Poetry Books

Your book is dynamic! Strong, powerful words that reach the hearts and minds of the entire human race, and make them say "Hmmmm! This girl is speaking the truth"! Much love to ya sista' and keep up the excellent work!

This work of literature is an open and honest look at what many people are afraid to express. Ms Johnson has truly confronted the many life situations that are occuring everyday. This work is simply superb. I know that others who read this book will come to the same conclusion. It will lead the reader to an experience the whole gamut of emotions. It is a must read.

Paula your book title "Poetry Is more Than Just A Poem"is unique.I have never read a book such as this one. Keep on writing.The young people and seniors alike should have had this long ago.Thanks for letting us share your gift.

Paula Denise Johnson writes with an honesty and directness that is rarely seen. Her book tackles issues that many people have faced or will face in the world in which we live. She brings the point across that today's issues have to be dealt with here and now. She also lets readers know that bad things happen in our world because we allow it to happen and we can make changes for the better.

I love reading poetry and enjoyed reading this book because through the author's writing, I could feel what she was relaying. This is one book that is written with great depth and meaning. I hope she will write a second book because I can wait to read it!

Contemporary. Urban. Modern. Johnson's voice speaks volumes for those often ignored. Her poetry is compelling. It never lacks honesty, sensitivity or emotion. Often times, her poetry is a living black history lesson, a discourse on Christianity, an exclamation of pride in black womanhood. Through feeling examination of current events, Johnson's book touches to the very heart of the reader.

I loved this product. As an English teacher in DCPS I have found my students loved being read to. Sometimes they become a little sick of me reading out loud, so having the CD accompany these fantastic poems worked out well in providing variety.

This is a wonderful book for the beginner or anyone wanting to awaken the lapsed poetry lover within. I haven't read poetry since I was in college (many years ago) and found this book an easy re-entry into the wonderful world of poetry. Everyone will have their favorite poems, but I think the ones chosen for this book are diverse and reflect a treasure of past and contemporary work. I have listened to the CD over and over again as it opens up the other dimension of poetry which has helped me fully appreciate many of the poems. John Lithgow is a wonderful host, and beckons us all to enjoy one of life's truly meaningful and mysterious joys. The brief information about each poet proceeding their poem is very helpful and there are highlighted bits of general information including further reading, links to websites etc. Warning--reading poetry can be addictive...

Lithgow was born in Rochester, New York. His mother was a retired actress, and his father was a theatrical producer and director who ran the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. Lithgow won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1967, and won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Lithgow writes that poetry was an important part of his life: "My grandmother was part of the last generation who memorized poetry for pleasure."

Lithgow's love of poetry shines through the fifty short introductions to 50 classical poets on offer here.

Here's a sampling of the bios:

"Among the Victorian poets of England, Matthew Arnold was not as famous as Tennyson and Robert Browning. Unlike them, he did not have the luxury of being able to devote himself full-time to writing. Arnold, the son of a clergyman and private-school head- master, worked for a living his entire life. A ten-year appointment at Oxford University as a poetry professor, combined with his job as a government school inspector, meant he had to squeeze in his poetry on his own time. He wrote most of his poems before he was forty years old, when family life and work were less demanding. After that, he concentrated on writing essays about culture, religion, and literature, and his prose was better received than his poetry, at least during his lifetime. Some say it was his literary criticism that elevated criticism to an art form in its own right. Here is Arnold on poetry: "I think it will be found that grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject."

To Arnold, no matter how beautiful its language or imagery, if a poem lacked an important subject, he found it unworthy of his attention. Serious and austere himself, he chose lofty subjects for his own poems-faith or the absence of faith, how to live in a meaningful way, politics, the individual in relation to society. He believed his work would endure because it reflected the period's big themes. "For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur," wrote Arnold, "the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment." Arnold's moment in history happened to be one of great change and flux. You could say all his poetry was about coming to terms with the Victorian age of industrialism and the weakening of religion.

***

Lithgow chooses poems he personally enjoyes the most;
for Arnold he chose "Dover Beach":

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -- on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

You can hear the actor's cadences as you read these lines, and Lithgow adds: "There's just no way around it, this is a downbeat poem. I hear in it a desperate, yearning gloom, a sense of despair about the Victorian world and a personal crisis of faith. But despite the poet's melancholy, the poem is quite beautiful in its specificity. Arnold reveals his feelings very directly and openly."

Lithgow is very aware of the importance of sound, and for folks like me with a tin ear, the accompanying CD is a special delight: great poetry read by great actors like Jodie Foster and Helen Mirren.

Altogether, a delight to savor and perhaps to even encourage the reader to memorize a few lines.

Robert C. Ross 2007 2008

The most important factor in this anthology is that Lithgow is not a poet! How great is that! No name dropping, no friend of a friend, no academic postulations on the preponderances of poetry's perplexing postulations! He just loves poetry. And that frees him to choose what he likes.

The second important factor is that he provides us with audio. Poetry is an audio art as well as visual one. And it stinks to always be missing out on 1/2 of the art.

As a student a teacher of poetry I was schooled in contemporaries like Collins, Howe, Harjo, Bukowski so I always had an aversion to the masters being a lot of it was now cliche and with that annoying abab rhyme scheme. But Lithgow and company make it come alive for me. Hearing Auden read by Foster blew the doors on my poetic hinges. I think this anthology is important for anyone who loves the arts. It is not condescending or overwrought with analysis. A little history of the poet, a little nostalgia about why he like the poem, and then BAM! the poem PLUS he give you more poems by the same author after his initial pick just for exposure so you get 50 poems on the CD plus more in the book. This is the kind of book you buy everyone you know when you can't think of any really worthwhile and meaningful to give them.

It makes me want to do my own anthology poems I love. I my own quarrel is that I doubt there will be a sequel.

The Poet's Corner, compiled by John Lithgow presents an expansive collection of poetry, and is accompanied by a bonus MP3 CD featuring readings of poetry by Mr Lithgow and his friends [ Glenn Close, Morgan Freeman, Jodie Foster, Sam Waterston etc].

Though not the most comprehensive collection of poetry, it is a worthy compilation of well-known poetry written in the English language and is sure to find fans, both existing lovers of poetry and those just coming to appreciate the genre.

Each poem that is selected is accompanied by a short bio of the poet and Mr Lithgow's own explanation as to how the piece interests him or its emotional pull for him. The poems are presented by the poet [alphabetically by their last names] beginning with Matthew Arnold, and ending with William Butler Yeats. There are 50 poets in all, and the poems cover different eras, varied subjects, yet are all beguiling and unique in their ability to draw us in and affect us in different ways. Reading this compilation impacted me emotionally, engulfing me in feelings of joy, sadness and even silent contemplation. The bonus CD is another plus and together this is a wonderful and enjoyable compilation of poetry.

This little book is filled with meaningful prayers for children that they can easily learn and recite. My own children read it and now my grandchildren are enjoying it and asking for it to be read to them at bedtime.

It is a great Book our Son has one for Bedtime and we wanted the same for our next Baby due any day.

Thanks

This book has been around a long time. When my grandson was little his mother and father read this book to him each night along with several books he was allowed to choose. When I visited him he asked me to read the book, even before his afternoon nap. Ageless......

My 5 year old loves to say a prayer every night and each morning. This book has prayers for all occasions. They are simple for her to remember. The illustrations are wonderful and fit in great with the prayers. She knows which are night time and day time prayers by looking at the pictures. You can never go wrong with Little Golden Books. I look forward to sharing this for years to come!

The amazing invitation in Scripture to actually talk to the Father in Heaven through His Son, is something that every child needs to know.
The world is often a frightening place to little ones. This lovely little book, so beautifully illustrated, helps us teach little ones about a kind, good, powerful Heavenly Father Who cares and hears our prayers.
It also serves to link generations in a communal perspective because the prayers in this wee book were offered up by grandparents and parents of past generations. I am delighted that it is still available! In a world where selfish ambition drives and greed thrives, this little book directs focus to another realm and encourages excellence: God, make my life a little song/That comforteth the sad,/That helpeth others to be strong/ And makes the singer glad.

Barbara Crooker's RADIANCE is aptly titled and captures her joy and wonder in all that surrounds her and us. As I read this collection, I flagged pages of favorite poems until I realized I was marking nearly every page. These well-crafted poems are playful and touching, a glimpse at not only one poet's desire for MORE of life's riches, but also an awareness of love and living's ephemeral nature. Crooker is a wordsmith with fresh phrases that recall her youth in the fifties and sixties -- and the youth of her peers. She is candid about the frustrations of raising an autistic son, with descriptions of his discomfort as well as his love for all things "perforated: toilet paper, graham crackers, coupons/ in magazines loves the order of the tiny holes,/ the way the boundaries are defined." She questions, "if I've done enough to deserve this life/ I've been given. A pile of sorrow, yes, but joy/ enough to balance the equation."

With these beautiful poems, she shows us she is more than deserving of our praise.

For other poets, this book is charming as well as instructive. If you're new to poetry or have been afraid to trudge through the sometimes-rocky terrain of contemporary poems, you'll be very glad you took your first steps here.

ACHIEVING RADIANCE by Linnea Johnson
This Book Review was published in Summer 2007 PRAIRIE SCHOONER
RADIANCE: POEMS BY BARBARA CROOKER, Word Press, 2005 ($17)
Winner of the Word Press First Book Prize
Word Press, P.O. Box 541106, Cincinnati, Ohio 45254-1106

The three-plus pages of single-spaced acknowledgments attest to the fact that Barbara Crooker is one of the best poets you've been able to read only every now and then. Writing her entire adult life and now a grandmother, this is her very first full-length collection of poems; a fact to give all poets pause, even as one splashes into the lightstream of finally being able to read this perfect book.
Like the Impressionists Crooker daubs into the lyrics and onto the palette of her poems
...these iris rise
writhe, charmed like snakes by the song of the sun.
The wild blue heart of longing moves up, up,
from papery rhizomes...
["Iris, 1889"]

she has proceeded without standard imprimatur and brouhaha. Like the Impressionists, too, Crooker has succeeded. With a minim here, a tittle there, an iota virtually everywhere, she's been nominated for seventeen Pushcart Prizes; she is the author of ten chapbooks and more than four hundred fifty published poems; she has had ten residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Stanley Kunitz judged the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred competition which she won; and for her terrific, wit-whipped poem, "Nearing Menopause, I Run Into Elvis at Shoprite," and read by Alfre Woodard on the 1997 audio collection, Grow Old Along With Me --The Best is Yet to Be, she was nominated for a Grammy.
RADIANCE, divided into six parts, opens with "All That Is Glorious Around Us" and closes with "Poem Ending with a Line by Rumi," establishing a frame of the "grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled overlooks, and towering clouds" of the luminous paintings referenced by the poem's title and the Thomas Worthington Whittredge oil painting, "Kaaterskill Falls," reproduced on this book's cover. Immediately, Crooker tells us that "everything is glorious around us" including "doing errands on a day of driving rain". Full of journeying water, red and gold leaves, rocky escarpment, panoramic landscape, the "glories of breath" and how her mother struggles to breathe, this poem causes us to notice "small rainbows of oil on the pavement" in juxtaposition with the oil paintings of The Hudson River School of art.
"There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground" is Rumi's line of poetry with which Crooker closes the book. Everything here, too, is "glorious around us". The line before Rumi's, one of Crooker's, leaves us in the hushed and tawny silence of a late autumn, "...so deep, the only sound, leaf falling on leaf".
In this volume of 84 pages/50 poems Crooker re-constitutes Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Shoprite, and a grammar lesson; she pegs wash onto a line, calls hawks from the sky, blazes iris, peonies, and sunflowers to life, gives us the Shozui temple, lilacs, licks of desire, red and blue, the gyre, Deconstructionism, a comet and an opossum.
In "The Comet and the Opossum" Crooker, out at night, momentarily balances on transience, like a tightrope walker teetering on a highwire timeline, seeing light from a 20,000 years ago comet even as she notices the familiar backyard opossum diminish to bones alone, bones which might still be where she is now 20,ooo years hence.
Last night, looking up at the inky blackness, I felt myself
shrink, smaller than the smallest bones in the opossum's tail,
and then I found the comet one last time...

When into words she forms her son's autism, her friend's cancer, or any of the other galvanic, tearing, breaking things of life, she isn't confessional or asking for pity, she's creating `the made thing'. In a 2005 interview, she says, "I don't look at writing as a form of self-expression, but rather, the love of the made thing, like a hand-thrown bowl or oil on canvas. I try to do what William Stafford said,"I have woven a parachute out of everything broken".
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze. Sometimes, just what you have
manages to be enough.
["Happiness"]

This poet explores, as do few others, generating love again and again within an old love, a long-nurtured love.
Two stubborn people, dulled into habit
stuck in the old sock of marriage, might just fall in love again
["Possibly"]


..Often, I slip a hand under
your body to anchor myself to this earth... ["Away in Virginia..."]

"Tangled up in love, running out of time," Crooker writes:
...Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return...
["In the Middle"]

Indeed, in "Irrational Numbers" it's as if the mathematics of the couple is solved and resolved by neither want nor longing nor desire, but, instead, because they are elemental as color and day, and geometry, "...the angle/ of intersection, where we come together..."
In RADIANCE we learn, too, what Crooker was doing the day Jerry Garcia died, how corn grows, the nature of happiness and crows, the landscapes of motherhood, growing food, and the infinite. Whether her subject is politics or maternal grief, Crooker is neither troubled nor neurotic. The cyclical, non-idealized world is her home and she belongs to it, it to her. She knows how this mysterious as-is world works through her work, some of which is finally in one place together, and which we are finally privy to, thanks to RADIANCE.
They speak in tongues; whole glossolalia rolls
out of their beaks. Their song is unmusical, industrial,
like a wrench on metal. They rise in a dark river,
fly past the redbuds next to the cherries, a small stream
of violets underneath...
["Quiscalus, Quiscula"]

In this poem, too, she tells us to "Love whatever you can," and that "night is always bearing down". She is a wizard of unsentimental passion!
And, Crooker brandishes a lucid sense of humor --rooted and witty-- along with her other knowing, going senses. In "Twenty-five Years of Rejection Slips" Crooker plumbs the familiar writers' abyss of sending out work to editors hoping to get one's poems Out There and into the Grand Conversation of literary publication chatter, but, instead, usually facing "the great steamroller of indifference," mailboxes empty of acceptance letters; the learning to be content with "...the hot buzz of the cicadas' applause".

...Look at the stanzas
of light in the locust leaves as they bob and weave
in the hot July wind, their effortless green repetition
and refrain. Why not give it up now?

What, she asks rhetorically, does it matter if she reads her work only to the "cardinals and wrens" !
But, she is writing this poem, after all, because most days are her poem's "tomorrow" when "...a clean sheet comes up/in the roller, and we[`ll] start all over again".
Onto that clean sheet in the typewriter's roller, Crooker presses the materials of her art, such as using the sonnet form and the line break in fresh ways.
For instance, the first eight lines of Crooker's blank verse, iambic pentameter sonnet, "Some October," asks someone (and not God), if the `Me' of the poem has done enough "to deserve this life," if she's "made a difference," then turns to "today," "the wind pour[ing] out of Canada," the equation of joy unbalancing sorrow, even at the end of the green seasons, in October. We, too, are drawn into Crooker's copper woods and into the blue sky to see the "...twilight, when the clouds stream from the west/ like the breath of God..." When and because the meter is broken in the "little song's" envoi, we ask ourselves the questions she asks her Someone to ask her again during that "some twilight," and we wonder then what else besides the meter is broken.
In "Star of Wonder, Star of Light," it's a particular choice of line break which unhinges us. Coming out of "the accident" in the first line of the poem, that accident unexplained before or after the mention, her line break in the second line leaves "My husband and children [are] hanging".
In the third line we see that they are hanging...lights on a Christmas tree. But she has jangled our nerves with, first, that unexplained "accident" and then, with that minor chord "hanging family" all swaddled in what could otherwise seem to be a typical happy family scene. After all, she begins the poem, "It's Christmas..." --so informal and signaling happiness that one could insert a perky "hey," but no:
Shadows gather behind the hills. The tree turns dark green,
then black...

Or maybe yes. Here's how the poem concludes:
husband, son, and daughter in a circle around the tree,
their arms full of stars.



Crooker is both student and author of movement and gesture, creating the spontaneity and pith of real life. Her dimensional impressions tether life as much as is possible, sometimes foreshortening time in order to paint a whirling candid music sans mythology. With the best of them, she captures fleeting inner voices of light and color. One might say of Crooker as Andre Mellerio said of Cezanne, "One might say that Cezanne wishes to restore intact to each object...its true and essential radiance".
For pure bravura sparkle-and-spangle sumptuousness infused with the pulse and fire of everyone's love of all things chlorophyllic, from Hildegarde von Bingen's "green finger of God" to Dylan Thomas' "green fuse," Crooker praises "what comes from the dirt" in "Vegetable Love," her litany of color, taste, sound, scent, palpable sensation of roundness, pull and sink of roots, the "cool jade ruffles" of lettuces, and that "dark blood of the earth," beets...
And basil, sweet basil, nuzzled
by fumbling bees drunk on the sun.

Crooker accomplishes what poetry can accomplish --creating the dimensional from the flat, light from black type on white paper, real life from the raw; juggling the hit-or-miss music of life.

In "evening's violet cashmere" in "In Aix-en-Provence"
...Where breakfast is a flaky
roll that shatters when I bite it, that sings like the sun
in my mouth. Where lunch is a ripe pear...

she says that:
...On the last day of my life, I'd like
to be working, like Cezanne, even if it means being pulled home
in a laundry cart and dying of pneumonia. I want to be out there,
singing...

Of the dozen or so writers I need to read, Barbara Crooker is foremost among them. Each element of a radiant, achieving life is present in this bright, working book, these poems which illuminate all at once life's layered and complex realities. Glorious. Radiant. RADIANCE is a book which poets and non-poets will be buying for, and reading to, each other for years to come. Thinking of Alicia Ostriker, I tell you that one can read RADIANCE by the light of the poems themselves.

This lovely new collection of poems by Barbara Crooker is a treasure. True to its title, the book, and each poem in it, shines from within. There is a sense of the sacred in this volume, and, as the author explores such varied themes as art history, travel, caring for an autistic child, aging and illness, and love in a long-term relationship, we feel her steadfast searching for God in the darkness. At the same time, this spiritual seeking is wedded to gentle humor and a down-to-earth look at ordinary things like eating corn on the cob, watching the slow decay of a dead opossum, or pinning wash on the line. Regardless of subject, each poem is delivered in lush, lyrical language rich with sensory images. And while Crooker's work is accessible, this collection is not simplistic. There is mystery here and a pleasing complexity in the delicate layers of her poems. RADIANCE, winner of the Word Press First Book Prize, is surely a light in the darkness.

Here's a first collection that could pass for a tenth collection. There's no stumbling here, no weak poems used as filler. It's one gem of a poem after another. Crooker's range of topics is wide: family, sewing, birds, the things of this earth, France, paintings, animals, Elvis. The range of moods is also wide. Dark shadows pass through the collection: the sorrows of a disabled child, an elderly mother coping with health problems, a world sometimes gone haywire. But love for this life overrides grief. The sorrow of one poem is balanced out by poems such as "Corny," a three-part poem which celebrates the many varieties of corn and makes us want to run to the nearest farm stand. Throughout the collection the reader feels exhilarated by Crooker's passion and gratitude, her heightened awareness of the earth's beauty, its radiance. Here's a poet who knows how to choose the right words, how to create images, and how to make music of poetry. Listen to these lines from "A Congregation of Grackles": "Scruffy lawns / turn a little greener, daylight preens, spreads / its feathers. Grackles fan their wings,/ and clatter and clack in the maple trees, / making a racket that passes for song." These poems, too, pass for song.

When people in my workshops ask me how to improve their poetry, I tell them to read poems by good poets. Those who read Barbara Crooker's new anthology "Radiance," winner of the Word Press First Book Prize, are in for both a treat and a lesson in writing.
As I read her poems cover to cover, I enjoyed old favorites and discovered new ones.
If you ask yourself why you continue writing poems, consider Barbara's response in "Sunflowers":

When we're gone, what will be left of our small
songs and minor joys? Still, when I drive by a wheat field
turning ochre and amber, every awn and arista shouting sun!
` sun! sun! something in me rises, makes me look
for a scrap of paper, a pencil nub,
even as the hot wind lifts,
blows the dust we are, carries it away.

Notice that Barbara uses words which make us see in a fresh way.
Have we ever looked closely at our world so that we notice the awns[italicize , or bristles, on each head of wheat?
Those of us who have submitted our poetry for publication can
relate to her poem "Twenty-five Years of Rejection Slips." The speaker
asks,
How many trees have been pulped
for this constant susurrus: sending, resending,
shuffling, sorting?
Even the name submission [italicize] suggests a certain deference,
servility, prostration: lying down in front of the mailbox,
and letting the great steamroller of indifference flatten
me into the ground.

Have you ever mailed a rustling, or susurrus [italicize], of papers to an editor?
Have you been flattened by the steamroller of rejection?

In her poems, Barbara celebrates the world in which we live.
Her exuberance is evident in the title poem "All That Is Glorious Around Us."
She celebrates ordinary things and people:

Reading Berryman to the Dog is a fine first book by an accomplished writer. You'll go back and back to these startling, satisfying poems. Carlisle's is one of the truly original voices in contemporary poetry. The poems are sensuous, muscular, textured. You won't soon forget "The Redhead Conjures Him Up" or "Questions for Joe": "In March you were there,.../wearing a broad expanse of belly, by June/you were gone...." If you're tired of tired poems, this book will revive you.

Reading Berryman to the Dog is a fine first book by an accomplished writer. You'll go back and back to these startling, satisfying poems. Carlisle's is one of the truly original voices in contemporary poetry. The poems are sensuous, muscular, textured. You won't soon forget "The Redhead Conjures Him Up" or "Questions for Joe": "In March you were there,.../wearing a broad expanse of belly, by June/you were gone...." If you're tired of tired poems, this book will revive you.

I met Wendy at a poets' workshop in Arkansas back in June 1996: her turf, not mine. Imagine me, a New York Jew whose marriage was headed toward the shoals forming an alliance with another middle-aged writer, in the middle of Wal-Mart country. She's just about the only person I kept up with from that week in northern Arkansas, and over the years we've exchanged writing and confidences. And now there's this book...and nothing prepared me for the power in it. All the "reviewer words" apply: serene, savage, beautiful. I read the title poem to my Significant Other the night the book arrived and when I was done I had unexpected and unwanted tears in my eyes. You don't read work this fine every day...which is why Wendy's writing stands out as clearly as Wendy herself.

Another voice from the tough and moving tribe of modern woman poets. (see Kim Addonizio, Joan Larkin & Belle Waring). Carlisle's poems are well crafted and sharp.

Buy a copy.

Another voice from the tough and moving tribe of modern woman poets. (see Kim Addonizio, Joan Larkin & Belle Waring). Carlisle's poems are well crafted and sharp.

Buy a copy.

Arranged in five parts, with each segment unfolding to reveal the constant yet changeable essence of relationships, the poetry of Anthony B. Ashe as compiled in "Relationship Related And Other Poetry" is contemporary in their themes and universal in their appeal. These are very highly recommended and intellectually stimulating free verse compositions that deftly utilize metaphor, simile and symbolism to reveal complex elements of human kinship. 'Kiss Me Now': succulent lips/or forever hold your piece//keep the measurement and directions/we're not trading recipes//cook with raw/unadulterated skin on skin//;when we scream/when we moan/when we writhe and grind//are you giving all to me?/does that make you mine?

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (6/07)

Anthony Ashe offers a unique poetic look at relationships. One part of the book speaks to physical relationships. It is obvious he has experienced a deep love for someone. His words speak of missing a loved one's touch, and of lips meeting for a tender kiss. He speaks of being comfortable in one's presence "like flannel bathrobes." He tells how the touch of a lover is a gift to be cherished.

"Was It You" is like looking in a mirror and wondering who that person is. As we age, our appearance changes but sometimes we forget that now our hair is gray and our waistline is different. We look at others and wonder why they are changing but we don't always look at ourselves.

"Friday, In the Crowd at The Nuyorican Poet's Café" is a delightfully sensuous poem hinting at the thoughts a lover has for their mate. I will share this one.

Ashe uses his poetry to reflect upon days gone by. He poetically tells of the nightmare of slavery, the result of living in poverty and the damage of alcoholism.

The words of talented author Anthony B. Ashe flow off the page like a brook of water streaming over moss covered rocks. The cover of "Relationship Related and Other Poetry" is exquisite! A man with his wife posing for a photograph, his arm gently draped over her shoulder as if to show how much he loves her and is proud she is his. The smile on his face says it all. The words Ashe used to describe relationships also say it all. He uses words to create a picture of people in love. I could relate several of the poems to my own relationships. "Musings" was one of my favorites. I recommend "Relationship Related and Other Poetry" to fans of poetry.

Anthony Ashe is regarded as an experienced poet who possesses a range and poetic forms as variant as Haiku and Villanelle, and at times everything in between. The poems are enticing and the delivery is acute.

From the succulent musing appropriately titled 'Musings', he shares the soothing, enticing cocoon that elevates a contented heart even when doing a task as mundane as laundry. 'Romancing and Alone' takes readers in another direction, into the depths of a lonely heart yearning for deliverance. 'My Metaphors and I are Mixed in Your Presence' is a Pandora's Box for lovers of metaphoric verbosity; it will tickle the intellect. These are mere tips of the iceberg as Ashe launches his thoughts.

RELATIONSHIP RELATED AND OTHER POETRY is richly political, but candid enough to connect the reader to the subject. Ashe successfully lends his flair for combining the serious academic study of one art form with street and cultural maturity. His tendency toward classic meter and rhythm are inspired by how he revels in reality that he camouflages with the feel of something fantastic. This is poetry that draws its life from the aura of relationships. If you are in a relationship or simply longing for one, RELATIONSHIP RELATED AND OTHER POETRY is something worth experiencing.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Someone once told me that writing good poetry is the same as dancing well; all rhythm and steps placed effortlessly, words gliding images across a page. I have never seen Anthony B. Ashe dance but after reading his book Relationship Related and Other Poetry I know he must cut a rug till it's threadbare.

True to its title Ashe's poems are interconnected by the theme of relationships. They are grouped by romantic involvement and also by a more spiritual association. Part One is full of lips and hips and jazz wrapped up in summer sunset beaches and chocolate covered metaphors. These poems are sultry but in no way cliché and are not retailed, as Ashe puts it in his last line of the book, when he writes, "we pimp our verse for valentines." These are poems with form, where you can become lost in the space of rhythm. They are smart with a subtle humor. I love the poem My Metaphors and I are Mixed in your Presence. It flaunts wit with lines like "I'll refrain from trite verbosity / and acceptable lyrical latitude / in avoidance / of tending toward the obtuse." Other poems are more sensual. I loved Friday, In the Crowd at The Nuyorican Poet's Café. It is full "of things that would make you blush" and is the kind of poem you could read across a pillow. It is lovely in all the right places.

The second part of Relationship Related is a collection of poems that are more political and also more somber. These are poems that reflect upon the past and are haunted by themes of slavery, poverty, and alcoholism. Though their subject is darker than the first collection these poems are not bitter and have great zeal. Ashe's sense of style in the poem Blackstone gives power and depth to a subject that could otherwise be made prosaic. The first and last stanzas really hooks the reader "Stone cold / Like black rock / Like black stone / Like Blackstone, Virginia" and "Just cold / Like cold rock or / Black stone in / Red Clay in / Blackstone, Virginia."

Ashe's collection of poetry has me relating images and experiences of my own to the subjects of his written muse. I find we have a relationship related. This is by far one of the best collections of poetry I have read in a long while. Ashe's writing is studied and complex. I find myself rereading and still pondering much of it. If you are thirsty for poems Relationship Related and Other Poems is a fine wine, so don`t gulp!

There is this great perception masking itself under the catch phrase "universal" and some warped idea of political correctness causing a number of black writers (or any writer of color) to bury their cultural identity and in many cases their politics for larger success in the literary world. In the process, many have become what Langston Hughes termed "lily ponds," art by black writers which evades any kind of social context to imitate so-called mainstream standards devoid or divorced from the slightest hint of cultural identity. Anthony Ashe, happily to report, doesn't fall into this class of writers. As the back cover of RELATIONSHIP RELATED AND OTHER POETRY suggests, Ashe exhibits styles called Haiku and Villanelle, but the difference is he makes them his own without giving up his identity as one proud to be black and and proudly political.

Ashe's book of poetry is divided up into two parts, Relationships Related I and Relationships Related II. The first half of the book pretty much concerns interpersonal relationships with black women who Ashe reveals a great deal of respect, admiration, and love towards, a political stance itself today. Hughes has been described as the first and only black male feminist for his platonic attitudes of respect and admiration toward black woman in his entire body of work . If the first portion of this book is any indication, the resolutely and enthusiastically straight Ashe will soon join Hughes in this honor. One of the many standout poems in this section is "Romancing and Alone" which those concerned with the universal element can admire because it speaks to everyone regardless. Reading many of the poems here, the immediate sense is how great they would sound spoken aloud. Poems like "Flavah or," "Big Sistah Thighs," or Ode to Youthful Romance on the Upper West Side Prior to Gentrification.", all of them honestly.

Relationships Related II is perhaps most political and strongest part of the book. Here, it is pretty difficult to choose one particular poem to highlight. "Writing Block (prior to September 25, 1985)," "Mobility Justification," and "Postcard Ruminations" are reads not to be missed. All the reads in part 2 are not to be missed.

Overall, the best thing about Relationships Related and Other Poetry is the readability of the work. It doesn't pretend to be above the head of anyone, but is accessible to everyone. Anthony Ashe should be proud of himself.

This book was give to my daughter for Christmas when she was 18 mos old. It is a wonderful book depicting various stories in the Bible. They are very short and told in verse form. 'God made the land/And God made the sea,/God made the flowers/And God made me.' and 'David was/ A shepherd boy,/Who sang to God/Great songs of joy!' Each story is accompanied by a lift the flap or touch and feel picture which makes it interesting and fun for little ones. I give it 4 stars because it is in spiral bound form and the pages are easily taken apart by busy little hands. I keep it separate from my daughter's other books and read it to her instead of letting her 'read' to herself and thus removing the pages. Other than this drawback, it is an excellent book.

My three year old loves to be read to from this bible. He asks for specific stories by name! He enjoys it as much as any of his secular, popular books.

I am a KJV only but, this is great for children. I was amazed at how smooth the stories flowed. A must in every home library. wonderful pictures. I also bought the toddlers version. RHYME, RHYME, SPEEDS THE TIME.....

My kindergarted sunday school class loves it. They pay attention, then beg to read it again. I have an audio tape version that I play while I just turn the pages. Unlike some children's translations, this one is truly age appropriate for young children. The rhymes and paraphrasing are exceptionally clever.

Original Bible Stories(unchanged) told in rhyme form. A marvelous way to teach children God's stories, and a marvelous way for them to be able to remember the stories. Simplicity in the eyes of a child. Wonderful, wonderful! Wish I had this when my children where samll.

Vague enough to enfuse with personal meaning. Meaningless read hard, and broad read softly. A good book if you want to sway in the romantic waters of an indefinite God, but hardly the work to peak behind the curtain. It studies the fabric. Full of delicious quotes, irresistable.

Kahlil Gibran is a very powerful, dynamic writer. He does it brilliantly each time a book goes live.

Wisdom is poetry that sings in the mind. If we could enchant man's heart and at the same time sing in his mind, Then in truth he would live in the shadow of God.

The quotes from "SAND AND FOAM" enhances the thought process and I find better understanding of the people around me.

Our god exists in ourself. It takes thought provoking book to make us aware.

What a beautiful compilation!

I read Kahlil, when i was 14.
I was astounded by his words,
and compostion.
He seemed to define them very well.
When i read this work?
i kept learning the aphorisms,
and the value of his thoughts.
I had never seen, or read another book
without some knowledge of great worth, and wisdom.
besides the Bible.
Gibrans paintings, also speak to the soul
The painting of The Prophet?
depicts a man who seems to
be an ancient, and of whom Kahlil
says he had never been without
since Lebanon .
When i first started to read Gibran?
i knew that i would read
all his works.
And they will continue
singing theyre words, and theyre thoughts
to the serinity and the solitude
of my mind.

Gibran continues to inspire me in this book. It is written from the depths of his soul and from every beat of his heart, as every one of his works are. Some readers criticize his writings becasue they say it is "too hard to understand". This is a complement to Gibran, because the most precious things in life are not supposed to be easily understood. One must read his books and reflect the meaning into their own lives in order to even began to understand. Don't be afriad to challenge yourself.

We can all only hope to live our lives with kind of heartfelt passion that this author chronicles. Truly inspired and inspiring!

The only problem was that as I read it from cover to cover, I kept crying - it was the darndest thing. But my tears fell continuously.

I thought I will write her after I have finished reading it. I can't finish it! Every time I start, I have to begin again at the beginning. I never get very far.

"A Scrapbook for Sandy" was sent to me by a dear friend who lives far away, who I don't see very often but with whom I shall always have a very close bond. I received the book after a long days' journey, too full of too many different airplanes and airports. Just as I was thinking how exhausted I was to be back in New York, I saw this large package on my desk, awaiting my return. Upon opening it, I sat for at least two hours reading and laughing, smiling and thinking, completely unaware of tasks in front of me and the exhausting trip behind me. What warmth and inspiration! What a passion for loving and living the book contains! For any of those most dear, I recommend sending a copy of Cecile Mactaggart's "A Scrapbook for Sandy" right away! They will cherish it for years to come and they will return to it often for sustenance, solace and delight!

"A Scrapbook for Sandy" is a marvelous love poem. Its author has worked her pictures and text together so that both, reinforcing each other, present a large and moving serenade.

There are several editions of this book published. They have been thoroughly reviewed, so I will just review this edition, not the material itself.

As you can see by the photograph, it has a red cover and black spine. On the front cover and the title page there is a picture of a shirtless horned man. This book contains black and white photographs, by Robert Mapplethorpe, placed just about at the beginning of every section. I do not like them and I think they are a distraction from the text.

This is a very well constructed book. The pages are made out of a high grade thick paper. On the left side of the book is the original text in French. On the right side is the translation in English, which is done by Paul Schmidt. Since I can not read French, I completely enjoyed the English version.

In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies. I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."

Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.

The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.

Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labour in a Belgian jail.

We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."

When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered together under the title, Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.

These are the brilliant and mystical hallucinations of the original "enfant terrible" and his visionary raptures about poetry, innocence and guilt. Verbal deliriums suffused with pain and hatred, remorse and desperation, but also with a parodic, pathetic and fatalistic megalomania. The "mystical rage" transformed into pyromaniac wording. Poems in prose, of very high quality, which reflect the fury of the love-hate relationship of Rimbaud with life and Universe.

In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies." "I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."

Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.

The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.

Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labor in a Belgian jail.

We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."

When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered under the title Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.

This is a brilliant encapsulation of the rage of the artist. He has a contempt for mankind, society, it's progress, and yet can't escape society. He can be a "..." as artists where called back then, refuse to live a middle class existence, live a life of drunken debauchery, and yet that is just another societal role.
His imagery is powerful, his language self-deprecating and insanely sincere. It draws you in with its suffering.
At the end he finds his life as an artist, his passion, empty. It all ended with the gunshot to the hand that ended his affair with Verlaine. In short, he equates his artistry and homosexual affairs with hell, and a return to society redemption. This explains how he became a materialist later on in his life, a trader, even considering trading slaves.
It is a sad fate for someone who had such a poetic gift.
I still enjoy reading A Season In Hell, even after having read it many times. Ultimately, the work is flawed; it has a little too much affected insanity, angst, the sign of an adolescent work, but it is also full of pure poetry and promise.