The author of Good Heart presents “lyric poetry that sings, enchants, debunks and then reconstructs the truths and mysteries of our lives” (Jim Moore, author of Prognosis). Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry Included in the Book Sense Picks Poetry Top Ten Written over the course of three decades, this extraordinary collection of new and selected poems presents a body of work from Deborah Keenan that is expressive variously of love and rage, vulnerability and authority, distraction and focus, and, perhaps above all, a sharply empathetic sense of observation. Keenan’s work balances holding on to what is dear with letting go of what she cannot change. With refreshing curiosity, these poems capture rich layers of life in trial and bliss alike, enabling us to see what a number of her contemporaries have recognized for some time: Deborah Keenan is one of our great poets. “My god, these are beautiful poems. I feel as if a great soul is speaking in these poems, after long thought and meditation and inward dialogue.” —Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

In her highly anticipated new collection, Deborah Keenan sifts through inanimate objects and forgotten memories in search of personal validation. Her journal-like confessions create an instant bond with the reader, yet these seemingly simple poems daringly redefine common language. Keenan skillfully twists words to suit her ends, creating a colorful, dream-like world filled with lions, paintings, wars, and mummies. Throughout, she constantly reorganizes this world in an effort to realize her place in it.

USE YOUR WORDS introduces the art of creative nonfiction to women who want to give written expression to their lives as mothers. Written by award-winning teacher and writer, Kate Hopper, this book will help women find the heart of their writing, learn to use motherhood as a lens through which to write the world, and turn their motherhood stories into art. Each chapter of USE YOUR WORDS focuses on an element of craft and contains a lecture, a published essay, and writing exercises that will serve as jumping-off points for the readers’ own writing. Chapter topics include: the importance of using concrete details, an overview of creative nonfiction as a genre, character development, voice, humor, tense and writing the “hard stuff,” reflection and back-story, structure, revision, and publishing. The content of each lecture is aligned with the essay/poem in that chapter to help readers more easily grasp the elements of craft being discussed. Together the chapters provide a unique opportunity for mother writers to learn and grow as writers. USE YOUR WORDS takes the approach that creative writing can be taught, and this underscores each chapter. When students learn to read like writers, to notice how a piece is put together, and to question the choices a writer makes, they begin to think like writers. When they learn to ground their writing in concrete, sensory details and begin to understand how to create believable characters and realistic dialogue, their own writing improves. USE YOUR WORDS reflects Kate’s style as a teacher, guiding the reader in a straightforward, nurturing, and passionate voice. As one student noted in a class evaluation: “Kate is a born writer and teacher, and her enthusiasm for essays about motherhood and for teaching the nuts and bolts of writing so that ordinary mothers have the tools to write their stories is a gift to the world. She is raising the value of motherhood in our society as she helps mothers build their confidence and strengthen their game as writers.”

Can we teeter together, on the knife's edge of having and wanting? In Blameless Mouth, Jessica Fox-Wilson asks this question, by exploring the cycle of hunger, consumption and satiety. The collection traces the poet's relationship with hunger from childhood to womanhood, uncovering what it means to feel forever wanting. Her work also considers the cultural legacy of hunger, through stories of starving children and hungry women, like Hansel and Gretel, Persephone, Eve, and others. Blameless Mouth illuminates the struggle of living daily with the contradictory pressures to want less but take more and searches for satiety in a culture that encourages insatiability.

A moment like this becomes extraordinary,/when I think of how easily/it could have been overlooked; claims Kristin Laurel in her poem Ordinary Bliss. How lucky we are that Laurel refuses, over and over, to overlook the ordinary. This is a truly wonderful collection of poems that looks unflinchingly at the full spectrum of human pain and trauma, at the violence we do to ourselves and each other, and at the violence that the world inflicts on each and every one of us. What I admire above all is their tenderness and their hard-won humor: here is a poet who has seen as mother, lover, ER nurse and survivor the best and the worst we have to offer. To steal a phrase from Yeats, here is the world in all its terrible beauty. Here is a world of cut lilacs and metal, of broken minds and bodies, of bullets and vomit and “unhindered sky.” These are poems that resist easy redemption or absolution. Instead, they present the complex reality of what it means to be human, and they implore and challenge us, in their refusal to turn away, to stay human and to live with compassion. -- Jude Nutter, author of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman and The Curator of Silence.

2009 Poet's Market will give you all the information necessary to research markets and submit your poetry for publication. In addition to market listings, you'll find guidance for preparing and submitting manuscripts, identifying markets, relating to editors, and more. Plus, the book includes additional listings for conferences, workshops, organizations for poets, print and online resources, and the latest trends in poetry writing and publishing.

"Inspired by Nin-me-'sar-ra, Enheduanna's song to Inanna."

This anthology of contemporary American poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, explores issues of identity, oppression, injustice, and social change. Living American writers produced each piece between 1980 and the present; works were selected based on literary merit and the manner in which they address one or more pressing social issues. William Reichard has assembled some of the most respected literary artists of our time, asking whose voices are ascendant, whose silenced, and why. The work as a whole reveals shifting perspectives and the changing role of writing in the social justice arena over the last few decades.

Poems that explore the relationship between the author's search for meaning and the art and life of Vincent Van Gogh.

Unabashedly local and particular, these poems bring alive the sights, sounds, and people of Minneapolis and Saint Paul--the "twin cities" of Minnesota. In addition, they aim to think and feel their way through one of the most painful episodes in the history of the local church, the revelations of cover-up surrounding the sexual abuse of children by priests. The poet's words present one mode of healing in a difficult hour, some nourishment as a community moves forward into a new day.