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In the El Malpais wilderness of New Mexico, Juniper Window lives in a cave in a deep collapse that his father has built into a home. They live a strange existence where the witch of the El Malpais stands in large Ponderosa pine trees on nights of the full moon and haunts a stark landscape of lava flows, cinder cones, caldera sunk into the earth, lava tube caves, and sandstone bluffs.One night, after a depressing day at school, Juniper confronts the beautiful witch in her tree, and she chases him until he finally escapes down a lava tube that branches into other lava tubes deep in the earth. He finally reaches a great cavern with an underground river. There he sees "great lizards moving in darkness. Tongues flickered in and out of huge mouths with rows of razor-sharp teeth." When the largest of the lizards notices him, Juniper hears a voice in his head that tells him to follow to where a lava tube leads to the surface. Juniper is hesitant, but what other choice does he have? He could never follow the maze of tubes he'd scrambled down before he found the great cavern. When, poised above the cavern in front of the lava tube he has been led to, he speaks out loud to the great lizard, the lizard informs him that it not a lizard but a dragon.Thus starts an adventure that is partly a love story, partly a tale of madness in a world filled with the violence and problems confronting contemporary society, including drug use, and partly a story of healing, family, and redemption. Poetic prose sings as events sweep over the wild landscape of the El Malpais and Ramah, New Mexico and dragons and human hurtle toward a climax that promises enormous changes in a world that has no idea of what is about to happen. As the powerful adventure continues, the dragons discover their heritage as great dragons who have been driven to the cavern beneath El Malpais to avoid extinction, Lily, a Navajo girl that Juniper falls in love with, finds a way to heal her Grandfather of his alcoholism, and Juniper, his father, and his mother at last put the past behind them on a hill beside Four Windows Caves as the dark sky on a Christmas night is filled with the flight of dragons.¿

Mythos of the Door contains lyric and narrative poems that explore the underlying spirit of Door County, Wisconsin. Millions of visitors come to the Door every year because of its miles of shoreline, art galleries, indoor and outdoor live theaters, musicians and music venues, nightlife, sailing, fishing, golf, small shops, and bookstores. Once in the county they visit small villages and the city of Sturgeon Bay. What they do not always see beyond dolostone cliffs, the waters of Lake Michigan, Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay, or inland lakes, the forests, or the wonder of the state parks are the stories that go back to when American Indians, the first French fur traders, the sailors of sailing or steamships, or those that first planted the magnificent cherry orchards created a mythos woven into the natural beauty of a magic peninsula.metapA mythos is a myth or mythology, a traditional theme or plot structure, or a set of beliefs of assumptions. Poetry, at its very best, is an exploration. In this book, story poems are interwoven with lyric sonnets and a wide range of other forms of mostly traditional verse forms to explore the mythos of the door from the wild waters of Death's Door between Washington Island and Gill's Rock at the tip of the peninsula. In doing so, the book as whole looks past the surface of the stories and the characters of the Door and explores the meaning of what we all are, living inside our multitude of histories, as human beings.The stories told with meter and rhyme range from that of a Potawatomi woman confronting a wolf with pale, green eyes frightened away from here by a large black bear to the classic Christmas story when an immigrant man and his daughter try to cross a frozen Death's Door just before Christmas during a year when Lake Superior has frozen over and confronted by ominous cracks in the ice. Potawatomi and fur traders come into contact, sailors try to survive furious storms, and an old man at Christmas miraculously works his way out of a deep depression caused by his wife's death when he sees two ravens and snow geese during a winter storm. The sheer beauty of lyric poetry describing magic moments can be found too, as well the life of stone sculptures of women "Staring intently out of bronze, pewter, metallic blue, and silver/At the nothingness of everything." This is old fashioned poetry in an age where rhyme and meter has gone out of style, but it recalls the magic of poetry that has enchanted generations upon generations of readers from the time when Beowulf was first written down on a page into our contemporary world.

Door County, Wisconsin has had seven poet laureates appointed by the Door County Board of Supervisors since the inception of the program. This anthology contains seven poems by each of the seven poets, Frances May, Barbara Larsen, Estella Lauter, Ralph Murre, Sharon Auberle, Nancy Rafal, and Mike Orlock. Partially as a result of this program, Door County, one of the major arts attractions in the Midwestern United States, has become a major writing, as well as fine arts and live theatre, center, featuring such organizations as the Clearing Folk School and Write on Door County, a writer's residency and writing center.Nancy Rafal, one of the laureates, initiated the laureate program in 2009. Rafal has been active in Wisconsin arts for decades, and she knew many of the people who had served as Poet Laureate in various counties around the state. As Jude Genereaux, a poet in her own right, says in Seven by 7, "Rafal shared this gem of an idea with me in seeking advice on how to successfully squire adoption of the post through county government in order to receive the blessing of the Door County Board of Supervisors. Having worked with county boards for many years, I knew the system well and the people who were serving on ours at the time - so hopefully I could foresee what stumbling blocks there might be. "After several advance conversations with our then County Board Chairman Leo Zipperer, a resolution was created and passed at the proper committee and sent on to the full board for final adoption. Nancy and I attended that session to speak for its passage and were thrilled to see the Resolution adopted with little resistance. We could now boast having this welcome feature to Door County arts and culture."The first Door County Laureate, Frances May, had a national reputation when she was championed for the post by Norbert Blei, then the most famous writer living in Door County. The other poets that followed are primarily characterized by not only their creative fires, but also the excellence of their word craft. Each poet in the anthology is introduced by a well-known writer and then the seven poems follow. Anyone who loves regional poetry will love the volume.

No More Will Fit Into the Evening contains poetry by thirty-seven poets from five countries. The sub-title of the book is, "An Anthology of Diverse Voices," and this is what the poet's in the volume represent. Poets from a diversity of backgrounds and places inevitably produce poems that are made distinct not only by their talent, but also by the experiences and visions that arise from that diversity. The diversity represented by this volume encompasses racial identity, sexual orientation, country of origin, and spiritual beliefs. There is no perfect way to look at the universe, but when all the ways of seeing what is are represented, then, at least from a human perspective, a fuller and truer image can emerge. The editors, the poets Thomas Davis and Standing Feather, asked each of the poets in the book for ten of the best poems they have ever written and then selected the poems that they considered exceptionally strong for conclusion. They wanted to honor the idea that a healthy sampling of a poet's work is better than a whiff that gives a slight taste of what the poet is all about. Some of the poets contained in the anthology have been published in some of the finest magazines and journals in the world. A few have won major awards for their poetry and their books and have an international audience. Others have never achieved publication outside of their personal blogs. Of special note is the inclusion of poets like Terence Winch, winner of the American and Columbia Books awards, among other major honors, the extraordinary Anishinabe poet Kimberly Blaeser, John Looker, one of England's most interesting poets, the environmentalist poet Robin Chapman, the award-winning novelist James Janko, and the jazz musician and founder of the literary journal After Hours, Albert DeGenova. These, and all the other poets included, have helped achieve what Davis and Feather wrote as their fondest wish in the Introduction, that readers might find themselves on a mesa top where grandmother junipers spread their branches out beneath a full moon, remembering poems that stuck in their spirit after this volume has been read. We are hoping they might have that experience in Door County, Wisconsin where Lake Michigan is tossing wild, white capped waves at the dark dolomite escarpment that runs through Door Peninsula, or maybe in the timeless moment when they are communing with Taliesin, the ancient Celtic bard, in a time before time as he chants beauty and the world's beauty into the deep starlight of a Celtic night. The list of poets included in the anthology are: Betty Hayes Albright, Sharon Auberle, Kimberly Blaeser, Richard Brenneman, A. Carder, Robin Chapman, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Thomas Davis, RedWulf DancingBare, Albert DeGenova, Diane Denton, Bruce Goodman, Margaret Gross, Annette Langlois Grunseth, Elizabeth Herron, Maryann Hurtt, Penny Hyde, James Janko, Gary Jones, Michael Kriesel, Cynthia Jobin, Jim Kleinhenz, Estella Lauter, John Looker, Anna Mark, Jon Marshall, Nick Moore, Chris Moran, Ralph Murre, Ben Naga, Jack Carter North, Mike Orlock, Ward O'Cean, Robert Okaji, Nathan J. Reid, Ina Schroders-Zeeder, Standing Feather, Tori Grant Welhouse, and Terence Winch.

Seeing-Eye Boy, the first novel by poet and musician Terence Winch. winner of the American Book Award and Columbia Book Award, brings to life the Irish immigrant world of 20th-century urban America. The vivid and engrossing story of Matt Coffey, 12 years old going on 13, offers an inside look at a lost universe where two cultures, Irish and American, blended together in the new world.  In the story it's the fall of 1957, and Matt's world is in turmoil.  He's acquired a new enemy named Bull Burke, has started taking care of a neighborhood blind man (who turns out to have been part of the resistance to the British during the Irish troubles in the old country) and his terrifying dog, and is feeling the stirrings of first love.  On top of it all, now he has to contend with the threatened invasion of his block by the meanest gang in the Bronx, the dreaded Fordham Baldies. How he navigates his way through the minefield of early adolescence, and what he learns about love and life, are at the heart of Seeing-Eye Boy. The vivid narrative shows immigrant adults interacting with their first-generation sons and daughters, while Irish and rock music co-exist uncomfortably as the Irish become Irish Americans. Matt and his buddies take on gang members who use bicycle chains as weapons, as everybody dances around the efforts of Irish cops to keep the Bronx safe from violence.  The thrilling climax involves water balloons, mysterious voices in Matt's head, firecrackers, fierce friendships, a dramatic rescue, a horrifying accident, and the eerie sound of the bagpipes. As writer Michael Lally says, “Seeing-Eye Boy is the lyrically precise and definitive story of what it is like being a smart and sensitive adolescent  anywhere, anytime.”