Bøger udgivet af Homebound Publications

"The Mystery Still Drives Us is a prismatic, mysterious read that will thoroughly envelop you and usher you along on a poetic journey that will leave an undeniable, indelible mark. These billowing, prayerful reflections of longing will open you to the mystery."-Frank LaRue Owen, author of award-winning The School of Soft-Attention"One part beautifully illuminated love story, one part elongated human heartbreak, and a third part warning signs for a broken and beautiful world. McDowell photographs the curves of the earth and the sharpness of desire with the deep clarity only a poet can reveal, while somehow offering up a balm for all of us, poet and pedestrian alike."-Thomas Qualls, author of the award-winning novel The Painted Oxen"This is poetry for the soul and for the body, sensuous and textured-alive. Its rhythms and themes are familiar, but still fresh, at once quotidian and accessible, but still mysterious. You'll want to sit with The Mystery Still Drives Us under a tree, carry it around with you and read and re-read; for it offers, in some small way, in its subtle and slow depth, an antidote to the superficiality and busy-ness of our world."-Theodore Richards, award-winning author of Cosmosophia

Some Bodies in the Grief Bed is Rick Benjamin''s latest attempt to find the intersection of the human and the non-human in the context of this earth''s ecology. A poem about migrations butterflies and others make might be followed by another appearing in the life of a family; and this poet is always trying to face down the distinction between them. At the same time, he is deeply interested in every detail of either: giraffe''s eating an Acacia''s topmost leaves and pods; the way the sound of percussive roofs in rain bring up memories a boy might have thought he''d buried. These are offered as equal parts of one book, planets orbiting around the same sun. As the title suggests, Some Bodies in the Grief Bed evolves around loss, but also those moments of ecstasy and joy that are attached to them. As Martín suggests, such grief is also and always just another opportunity to praise everything and everyone we''ve been lucky enough to hold and have in this world without keeping. This book reminds us both to hold each moment and to be more mindful of what it''s made (out) of- the organic, impermanent nature of our "passing love" (Langston Hughes) on this planet.

In 2016, months before his son was born, Scott F. Parker went to the Oregon coast to hold himself accountable for his first 35 years, to take stock of his life and what he'd learned so far, to ask what he might have to offer his son. For ten days he walked south keeping a notebook. Being on the Oregon Coast is the product of that journey. The book offers a condensed and symbolic account of Parker's walk as his thoughts roam over such territory as nature, solitude, the creation of value, and the art of human flourishing. The prose is reflective and deeply grounded in the environment it traverses. The Pacific Ocean, the beach, and the inland woods are felt presences even in Parker's most philosophical turns. As in his previous book, A Way Home: Oregon Essays, Parker celebrates the natural beauty of his home state. His love for Oregon is a testament to the power of place. Being on the Oregon Coast takes readers for a long walk on the beach and leaves them energized-ready for their own walks, their own thoughts, and their own possibilities. It is a profound work.

By turns irreverent, playful, and serious, Haltmaier's poems explore the phenomena of daily life with a deft clarity that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Brimming with nuance and surprise, To the Left of the Sun touches on the themes of solitude and union, love and letting go, and the redemptive power of nature. Haltmaier's unflinching eye lays bare the hidden miracles in choosing a head of cabbage at the farmer's market, taking a morning walk, or watching her mother's decline into dementia. The everyday and the heartrending undergo a light-infusing alchemy in her hands. At its heart, To the Left of the Sun is a portal to a world where wonder, humor, and beauty can be found in even the most unlikely places.

It has been said that poetry can be a marker of where a poet has been, or a way for a poet to point to places where we, the reader, can go. Both types of poems appear in The School of Soft-Attention. Not corralled to any one poetic style, the heart-mind-river that forms this flowing collection has been shaped by the author's diverse cross-cultural experiences, spiritual tutelage with a New Mexican wisewoman and wilderness guide, and fueled by such practices as meditation in the Zen tradition, mountain pilgrimages, fasting in the deserts of New Mexico, and intensive dreamwork. At every point along the way, the poems in The School of Soft-Attention invite the reader to turn to a new way of seeing, a new way of paying attention to the life within and around us.

What do we mean by "God" in today's world? Do we even need "God" anymore?How many names for Divinity are there? Do the names for God change as we mature as individuals, evolve as a species, and face a critical "turning time" in human and planetary history?" Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview. In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of Divine Names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: From experience.Ultimately, no name for God suffices. We are challenged to continue to probe the rich ecology of human spirituality to ask questions, embrace paradox, and listen silently to the deepest of life's mysteries.

The natural world has the power to awaken, restore, and transform us, and nowhere are these capacities more evident than in the thirty-six luminous essays that make up The Ashokan Way. Written in the form of journal entries that take place over the course of a year, the essays explore both the outer landscapes of the awe-inspiring Ashokan Reservoir, a vast open space surrounded by the ancient bluestone peaks of the Catskill Mountain Watershed, and the equally awe-inspiring inner landscapes of our own most personal terrains.Each of the book's evocative entries describes a walk along the ever-changing reservoir, illuminating the natural world as a portal to self-understanding, restoration, and meaning. Some walks take us deep inside to trek the hills and valleys of our aspirations and sorrows, our joys and confusions. Others offer a profound antidote to an interior landscape that has become crowded with distraction and overstimulation. Still others seem to seem usher us into the realm of the mystical.As surely as we would perish without the water and air that the earth provides, we are at risk of perishing without the spiritual sustenance that the natural world provides through its ability to stir and astonish us. In a world that is ever faster, noisier, and busier, The Ashokan Way is a balm, an inspiration, and an invitation to discover greater intimacy with inner and outer landscapes alike.

From Cape Wrath in the lonely northwest to a muddy estuary overlooking England, The Kiss of Sweet Scottish Rain takes the reader on a walk across Scotland. For Rob McWilliams-Scots-born but exiled since childhood-the walk is an obstinate ambition, and the start of a new direction in life.McWilliams crosses wild and beautiful landscapes, meets an ever-changing cast of companions, and passes through communities from remote hamlets to the smiling, but rough-edged, city of Glasgow. Around every corner, he explores Scotland's turbulent history and unique cultural and natural heritage, from the Gaelic language, to the fearsome Highland midge, and how the Stone of Destiny-an ancient coronation symbol - could now reside in an unassuming Glasgow pub.Struggling with terrain, injury, atrocious weather, and above all his own fragile confidence, McWilliams weaves into his narrative the threads of his life that led to the journey, and discovers that the rewards of adventure are rarely those that were anticipated.The Kiss of Sweet Scottish Rain informs and entertains. As well as a ben or a castle, there is usually a joke just around the next turn in the trail.

RIVER OF LOVE is a supernatural Love story about a fierce Indigenous Mexican American girl growing up in a white Colorado town during a youth-led cultural revolution of the 1970s. It's a Love letter to the Southern Rocky Mountains, to the Spirits, to a close-knit family, and even to youth itself. The Arkansas River is a vital character, as is the environment, and wisdom of the ancestors. Things that happen when you're young seem so much more important because they're happening for the first time. Indigenous Mexican Americans straddle two very different cultures; this story focuses on how we are all connected. Power is lost by moving in a forward direction the whole time looking backward. Mistakes are portals of discovery. Trust The River ~The Flow ~ the Lover, to be in the present, trying not to make things happen, to not push The River. Let things come and go on their own, to flow like a riverbed. The story culminates with the high school friends gathering at a 40th school reunion. Attachments are invisible threads that reach through dimensions of space and time. Infinite Love shapes our lives. Love is what we are made for, and Love is who we are. What if caring for each other is the summit? At all costs stay connected.

The Temple of Warm Harmony is a book of poems, but it is also something of a map. Some of the poems are about the author, some are about the reader, while other poems are about the times we're all living through. A blend of mini-exorcisms, healing incantations, dreams, and invitations to numinous ways of observing and experiencing life, the book is divided into three parts: In the World of Red Dust, Heartbreak and Armoring, and Entering The Temple of Warm Harmony. On the heels of his award-winning first book of poetry, The School of Soft-Attention, poet Frank LaRue Owen invites "fellow travelers" to consider ways we can regain a sense of harmony even while navigating challenging terrain, personally and collectively.

After Following is a collection of poems inspired by what the author Burt Bradley describes as poet whisperers: from Rumi to Kerouac, Ecclesiastes to Philip Levine, Emily Dickinson to Mary Oliver. These writers and numerous others' lives and work serve as guides in shaping the poet's ways of seeing and reflecting upon wildness in the world. Often this is expressed in poems depicting the severe beauty of Wyoming as well as the wide-open spaces of the inner life.To speak of wildness, following Gary Snyder, is to speak of wholeness, in which hierarchies of value evaporate as well as the separation between the sacred and profane. The poems in After Following pay homage to a host of literary mentors, at times directly as in "A Belated Letter to James Wright," "Postcard to William Stafford." Other poems are more allusive, like "Rain, A Wyoming Love Song" (after T.S. Eliot) and "A Long Way from Amherst" (following Emily Dickinson). After Following describes the process a poet develops in his or her craft. Beginning with reading and learning from the masters, great and small, following in their footsteps, after which one finds his own path, while acknowledging the mentors who served as his guides.

Dickerson's lovingly crafted narratives take us to waters from sockeye spawning streams of Alaska's Lake Clark and Katmai National Parks, to Rocky Mountain rivers in the national parks and forests of Montana and Wyoming, to the little brook trout creeks in his home waters of Maine. Along the way we will fall in love with arctic streams, glacial rivers flowing green with flour, alpine brooks tumbling out of melting snow, and little estuaries where lobsters and brook trout swim within a few yards of each other; with wide deep lakes, little mountain tarns with crystal clear water, and tannin-laden beaver ponds the color of tea. The narratives are creative, personal, and compelling, yet informed by science and history as well as close observation and the eye of a naturalist. The characters in the stories are fascinating, from fly fishing guides to fisheries biologists to wranglers to Dickerson himself who often explores the rivers with a fly rod in hand, but whose writing transcends any sort of fishing narrative. But the most important characters are the rivers themselves whose stories Dickerson tells, and whose music he helps us to hear.

Imagine walls could actually talk as a New England factory community faces closure of its signature mill due to environmental contamination and foreign competition. This story of politics, family life, competing redevelopment schemes, gossiping locals, and a mother fiercely protecting her children is told in the voice of common objects-from the church steeple clock to a Bridgeport milling machine to an umbrella. They witness a bit of drinking, sex, a suicide, and the hopes and dreams of the human beings around them. How did these everyday things find their voice? Readers may never again look at the ordinary objects around them the same.

"Trapped underground in the Svalbard Seed Vault, Mavin Cedarstrom is rescued by a band of strange women dressed in furs. The Peregrine scout Simone Kita was sent to recover seeds from the top of the world and bring them south to the floating gardens of Kashphera"--Back cover.

From the small-world accidents of finding lost toys and meeting old friends in strange places, to apparent twists of fate that lead to historical events, people continue to find meaning in coincidence. In Great Pan is Dead, author Eric D. Lehman investigates this phenomenon through the lens of his own mysterious stories and ponders how the puzzles of our lives fit together. From a frightening encounter in England's Lake District to a moment of transcendence in the Sistine Chapel, this insightful memoir will make you see your world in a startling new way.

Two men, three realms, one goal: to find the heart of the world. Painted Oxen is a novel of transcendence, one that not only invites its readers into its story, but somehow enmeshes them in its alchemy, leaving them changed in unexpected ways at its journeys end. Bridging the worlds of ancient Tibet and modern-day India, Painted Oxen weaves a tale of two men-one young, one old-on parallel journeys. Their separate-but-connected pilgrimages are equal parts internal and external.The old man, a Tibetan monk, is searching for a sacred hidden valley known to bring enlightenment to those who enter it. The young man is backpacking through India, searching for a guru or the love of his life; he doesn't care which. A mysterious red-haired woman who resembles an ancient goddess appears in a series of dream chapters that tie the two journeys together.The underlying theme of the novel is the transformation of the human heart, which is required to arrive at any true change in our lives. With its authentic voices, unforgettable characters, and well-crafted story, Painted Oxen successfully bridges the worlds of literary and spiritual fiction, adding something new and authentic to the literary landscape.

In his first collection of poems, Water, Rocks and Trees, James Scott Smith kneels and prays alongside creation, and becomes the utterance of the naked soul. -Catherine Strisik, author of The Mistress and Thousand Cricket Song In his debut poetry collection, Water, Rocks and Trees, James Scott Smith explores our relationship to the natural world with a shamanistic sensibility. Smith's yearning for connection, for a sense of belonging to the earth, the universe, permeates every poem. Whether describing the "death drop love dance / of the hummingbird" or the coyote with a "fresh kill of rabbit hanging / soft and surrendered in her mouth," Smith revels in the intelligence and vibrancy of the more than human world. Here, man doesn't conquer nature--he converses with it. It is a conversation I didn't want to end. -Mary Reynolds Thompson, author of Embrace Your Inner Wild: 52 Reflections for an Eco-Centric Worldand Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth's Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness Lean and righteous. Those two words paint a coyote in one of these poems. But they could describe the entire collection. Herein are verses from a man who stays close to the ground--a walker, a seer, his vision paced but urgent, hungry. -John D. Blase, Poet and author of Know When To Hold 'Em: The High Stakes Game of Fatherhood In the spirit of the ancient Tao, Smith's poems in Water, Rocks and Trees, show the way and exhort us "to roll inside the great wheel, to turn with it, not against it." In a courageous "new language of prayer," these poems evoke an intimacy with all of creation and call us to remember what it might mean "to dwell, not merely live, in utter step with the time and space of earth. -Gary Whited, author of Having Listened These poems seem to form concentric circles around a core that is in itself silent and solid, so primal and fundamental as to not quite be accessible by words. And yet the tight diction here, authoritative and resonant, spirals in very close, and we are guided again and again into an earthy mystery - stark wonderment at the sheer presence of things. -Walker Abel, author of The Uncallused Hand To let your breath rise and fall through the poems of James Scott Smith's Water Rocks and Trees is to walk with him under 'fiery maples...over streets turned aisles/of cathedrals, ' to a place of sacred knowing where "we are the/ down in the kestrel's wing, the claw of the ermine." Inside this book, more than any other collection of poems, I felt my heart pulled back together with animal memory, drawing breath "out beneath the indigo," under "the peppered sky," where "my senses are the feet of Mergansers." I gave myself to these poems and felt my prayers sink like ripening seeds into an earth simple and luminous, my body to the water, "in keeping with the ways of fish." I carry away with me Smith's reminder to "walk in the day as/ if all things must be/ touched and felt as real." To walk through Smith's poems is to feel as though, barefoot, your own feet might send down green shoots in a kind of strange and long-awaited homecoming. -Lori Howe, author of Cloudshade: Poems of the High Plains, and Voices at Twilight. Every morning for a month now, I've started my day with a poem from James Scott Smith's, Water, Rocks and Trees, and every morning I've been graced with nothing less than a secular prayer that makes my day better, kinder, more meaningful. Fans of Mary Oliver will be drawn to Smith's work, and yet, he is his own poet with his own voice and his own insights. This is a book that can make the world a kinder, more compassionate place. In today's world, this is a book we need. -BK Loren, author of Theft and Animal, Mineral, Radical A magnificent work of word-craft and deep reflection. This feels like a renewal of the American Transcendentalist spirit: thoughtful, visceral, elemental, and wise. Water, Rocksand Trees is a book to cherish and grow old with, a book that returns me to nature and the things I love again and again. -Jonathan Ellerby, PhD, bestselling author of Return to the Sacred

Woodland Manitou: To Be on Earth is a collection of essays rooted in the rhythm of the natural world. Through the turn of the seasons, Heidi Barr illustrates how the cycles of the earth have informed her everyday life from community to vocation to the food that finds its way to the dinner table. Through gardening, simple living, and prioritizing sustainability, Barr paints a picture of how remaining close to the earth provides a solid foundation even as the climate changes and the story of the world shifts. Part stories, part wonderings, and part call to act, this collection of meditations invites reflection, encourages awareness, and inspires action.

The Taste of Water and Stone is a deer trail through the last decade of Kirkey's poetry. Along its course, it charts a way through mountains, forests, and estuaries, through personal transformations and mythic encounters. The selected works have been revisited and revised to stand comfortably alongside a series of new poems. The result is a collection in answer to and enactment of the question, "how do we rewild the human heart?"