This small volume is both companion to and descendant of Yakich's award-winning Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross. Each poem here shares a title with a poem in the previous book. Each expands on its namesake poem, giving the background, but a background you've never imagined! When a poet as vital and innovative as Yakich is telling the story behind the poem, the vignettes and characters that emerge from behind the scenes are as exuberant and playful as the originals. Mark Yakich's first book of poems, Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, was a winner of the 2003 National Poetry Series. He is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.

"A provocative and practical guide, written for students of creative writing as well as literary studies, to an art form that is both loved and feared"--

The literary tradition of New Orleans spans centuries and touches every genre; its living heritage winds through storied neighborhoods and is celebrated at numerous festivals across the city. For booklovers, a visit to the Big Easy isn't complete without whiling away the hours in an antiquarian bookstore in the French Quarter or stepping out on a literary walking tour. Perhaps only among the oak-lined avenues, Creole town houses, and famed hotels of New Orleans can the lust of A Streetcar Named Desire, the zaniness of A Confederacy of Dunces, the chill of Interview with the Vampire, and the heartbreak of Walker Percy's Moviegoer begin to resonate. Susan Larson's revised and updated edition of The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans not only explores the legacy of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner, but also visits the haunts of celebrated writers of today, including Anne Rice and James Lee Burke. This definitive guide provides a key to the books, authors, festivals, stores, and famed addresses that make the Crescent City a literary destination.

A new collection from a poet of "wily verve" whose work is "filled with more satire and jeopardy than anything going today" (Terrance Hayes) Mark Yakich's fifth collection of poetry is a dynamic and discerning journey of devotion and temptation in pursuit of the divine. Not trifling in ambiguity but diving headlong into it, Spiritual Exercises wrestles with popular gods as much as with personal ghosts. From autism to eroticism, from benediction to excommunication, and from grief to gratitude, this collection lays bare a full spectrum of emotional life, showing us how grace can be as playful as it is sincere.

An unconventional collection from a National Poetry Series award-winning poet, author of Spiritual Exercises Mark Yakich 's acclaimed debut collection, Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, examined the blessing and curse of romantic love in its multiplicities. The poems in his new collection approach questions of suffering and atrocity (e.g., war, genocide, fallen soufflés) with discerning humor and unconventional comedy. These poems show how humor can be taken as seriously as straight-ahead solemnity and how we can re-envision solemnity in terms other than lamentation, protest, and memorial.

Poetry. Scientists use the word "biogeography" for the geographical distribution of plant and animal life. Sandra Meek's Biogeography is a powerful metaphysical meditation on the connections between us humans and the larger natural world. Her elegant verse entwines public and private histories, unleashing them in fascinating habitats, ranging from a remote forest village accessible only by boat to the poet's own small backyard overrun with honeysuckle. Her lines travel these disparate landscapes, focusing on the wanton desecration of the land, while simultaneously seeking to inspire a new sense of wonder, a new registry of fresh and creative inspiration. In Meek's poems, the word and the world are inextricably linked. There is room for flamboyant faith and a new nomenclature of wonder. BIOGEOGRAPHY is Sandra Meek's third collection of poetry and is the winner of the Dorset Prize. Meek was also a four-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. She was awarded Editors' Choice for the 2002 James Wright Award, given by Mid-American Review, and she won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award for Poetry in 2003. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, while many others and have been featured on the websites Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Poetry Net's "Poet of the Month." Meek is an associate professor of English, rhetoric, and writing at Berry College, where she teaches creative writing and contemporary literature.