations on the couch. The concrete jungle cedes to woods, rivers and lakes. Northern directness, mellowed by French finesse, now yields to Southern charm. Transition is eased by the gifts of magnolias, hummingbirds, and an overhead fan.Transplants opens with a poem that evokes the polar tensions of transition, and closes with one that resolves those tensions. Both poems are set, appropriately, in Autumn, with its distinctive rhythms of death and release, gathering and harvest. It appears as one of the chapbook's main characters, and marks Pat's arrival in and (eight years later) departure from Georgia. It provides an apt metaphor for transition, and ultimately yields its secrets on hope.Alexa Selph, poetry instructor at Emory Continuing Education in Georgia writes, "Transplants captures moments that are both fresh and familiar. Pat has a gift for transforming everyday experience into vivid imagery, engaging all the senses and leaving us with the wish to come back for more."Pat has also been published in a number of literary and online journals, including Cardinal Flower, Aurorean, and Ruminate. While in Georgia, Pat was part of the Peachtree Poets' scene, including its annual poetry competition, where she has won numerous awards, mentions, and publication in their chapbooks. Four entries appear in Transplants.Follow Pat on social media and the following sites:Website: www.theliteraryboatyard.wordpress.comBlog: http://poemsfromtheboatyard.blogspot.com/Facebook: Poems from the BoatyardInstagram: boatyardpat

Changing Times travels from Depression Pennsylvania to California and Rome, from coal towns with pretty names to Chinese railroad laborers. Other poems celebrate flowers, a cherished cat, a beloved daughter.

Romp and Ceremony, a full-length poetry collection, by Jeannie E. Roberts, combines humor, sound play, light and shadow, and close observation of our natural world. Divided into six sections, Seasonal Disorders, Brighter Days Ahead, Signs of Life, Food and Other Phenomena, All Life Shines, and Romp It Up!, Roberts takes the reader on a vibrant, compassionate, and entertaining seasonal journey, drawing on both human and non-human stories as her framework. Poet and author Bill Yarrow summarizes this collection of fifty-one poems in perfect pitch, "A book for all those who admire the sobriety of ceremony and appreciate the intoxication of romp."

The poems in The Season of Distress and Clarity probe what is essential to understanding a complex and confusing world and does so with a lyrical strength that is delightful.