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Discover and learn to trust your inner voice as you read the poetry of the SHY collection.

Another Morning: Poems by William Minor embodies a premise stated in the first line of one of the poems: "All our lives begin and end / with music." Several poems address this theme directly ("Genesis," in which the line quoted is found; "Our Dance"; "Full of It," with its song titles; and the extended poem in five parts: "The Sounds of Kauai"). All of the poems contain their own unique music in terms of rhythm and intonation-providing an engaging, and enhancing, backdrop. In 2011, I was "first grand prize winner" in a national essay contest, "What Music Means to Me," sponsored by RPMDA (Retail print Music Dealers Association). Several of the poems in Another Morning have actually been set to original music I employ when I give readings.The appeal of music is universal, and these poems reach out to a wide range of readers in another way: they all express aspects of daily life common to both the author and the book's potential audience: the sense of shared existence we all experience in homes in which each room comes to be regarded as sacred. Specific subject matter ranges from fundamental human concerns: friendship, falling in love, longevity in marriage, aging, the decline of physical finesse to philosophical concerns: the nature of time passing, progress (perfecting and perishing); inner versus external existence, sacred and secular love, and contemplation (being a frog on a lily pad).Extended poems celebrate inspirational thinkers such as poet Charles Peguy and philosopher Ernest Becker-and the author also takes the reader to a tropical island to explore the nature of paradise. I feel that the poems in Another Morning, transform and transcend subject matter and result in skillfully crafted work that will appeal to a wide range of readers and stand the test of time.

These poems explore the bonds of love and family, the liminal spaces at the beginning and end of life, and the power of words to both make and complicate the connections among human beings.

Mother Lines travels the complex and layered terrain of motherhood. Shawna Ervin's first chapbook includes poems about motherhood, adoption, autism, and parenting after trauma. Ervin generously invites readers into her experiences by offering the tender moments at bedtime, the pain of watching a child struggle with autism, and the ways her own loss becomes sharper as she loves her children with the type of love she longed for as a child. Ervin uses both explores motherhood with traditional forms of poetry and free verse. The poems in Mother Lines follow Ervin's children from their first days in their new family as babies to the beginnings of puberty and imagining the day her children are ready to set off on their own.

A love song to the earth entwined with the planetary love of a man for a woman.

Wife of a medical school student and mom to three young children, navigates marriage, motherhood, faith, and repatriation in this beautifully rendered collection of poems spanning oceans, continents, and landscapes of the heart. From finding first love and becoming a parent, surviving the eye of the strongest Atlantic Hurricane in recorded history, Irma, to rebuilding a marriage after being separated by an ocean for 7 months, opera singer Kelsi Folsom bares the depths of her soul in these life-affirming poems. With ferocity and vulnerability, Buried in the Margins will take you on an exciting, hope-filled journey you will never forget.

This is a frieze-like collection of roughly chronological poems exploring memories of a broad range of childhood experiences up to about the age of 11. The memories range from the traumatic to sublime moments of solitary elation and realization.Around 2010, I went through a significantly challenging period, during which I made a trip to locations where I lived as a child in the Pacific Northwest, mainly Spokane, Washington, and I began exploring childhood memories, some of which were difficult to face. Most of these poems were written over a few weeks during and after that trip.

Lined with verses built to absorb shock like bubble wrapping, Dan Fecht's first collection of poetry plays out as a talk show in real time; a collection that acts as a hawk diving through the air for its game and rising straight back up against the wind to no resistance, Assisted Suicide Talk Show is not only an expedition through the human conduit, but a spiritual journey to meet and know God once and for all-with seemingly everything at stake…

Midrashim are Judaic interpretations of scriptures, which often elaborate the stories found only in skeleton form there. In this spirit, contrary to the ways of Roman Catholic dogma, Lutz examines the social-spiritual effects of historic Catholic interpretations, including a child's mind's understanding. She turns the biblical stories on their head, with then pierces them with a deeper, more authentic meaning of the gospels'-including Mary Magdalene's and the Yoga Sutras' and Buddha's-message of nonviolence. At the same time, the poems expose the Church's patriarchal and punitive thought systems and contradictions.The scriptural dissections alternate with poems of a fraught relationship between a rebel daughter and a pious mother, ranging from the pathos of the mother's loss of faith when her parish priests' pedophilia is revealed to the sweetness of the daughter's joy when her mother gives up self-punishment for Lent. Lutz spins tragicomedy from imagined fills in the gaps of the gospels and from the increasing absurdity of the mother and daughter's debates about birth control and abortion as the mother sinks into dementia.Careening between sass and earnestness, the poems rail against religion, while struggling to recover an authentic spirituality. Lutz doesn't argue with God as much as she argues against religions' big lies.It's kind of like Oscar Wilde and Richard Rohr walk into a bar/monastery, which is something like a bookstore/café, and find God's glass is more than half empty(ness).

Katherine E. Schneider's first poetry chapbook, I Used to Remember the Story of How, engages faith, love, and humanity. The poems are featured from first to last as if passing from day to night. Light, colors, the warmth of connection-as well as the absence of these-are palpable, and they shift from beginning to end. In lyrical free-verse, she shares a revelation about a friend beside her in a pew at church and captures images and memories of awe, connection, and loss. Then, in the midst of these, she shifts back to the ancient near east to look over the shoulders of King David, John the Baptist, Jesus, Judas, and an unnamed disciple. From poems capturing the breath of a moment, to poems imagining Biblical narratives, the reader is invited to pause and feel.