Bøger udgivet af Woodley Press

In her dazzling first book, POINT OF DEPARTURE, Marina Jaffe explores regions of place and regions of identity in a collection of poems that is so much more than a travelogue. The poet interacts with street kids in Central America, writing poems with heart, but also with a hard eye at the unfortunate realities these children face. The book also examines the lives of fellow continent hoppers, including the tough decisions they make, towards or against conformity, society, and stasis. Poems also examine family and its legacy, its identity blueprint in a postmodern age.

"The poems in This Ecstasy They Call Damnation walk a razor's edge, bristling with intensity as they tackle the hard work of survival, both physical and spiritual. In this wide-ranging collection, Israel Wasserstein tells and re-tells myths, legends, Bible stories, and his own brilliant poems of Highway 54. The speedometer's always broken in this life, Wasserstein reminds us, and how we cope with this knowledge, and this lack of knowledge, seems to be at the heart of this rich, sure-handed debut." -Jim Daniels, author of Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry and other books "An evocative and lyrical storyteller, Israel Wasserstein takes on Bible stories and zombies, politics and myth. Like the angels that "we might entertain...unaware" these poems bless us with startling beauty and intelligence as they plumb the depths of the human condition. A deft and stunning debut that lingers long after the last page has been turned." -Lisa D. Ch vez, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico, author of Destruction Bay and In an Angry Season

An anthology of 150 poems by living Kansas poets, edited by current Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, this is a must read book of regional literature as well as an excellent read for poetry readers, in general.

A debut collection of short stories by Kansas writer Tasha Haas. Haas is a strong new voice in our region and nation. Here is what renowned writer Wendell Mayo wrote about this collection: I invite you to read these stories, stories that shimmer from dim corners few dare to go-a cornfield in a nightgown, a nurse on a perilous road after dropping an infant, a fallen priest's murder remembered in "prisms of light and shadow revolving in the treetops, silver leaves clattering in the wind," the title story's murderess who tells her own near-death story, and the wry narrator from the "wings" of art who abjures her boyfriend's niggling hypocrisies-all corners of consciousness, all places true art speaks from. Here is one of the most original and engaging voices of our time. Come close to these fearless stories. As the narrator of Haas's "What My Father Taught Me" discovers, "[I]f I could learn not to fear the dark I could learn not to fear anything." Such a brave debut! --Wendell Mayo, author of B. Horror and Other Stories

As in Hieronymous Bosch's medieval painting, in this collection of long short stories, we see that love and intimacy can be heaven on earth. But too often in our human woundedness, we turn it into hell on earth. These stories explore struggles, self-sabotages and--every now and then--successes of men and women as they search for that heaven that is connection with another. A narcissistic actress offers to help a down-and-out prostitute. A lovestruck American couple wanders Madrid with the singular goal of viewing THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS. A businessman unexpectedly finds religion, and the skeptical ear of a woman less interested in his enlightenment. A young woman faces a brutalizing medical system and a healer with Nazi sympathies. A self-destructive night club singer reunites with her arrogant former lover. An immigrant supermodel, obsessed with the fear of losing her husband, has no idea how deeply she is loved. Part the leaves. Enter the garden, and be delighted. "In THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS we witness new lovers as they slowly reveal their damnation. Haas's sentences are awake and aware and habitable. The reader moves through them and into Madrid with imagistic and emotional ease. A Madrid charged with the delightful and dark perversities of a fresh romance seasoned. Love it." -Kevin Kilroy, author of THE ESCAPEES and DEAD ENDS: OR LAUGHING GAS "This book is stylistically brilliant, an exquisitely made thing. Beneath that veneer, though, the book is supercharged, like a muscle car. Among its many bits of wisdom is that idea that we are all one, each interrelated. There are no true separations between us. As Whitman wrote, "for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." And as the quote about the "danger" of artists goes, "Beware of artists. They mix with all classes..." In this case, we are given a mix of all sorts: opera singers and streetwalkers, suburban couples, academics, and lonely people of all stripes. This is one of my favorite books of the past few years. It will likely become yours, too." -Kevin Rabas, EVERYONE JUST WANTS TO DRUM, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019

Poems written in the Kansas City area, primarily based on a man's relationship to his health, his family, and his God.

This is a volume of poetry relating to sports and other events in small-town Kansas settings.

A volume of elegant free-verse poetry by Catherine Anderson.

Free-verse contemporary poetry about life lived off the beaten path, trod by ghosts and orphans of the Norm.

One summer, William Stafford's class at Centrum in Port Townsend decided to name their one-week community "Worthy Company," for they were aware of and held a common purpose in advancing the verbal epiphanies of each writer in their circle. In this book, that ritual and commitment live on. Writers and readers in our world are on a rough and challenging road, but they are often in good company, advancing together the idea that imagination, words and poems can make inroads against the dehumanizing violence of our time. Instead of consoling platitudes and aggressive certainties, this "worthy company" believes in the benefits that honest language and humane imagination bring to us all. One could think of this collection as a multi-faceted letter to William Stafford some twenty years after his death. It's a letter that tells him not only how each poet is faring, but also how important Stafford's writing, ideas, and teaching continue to be. For those who were his friends, it also registers how much his personal presence is missed. But this collection is neither elaborated elegy nor mere hagiography. What Becca J.R. Lachman has done as editor is bring together a set of contemporary poets whose work is "in conversation" with William Stafford. Sometimes the conversation occurs as direct address, other times as vivid recollection, and yet other times as dream vision or ghostly visitation. Some of the poems launch forth from a Stafford line or two, while others pause to reflect upon some aspect of Stafford's life. However, many of the poems make no direct reference to Stafford's life or writing. Instead, they offer us an indirect conversation, often a meditation on some dimension of contemporary life that Stafford himself would have wanted to know of and hear about. --Kim Stafford and Fred Marchant, from the introduction

Like its title poem, this collection insists on art's daily necessity. McCallum chronicles the rhythms of family life, and in the domestic pause between chore and love, in the hushed wake of cleaving or grieving, she catches a visceral sense of life's intensity. In a parent's gaze, a child's "becoming/individual" transfixes attention on the momentousness of any given moment, and it's this same gaze the poet lifts to consider how Being shapes itself into the patterns we'll look back on to recognize as our lives. Fluid, confident, and honest, these poems celebrate creativity and find it both rare and everywhere. --Elizabeth Dodd

Praise for Jeff Worley's Poetry The Only Time There Is "Jeff Worley has carefully seasoned his considerable talent and fidelity to his craft, and his poetic voice now rewards us with this fine and various volume of poems on the enduring subjects-the living, the dead, and the human events that move us through our time." -Paul Zimmer "Jeff Worley's deceptively simple narratives evoke an affirmative generosity of spirit. This is an alluring and unforgettable first book."-Ron Wallace "Though it's the delicate, yet hard-edged love poems that I love best in this wonderful debut, there are pleasures on every page." -Stephen Dunn Happy Hour at the Two Keys Tavern "Jeff Worley is a poet of uncommon precision, whose sense of detail reminds me of the 'perfect pitch' of certain musicians-so that his poems seem to glow with an inner light, with the aura of a thing looked at with such love and attention it becomes a projection of the speaker's most inner self. This fine collection evokes the exhilaration provided by only the most accomplished and serious art. -Michael Van Walleghen "Each poem in this collection is carefully crafted, built on a foundation of vigorous diction, acute perception and quiet epiphany. Worley's voice is measured and sure . . . a voice worth hearing." -The Wichita Eagle

These are stories rooted in Kansas soil, in country roads and small towns, in characters you swear you have met before, men and women who tug at your heart and get under your skin. The landscape where they live is both familiar and exotic, deeply felt and vividly described, from a writer clearly at home in the natural world. Save Your Own Life is a strong and satisfying collection, with language that can punch you in the solar plexus-just the right phrase, just what you have always known. -Sharman Apt Russell, author of Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist and Hunger: An Unnatural History In Save Your Own Life Amy Sage Webb establishes herself as a major Midwestern voice who is not afraid to both love and critique the people of her region. Webb cares about her characters, and she instills them with personality and heart-and with needs we can both feel and understand. She knows the world of work, and what she turns her narrative lens upon teaches us something about who we are and how we can live: fully, completely, intentionally. Her characters' struggles-for love, for appreciation, for success-mirror our own. Webb is a writer who knows her stuff. From the details within her stories to the architecture of story itself, her hand is steady, her gaze is sure. -Kevin Rabas, author of Bird's Horn, Lisa's Flying Electric Piano, Spider Face Reading Amy Sage Webb is a delight. Save Your Own Life is full of mismatched people attracting and repelling each other. Brothers are in love with the same woman at different times. An LA artist and KC food writer meet in his mis-built studio. The husband of a mentally ill woman remains "fixed and ever-blooming," like dreams doomed in a desert. In "The Memory of Water" a woman older than any in her veterinary class has the task of running donor horses until they die, but dealing with death brings her warmth and romance. "The Wedding Gift" is a gift in itself. The robust stories in Save Your Own Life are full of surprises, are clear, open and singing all through. -Thomas Fox Averill, author of rode and Secrets of the Tsil Café

"This collection shows us how the mythology of touch includes the spaces in between-both physical and emotional-and how we both survive and rely on them. The dangers and risks each speaker survives draws us in for a safe haven of our own yearning." Dennis Etzel Jr., editor

Fire Mobile is a poetic narrative beginning with the joining of two lovers and culminating in new life. Its sonnets speak from the voice of a man observing the mysterious, transformative, unpredictable progression of his beloved's pregnancy. The mundane and the bizarre are domains playfully traversed in its pages as well as profound love and an awe for the creative capacities of the human body.

"Finding the Edge appeals with a wry, powerful combination of narrative and lyrical poems. The narratives are small novels, chiseled studies of human folly and vulnerability: You won't soon forget the reckless, highway-obsessed Wally or the hapless woman in "Copperhead." In his lyrical mode, Ortolani is beautifully expansive ("In the surrounding air, /the night spreads from my fingertips..."). Cinematic images abound to present a wondrous but never-sentimentalized world of nature. After reading Ortolani, you'll not look at coyotes, back roads, or your lover's face in the old, expected ways again." --Jo McDougall

A strong, Midwestern voice, Harley Elliott has been writing and publishing books of poetry for more than 40 years, primarily through Hanging Loose Press (Brooklyn, NY) and Woodley Press (Washburn University, Topeka, KS). More specifically, other publications by Elliott include DARKNESS AT EACH ELBOW and ANIMALS THAT STAND IN DREAMS (both poetry) from Hanging Loose Press and THE MONKEY OF MULBERRY PASS (poetry) and LOADING THE STONE (non-fiction) from Woodley Press. Harley Elliott lives in Salina, Kansas.

A volume of astounding poems on the theme of transformation, this book has been called a love song to the life force. It features stunning black-and-white photographs by Michael Johnson, likened by critics to Ansel Adams. A must-read whether one commonly reads poetry or not. The power and scope of Wyatt Townley s The Afterlives of Trees shakes you to your very bones. There s some audaciously formidable poetry in this book. ---John Weisman, seven time New York Times bestselling author The Afterlives of Trees brings together exquisite poetry of great tenderness, strength, and beauty, but it is also a book of revelation .a love song to the life force. ---Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Poet Laureate of Kansas About the Author: Wyatt Townley s books of poems include The Breathing Field (Little, Brown) and Perfectly Normal (The Smith), and her work has appeared widely from Newsweek to The Paris Review. Recently she wrote the 50th anniversary book of The Kansas City Ballet (The Kansas City Star). HarperCollins published Wyatt s yoga book, Yoganetics: Be Fit, Healthy, and Relaxed One Breath at a Time, deemed an Editor s Choice by Yoga Journal. She lives with writer-husband Roderick Townley in Kansas, and her work is grounded in its wind, storms, and stars. You can learn more about her work at www.yoganetics.com or www.WyattTownley.com.

A poetry collection about place, the environment, colonialism and its current path, and family. Atlas of Our Birth is a map of an ongoing journey beginning in Trinidad and Tobago and includes Kansas.

Poetry about life in Kansas, Kenya, and beyond.