From the Blues to the Good News takes the reader through multiple themes, from inspirational and educational rap lyrics, romantic and seasonal poetry, to avant-garde. The reader will be inspired, enlightened, experience the wonder of romance in the love poems and be pleasantly dazzled by the avant-garde poems.

Soul searching poetry for a new generation. Inspired by Diane di Prima, Rene Ricard, Henry Miller and others 'who tell it like it is', The Blues Comes with Good News is a collection of poems by prolific writer, Sonny Hall. The collection ranges from articulating addiction, self-destruction and identity, to romantic relationships, his journey to recovery and his unapologetic depiction of truth, through life and its happenings. At 18 years old Sonny entered a treatment centre for alcohol and drug addiction, after losing his biological mother - who he remained close to despite being adopted aged 4 - to a heroin overdose. Three months into his treatment, Hall started writing poems as a way of ordering 'all the madness' in his head. He has since written hundreds of poems, which all portray his newfound intimacy with life, figuring it out as he goes on, never failing to write sincerely about the sting of life, through a rare candour, explicit and seedy within the realms of his own indulgence. Illustrations by JACK LAVER

In this Christian SoldierÕs Evangelism Field Manual I share my accumulated experience in sharing my personal testimony and how to lead a person to Christ.

A collection of poems all written by Aaron R. Ziegler. The Good News of Music Summary: Ellis Ray has seen his life go to hell by the overbearing demands of a father he has once distanced himself from in following the successful love of his life in the musical artist destined to make it big, Maria Evangeline Christina while Ellis Ray is a talented writer in all fields. He careens off a cliff while driving to join his lover on her musical tour with her band causing Ellis to descend to a level he thought not possible. Ellis Ray must go through running the family business of ruling Hell until he learns the woman he loves is about to make a deal with a greater evil for her soul, that evil is his father. Ellis Ray with the help of a friend win back the woman of his dreams who her blessed music saves the world.

Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

In The Blues of Heaven, Barbara Ras delivers her characteristic subjects with new daring that both rattles and beguiles. Here are poems of grief over her brother’s death; doors to an idiosyncratic working-class childhood among Polish immigrants; laments for nature and politics out of kilter. Ras portrays the climate crisis, guns out of control, the reckless injustice and ignorance of the United States government. At the same time, her poems nimbly focus on particulars—these facts, these consequences—bringing the wreckage of unfathomable harm home with immediacy and integrity. Though her subjects may be dire, Ras also weaves her wise humor throughout, moving deftly from sardonic to whimsical to create an expansive, ardent, and memorable book. Survival Strategies To dig for quahogs, to feel their edges like smiles and pull against their suck to toss them in a bucket. To feel the wind as a friend, to feel its current as luck. To ignore Capricorn and Cancer presuming to slice the globe. To know the lie in “names can never hurt you.” To be a gull breezing the blue, eating nothing but clouds. To measure your ties to the past by the strength of cobwebs. To haunt the widow’s walk, its twelve narrow windows each the size of a child’s coffin. To watch the harbor where the Acushnet runs into Buzzards Bay before it was named a Superfund site full of PCBs. To wonder if that water you swam summer after aimless summer could get you the way something got your brother, too fast, too soon. To bury or burn the whole family you were born to and talk to them only through the smoke of letters you torch at their graves. To see a snake with a ladybug on its back and still refuse to pray.

All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction, and is the one and only book to fall out of print. This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy’s Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of “Staggerlee wonders” and “Gypsy” to the lyrical beauty of “Some days,” which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald. Nikky Finney’s introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin’s many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Winner of the 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry "The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 may be the most important book of poetry to appear in years."--Publishers Weekly "All poetry readers will want to own this book; almost everything is in it."--Publishers Weekly "If you only read one poetry book in 2012, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton ought to be it."—NPR "The 'Collected Clifton' is a gift, not just for her fans...but for all of us."--The Washington Post "The love readers feel for Lucille Clifton—both the woman and her poetry—is constant and deeply felt. The lines that surface most frequently in praise of her work and her person are moving declarations of racial pride, courage, steadfastness."—Toni Morrison, from the Foreword The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010 combines all eleven of Lucille Clifton's published collections with more than fifty previously unpublished poems. The unpublished poems feature early poems from 1965–1969, a collection-in-progress titled the book of days (2008), and a poignant selection of final poems. An insightful foreword by Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison and comprehensive afterword by noted poet Kevin Young frames Clifton's lifetime body of work, providing the definitive statement about this major America poet's career. On February 13, 2010, the poetry world lost one of its most distinguished members with the passing of Lucille Clifton. In the last year of her life, she was named the first African American woman to receive the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoring a US poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition," and was posthumously awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America. "mother-tongue: to man-kind" (from the unpublished the book of days): all that I am asking is that you see me as something more than a common occurrence, more than a woman in her ordinary skin.

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. African & African American Studies. Australian Book Review Book of the Year. Honorable mention for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. "Timothy Ogene's poems are writings of witness, displacement and beauty. Instead of a home address there are poems as address, at once exquisitely gentle and acute. The sharpness of the poems' blades --whether literal, like the blades that peel cassavas and leave the speaker's arms scarred, or deeper injuries of trauma and loss--sits alongside their subtlety and tenderness. These are poems of deep attentiveness to the smallest encounters, and to the largest questions of love, doubt, solitude and migration. Their crafting reveals Ogene's deep reading, both of poetry and of the landscapes the poems explore. How do poems that bear witness to violence, loss and displacement open so gently to the reader? This paradox is one of many in these wise, important poems. I am reminded of Hélène Cixous's description of Paul Celan's poetry as 'writing that speaks of and through disaster such that disaster and desert become author or spring.' Where trees hold 'time in absent leaves,' these poems mourn roots but refrain from 'easy paths,' offering, instead, the force and grace of a numinous poetics."-- Felicity Plunkett "Where does he come from, Timothy Ogene? From Nigeria, from Liberia, from Texas, from Oxford, now Boston. But look for him in the future, where he will be writing great books. Look for him in the present, too, in this satisfying, wonderful book--already he can do everything--he makes music, his figurative language is rare in that it goes deep, is never arbitrary, there is a care for especially the poor people and objects of this world, he remains hidden behind his language yet clear, which is to say his ego does not control the writing, something else does--a desire to lead us gently to noticing. Not just noticing, experiencing. Suddenly an empty bench comes to the forefront of our sight, from the "remains" of fog. He can personify without anthropomorphizing, maybe because he loves the world without needing to hold on to any aspect of it. He is unusually free yet aware of the limitations imposed on us politically and yes by language itself. If you want some pleasure, slow down and listen to his poems."-- Ruth Lepson "Timothy Ogene's debut collection, DESCENT & OTHER POEMS, presents a lyric and emotional journey that swiftly and utterly captures the reader's eye and heart."--John Keene, judge for the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

This book examines the meaning of Jesus' humanity, his divinity, and the special significance of his teachings to the poor and the oppressed. The discussion of these issues is shaped around the theology of Howard Thurman (1900-1981), one of the greatest religious thinkers of his generation. It is the only such work which thoroughly defines Thurman's significance as an African American folk theologian who both adopts and transcends his religious heritage. Thurman is depicted as a 'folk theologian' who both perpetuates and transforms African American folk religion. The core of Thurman's theology revolves around his reinterpretation of the meaning of the concept of 'humanity' and 'divinity'. The search for a 'Black Christ', black messiah, has been a prominent feature of African American religious thought in the past two centuries. This book addresses Thurman's treatment of Jesus within the ebb-and-flow of the debates in this area. This is the first work devoted exclusively to the subject of Christology as the center of Thurman's theology.