Bøger udgivet af Finishing Line Press

These are accessible poems, written in plain, direct language reminding us what it is like to be awake in our world, minute by minute; poems delivered with humor and unaffected humility that suggest a steadier, larger happiness than we might know. Basting's voice is simultaneously traveler, bystander, and intruder, a recalcitrant participant-witness admonishing himself for riding the cusp of other's experiences. HOME and AWAY reads as a team of quietly building poems, beginning with what could be, and finally, inviting a layered view of the peopled and natural worlds.

This poetry volume explores themes of loss and grief, the complexities of familial relationships, the struggles with coping with aging parents with dementia, the mourning that comes after their deaths, the significance of memory, and the struggle to maintain feelings of hope and resilience. The volume encompasses different forms of loss-from feminist poems that depict women's silencing and agency, to moments of grief and mourning, to questions of aging, to meditations on family photographs that explore the back stories of her parents' characters and experiences before the poet was born, and finally, to extended meditations on moments of resilience and hope. The volume ends with the idea of the need for "foraging for light," for embracing moments of being, joy, and artistry. Notable in the volume is its hybridity-its range of forms from lyric poems to prose poetry, persona and ekphrastic poems, and ghazals. The stylistic variety makes for an enriching poetic reading experience.

Finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize, This Girl, Your Disciple explores the history of a family suicide kept secret for almost 50 years.

This collection presents the voices of adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer - part of a cohort of some 70,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 39 who are diagnosed with cancer each year. Navigating cancer includes addressing human needs that become suddenly more pronounced for this age group: the loss of independence and a sense of immortality, the need for deepening relationships in a time of uncertain future, the anger, frustration and even humor involved in adjusting to a new body and a new story, and especially an intensified awareness of what is beautiful and valued in human life. This collection brings together established poets and new poetic voices to explore the wide range of emotional, imaginative and spiritual experience that the AYA cancer journey involves. It is offered as a resource for patients, families and survivors in the hope that it will deepen the sense of understanding and even community among AYA survivors, their loved ones and medical providers.

The Long Arc of Grief offers a compassionate, nuanced understanding of what it means to be a daughter, mother and friend-exploring the small, miraculous moments of discovery, heartbreak and redemption that come with facing loss.

A lively exploration of history, memory, and identity within manmade and natural landscapes, A Poetic Inventory of the Sandia Mountains illuminates the Southwestern wilderness through lyric research. Playing with the concept of a "scientific inventory" of a location's biodiversity, this chapbook catalogues the flora and fauna of Albuquerque, New Mexico, its urban wilds and surrounding mountains, river, and mesa. Against a graffitied, adobe backdrop, the desert ecosystem reveals itself: hummingbirds fly drunkenly after slurping fermented nectar; cottontails slip through the space-time continuum; and chollas guard sleeping beauties.

Mixed poetry and prose by award-winning author, Daniel Wolff, about Haiti and the U.S. role there, including the return of President Aristede, the beauty of an impoverished culture, and the role of whiteness.

Set on the trans-Siberian railway, these poems take up themes of mobility as well as the body and the self created through loss. In the collection, loss is generated through travel as it strips away the mundane routines used to define ourselves, such as homes, careers, families. For example, one poem focuses on the interaction between the speaker and an elderly Russian woman who perceives something evil in the speaker's surgery scars despite the brief encounter. In each poem, we see the speaker evolving and redefining self-identity through location, through unexpected connections and disconnections, through the present and the past. Dorris focuses on the body's role in mobility and self-creation because she has a genetic bone disorder which causes benign tumors, or osteocondromas, to form at her joints. As she grew, so did the tumors interfering with normal growth patterns; her right leg is shorter, her right arm is several inches longer, and she has strange knobs of bone sticking out. All that said, she walks, jogs if she must, dances and hopscotches (although not gracefully). For years she avoided writing about disability because she wanted to avoid sounding melodramatic and self-pitying, but while completing an MFA, she realized her disability colored the way she perceives the world and her role inside it; consequently, her poetics lean towards erasing, running, and eventually disassembling illusions, as well as contributing to the dialogue of disability poetics.

Sisi and the Girl from Town explores the relationship between two foreigners to Hungary: Queen Elizabeth of Hungary and the poet. In this collection of persona, narrative, and historical poems, human and natural landscapes shape the beautiful and complex history of Hungary, its invaders, and its most beloved Queen.

A brave and evocative meditation on motherlove, which considers how we rebuild ourselves after loss.Caledonia Kearns' first collection of poems, published at 49, is an attempt to meet Muriel Rukeyser's challenge, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/The world would split open". Kearns' poems tell the story of an ordinary woman raising a daughter as a second-generation single mother, as she recreates herself after marriage, negotiates lovers lost and found, and navigates the quotidian.From Kearns' childhood in Dorchester, Massachusetts ("the streets of that other city/were so quiet it was always a lonely dark") to her daughter's childhood during the first wave of gentrification in Brooklyn ("This is Brooklyn now./ The antenna factories across the street are long gone"), it is a deeply urban story.Told in four parts, Kearns begins-"Coming from where I do/there was no choice but to bet on the filly." She moves on to explore the reconstruction of the self after the end of a marriage and the search for connection. The collection ends with a reckoning-her daughter's depression and hospitalization before she leaves for college: "I don't want to say/sometimes my daughter wants to die/but if I don't there's no saving her/sometimes my daughter wants to die." Along the way her daughter's voice infuses the occasional commentary: "How you think/you fucked me up/is not how/you fucked me up."Clear-eyed and persistent, the virtue of "A Daughter's Work Is Heartless by Nature" is its straightforward, accessible lyric, its relentless search for beauty in the day-to-day.

Under Glass, a collection of 29 poems, follows the journey of physician Mary Lachman through her diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. Along the way she shares her challenges as well as insights into the human spirit. Her poems convey the importance of small things and the promise of each new day.

When The Mouth Can't Speak The Body Will-through her poetry and photography readers see the progression of Jane Berger Herschlag from a sickly victim of child abuse to a triumphant survivor. She struggled through years of repression till she turned her unchildhood into art. Jane vividly shows the impact of emotional and physical trauma that can damage the immune system; but the yearning for homeostasis can reverse that trend, and the immune system can regain its vigor.Witnessing one's history through analysis and journaling heals, and going public at readings enhances that recovery. Jane curated poetry readings at the 63rd Street YMCA. and at a Fifth Avenue Deli in NYC, and after moving to CT, at the YMCA in Danbury.