Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. "No one has written a finer, stranger, more enjoyably various and intelligent long poem than Jason's Koo's 'No Longer See,' the central poem in his splendid new book, MORE THAN MERE LIGHT. Schuyler and Knausgaard, Proust and Ashbery, to name just a few, meld into a poetic performance that is joyfully bent, and as gloriously funny as it is self-castigating. Underscoring all this is a sorrowing sense of self that can't shake free of time--time as it drags or stops or flies during romance and sex and the passage from domestic happiness to failure, and as it marks off the progress of a poetry and a life coming into its full, vital strength. With a cool-eyed detachment from his own drama, Koo has written a book that is unforgettable in its candor, its disabused self-knowledge, and its generosity of spirit."--Tom Sleigh "This book is about falling, a lot. There are good falls and uncomfortable falls and quiet falls and in-between falls and falling in and out of love with other people and yourself--as Koo aptly writes, 'That was a falling.' Koo is brilliant at mastering the often anxious way we talk to ourselves in our heads, as a way to recall moments and construct memories, justify behavior to oneself, and explore the roles of gender dynamics and sexuality within a world full of distractions in an often strange modern technological landscape. Throughout the collection, Koo is wonderfully narrative, bringing us into the speaker's world, full of jazz and biking and Brooklyn and girlfriends and students and conversations with both an overload of self-consciousness and a lack of it all at the same time ('What's okay, okay?'). The speaker's unabashed ability to be excessive while also having the reader rely on silence, on what isn't told, creates a captivating world for the reader to explore--and most importantly, see themselves fully immersed in as they navigate their own bizarre lives and landscapes. Read it over and over and over again, so you can, as Koo says, drop back 'against the light.'"--Joanna C. Valente

Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.

The Great Lakes have a colorful past that spans hundreds of years, stretches over thousands of miles... and sometimes crosses into the spirit world. Ghosts of the Great Lakes takes readers from the far eastern shores of Lake Ontario to western Lake Superior, revealing haunting and strange tales. These whispers from the other side, however, are based in history and fact. One lighthouse site hides the bones of a murdered keeper. Rapping sounds in a family home mark the beginning of the Spiritualist movement in North America. A bride has a premonition that her honeymoon ride will end in death... and soon after, the steamer she was on vanishes. Repeated sightings of ghost ships. Can these strange phenomena be attributed to the imagination? How can multiple sightings be explained away as mere tricks of light and fog? Read these historical accounts of the Great Lakes' most fascinating ghost stories and judge for yourself--are they more than mere legend? Where does fact end... and folklore begin?

Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.

This is the journal of Joe Necchi, a junkie living on a barge that plies the rivers and bays of New York. Joe's world is the half-world of drugs and addicts -- the world of furtive fixes in sordid Harlem apartments, of police pursuits down deserted subway stations. Junk for Necchi, however, is a tool, freely chosen and fully justified; he is Cain, the malcontent, the profligate, the rebel who lives by no one's rules but his own. Like DeQuincey and Baudelaire before him, Trocchi's muse was drugs. But unlike his literary predecessors, in his roman a clef, Trocchi never romanticizes the source of his inspiration. If the experience of heroin, of the "fix," is central to Cain's Book, both its destructive force and the possibilities for creativity it creates are recognized and accepted without apology. "Cain's Book is the classic late-1950s account of heroin addiction. . . . An un-self-forgiving existentialism, rendered with writerly exactness and muscularity, set this novel apart from all others of the genre." -- William S. Burroughs

A moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poets What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaining—a sharp sequel to Wiman’s earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.

Psychic and master healer Meg Losey shares her alternative healing techniques for mind, body, and spirit in Touching The Light. Losey shows how channeled systems of healing stem from our perception, energy, and participation in our own journeys. She shares the techniques that she has learned from her human and etheric teachers that readers can use on themselves and others. How is it that miracles happen? Is spontaneous healing really possible? Why is it that some illnesses don’t show up in standard or even specialized medical testing, yet are very real in their effects? Can someone be “cosmically sick” with no apparent physical cause? How do the people and places around us affect us in our everyday lives? Can we intentionally and effectively create miracles of healing to change lives, or to effect positive outcomes even when situations seem hopeless? How can symbols of light be used to instantly attune someone’s entire energy system? Meg Blackburn Losey answers these questions and many others in this ground-breaking book. Touching the Light brings the reader into previously unknown worlds of healing and explains not only how energy healing is possible but how it works. It is the quintessential instruction manual for holistic healing in the third dimension and beyond!