Bøger udgivet af Red Hen Press

"With rare insight, clarity, and grace, Peggy Shumaker charts both the minutiae of miniature lives and the grand and cosmic movements affecting earth's more imposing denizens. She tracks the profound and subtle dislocations or illuminations of self inspired by the closest regard of our natural world. This volume brims with the gifts and losses, struggles and triumphs that the poet gleans from nature, and which both instruct and sustain us all. Bearing an exquisite beauty and purity, these poems soar." ¿Maurya Simon, author of Days of Awe and The Golden Labyrinth "I doubt that I can praise a poet more highly." ¿David Lee

¿Between little corner taquerias/ and Thai home cooking joints,¿ Eloise Klein Healy renders a post-modern Los Angeles, weaving elegies, lyrics and meditations into a provocative assemblage. She anchors the book with poems exploring gender identity and social relations, meditating on the Civil Rights movement (¿our unnatural disaster over race¿), the scourges of breast cancer and AIDS. She elegizes sister-poet Lynda Hull and honors the ¿oldest human assignment¿¿burying a parent. Read this collection for its wisdom, rage, and wry wit, for Healy¿s intelligent probing into contemporary culture.¿Robin Becker, author of The Horse Fair

In the series Seeds of Truth Petra Eiko has written an inspiring story about the connection between the body and the mind. Petra Eiko's books are available individually in eight parts: Is, Wisdom, Vision, Sound, Power, Sex, Fear, and Heart. These books help promote both self-understanding and the acquisition of wisdom. Each book in the series marks important stages of growth in every person's life.

In the series Seeds of Truth Petra Eiko has written an inspiring story about the connection between the body and the mind. Petra Eiko's books are available individually in eight parts: Is, Wisdom, Vision, Sound, Power, Sex, Fear, and Heart. These books help promote both self-understanding and the acquisition of wisdom. Each book in the series marks important stages of growth in every person's life.

In March, 1974, facing drug charges in a case in which he claims he was innocent, Abbie Hoffman, one of the Chicago Seven, became a fugitive, forced to leave behind Anita, his wife of eight years, and america, their four year old son. During this time, they could only communicate through letters. Letters from the Underground includes all the letters sent between Abbie and Anita during the first year of their separation.

Blase Bonpane is a new abolitionist who believes the war system can be replaced with a peace system. Guerrillas of Peace includes radio commentaries, interviews, and other works which examine and promote the ideology of peace.

We began in the dark, and from the dark, we created myths, stories, the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness, Odysseus returning home, Buddha sitting lotus quiet. We had a few good stories to sustain our wanderings.Over several thousand years, the fire of myths began to burn out. Or we burned them out. We burned Troy, the prophets, and Joan of Arc, and finally, as one myth after another descended onto the pile of ashes, we found ourselves outside the church, the cathedral, the pyramid, the synagogue, with no path, and no journey. No Holy Grail to seek for, no reason to seek a grail. We pick up the skull of the storyteller, turn it over in our hands, fumbling for the eye sockets that used to see something. We don't know how to handle the skull, with what ritual to bury it, what song to sing for the dead or the living. The stories in this collection, address this place in which we've found ourselves, more aware of the dead than the living. The dead had their myths and their fire.

This selection and its somewhat haphazard direction of how so many of us interact romantically¿on the surface¿is a gentle reminder that be it fate, chance, or will, we appear destined to carry out our mission to couple and partner, no matter what the cause or effect. If we truly desire companionship, at all cost, there is probably someone out there seeking the same measure¿for better or worse. Whether it is simply ourselves, or the likes of Nathanael West (¿Day of the Locus¿), Amadeus Mozart (¿The Dogs of Amadeus¿), Mark Twain (¿Mark Twain¿s Cigar¿), Natalie Wood (¿The Late Natalie Wood¿), or the poor children who haunt the camps at Terezin and Auschwitz (¿ Little Ghosts¿), we are all in need of the dose of kindness that love¿s dispensary provides if we are fortunate enough to find it, hidden or not, among us.Whether or not a higher power is at work to guide us and grant us ¿The Word,¿ or we are determined to discover a path towards salvation through the generous acts of others¿or ourselves¿we follow an unconscious path, at times, and seek refuge, where possible, in places and locations we might have never imagined to investigate and bear witness. It may be upon ¿The Road to Jerusalem,¿ aboard ¿The New Train,¿ or in ¿The Terminal of Grief,¿ yet we still search for solace and speak the only common language we understand, this pursuit of love we may even try to escape¿but never deny.

"In Ally Acker's poems...the erotic and the spiritual grow...closer...Impressive...Such rare gifts bring call for rejoicing." -William Matthews "This is a book about beauty...pain...self-revelation...a brave transparency to existence and all it brings." -Jane Hirshfield

The poems in this book travel with us up to the door of another life. They are clear and radiant with the fulfillment of having lived a life, loving and being loved. There are hands bathing babies, there is the kiss of the lover; there is plywood and good food. Life becomes its most minute details and yet, opens out into some larger realm. These poems create astonishment. It is with these poems, that Benjamin Saltman has left us. These poems will become for our culture, part of the canon, part of our breath, part of what and who we think of and remember best when we place our faces in our hands, feel our mortality and look up at "a white astonished sun still waiting to speak."

Sholeh Wolpé¿s poems are political, satirical, and unflinching in the face of war, tyranny and loss. Talismanic and alchemical, they attempt to transmute experience into the magic of the imagined. But they also dare to be tender and funny lyrical moments. This book is remarkable and unexpected.¿Chris Abani

"Pearson's poetry astonishes¿ her range is wide and profound. She explores the loss, the mundane, and quirkiness of life with passionate joy. Her skillful images and wry tone linger, encouraging you to reread her poems¿ to put yourself inside her poems, inside the very essence of what it means to be woman, to be human. A stunning and highly enjoyable collection!"¿Jewell Rhodes, author of Voodoo Dreams

A Life Above Water is a cycle of poems that examines both the natural and human worlds and explores the boundaries between the two. The manuscript is concerned with personal ecologies and mythologies the ways that things are interconnected and the stories that we create to explain those connections. The manuscript is arranged in three concentric sections, each subsequent division nesting within the previous one. The reader is drawn into the broad, inclusive view of All These Indigestible Parts with its focus on the animals of the forest and birds of the air, the apparent cruelty of the natural world and that which is human about the animal through Fellowship and Baked Goods which looks at peopled communities and the ways we interact with one another, to the tighter, more personal focus of The Great Slowing and its themes of loss, shortcoming and redemption. The poems are individually free-standing and complete, but taken as a whole form a broad yet detailed portrait of the world around us and our place within it. By turns analytical, scientific, lyrical, whimsical and spiritual, A Life Above Water is a book that fits neatly into the canon of contemporary poetry while offering a unique, fresh and accessible perspective.

The poems in Morning Glories possess a gracefulness, like the flower itself, taking on their own life Seeds, Planters, Growing, Blossoms. For Brooke Bognanni, the process of writing becomes spiritual, a meditation for which the purpose varies; often it is about the natural cycle of the things of this earth, and about saying good-bye. The book, in turn, becomes a marker of epiphanal self-discovery.

In a collage of elegant, linked essays DeWitt Henry captures the pulse of his American generation-- partly offering a portrait of the artist, partly a man s pilgrimage of learning, growth and discovery through decades of social and cultural change.Against a background of suburban Philadelphia in the 1950s, and the family secret of his father s alcoholism, Henry comes of age as the youngest of four children. He rejects his father s course in managing the family chocolate factory for a third generation, and goes on to college, then to graduate school in the 1960s, becoming a writer and teacher. When Henry marries, and becomes a father himself, he is impacted by the social revolutions of the 1970s, and struggles to avoid his father s flaws. He leads a literary life in Boston, founds the literary magazine PLOUGHSHARES, teaches writing and literature, and befriends novelist Richard Yates. During 1980s, Henry suffers the deaths of his parents, infertility, rejections of his work, and setbacks in his teaching career. In the 1990s, while his daughter and adopted son are swept up into trials of adolescence and young adulthood, and as his wife grieves the deaths of friends and family, Henry confronts a spiritual abyss similar to his father s, and learns to surrender to life, to love, to aging and mortality.The drama of SAFE SUICIDE is the writer s mid-life quest for psychological and spiritual truth. By turns lyrical, quirky, confessional, and experimental in form, Henry s essays build into an affirming and generous vision. While addiction, the uses of imagination, a passion for literature, and issues of heart and soul are key motifs, a bungee jump becomes Henry s central metaphor: isn t this life? isn t this art? We live and trust in our safe suicides. "

Fifty years from now, historians will be identifying the criminality of the George W. Bush Administration. As these academics document their task they will be dependent on authors who were \u0022in his face\u0022 at the time of these international crimes. Blase Bonpane believes that silence is complicity. Civilization is Possible identifies the crimes at the very time they were being committed. Aside from the weekly commentaries of Blase Bonpane, this volume also includes his personal interviews with like minded observers of the disastrous Bush years: Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Robert Fisk, Greg Palast and Peter Laufer. These are voices crying in the wilderness of rampant militarism, torture and collateral damage (murder). This toxic mix was nurtured by literally hundreds of lies coming from a failed administration that blatantly abused the sacred trust of our citizens.These commentaries would have never been permitted by the rigid corporate media censorship which marks the Iraq War years. This exercise of free speech in Civilization is Possible was only made possible by \u0022fiercely independent\u0022 KPFK radio Los Angeles (listener supported and \u0022powered by the people\u0022) for the Pacifica Network.Civilization is Possible completes a trilogy of Blase Bonpane's books published by Red Hen Press. His previous books were: Guerrillas of Peace; Pacifica Radio Commentaries and Peace Reports from the Office of the Americas, second printing, 2002, and Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century, 2004, which in addition to his radio commentaries includes interviews with the Reverend James Lawson, Jonathan Schell and Chalmers Johnson.By selecting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the preface to Civilization is Possible, Blase Bonpane gives a hint about how his title might become a reality.

Physical and emotional pain, internal scarring, and explorations of social illness color the poems of this collection with hauntingly honest accounts, simultaneously filling readers with both a sense of hope and of surrender.

"Ron Koertge can elevate the ordinary places of America?-the backyard, the classroom, the mall-?into scenes of mock-epic significance. He can just as easily lower the mythic worlds of Superman, Ozymandias and Cinderella to a level just a few inches above the bathetic. And he does all this with a charming combination of wit and empathy, satire and sweetness."-Billy Collins"I would think a poem entitled Getting Tough with John Ruskin,? ?Ozymandias and Harriet,? or ?Teen Jesus? would be enough to entice any reader. But permit it to be known that Koertge also carries around a lexicon that includes locutions such as ?snazzy,? a word I haven?t heard since my last Canasta game in 1959. We all know who said that poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom, but Koertge might have said it because his poems are delight and wisdom all the way through. They are also very funny, the way the truly serious often is. This is a snazzy book, also a beautiful one, and I strongly urge you to buy it."-?B.H. Fairchild

Blending features of speculative fiction, the occult, and the spiritual quest, Paper Crown details an unusual story of initiation. Traumatized by the mysterious circumstances of his mother's death, Chuck runs away from his Southern California home and lands in Colorado Springs where he becomes involved with Frank Posner and his mother, Lyuba. Leaders of an ancient and highly secretive family of travelers who have incredible powers, they take Chuck on a psychological journey in which he must face his disturbing past and confront a frightening and uncertain future. With a cast of vivid and sometimes bizarre characters, Paper Crown unfolds a classic story of loss, struggle, and renewal.

"Camille Dungy has a garden of verses that spring up with the sunshine or hide with you in the dusk. "Cleaning" best sums up What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison, an amazing poetry collection, when Dungy pens "understanding clearly/what is fatal to the body./I only understand too late/what can be fatal to the heart." Take an ice tea and sit on the veranda or take a glass of wine and prop up in bed but whatever way you like your poetry, this book is a must."-Nikki Giovanni, author of The Collected Poems of Nikki Giovanni and Black Feeling, Black Talk"The sorrow here is ironic and unsentimental and yet Camille Dungy's vision is all joy. Even as anti-psalms, these poems are pure transcendence."-Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Dog Woman"Camille Dungy shares with us in this manuscript her sharp, clear and honest ear and her unswerving commitment to the voice of life. She is a brave poet writing true poems and I salute the music and courage of her work."-Lucille Clifton, author of Blessing the Boats and Mercy

"Volando bajito is a strong, raw, transparent book that makes us tremble. Readers can feel every poem with their entire body, their entire soul. Alicia Partnoy had to fly low, otherwise she couldn't have tracked down all that blood, all those scattered bones, all those spirits left hanging from the windmills' sails. It is a book of testimonial poems that forces us to remember that tender girl who always waits for us, a girl called Solidarity." -Claribel Alegría "The terse sensuality of these poems - their gentleness and unflinching courage in the face of devestation, of genocide - is so much more than instructive. It is poetry with the subtlety and insight of our greatest resources, intelligence and compassion." -Gail Wronsky

Amy Lemmon s stunning and heart-wrenching debut, Saint Nobody, offers us a profound meditation on the body, on the tribulations and the hard-found joys of incarnation. Lemmon does not shy away from a world where vestigial angel-parts ache to emerge and where there doesn t appear to be a speck of God. This piercing meditation takes the problem of the body, and the problem of the body in a world that often seems God-less, head-on, without flinching, and yet delivers us truths and beauty we would never have imagined. Lemmon knows that we can t count on the intercession of an absent saint, and she refuses easy solace. Instead, she probes deeply into the pain, into the conflicting emotions of childbirth, into the birth of a child with Down Syndrome which is probably the most extraordinary poem written on that subject to understand the life of our body here, the body in which pain is sharpest where my wings would be. This is a world of urine samples, errant chromosomes, lost kisses, first bleedings, chaotic cells, and scars, where the blood seems ours alone, and where the words are the only bread we have that may deliver us. In the bread of her words, Lemmon has given us a profound sacrament."

In Fault, Katharine Coles continues to explore her abiding interest in the intersections of science, culture, and history, but the book is perhaps best described as an extended meditation on love. Ranging across time and continents, Coles addresses such figures as Newton, Kepler, and Vesalius, not only with intellectual rigor but also with a humor, intimacy, and buoyant optimism that render her subjects-the figures and the science-accessible within the capacious intellectual, emotional, and physical landscapes of the poems.

Letters To Guns represents a collection of poems that examine the para-physical natures of love and history, at times re-imagining both. As the poems progress, eight letters arrive written by non-human addressees (a nightgown, a grove of trees, a wooden spoon, others) at random points over the last 2,200 years. They are messages from home and pleas for understanding, warnings and promises of change. These in turn ignite other poems and themes which anticipate the next arrival. Taken together, the letters form an armature, a living skeleton fleshed by real and metaphenomenal experience. Throughout, a variety of styles appear and no single approach to poetry pervades. Singly, these poems should challenge and entertain. As a group they must transform and evolve our experience of sitting down with a book of poems.

Unending Nora is a love story, though not in the ordinary sense. Having retreated to the streets of the east San Fernando Valley amidst an intense heat wave, Nora Yano, who has lived the first 29 years of her life as a devout Christian and an outcast, strikes up a relationship with a stranger and experiences sexual intimacy for the first time. When Nora mysteriously disappears, her best and only friends Caroline and Melissa, each with their own lives to consider, must decide what they\u2019re willing to risk to find her. The complications that ensue, along with an unexpected arrival home, set this novel in motion. Beneath the stories of four compelling women, Shigekuni creates in Unending Nora web of ideas concerning the after effects of wartime internment. Fresh out of the camps, a displaced and emotionally scarred generation clustered together to form a community; they even took on a religion in order to adapt to the society that oppressed them. Now their offspring, four young women coming of age in their thirties, must carve their own path. Unending Nora is a story about finding love through adversity. In an ambitious examination of faith, shame, and desire, Julie Shigekuni takes up where John Okada left off over fifty years ago with his masterpiece No-No Boy—to tell the story of a community ready to mark its place in the larger world.

love belongs to those who do the feeling-an exciting collection of new and selected poetry by Judy Grahn. The book contains selections from Judy's entire body of poetic work from The Work of a Common Woman, The Queen of Wands and The Queen of Swords, to new poems written between 1997 and 2008. Judy's poetry is rangy and provocative. It has been written at the heart of so many of the important social movements of the last forty years that the proper word is foundational-Judy Grahn's poetry is foundational to the spirit of movement. People consistently report that Judy's poetry is also uplifting-an unexpected side effect of work that is aimed at the mind as well as the heart. Judy continues to insist that love goes beyond romance, to community, and that community goes beyond the everyday world, to the connective worlds of earth and spirit.

The Common Fire is a book of family stories from matriarchs to daughters, about the struggles we encounter in daily life; it is a journey wherein fire keeps igniting, beginning with the burning of flesh in a concentration camp and ending with enlightenment. The book is divided into four sections: Mama's Kitchen introduces the reader to family elders; Leaving This World reconciles death of children, animals, even art; Just a Child glimpses at childhood and motherhood; and Searching for that Light is the quest for illumination, love and ultimately inner peace. The poems are largely domestic, and the author s Jewish background adds a strong flavor to the theme: Within the common experience, there is struggle and there is light.