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A collection of poems focusing on the narrator's various interpersonal relationships, hardships, and the gradual realization of themselves as an autonomous and independent being. The One In Which Bambi Tells Me To Get A Life also meditates on personal, political, and global issues such as mental health (i.e. depression & anxiety), sexual abuse, the #metoo movement, and existential isolation.

A Chapbook of lyrical poems that speak to the universal human experience of loss. This collection of poems draw on the natural world to find words and images that evoke and express the exquisite and persistent experience of grief, the twin sister of profound love, whether it comes as a result of death, adoption, rejection, suicide, miscarriage, or a myriad of other different kinds of separation.

"This is all a year is" Carriger tells us and then embarks on a collection of poems that deftly encompass and reflect upon the moments that comprise our lives. From a story of Samuel Morse to the image of a modern boy staying after class to soak up the attention of a teacher, she places historical events next to modern pieces and invites us to think not only of our own lives but of what time has meant to others because "[e]verything goes in time". This collection gives voice to those often left voiceless, like Sarah and Delilah from the Old Testament, Christine Keeler, Angela de Foligno, and Persephone who confesses, "The terrible truth of the underworld / is that it is not terrible at all." These poems are "Suspension bridges [that] grow out like climbing vines" inviting us to marvel at what holds us all together during our time Deep Inside that Rounded World. -Jamie Lynn Heller, author of Domesticated; Poetry From Around the House (Finishing Line Press) and Buried in the Suburbs, a 2019 Kansas Notable Book of the Year (Woodley Press)Shannon Carriger writes with empathy and eloquence of the "inevitable wreckage" of time, history, and war; she tenderly exposes hearts "bruised or brushed" by love, fear, and regret. Deep Inside that Rounded World is memorable, nuanced, fresh, stunning. -Linda M. Lewis, author of Ensemble: Poems (Spartan Press) and Professor Emerita of English, Bethany CollegeThe poems in Shannon Carriger's debut collection Deep Inside that Rounded World often suture history to a single, human life-one left out of our more public, official narratives. We aren't looking closely enough at the world-not at our shared pasts, not at the present, and certainly not the way the poet does in these sharp, impressively referential poems, ranging from Shoichi Yokoi, to Hannah Duston, to Persephone. In one stunning poem from the collection the public views a 1964 photograph of Marianne Faithful and merely perceives the singer "as a cold, closed thing," missing entirely "...a refraction of the light / above and within...". These poems follow the light no matter how it bends, or through what stubborn materials. They do not flinch. -Ben Cartwright, author of After Our Departure (Sage Hill Press) and The Meanest Things Pick Clean (Floating Bridge Press)

The legend of an American icon gets real in a riveting collection of poems that peels back the layers of the Amelia Earhart mystique. You may know the ending, but the moments in Alchemy are not revealed through the lens of disappearance; each event is examined for its own value in this biography unlike any other. Born into a man's world, Amelia bucks the role set before her and all American women in the early 1900s. Instantly surrounded by the competing philosophies of her parents and grandparents, she works hard and plays hard, never shying away from a task or adventure deemed "too masculine." In a time when girls are expected to wear dresses and play tea party, Amelia learns to shoot guns and play football. As a young woman in 1918, she becomes part of the war effort, moving to Canada to work in a military hospital where she is infected by the flu pandemic. During a period of financial and personal uncertainty, she falls in love with the burgeoning field of flight, and never looks back. With grit and gumption she turns her dreams into an extraordinary career and lifestyle, proving that there is no ordinary. Amelia doggedly pursues the many firsts set before that original generation of pilots, breaking one aviation record after another, until her luck runs out. Told in a combination of free verse and form poetry, Alchemy is a true story of female empowerment, ambition, and loss. Both bold and haunting, it reveals the essential Earhart, a woman driven by detriments and dreams. Alchemy features a detailed preface that sets the historical context and provides little known facts about Earhart's life. Thoroughly researched and historically accurate - it's poetic storytelling at its best.

Poet-Literary Translator, Eveline L. Kanes, listened to other voices as she found and added her own. Traveling Through describes her long life's journey in a changing world.

In her first collection of published poems, Ready or Not, Robin Wright explores the universal theme of unexpected life events through images and language related to relationships, love, loss, death, and dementia. This collection begins with "Fringe," a poem about teenage loneliness and isolation. Several poems about romantic relationships follow, including "Renters," a poem about a marriage starting out differently than expected but leaving the reader with hope.Other poems ignite the emotions of relationships lost. Several lead the reader through the narrator's frame of mind and feelings during and after a break-up. "What This Woman Wants," centers on a woman's needs from her partner and is a nod to Kim Addonizio's "What Do Women Want?"The collection then segues into poems about the loss of beloved friends and a beloved uncle, taking the reader into the darkness of grief. "Like This" focuses on a different kind of loss and revolves on what we are willing to do or not do as a society. The final poem features a loved one struggling with dementia as witnessed by the narrator.Wright uses accessible language and uses images that resonate with others to make a human connection."Like This" was a finalist in Poetry Matters Spring Robinson/Mahogany Red Literary Prize. The poems in this collection have previously appeared in the following: Amarillo Bay; Ariel Chart; Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; Indiana Voice Journal; Lost River Literary Magazine; Muddy River Poetry Review; Nature Writing; Peacock Journal; Rat's Ass Review; See Spot Run; Terror House Magazine; Zygote in My Coffee; Time Present, Time Past, the University of Southern Indiana's 50th anniversary anthology.

In poems as vivid as they are precise, S.J. Stephens reckons boldly with the difficult world and-in equal measure-with what is difficult in herself. Again and again she trains on self and other (and trees and birds and bees and weeds) a loving attention no less exacting for its affection. This work is feminist in its insistence on telling the truth from an embodied female perspective, even when the truth is that she has internalized a "shame so shrill it makes [her] shudder." Sometimes these poems tell their hard truth directly to those who endanger the speaker's capacity for liberty and self regard. Sometimes they speak to the natural world, finding echoes of the inner life in outer scenes: hunger, danger, love. Often the speaker seems to talk to the speaker, counseling herself to keep seeing, keep saying what's true for the sake of her own wellbeing and for the good of us all. Always these poems speak to a reader ready to train her gaze, too, on what's beautiful and frightening, frustrating and heartening. While Stephens' poems offer no compromise, they certainly offer, in poem after poem, plenty of consolation. "[A] raw and bloody fear rises in me," she tells us "but there is also wild, wild joy." -Melissa Crowe, author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press)These are elegant, surprising poems. The speaker longs to find something sacred in the branches, in the Ohio River, in the Salty Dog Café, and in language. There is such a deep need to connect despite violence, despite "a world that picks at...souls like scavenger birds feasting," because in each Laurel there could be a "beating heart." Stephens' voice is muscular and full of truth, and I am so lucky to have come to know it. A beautiful, powerful collection. -Kelly Moffett, author of Bird Blind and A Thousand WingsThrough Stephens's work, we realize the questions that are buried deep within our subconscious-questions like: am I a true feminist or am I just giving the impression that I am a feminist without truly living it? "I wear the impression of Cinderella and her feminist rant / like an evening gown." She takes us on a journey through the #metoo movement and whittles the essence of family into concrete images we understand at a gut level: "Even though the love lies on the floor / with sawdust and drops of paint / and years of words stick in the cracks of wood paneling". Stephens possesses an unusual talent for the art of the sestina, and she brings us a new consciousness of the "childless mother"-that there are women who are mothers but have not had the opportunity to have children, and this is a fresh take on feminism. Stephens's work is timeless and remains with the reader long after they close the book. -Megan D. Henson, author of What Pain Does

Poems in An Envelope Waiting by Lisa Roullard explore the world of mail: sometimes the poet escapes into it, sometimes the mailman from it. Themes of waiting and dating also surface and postage stamps capture first dates in Washington State. In 2013 poems from this collection placed first in the Utah Original Writing Competition.

The poems in Working Hypothesis celebrate curiosity. They revel in the discoveries of Natural Science as well as the hoaxes and scientific jokes that litter our history of knowing. These are the product of Charles Malone's rural upbringing and connection to the natural world, his family's passed-down bookishness, and his mother's work as a chemist. Poems like "Beneficial Insects" and "Papilio Ecclipses" look to the intersections of these ideas with our most intimate personal relationships. The poem "About the River" comes from Malone's work using poetry writing in the community to talk about the history of the Cuyahoga River. These pieces balance intellectual searching with domestic moments of childhood, marriage, and the making of a home.Amid his wonder for the natural world, Malone's poems also grow from doubt. We have painted butterfly's wings to claim a new species, imagined animals that burst from the seeds of plants, and written of man-eating trees in the jungle of Madagascar. We have lied to and amused ourselves. We have made mistakes. "Adecula Ridiculi" considers the metaphors offered by a typo that bred a fake history of a temple constructed to mock Hannibal's failed siege of Rome. "Jokes of Nature / Jokes of Knowledge" and "Truthfully" catalog a cabinet of curiosities in the history of Natural Science, and "The Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar" imagines that lie as something akin to the way an older sibling might mislead a younger one.The final section of the book, "Experiments & Tricks" draws from Robert J. Brown's 333 Science Tricks & Experiments. Brown's 1984 book offers up an abundance of ideas to bring science into the home. This infusion of metaphor and vocabulary invites us to consider the simple act of counting the seconds between lightning and thunder differently in "How Far the Storm?" This poem connects to the history of Malone's home town, Kent, Ohio, and the shootings on the campus in 1970. He writes, "We can count the seconds between / explosions. / We can feel them in our teeth. / Even as one voice says / a storm is coming, another says it isn't." Other experiments inspire "Mirror Tricks," "Smoke from the Fingertips," and "Ghost Light." In all, these poems encourage us all to follow our questions and our doubts. They invite us into overservation and to be childlike in embracing our curiosity.

Sky gone is an articulate examination of the loss of a parent through the lens of metaphor. It moves throughout the year following a father's death. Using the disappearance of the sky as a metaphor, the author compares grief to the world of nature in chaos, and its substantive lack of normalcy, until a return to some new semblance of living is possible.

Barbara Flug Colin has published poems, essays and interviews in art, literary and teaching magazines and anthologies such as Art Now, Arts Magazine, New York Art Journal, M/E/A/N/I/N/G, New Observations, Frigate, Third Mind, Making a Difference, Cerise Press, Evergreen Review, DIAGRAM. Essays received: Teachers and Writers' 2012 Bechtel Prize; Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2013; finalist in 2014 Diagram/New Michigan Essay contest. She teaches a poetry-writing program she created in 1991 for the Henry Viscardi School, a state supported elementary and high school for severely physically disabled students in Albertson, New York.

These poems inventively blur the line between lyric and broadside, confronting an increasingly hostile world with poignancy, wry humor, and a sense of the surreal.

These poems may possibly help you get through the dark night of the soul, as they were written there by a woman in long-term sobriety, a therapist, whose faith is tested by the impending death of a spouse during a perilous time for our democracy. Like a guidebook to overcoming personal and societal challenges, these poems are how a poet pulls their self up by their bootstraps, and speaks back to injustice with mercy, truth and courage, reaching out to activists everywhere.

Peace Maps explores real and imaginary terrain at the intersection of ecology and devastation. From Chaco Canyon to Chernobyl, Beirut to Zuma, the poet excavates artifacts and elements to map themes of love, loss, motherhood, and healing. Sensory natural images take root and grow beneath daily lives-offering hope, heart, and glimmers of peace.The poet Karen Lewis engages with the environment in ways that probe the current moment where reality touches imagination. Poems connect her personal journeys through love, loss, motherhood, and solitude with a complicated terrain of war, peace, and places in-between. In this era of increasing globalization, these poems argue for particular connections to particular places. "Desolation Wilderness" brings readers to a mountain region accessed only by foot. "Sian Ka'an Biosphere" (a ghazal) excavates tons of ocean plastics washing ashore. "Painted Cave" traces a new mother's connections with the unceded indigenous land where she lives, her own ancestors, her husband's war trauma, and her newborn infant. "Sappho's Island" celebrates silences, spaces and the concept of erasure. "Prayer Beads" is a praise-song for Baghdad, a city that is the cradle of civilization and a contemporary war zone. Because poetry cannot always fit into lines, "Peace Summit" creates a visual ascent to a place of balance and duality. "Tunis" celebrates the pulse of women demonstrating during the Jasmine Revolution, while "Place of Echoes" deciphers what remains of a ruined Mayan temple.As a collection of poetic cartography-and a reflection of how one woman navigates a privileged life through an often-murky lens-Peace Maps faces the future without easy answers. The poems here invite readers to risk their own imaginative journeys through whatever challenging times they may face, wherever in the world they may be.

A collection of fabulist poetry inspired by experiences as a part of the queer community and the natural world.

The Unsaid Words is a small collection of poems about life with chronic pain. Themes of despair, struggle, and, ultimately, hope, run through the book. The poems encourage readers to acknowledge the emotional and mental struggles that accompany chronic physical pain. The book is a space to mourn these effects on one's life, as well as a message of solidarity and hope for those who suffer.

Grief, joy, sorrow. Love, loss, healing: the highs and lows of the human soul. Marybeth Cohowicz draws upon personal emotions, and creatively marries them with nature metaphors and imagery while addressing the trials of life. Many orthodox writers would struggle with a full length book to reach the depths Marybeth can take a reader in just 26 poems. Her poetry is poignant, and this first publication will turn you inside out and show you what you're made of!

Covering the full and rich experiences of a woman's life, this collection includes poems that were nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net awards. Some poems were also included in exhibitions, such as the Poetry Leaves exhibit in Waterford, Michigan. The poem "Curves" was performed on stage at the Turner Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by professional actresses in an event in support of women and girls with eating disorders. Divided into sections, the poems lead the reader through the full experience of a romantic relationship, from attraction to devastation. Other poems express the experience of birth, both through being a mother and being a writer. Two poems intensely immerse the reader into what it's like to have breast cancer. The interaction with the earth is included too, in a section on nature, both outside in the world and inside the soul. Whether the poems are the bright burst of haiku, or the longer prose poem journey from teenage angst to old age, there will be echoes of familiarity and resonance for every reader.

It always comes back to this. A writer sets out to tell one story, and only when its finished, discovers it's another story entirely. Such is this collection of bird poems written by Kate McCarroll Moore. The poems collected here are stitched together with tenderness, regret, grief, and hope, telling the story of a father-daughter relationship expressed through a shared love of birds.

Every summer, mayflies swarm the shores of Lake St. Clair for a week's time, before their bodies dry up and scatter like ashes. Set inside the blue-collar automotive town of Windsor, Ontario, Mayflies traces the trajectory of adolescence into adulthood: A personal inventory of "glass-specked streets and shuttered storefronts" and "open wounds and eyesores" that follows in the wake of the 2008 recession. Cassandra Caverhill captures urban decline and imagines the road ahead as pockmarked and pot-holed, with opportunities dissolving beneath the weight of semitrucks.These narrative poems explore how place colors possibility and affects relationship; how the absence of feeling is filled by obliteration. Using sharp textural images and a keen self-awareness, the poet weaves her own struggles with Windsor's, chronicling the city's descent as though it were a loved one lost.