May Books

Since Ann Stanford's death in 1987, her books have vanished from print and her name off the tongue of the current list of important American poets. This book, Stanford's last collection, had finally been published after over a decade's wait. It's a good one--another strong group of poems that meditate on geography, life, and art. Stanford's work has been likened to Elizabeth Bishop's--and for good reason! Stanford is a rare poet who understands the complex relationship between language and aesthetics.

Although I am an adult, this book brought back wonderul memories of my childhood. I would highly recommend this book to all readers, young and old. It provides instant gratification and leaves the reader feeling warm and fuzzy. This book would make a wonderful Christmas presnt, especially for children who don't like to read. They can read little stories in the poems and they do not have to wait for a 300 page ending. Don't hesitate to purchase this item. I am sure that you will be as pleased as I was.

As students of U.S. history know, the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case was one of the major causes leading up to the Civil War. Prof. Finkelman has provided a valuable educational tool that will help students understanding this important part of our history. His clear and concise explanation of the case, including an analysis of the majority opinion, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions, and other relevant aspects, is well-researched and well-written. He also includes excerpts from the Supreme Court's opinion so that readers can examine it and draw their own conclusions. Any serious student of U.S. history, particularly of the Civil War period and the events leading up to it, should own a copy of this book.

May[y] Telmissany's novel operates (read journeys) on three distinct but inexorably linked thematic tracks: (1) the individual or Romantic (hence extremely private and narcissistic); (2) the community-based (of the culturally-driven extended family); and (3) the public which resonates of (a) the "hara," or neighborhood; (b) the "watan," or Egyptian city/nation; and, by extension, (c) the "dunya," or world/life at large. Dunya (life) zad (food), hence "food for/of life," the unnamed narrator's baby girl, is sadly but justifiably stillborn. The cycle is unbroken. In the end is the beginning!

As a work of art, however, Telmissany's work remains a narrative gestalt--a symbolic, irreducible configuration.

This book is one of many that I have read by the author, Mary Pytches. Her discussion of the defense mechanisms that people use to compensate for their emotional neediness is thorough and soundly biblical. She brings the unique Christian perspective to the strategies that we use to cope with low self-esteem and insecurity. With compassion, she explains both how we have come to have these feelings and how we come to cope with them. However, she does not leave us there, but provides us with the Christian antidote: dying to self. This is not presented as grim self-denial but rather as partnering with the Lord Jesus Christ and recognizing that His will for us is to be healed and whole, not self-protective and self-absorbed. The process is most fully explained through the story of Val, a Christian woman who recounts the stages she went through to recognize and overcome the survival strategies in her life. Her testimony includes a vivid example of what is now being called Theophostic ministry: that is, experiencing the healing power of the Lord Jesus Christ as we allow Him to deal with our memories and faulty beliefs. I recommend this book to anyone who is involved in a Christian ministry of inner healing.

This is a great popular science book, written by an adventurer/explorer who also has a Harvard PhD in biology. He travels all over the world for National Geographic, taking nature photos as well as reporting on cutting-edge discoveries in the rainforests. As such, he succeeds at mixing art and science in this book, which is somewhat technical, but explained in clear language that laymen can understand. THis book changed the way I saw rainforests: fully 9/10s of their biota are in the canopy, in the leaves high above, which you would never imagine from the ground. And Moffet went up there with camera to photograph it with some of the world's best scientists. The result is absolutely masterful.

It is truly a pity that this book is out of print. I wrote a review of it for the Boston Globe when it came out and later met the author, Moffet. He was as interesting and colorful as the book, full of hilarious stories of his adventures.

I am somewhat lost about the beginning & ending ... is this novel in the middle of something?

The novel in short - is short ... and reads like a greeting card; somewhat - maybe it's a Mother's Day card - I buy it!!

I will definitely recommend this novel to anyone - it covers all of us. Thank you, Scott Lance and the person who inspired you.
I hope this guy keeps writing!!!

From book's back cover:

"Para los mexicanos, gringo es el adjetivo que con algo de desprecio y mucho de resentimiento, se aplica a todos los nativos de Estado Unidos de América cuando son de raza caucásica, sin importar el origen. Esa generalización desmesurada transporta una pesada carga de prejuicios, como suele suceder, aunque en este caso puedan explicarse parcialmente por una vecindad geográfica tensa, casi siempre hostil. Es cierto que hay y ha habido una multitud de gringos que no son responsables del comportamiento prepotente y a veces inhumano que a menudo caracteriza a sus gobernantes y clases altas, sino que también son sus victimas, y de forma mas pertinaz y grave de lo que sospechamos. Y a las victimas, cualquiera que sea su nacionalidad, no les conviene el antagonismo, ni la indiferencia entre si, sino la comprensión y la solidaridad. Es el gringo que May Brooks quiere revelarnos.
de la presentación de Rodolfo Pena"

In popular imagination, Queen Elizabeth's court was a highly literary venue, where any nobleman might at any time have a sonnet up his sleeve and the pen was as potent a weapon as the sword.

Professor May explores the more complex truth in this study of the poetic and dramatic works of the upper crust of Elizabethan society. He limits his purview to the men and women properly called "courtiers", those who had access to the Queen's privy chamber and might rightly consider themselves her intimates, if not her friends. These aristocrats moved in a world far above that of court hangers-on like Edmund Spenser and John Lyly, not to mention the run of out-of-court Shakespeares, Marlowes, Marstons, Draytons, Chapmans, Jonsons and the like, who glimpsed the great ones only when and if specially summoned to perform a play or provide the text of a masque.

The book comprises two parts: a narrative account of courtier literary development and an anthology of over 90 courtier poems, most of them not readily accessible anywhere else.

The narrative begins in the last days of Henry VIII, when verse, unless in Latin and devoted to suitably serious subjects, lay under a cloud. Elizabeth's private attitude was more tolerant - she liked poetry and had begun writing it before her accession - but condemnation of frivolous versifying continued to be dominant during the first two decades of her reign.

Professor May credits two young writers of the 1570's, the Earl of Oxford and Sir Edward Dyer, with introducing English, secular, amatory verse to the court. Neither was a great poet. Their works retain the sing-song meters, intrusive alliteration and commonplace sensibility of "Drab Age" poetics. They did, however, show the way for more talented and original figures. While the number of courtier poets was never large, their ranks included two major lights of English literature, Sir John Harington and Sir Philip Sidney, and others - Raleigh, Greville, Robert Sidney, Essex, the Queen herself, etc. - whose output is worthy of survival.

"Elizabethan Courtier Poets" surveys the principal poetic works of the courtier group, the motives for their composition (with special attention to the role of verse in the competition for the Queen's favor) and the ways in which courtly litterateurs influenced or failed to influence both one another and out-of-court poets. The analysis is more historical and biographical than literary and is happily untouched by modern critical theory.

The second part of the book, the anthology, lists every person who meets Professor May's criteria for classification as a "courtier poet" and summarizes the supporting data. The pertinent facts - on the order of who exchanged New Year's presents with the Queen in what years - are often far from fascinating, but there is interesting incidental information. How many of the "Oxford was Shakespeare" partisans who laud the Earl's educational attainments are aware that his degrees from Oxford and Cambridge were strictly honorary, two among the dozens handed out to royal attendants when Elizabeth visited those institutions?

The poems included in the anthology are not intended to be either the best examples of courtier verse or a cross-section of the whole. Professor May has instead concentrated on furnishing reliable texts of works that are otherwise hard to find. Some are poetically very slight, such as the inscription that Lord Burghley wrote to accompany the gift of a spinning wheel to his daughter. Others display unexpected merit. The Earl of Essex, in particular, writing under sentence of death, is powerful and eloquent. `Tis pity, one thinks, that he did not forsake politics for poetry.

For any serious student of Elizabethan literary life, this book is an essential text. Those whose interest is real but more casual will also find it rewarding for its insights into an important segment of the greatest era of English poetry.

Pay no attention to the "recommended age" above - this little booklet of stickers is ageless. Most of the stickers are not so "sweet" as Darcy May's fairy drawings, but are comical and charming. I like 'em. Great for sticking on notes to people who take themselves too seriously, as well as for sending to those who simply have a good sense of fun. ...Enjoy!