September 04, 2008
Greg Rappleye, JD'76
Figured Dark: Poems, University of Arkansas Press, 2007.
The book: Linda Gregerson, poet and U-M professor, writes of this book: Oh the fine, brawling, pungent observation of these poems: "the smog-brown sea, the baggies-drooping sea"; Homer would be exhilarated and appalled. Greg Rappleye revives the language and revives our powers of seeing. "Figured Dark" is shot through with light.
The author: Greg Rappleye is corporation counsel for Ottawa County in Grand Haven, Michigan. He’s the author of two poetry collections, "Holding Down the Earth" and "A Path Between Houses," and two chapbooks. A past Bread Loaf fellow in poetry, he has won a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and the Brittingham Prize, and was the first runner up for the 2007 Dorset Prize.
Posted by lingjiex at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)
Ted Lardner, MFA'85, PhD'91
Tornado, Kent State University Press, 2008.
The book: Reviewer Alicia Ostriker states the following about this chapbook: "Tornado" is a book of ravishing and precise beauty. Death, said Wallace Stevens, is the mother of beauty, and so it is here; around the loss of a beloved sister in childhood, Ted Lardner has spun a radiant web of language by which he reveals what does not and cannot die, in the scale of nature above and underground, in the movements of time, and in the ongoing reach of human tenderness that "glides through our skins like a wave, lighting it up from inside."
The author: Ted Lardner's poems have appeared in Arsenic Lobster, 5am, Rhino, Luna and Pleiades and in a previous chapbook, "Passing by a Home Place." He teaches writing at Cleveland State University.
Posted by lingjiex at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
Joe Fletcher, '99
Sleigh Ride, Factory Hollow Press, 2008.
The book: One of the lines from this chapbook is the following: "I couldn't see the far shore, but / directly before us a suspension bridge arched out over the dark waters."
The author: Joe Fletcher lives and teaches in North Carolina.
Posted by lingjiex at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2008
Barbara Bialick, '73
The book: This new collection contains thought-provoking poems that are tied together by multiple levels of time and thyme, from a Jewish mailman who worked in Detroit's inner city to a World Peace Tree growing in Massachusetts and beyond.
The author: Detroit native and Newton, Massachusetts, resident Barbara Bialick has published as a journalist and a poet in a variety of publications, with articles in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Detroit News, McCall's and Pittsburgh Magazine and withpoetry in Ibbetson Street, Istanbul Literary Review, Pemmican, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Bagel Bard Anthologies, Mid-America Poetry Review and Jewish Currents.
Web site: www.lulu.com/content/1884973
Posted by lingjiex at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)
Nancy Baker Fate Heers, MA '72, Wendel Ward Heers
The book: Poetry and sculpture come together and illuminate each other in this book, which speaks of keeping the word. It reaches down into the blue earth and up into the galaxy and feels the rhythm of the earth and the movement of dance.
The author: Nancy Baker Fate Heers dances, both liturgical and modern, and writes poetry. She previously co-published "Forest of Algae and Ivy Outside/in" and "Rock Rhythms." She and Wendel Ward Heers have two children and two granddaughters.
Web site: http://paupacpress.com/
Posted by lingjiex at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2008
Laura Kasischke, '84, MFA'87
Lilies Without, Ausable Press, 2007.
The book: Admired for her use of metaphor and her nervy, surprising syntax, Laura Kasischke continues in this book to peel back the skins of our ordinary lives to reveal the underlying anxieties and complexities. Funny, irreverent, personal and at the same time unnerving, these poems take us to familiar places made entirely strange so that we may see them again as they really are, without the trappings and disguises we invent to remain blind to what disturbs us. Few poets write about parenthood with the combination of tenderness and steely insight that Kasischke brings to her work.
The author: Laura Kasischke is the author of six other books of poetry and four novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay diCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches at the University of Michigan.
Posted by lingjiex at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)
Janet Anderson-Davis, JD'78
Dance of the Warriors, 2007.
The book: Each poem in this collection is dedicated to a player in the 2005 Detroit mayoral election recount, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Poetry styles include haiku, traditional, jazz and rap. The cacophony of rhythmic beats contrasts with unconventional freestyle. The poems encompass hope, love, grief and joy. The work salutes not only the election process, but the patriotic men and women involved in the process.
The author: Janet Anderson-Davis, who practices law in the areas of transactions and elections, has written poetry for many years. An aficionado of the espionage novel, she enjoys studying foreign languages, spinning, weightlifting and reading. She lives with her family in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Posted by lingjiex at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2008
Manly Johnson, '46
Holding Out for What Is: New & Selected Poems, 2006.
The book: This collection explores the nature of friendship and memory, the ways in which the attachments of the present and the images of the past reveal beliefs that have shaped our lives. The book interweaves more than three dozen new poems with the author's poems from previously published volumes and his archives.
The author: Manly Johnson has published poems, reviews and translations in a variety of anthologies, journals and small magazines. He has taught at U-M, Johns Hopkins, Williams College and the University of Tulsa. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his wife, Francine Leffler Ringold.
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2008
Tung-Hui Hu, MFA '03
Mine, Ausable Press, 2007
The book: In "Mine," Tung-Hui Hu makes myths out of the personal. He speaks of desire and awkwardness and of the earth that contains both. Resonant and blunt, this is writing that excavates. As history unfolds over and over the same soil, these poems become, Hu writes, "practice for the living."
The author: Tung-Hui Hu lives in San Francisco, California, where he writes on film and new media. He is also the author of "The Book of Motion," and recent poems have appeared in The New Republic, Harvard Review and Prairie Schooner.
Posted by tobiaslw at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
Roy Jacobstein, '69, MD'73, MPH'96
A Form of Optimism, University Press of New England, 2006
The book: Filtered through the twin lenses of human history and personal memory, and suffused with ironic appreciation, this book engages in a meditation on beauty and evil, cornucopia and loss. Drawing on the author's cross-cultural work in international health, the poems range widely and naturally across setting, personage and tongue-from Istanbul to Detroit, Mother Teresa to Gorm the Old, Swahili to Sanskrit. Variously anxious, rueful, witty, tender and worn, "A Form of Optimism" transcribes an arc of compassion and hope, embracing the mysteries of the world and the word.
The author: Roy Jacobstein's poetry appears in many literary publications and has won many awards, including the Felix Pollak Prize for his first book of poetry, "Ripe." A former official of the US Agency for International Development and a public health physician who works in Africa and Asia, he lives with his wife and daughter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2007
Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Jeffrey Sacks, '92
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? Archipelago Books, 2006
The book: At once an intimate autobiography and a collective memory of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish's interlinked poems are collective cries, songs, and glimpses of the human condition. The collection-widely considered his chef-d'oeuvre-is a poetry of myth and history, of exile and suspended time, of an identity bound to the Arabic language and his displaced people. Darwish's poems-specific and symbolic, simple and profound-are historical glimpses, existential queries, chants of pain and injustice of a people separated from their land.
The translator: Jeffrey Sacks is a writer, translator, and scholar living in New York City. He teaches Arabic at Columbia University, and is editing and translating a collection of essays by Elias Khoury.
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)
Peter Meinke, MA'61
The Contracted World, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006
The book: Peter Meinke's fourteenth collect of poems is accessible to the general reader. It focuses on the personal and political problems in American society. Love, nature, cities, sports, war and peace are filtered through the imagination and verbal skills of the author. The collection includes representative work from four of Meinke's previous collections, and his new poems experiment with form. Meinke addresses life that is shrinking in specific ways: he is aging, the world is getting smaller, our post-9/112 freedoms are eroding, and our choices seem fewer and less attractive. Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the poet speaks to the reader in a personal and often humorous voice.
The author: Peter Meinke holds the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He has been a professor of literature and creative writing at Eckerd College and has served as writer-in-residence at several colleges, including University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Hawaii.
Posted by tobiaslw at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
David Gewanter, '80
The Sleep of Reason, University of Chicago Press, 2003
The book: "The Sleep of Reaso" plunges us into a macabre world where good impulses bring on evil consequences-a world not unlike our own. In David Gewanter's alternately delightful and startling poems, allegory comes alive and stalks a bookstore's musty aisles, comedians eviscerate their families for a laugh, lovers love each other for withholding affection, and theaters collapse on audiences hungry for spectacle. Amidst such surreal subjects, Gewanter's delicate musicality and keen sense of humor sparkle; his inquisition regarding a fallen world becomes a dark comedy of errors haunted by the most unexpected characters-from JFK Jr. to Tacitus, Redd Foxx to General Motors, Mariah Carey to 100 rabbits with herpes. An offbeat satire for an off-kilter age, The Sleep of Reason offers an incisive guide to moral behavior in an immoral world.
The author: David Gewanter is associate professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He has published two books and has won numerous awards.
Posted by tobiaslw at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
Sally Hanson Calhoun, '61, MA'63
Emerging from the Ranks, Twenty-first Star Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 2005./p>
The book: A collection of poems commemorating the deeds, lives and circumstances of the American Revolutionary War foot soldiers and other patriots. The narrative poems are based on research by the Twenty-first Star Chapter's members and the lives of their ancestors. One of the poems received the State of Illinois NSDAR Award for Humanities/Literature in 2005.
The author: Dr. Sally Calhoun has devoted much of her life to her private practice in clinical psychology and teaching. Her interest in writing dates back to high school where she earned honors for her fiction writing. While attending Michigan she earned an Avery Hopwood Award. After many years of private practice, Calhoun started writing full time and has since turned out 14 full-length book manuscripts: four children's novels, two adult novels, three collections of poetry, a collection of autobiographical poems, three dramas and a number of short stories. Calhoun continues to strengthen and expand her writing skills and hopes to spend many more years writing and publishing.
Posted by tobiaslw at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
Margaret Dubay Mikus, '74
As Easy as Breathing: Reclaiming Power for Healing and Transformation, iUniverse, 2002
The book: As Easy as Breathing is the moving story of a woman's struggle and triumph over cancer told through poems, letters and conversations with Spirit. The author learned to live deeply, using everything as an opportunity for growth and clarity. Her relationships were healed, her life profoundly transformed. Sometimes funny, always graceful, honest and inspiring, this hope-filled book is particularly relevant in these troubled times.
The author: Margaret Dubay Mikus was a research scientist and teacher. Illness transformed her life. After healing from multiple sclerosis in 1995, she began a poetic journal to "sing from the heart." Dubay Mikus sings, teaches workshops, and gives poetry readings in Illinois. She is a photographer and designed her website, www.fullblooming.com.
Posted by tobiaslw at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
Barbara DuBois, '48, MA'52
Country Style Poems, Blackwelder, 2004
The book: A collection of poems about country living.
The author: Barbara R. DuBois has published two poetry chapbooks in 2004: "A Greek Suite," and "Country Style."She writes regular book review columns for the Socorro (NM) Public Library newsletter, the Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge newsletter, and the Socorro newspaper.
Posted by tobiaslw at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2007
Victoria Chang, '92
Circle, Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
The book: Taking its concept of concentricity from the eponymous Ralph Waldo Emerson essay, "Circle," the first collection from Victoria Chang, adopts the shape as a trope for gender, family, and history. These lyrical, narrative, and hybrid poems trace the spiral trajectory of womanhood and growth and plot the progression of self as it ebbs away from and returns to its roots in an Asian American family and context. Locating human desire within the helixes of politics, society, and war, Chang skillfully draws arcs between T'ang Dynasty suicides and Alfred Hitchcock leading ladies, between the Hong Kong Flower Lounge and an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch, the Rape of Nanking and civilian casualties in Iraq.
The author: Victoria Chang’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Best American Poetry 2005, and other publications, and she is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She has earned degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Stanford University, and is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Scholarship, a Kenyon Writer’s Workshop Taylor Fellowship, the Hopwood Award, and the Holden Minority Fellowship from the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. She resides in Southern California.
Posted by tobiaslw at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
Carmen Bugan, '96
Crossing the Carpathians, Oxford Poets, 2005.
The book: "Crossing the Carpathians" is a collection of poems about exile, family, and the survival of love. Carmen Bugan was born in Romania, and her book has its origins in her experiences during the 1980s, as a child of political dissidents and as an exile from her country. Written in America, Ireland, and England, her poems are about crossing countries and languages, recording loss and celebration, reconciling memories with dreams.
The author: Carmen Bugan won a Hopwood Award and a Cowden Memorial Fellowship at the University of Michigan for her poetry.
Posted by tobiaslw at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
Nancy Willard, '58, PhD'63
In the Salt Marsh, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, $23.
The book: In this strong, appealing collection, Nancy Willard shares her passion for observing the mysteries of the natural world, particularly the flora and fauna of Cape Cod and the Hudson Valley, where many of these poems are set. We see, through her eyes, the coming of darkness to an empty orchard, the retreat of deer at dusk, and the breakup of a river with the onset of spring. Willard is also deeply engaged with the living creatures that populate her world. Her poems record her encounter with a moon snail and her celebration of the ladybugs she sends into the garden and the butterflies that alight on her shoulders like ghostly kisses.
The author: Nancy Willard grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was educated at the University of Michigan and Stanford University. She has written two novels, four books of stories and essays, and twelve books of poetry, including Water Walker, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A winner of the Devins Award and the Newbery Medal for her book A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, she has received NEA grants in both fiction and poetry. She teaches in the English department at Vassar College and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Posted by tobiaslw at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)
Marcia (Miller) Muth, '49, MALS'53
"Words and Images," Sunstone Press, 2004, $16.95.
The book: "Words and Images" celebrates Muth’s 85th birthday.
The author: Marcia Muth was born in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. She received degrees from the University of Michigan and has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the past 38 years. Her work is in private and public collections, including The Jewish Museum in New York, The Albuquerque Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts (Santa Fe), and the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (Beaumont). This is her fourth book of poetry.
Web site: www.sunstonepress.com/cgi-bin/bookview.cgi?_recordnum=347
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)
Betty Lukas, '47
"Delirium: A Little Story About Love," Fithian Press, 2003, $8.
The book: Love’s labor is never lost when its existence surfaces in this unforgettable poetic chronicle of passion between a younger man and an older woman who find that, in those brief, searing moments of time, they are joined and nothing is ever the same again.
The author: Lukas’ career began at The Michigan Daily. She spent thirty years as a professional journalist, the last 18 as an editor for the Los Angeles Times. During 12 of those years, she also taught several journalism courses as a visiting instructor at California State University Dominguez Hills. She is the author of four short plays, all of which have been produced in Southern California. Lukas holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California.
Web site: www.danielpublishing.com/bro/lukas.html
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)
John Jacob, '72
"Night of the Dolphin,"d’Cypher Press, 2004, $12.
The book: The 18th book by John Jacob. It has been nominated for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and for the 2005 USA Poetry West Award.
The author: John Jacob was born in Chicago. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and graduate degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago. John has won the PEN Discovery Award and the Carl Sandburg Award for his first book of fiction.
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)
David Cope, '74
"Turn the Wheel," Humana Press, 2003, $25.
The book: Poetry written from 1997-2002; includes elegies for poet Allen Ginsberg and poems written after September 11, 2001.
The author: David Cope grew up on the banks of the Thornapple River in Western Michigan. He studied under the great African-American poet Robert Hayden at the University of Michigan.
Web site: www.poetspath.com/exhibits/cope
Posted by tobiaslw at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Mary DeJong Obuchowski, MA'62, PhD'68
Field O' My Dreams: The Collected Poems of Gene Stratton-Porter, Kent State University Press, 2007.
The book: Gene Stratton-Porter was an Indiana writer and naturalist best known for her young adult fiction and other early 20th century novels and nonfiction writings about her Midwestern and California environments. She is less well-known for her poetry, however, despite having published two books of poetry as well as hundreds of her more whimsical, rhyming poems in such popular magazines as McCall's and Good Housekeeping. This book presents her collected poems.
The author: Mary DeJong Obuchowski is professor emerita of English at Central Michigan University. She has published articles in MidAmerica, Nature Study, Children's Literature Review, Great Lakes Review, Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, and An Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Marge Piercy, '57
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The Crooked Inheritance, Knopf, 2006.
The book: In these powerful, often funny, sometimes lyrical and down-to-earth poems, Marge Piercy writes of her “crooked inheritance”—physical and personality traits from wildly mismatched parents—and in a larger sense the marvelous half-broken world we inherit. Some of Piercy’s strongest poems have been political, and this book contains new verses raging against the war in Iraq, the abandonment of Katrina’s victims and the ongoing attempts to suppress women. Some poems are about her life on Cape Cod, while others are about her deep connections to Jewish life and ritual.
The author: Marge Piercy is the author of 16 previous books of poetry as well as 17 novels and a memoir, titled "Sleeping with Cats." Her work has been translated into 16 languages, and she has won many honors. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, Ira Wood, the novelist and publisher of Leapfrog Press.
Web site: http://www.margepiercy.com/
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Suzanne Potter-Ironbiter, '63
Devi: Mother of My Mind, Mapin Publishing, 2006.
The book: The author writes of ongoing conflict and ongoing need for refuge. Through introspection, she finds a deep, constant, unfailing presence in the Goddess' forms. Poetic images and tantra yoga teachings of India and Tibet help her picture her mind's fecundity, struggle and abiding truths.
The author: Suzanne Ironbiter has been a student of yoga and the traditions of India for more than 40 years. She teaches at Purchase College of the State University of New York.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Paisley Rekdal, MFA'96
The Invention of the Kaleidoscope, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
The book: This is a book of poetic elegies that discuss failures: failures of love, both sexual and spiritual; failures of the body; failures of science, art and technology; failures of nature, imagination and memory; and, most importantly, failures inherent to elegiac narratives and our formal attempt to memoralize the lost. But the book also explores the necessity of such narratives, as well as the creative possibilities implicit within the "failed elegy," all while examining the various ways that self-destruction can turn into self-preservation.
The author: Paisley Rekdal is assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. She is the author of a book of essays and two books of poetry. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and her poems and essays have appeared in many publications.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Matthew Rohrer, '92
Rise Up, Wave Books, 2007.
The book: Matthew Rohrer turns wide eyes and lyric wit toward the requirements of fatherhood, citizenship and romantic love. Approaching pleasure and terror with the same searching and determined curiosity, "Rise Up" traverses political, natural and domestic landscapes with gentle agility. Beautifully crafted surfaces give way to sincere depth.
The author: Matthew Rohrer is the author of "A Green Light," which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize, and "Satellite." His first book, "A Hummock in the Malookas," was selected for the National Poetry Series in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at New York University.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers, '55
Leaping and Looming, Merganser Press/Loon Publishing, 2005.
The book: These poems range from intensely lyrical to poignantly simple to complexly philosophical, with a dash of savagery stirred in. The collection contains, implicitly, the narrative of a life, a grandmother storyteller revealing a self, occasionally blatantly, sometimes deliberately, often unwittingly. The work exhibits both the intense passion and the comic distance with which the author confronts the business of living, trying to make sense of it in poems that can be understood.
The author: Poet Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers was featured in the first year of the Sunken Garden Poetry Readings. She has received many awards and prizes, including the North Country Poetry Prize and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.
Web site: http://www.merganserpress.com
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers, '55
Leaping and Looming, Merganser Press/Loon Publishing, 2005.
The book: These poems range from intensely lyrical to poignantly simple to complexly philosophical, with a dash of savagery stirred in. The collection contains, implicitly, the narrative of a life, a grandmother storyteller revealing a self, occasionally blatantly, sometimes deliberately, often unwittingly. The work exhibits both the intense passion and the comic distance with which the author confronts the business of living, trying to make sense of it in poems that can be understood.
The author: Poet Elizabeth Kincaid-Ehlers was featured in the first year of the Sunken Garden Poetry Readings. She has received many awards and prizes, including the North Country Poetry Prize and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.
Web site: http://www.merganserpress.com
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
Gloria Dyc, DA'89
East, West, and Beyond, Plain View Press, 2007.
The book:These vivid and moving poems take the reader on a journey of mind, body and spirit through geographical and cultural distances: from the author's childhood in Detroit with her Polish immigrant grandparents to mid-life in the West among Native Americans. As the title of her poem "Paying Attention" directs, she observes people and landscapes not only with her eyes, but with her heart. Her poetry of life and rituals among the Lakota are particularly vibrant.
The author: Gloria Dyc, professor of arts and letters at the University of New Mexico-Gallup and a UMN Regents Professor in English, has taught Native American literature for 25 years. This is her first collection of poetry; her fiction has been published in numerous journals and anthologies.
Posted by tobiaslw at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)