With references to traditional Taoist and Chinese texts, as well as influences from the author's background in psychology and psychotherapy, this book by Lorie Dechar demonstrates how practitioners can work with the spirit of acupuncture points in modern practice. The concept of 'kigo', a Japanese word meaning 'season word', is used to understand the seasonal energy of the points and how the body relates to the universal flow. As an understanding of the spirit of the point brings focus and potency to a practitioner's needling, it also strengthens their ability to touch a patient's soul and spirit, besides the physical body. Tying in the macro cosmic connection of the body to the universe with a poetic force that amplifies and deepens the effect of acupuncture, Kigo is the perfect companion not only for acupuncturists, but also for chiropractors and psychotherapists, doctors and nurses, and other practitioners who use the points as part of their clinical work.

Like Roland Barthes' well-known book, L’Empire des signes, from which the title of the present collection is taken, this volume contains essays dealing with certain aspects of Japanese culture.

American Haiku: New Readings explores the history and development of haiku by American writers, examining individual writers. In the late nineteenth century, Japanese poetry influenced through translation the French Symbolist poets, from whom British and American Imagist poets, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, T. E. Hulme, and John Gould Fletcher, received stimulus. Since the first English-language hokku (haiku) written by Yone Noguchi in 1903, one of the Imagist poet Ezra Pound’s well-known haiku-like poem, “In A Station of the Metro,” published in 1913, is most influential on other Imagist and later American haiku poets. Since the end of World War II many Americans and Canadians tried their hands at writing haiku. Among them, Richard Wright wrote over four thousand haiku in the final eighteen months of his life in exile in France. His Haiku: This Other World, ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener (1998), is a posthumous collection of 817 haiku Wright himself had selected. Jack Kerouac, a well-known American novelist like Richard Wright, also wrote numerous haiku. Kerouac’s Book of Haikus, ed. Regina Weinreich (Penguin, 2003), collects 667 haiku. In recent decades, many other American writers have written haiku: Lenard Moore, Sonia Sanchez, James A. Emanuel, Burnell Lippy, and Cid Corman. Sonia Sanchez has two collections of haiku: Like the Singing Coming off the Drums (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998) and Morning Haiku (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010). James A. Emanuel’s Jazz from the Haiku King (Broadside Press, 1999) is also a unique collection of haiku. Lenard Moore, author of his haiku collections The Open Eye (1985), has been writing and publishing haiku for over 20 years and became the first African American to be elected as President of the Haiku Society of America. Burnell Lippy’s haiku appears in the major American haiku journals, Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku (2013).Cid Corman is well-known not only as a haiku poet but a translator of Japanese ancient and modern haiku poets: Santoka, Walking into the Wind (Cadmus Editions, 1994).

A new live literature experience by award-winning poet Nick Makoha. On a November evening in 1978 after eight years of civil war, Nick Makoha and his mother fled their homeland of Uganda. Many people were displaced, thrown into unfamiliar environments and forced to find their new home in the world. The Dark is Nick's own poetic retelling of his experience and that of others affected by it - a series of voices echoing from varying states of darkness. What unfolds is a story of those who find themselves exiled, with allegiances split between their birthplace and their new country.

Florida-themed literary journal. Issue #2 features poems, photos, personal essays, photography, fine art and fiction and prose by Larry Baker, Chris Bodor, Carolee Ackerson Bertisch, Danuta Blaszak, Richard Burr, Susan Calfee, Pris Campbell, Alan Catlin, Susan Chappelear, Andrea Collins-Roe, Mary Deno-Yeck, Jim Draper, Sarah Crooks Flaire, Ann Leshy-Wood Fuller, Emma Gilger, Amy Lauer Goldin, Lynn Skapyak Harlin, George Holcomb, Inez Holger, Kyra Jade, Rick Jones, Leny Kaltenekker, LeeAnn Kendall, Beverly A. Bell Kessler, Michael Henry Lee, Loretta M. Leto, Antoinette Libro, Jason Logan, Dotty Loop, Johnny Masiulewicz, Tonn Pastore, Sam Pacetti, Becky Meyer Pourchot, Sharon Scholl, Kimmy Van Kooten, Rob Waldner, and Jim Wilson.

Aimed chiefly at newcomers, this is a practical guide to understanding and composing haiku. If you’ve long been curious about haiku then this introduction will answer your questions about syllable counts, cutting-words (kireji), season-words (kigo) and so much more, including differences between approaches in the English and Japanese languages. Using verse from masters and contemporary poets, the Haiku How-To will take you through key concepts and important contextual issues. The guide also features concise explanations and examples of compositional techniques, and offers easy-to-use templates which will allow you to grow accustomed to the form, structure and goals of haiku. Writer Ashley Capes is a poet, novelist and teacher from Australia. He has been writing and publishing for the last twenty years and teaching during the last decade or so. He is also the author of seven poetry collections, three of which focus on haiku, senryu and haibun.

This exciting new book explores the relationship between cultural traditions and computers, looking at how people from very different cultures and backgrounds communicate and how the use of information technologies can support and enhance these dialogues. Historically we developed our understanding of other cultures through traditional means (museums, printed literature, etc.) but the advent of information technologies has allowed us access to a plethora of material. Tosa asks the question “Can we understand other cultures using computers as media to supplement thinking and memorization?” Starting with a survey of art and technology, moving into the area of culture and technology, the book culminates with a vision of a new world based on an understanding of these relationships, allowing cultural creators and viewers the opportunity to reach a better and more profound understanding of the role information technology will play going forward.

The 7th International Conference on Entertainment Computing, under the auspices of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), was held September 25–27, 2008 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Based on the very successful first international workshop (IWEC 2002) and the following international conferences (ICEC 2003 through ICEC 2007), ICEC 2008 was an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst researchers and developers in the field of entertainment computing. ICEC is the longest established and most prestigious conference in the field of entertainment computing. The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for advanced research in entertainment computing, broadly defined. ICEC is truly international with leading experts from 14 nations representing academia and industry attending this year’s conference. These leaders presented their newest research, insights, products and demonstrations. Although the field of entertainment computing is thought of as new, in fact modern digital computer games go back over 45 years with games such as Spacewar developed in 1961. This is not to say entertainment computing is limited to computer games. As evidenced by papers in this volume, entertainment computing covers virtually every aspect of today’s recreational diversions.