{"title":"Blue Edge Books","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"on-the-mercy-me-planet","title":"On the Mercy Me Planet","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn these elegant, sparkling poems, Maya Janson writes about life's contradictory, mercurial nature with wit and warmth. Her imagination is expansive, her images surprising and delightful. \"Beware the urge to haul everything you own\/ to the top of a mountain in order to hurl it,\" she writes in 'Pushing the Dead Chevy.' The poems in \u003cem\u003eOn the Mercy Me Planet\u003c\/em\u003e, personal and intimate, ponder the duality in daily life, that it is both traumatic and triumphant, that we understand and yet know nothing. \"In mythology the pomegranate\/is said to signify the underworld. In real life,\/ a simple granite headstone will do.\" Despite death, loss, injury and breakups, diagnoses and climate change, in Janson's poems the sea still laps against the shore, the rower still goes in, out, and back in again. \"Find the way then lose the way. Repeat.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMaya Janson's\u003c\/b\u003e first book, \u003cem\u003eMurmur \u0026amp; Crush\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Hedgerow Books. Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies and she has received fellowships from MacDowell and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she has worked as a lecturer in creative writing at Smith College and as a community mental health nurse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Edge Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41681192616086,"sku":"9798985435702","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_66c3649b-51ba-4b7f-a53f-d2f02a0d453d.jpg?v=1650378037"},{"product_id":"woman-with-a-tree-on-her-head-poems","title":"Woman with a Tree on her Head: Poems","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWoman with a Tree on her Head\u003c\/em\u003e, Patricia Corbus writes about the enchanting, troubled beauty of the world and human life in these lyrical poems of grace and distinction. Sly and funny, a little baroque, a little surreal, accepting and generous, her poems spark with surprises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePlease let me hear from you.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Slip a letter under my door,\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e smoke an exploding cigar with me,\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e take me out for a cherry bomb\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e or a Molotov cocktail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHumor pops up like a hand reaching out to shake you into joy, as in the ending to \"Advice for a Baby\":\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eImmaturity is cute, but maturity is beautiful. Love\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e and Horror kiss, then slap each other. Eros has arrows.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Good is more real than evil. Life is hard. Have a nice time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe poems in \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWoman with a Tree on her Head\u003c\/em\u003e contemplate the delicacy and risks of our connections to people, creatures, nature and the inevitable experiences of loss. Here the uncanny mingles with the raw beauty of the world and the power of mortality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe sun, a gelid gold,\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e the lake, a nearsighted blue.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e - I'm afraid\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e that art has nothing to do\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e with my story, and the end\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e has already happened.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePatricia Corbus\u003c\/strong\u003e was born in Sarasota, FL and now lives in Charlotte, NC. She has a B.A. from Agnes Scott College, a Master's degree from UNC\/ Chapel Hill, and an MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program. She's the author of two poetry collections: \u003cem\u003eAshes, Jade, Mirrors\u003c\/em\u003e, 2002 and \u003cem\u003eFinestra's Window\u003c\/em\u003e, winner of the 2015 Off the Grid Poetry Prize. She wishes that she could say something true and rare about poetry, but finds it beyond all telling.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Edge Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44689915478333,"sku":"9798985435719","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9798985435719ita.jpg?v=1677618155"},{"product_id":"anybody-home","title":"Anybody Home?","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe poems in Kay Cosgrove's first collection, \u003cem\u003eAnybody Home?\u003c\/em\u003e are driven by curiosity - about herself, the world, and her place in it. Witty and elegantly restrained, they ask the question: how do we live the lives we've made for ourselves? Cosgrove roams from barrooms to checkout lines to the enigma of motherhood; she is a teenager responsible for a sack-of-flour-as-a-baby, and then an adult driving a teenage babysitter home. She explores the texture of our connections to strangers, family, ourselves, and illuminates the sublime in the unimportant. The poems in \u003cem\u003eAnybody Home?\u003c\/em\u003e embrace life's sweetness and shadows. Here, the ordinary is unfathomable and the ineffable is ordinary.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt dusk last night I blew the biggest bubble\u003cbr\u003efor my girls. It captured everything:\u003cbr\u003ethe black shutters and dead-headed geraniums,\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003etwo cars and two girls and a skinny man\u003cbr\u003epulling weeds - all of it\u003cbr\u003eso hard to see\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eexcept when it floats\u003cbr\u003ein a crystal ball\u003cbr\u003eright before your eye.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"God's Law is not Fully Knowable to Human Beings, Thomas Aquinas Wrote\" by Kay Cosgrove\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKAY COSGROVE\u003c\/strong\u003e is the recipient of awards from The Academy of American Poets, Inprint Houston, and \u003cem\u003eThe Westchester Review\u003c\/em\u003e. Her poetry has appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Florida Review\u003c\/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eAmerican Poetry Review\u003c\/em\u003e, among other journals. She holds a PhD from the University of Houston and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Pennsylvania with her family.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Edge Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45768949268797,"sku":"9798985435726","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9798985435726ita.jpg?v=1689791625"},{"product_id":"thanks-for-stopping-by","title":"Thanks for Stopping By","description":"\u003cp\u003eMiriam Sagan brings the strength of her curiosity, a refreshing coldness, and an expansive awareness of history - personal, ancient, and scientific - to her encounter with her own mortality in this moving collection, \u003cem\u003eThanks for Stopping By\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter receiving a frightening diagnosis, Sagan tracks the shifting moods of a life lived near death: its pleasures and amusements, irritations and confusions. Here love, family, memory, travel, and the unfathomable quotidian unfold alongside her contemplation of dying. These beautiful and often funny poems send reports from the border of life and death, a border we're all traveling towards.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMiriam Sagan\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of creative duo Maternal Mitochondria (with Isabel Winson-Sagan). Her poetry has been set to music for the Santa Fe Women's Chorus, incised on stoneware for haiku pathways, and projected as video inside abandoned buildings.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Edge Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48319775375677,"sku":"9798985435733","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9798985435733ita.jpg?v=1712689627"},{"product_id":"recent-changes-in-the-vernacular-1","title":"Recent Changes in the Vernacular","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Tony Hoagland's images, his metaphors, and his ideas crack like a whip, like a loud shout cutting across a noisy room. His style reads conversationally but belies a great verbal ingenuity that hooks the ear and mind, that holds the attention and elevates our engagement. It is this flash, this boldness, that ultimately raises Hoagland's poetry to the level of great art.\" Nick Lantz, author of \u003ci\u003eYou, Beast\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Tony Hoagland's work grapples with the distortions of contemporary America and what it takes to remain human in these strange times. Joan Logghe, poet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Edge Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":51445190263101,"sku":"9798985435740","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9798985435740ita_ffb105a4-d5ed-40d9-9251-eab14e8ef7a2.jpg?v=1772483745"}],"url":"https:\/\/itascabooks.com\/collections\/blue-edge-books.oembed","provider":"Itasca Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}