It didn't take long in 1858 for the apparitions in France to arouse strong emotions in people around the world, many of which were not of the visionary's faith. The unique child of fourteen, Bernadette Soubirous, possessed an astonishingly simple nature. So it was no surprise that she was immediately mocked and branded stupid. But the celestial visitor was enthralled with her. They laughed together. They cried together. And the Lady, all dressed in white, took Bernadette into her confidence, completely aware that she could accomplish the duties entrusted to her. The Lady asked Bernadette to drink from the spring. There was no spring. But she saw a damp patch of earth, and there she dug as a spring emerged. She told Bernadette to ask the priest to build a chapel on the site of their visits. She was to tell him to allow the people to come in procession and "let the people come to the waters." The fourteen-year-old was terrified of the temperamental priest; he was stern and unfriendly. But she obeyed. It was at this point that elected civil authorities, church authorities, and the local police changed the life of Bernadette and her family forever. Even the village of Lourdes, France, was forever new. Bernadette, for making up such a ridiculous story, was interrogated and threatened with prison and even a mental asylum. But not once did she alter her stance. The Lady told her that she could not promise happiness in this life, only in the next. In the end, it was decided that Bernadette was not a liar nor mentally deranged. And today, more than 160 years after the beautiful Lady asked for the spring, the chapel, and the processions, five million annual pilgrims journey to Lourdes--many pilgrims of many faiths. And some even arrive with no faith. But they all continue to come, hoping to find peace of mind, heart, body, and soul. For all of the blessings that have stemmed from Lourdes over the years, let us all enjoy as we sing together the Ode to Bernadette!

Theres only one real taboo left in 21st Century America, and Jack Kassels got it bad. He doesnt believe in God. And even that might be all right if he didnt teach at the College of Saint Bernadette, but he does. Nothing is more important to Jack than reason, the triumph of truth over comforting fantasies, but Saint Bernies is the land of created realities, where critical thoughts go to die. When his oldest partner in disbelief shows up as the campus priest, Jack edges nearer the abyss, finally plunging over when his ex-wife enrolls their brilliant young son in a Lutheran school and the boy begins quoting Scripture in response to Jacks questions. Back against the wall, Jack starts to come out as a non-believer at what turns out to be the worst possible time --- as an alleged vision of the Virgin Mary turns the college into a holy pilgrimage site. A novel of principles and substance...CALLING BERNADETTES BLUFF is surprising not in the form but in the execution --- in boldness, in originality, in the spit and shine of the prose The president, the philosopher, the priestess, and the priest nail us again and again by sentences, as it were, fired by builders gunsAll thats superfluous burns, as readers become powder, fuse, and match. --- Robert Grunst, author of The Smallest Bird in North America "Wicked funny...CALLING BERNADETTES BLUFF cleverly captures some of the primary paradoxes of contemporary American life, especially our humble human yearning for truth in an age of absurdity. The hilarious answer to what might happen if David Lodge met David Foster Wallace on a Wendy Wasserstein set." --- Cecilia Konchar Farr, author of Dancing Through the Doctrine "Entertaining, insightful...genuinely brilliant." --- Theresa Ostrom, author of The Folding Year "CALLING BERNADETTES BLUFF is an undoubted triumph of academic satire...in excellent company with other satirical novels of academe; from David Lodge to Jane Smiley, from Malcolm Bradbury to James Hynes, Dale McGowan is easily their match in wit and depth. [Its a] mightily funny sendup of faith and letters...but Bernadettes Bluff is also a delightful, insightful investigation into the heart of faith of a different kind, of the universal human need for a belief system, of the search for truth and meaning and a life lived honestly." --- Sharon Schulz-Elsing, Curled Up With a Good Book reviews This remarkable debut novel diverts the full force of the postmodern whirlwind onto a tiny fictional college on the Minnesota prairie, with results both thought-provoking and hilarious. Nonsense of every color --- political, religious, ideological --- finds fertile ground within the gates of St. Bernies, a college perched precariously on a bizarre land formation of unknown origins, known (tellingly) as The Wedge. Author Dale McGowan puts the tiny trumpet of reason into the unsteady hands of Jack John Kassel, philosopher and humanist, whose attempts to live with a little intellectual integrity are shaken as much by the antics of his erstwhile allies as by his intellectual opponents. McGowan creates characters that are at once recognizable and absurd: the atheist priest, the New-Agey college president, the feminist warrior (and Leonard the Poet, who sublimates his love for her by reading dirty Chaucer), Satanists, liturgical cheerleaders, singing nuns... all with cards against the vest and each other in their crosshairs. The dialogue moves from classical philosophy to cheesy pop culture with merciless speed and devastating wit. On the surface its riotous entertainment, but for weeks after you close the cover this remarkable book will resonate in your head, tickling the mind in lovely and unfamiliar places.

A COMPANION TO POETIC GENRE A COMPANION TO POETIC GENRE This eagerly awaited Companion features over 40 contributions from leading academics around the world, and offers critical overviews of numerous poetic genres. Covering a range of cultural traditions from Britain, Ireland, North America, Japan and the Caribbean, among others, this valuable collection considers ancient genres such as the elegy, the ode, the ghazal, and the ballad, before moving on to Medieval and Renaissance genres originally invented or codified by the Troubadours or poets who followed in their wake. The book also approaches genres driven by theme, such as the calypso and found poetry. Each chapter begins by defining the genre in its initial stages, charting historical developments and finally assessing its latest mutations, be they structural, thematic, parodic, assimilative, or subversive.

Contemporary American poetry has plenty to offer new readers, and plenty more for those who already follow it. Yet its difficulty—and sheer variety—leaves many readers puzzled or overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephanie Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, Burt canvasses American poetry of the past four decades, from the headline-making urgency of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen to the stark pathos of Louise Glück, the limitless energy of Juan Felipe Herrera, and the erotic provocations of D. A. Powell. The Poem Is You: Sixty Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them is a guide to the diverse magnificences of American poetry today. It presents a wide range of poems selected by Burt for this volume, each accompanied by an original essay explaining how a given poem works, why it matters, and how the poem speaks to other parts of art and culture. Included here are some classroom classics (by Ashbery, Komunyakaa, Hass), less famous poems by very famous poets (Glück, Kay Ryan), and poems by prizewinning poets near the start of their careers (such as Brandon Som), and by others who are not—or not yet—well known. The Poem Is You will appeal to poets, teachers, and students, but it is intended especially for readers who want to learn more about contemporary American poetry but who have not known where or how to start. It describes what American poets have fashioned for one another, and what they can give us today.

A veteran copyeditor studies the practice of diagramming sentences in a charming and funny look back at its odd history, its elegant method, and its rich, ongoing possibilities.

Unleash the Poem Within is about friendship, self-reflection and learning something new. It is, quite simply, about how the power of creativity can change your life. This book shows women how to liberate their creative spirit and use it not only as a means of self-expression, but as a way to find more calm, peace and an enhanced ability to see the value in each present moment. Wendy Nyemaster is the founder of the Poetry Posse, a group of ordinary women committed to writing and sharing their creativity as a way to enhance their lives. She guides the reader through twelve different poems and how to write them, and how doing so can unlock their inner power. Unleash the Poem Within shows women that by experimenting with creativity, they can find their voice and live their lives to the fullest.

Holoholo is the Hawaiian word for walking out with no destination in mind. In the three sections of this book, Barbara Hamby walks out into the current American chaos with its inferno of wars, street violence, apocalyptic fantasies, and racial tension. Fueled by an American lingo that embraces slang, Yiddish, street talk, and the yearning to be able to describe her moment in time, these poems encompass the complicated past, difficult present, and unknown future. Every foray offers a glimpse of the world constructed from one woman’s collage of consciousness. Ode on My Nightingale My nightingale is the conquistador of moonlight, the engine of divine hullabaloo, the dance party of shining headlights on a dark road past midnight, the thrill of that first kiss in the battered Chevette, the wrong turn that made me burn my map, clap twice, summon my djinn. My nightingale is the stake in my heart that can’t be dislodged, the hodge-podge of my brain at two a.m. when the drunks have gone home or passed out in the street. My nightingale trills in the darkness, thinks of nothing but his song, says forget me at your peril for I am the tiara of rain that falls from the purple sky, the lies you tell yourself to wake up from your dreams, so listen, for my song will fade into nothing, but nothing is made without me. I am the cosmologist of the atomic, high priest of everything you never wanted to be, all your highjacked dreams, the screams in the muddle of night, the beam of starlight on the river of sleep, for we are alone, my darling, on this planet of night, and I am your little god, your drinking water straight from the stream, for my song is spooling into the night forever and ever, amen. I am the derivative of sin. O let me in.

This book explores the art of poetry writing from a practice-based perspective, showing how form, trope and theory inform the practical craft of writing poems. It is divided into three key sections: - Form and structure, covering sonnets, ballads, blank verse and more - Trope and device, introducing topics such as irony, imagery and voice - Poetics and practice, which discusses the writing of poets such as Robert Frost, Amy Lowell and Frank O'Hara Each chapter unpacks a particular concept or form, using examples to display it in practice. The book is filled with exercises to get you writing, and hints and tips for effective re-writing and for avoiding common pitfalls. Written by published poets, many of whom teach writing or literature, The Portable Poetry Workshop will push you to explore beyond your creative writing boundaries.

Offering both subtle and immediate pleasures, Lee Ann Brown's generous new book extends her unmistakable, original voice, every bit as Southern as it is avant-garde, gracious without being naive. Abounding in a playfulness of style, including songs and ballads, the poems in The Sleep That Changed Everything are by turns funny, serious, insightful and moving. Botanical and scientific language are used here as collage elements to chart cycles of desire and emotional transformation. Brown is committed to Whitman's idea that we all have many selves; thus her work embraces the immediacy of the New York School, the personal and literary wildness of the Beats, the word play and political astuteness of Language poetry and an eroticism all her own. In poems that are both highly literate and plain-spoken, Brown makes the life of the soul directly available in all its renegade garb.

This book draws on literary, cultural, and critical examples forming a menstrual imaginary—a body of work by women writers and poets that builds up a concept of women’s creativity in an effort to overturn menstrual prejudice. The text addresses key arbiters of the menstrual imaginary in a series of letters, including Sylvia Plath the initiator of ‘the blood jet’, Hélène Cixous the pioneer of a conceptual red ink and the volcanic unconscious, and Luce Irigaray the inaugurator of women’s artistic process relative to a vital flow of desire based in sexual difference. The text also undertakes provocative against-the-grain re-readings of the Medusa, the Sphinx, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Red Shoes, as a means of affirmatively and poetically re-imagining a woman’s flow. Natalie Rose Dyer argues for re-envisioning menstrual bleeding and creativity in reaction and resistance to ongoing and problematic societal views of menstruation.