{"title":"Orison Books","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"requiem-for-used-ignition-cap-1","title":"Requiem for Used Ignition Cap","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2016 Texas Institute of Letters Bob Bush Memorial Award for a first book of poetry\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cb\u003eNamed one of the best poetry books of Winter 2016 by \u003ci\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFinalist for the 2015 National Poetry Series \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCatfish heads hang on clotheslines waiting for the ensuing apocalypse. Blue heelers call out from drainage ditches searching for friendly hands to lick. Hell-fire preachers lament the drowning of a young Pentecostal boy caught in the river's floodgate. Brownlee's poems meditate on the inescapability of place. These poems earnestly make a case for the rural condition's place in contemporary American poetry. Brownlee might be considered a natural mystic refusing to settle for the simplistic ideological framework offered by his religious heritage but rather finding in the particulars of place the vehicles of transcendence. Drawn into the local by these poems the reader finds much that proves universal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJ. Scott Brownlee\u003c\/b\u003e born and raised in Llano Texas is a former Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU where he earned his M.F.A.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eHis poems have appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Kenyon Review Narrative Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e Hayden's Ferry Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e West Branch\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e RATTLE\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e Beloit Poetry Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e Nashville Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e Ninth Letter\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e BOXCAR Poetry Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e The Greensboro Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review\u003c\/i\u003e and elsewhere. Brownlee writes about the people and landscape of rural Texas and is a founding member of The Localists a literary collective that emphasizes place-based writing of personal witness cultural memory and the aesthetically marginalized working class. He is the author of two prize-winning chapbooks: \u003ci\u003eHighway or Belief\u003c\/i\u003e recipient of the 2013 Button Poetry Prize and \u003ci\u003eAscension\u003c\/i\u003e recipient of the 2014 Robert Phillips Poetry Prize.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This is a big hearted uncomplaining book sometimes biblical in its utterances it brings to mind the definition of poetry \u0026amp;lsquobreaking the frozen sea ' and Brownlee dives in too and writes of the undercurrent. [\u0026amp;hellip] Can a poet be revelatory without being overwhelmed by suffering? Brownlee can - and he's good at it.\" - Grace Cavalieri \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Independent Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"J. Scott Brownlee may live in Philadelphia but he's never far from Llano. You can sense that \u0026amp;ndash see it touch it smell it \u0026amp;ndash in \u003ci\u003eRequiem for Used Ignition Cap \u003c\/i\u003e. . . . Every poem in the book is deeply rooted in Hill Country soil . . . . [\u0026amp;hellip] And nothing of that place that is conjured \u0026amp;ndash not the antlered buck or the wounded Iraq war vet not the salt lick or the horseflies or the catfish heads on a clothesline \u0026amp;ndash has an air of distance about it of being drawn from memories of long ago. The descriptions vibrate with the immediacy of things freshly seen and felt held just under the skin and still rushing hot through the blood.\" - Robert Faires \u003ci\u003eThe Austin Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Devotion whether in poetry or prayer requires one to pay attention. From the very first poem of this collection to the last J. Scott Brownlee does exactly that. Whether it is the landscapes of Texas soldiers home from Iraq or the awkward ways in which we relate to each other these poems pay close attention to details and transform them into something organic whole and incredibly moving.\" - C. Dale Young judge of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"J. Scott Brownlee's \u003ci\u003eRequiem for Used Ignition Cap\u003c\/i\u003e pulses with imagery that grounds and levitates mind and body [. . .]. This collection honed and shaped is woven from ordinary lives and dreams and each trope honors the earth we walk upon. There's a feeling in this collection-voices and rituals that spark the landscape. Brownlee juxtaposes mind and spirit and there's nowhere these poems don't dare to go.\" - Yusef Komunyakaa\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The violence of men the delicacy of their broken bodies the religiosity of the town that raised them: all of these influence \u003ci\u003eRequiem for Used Ignition Cap\u003c\/i\u003e which documents an America we rarely see. In J. Scott Brownlee's Llano high school football heroes become PTS-affected war vets. The rural dead sing from the hollow flutes their bones leave in the dust. These are poems whose language begins with the body and the land. For Brownlee the two are inseparable.\" - Dorianne Laux\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In his debut collection J. Scott Brownlee writes a stunning ode to his rural Texas hometown and its fathers brothers and ghosts. Llano is a place where meth addicts score wildflowers burn hunters drink in their blinds slain deer talk soldiers return from duty with loaded guns and the Wal-Mart sign glows brighter than Friday night's lights. In forms that barely contain their explosive contents Brownlee's poems relate and interrogate what's expected of young White men growing up in the rural South. In doing so they resist the erasure and nostalgia of some Southern literature and instead lay bare the benefits and violent trappings of small-town Christianity and masculinity. These poems are at once song accusation self-implication and prayer-full of the music of a place from which Brownlee is forever removed but from which he will always hail.\" - Susan B.A. Somers-Willett\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321563029654,"sku":"9780990691747","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_953b8950-7466-4642-a0ee-3c5c6cfde45a.jpg?v=1642156609"},{"product_id":"constellarium-1","title":"Constellarium","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFinalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eConstellarium \u003c\/em\u003echronicles the author's gender transition from biological male to female and engages the ontological quandaries that arise from this experience. Family history and religious heritage must be reckoned with along the way. In Rice's poems the evolving nature of the self the fluidity of identity and the lasting influence of the past are all held up to the soul's penetrating gaze.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJordan Rice\u003c\/b\u003e is co-editor of the anthology \u003ci\u003eVoices of Transgender Parents\u003c\/i\u003e (Transgress Press 2015). Her poems have been selected for the \u003ci\u003eIndiana Review\u003c\/i\u003e Poetry Prize by Aimee Nezhukumatathil the \u003ci\u003eGulf Coast\u003c\/i\u003e Poetry Prize by Natasha Trethewey the Yellowwood Poetry Prize from \u003ci\u003eYalobusha Review\u003c\/i\u003e by Beth Anne Fennelley the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize from \u003ci\u003eCrab Orchard Review\u003c\/i\u003e the Milton-Kessler Memorial Prize from \u003ci\u003eHarpur Palate\u003c\/i\u003e and an AWP Intro Journals Award. Her poems have also been anthologized in \u003ci\u003eWriting the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eTroubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume V\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eBest New Poets\u003c\/i\u003e (2008 \u0026amp;amp 2011) \u003ci\u003eA Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBest of the Web 2009\u003c\/i\u003e. Rice received an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University where she served as Associate Editor for New Issues Poetry \u0026amp;amp Prose and as an Assistant Poetry Editor for \u003ci\u003eThird Coast\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"[A] real and significant discovery. \u003cem\u003eConstellarium\u003c\/em\u003e is a book like no other ingenious and wide ranging.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDon Share\u003c\/strong\u003e Chair of the 2017 Kingsley \u0026amp; Kate Tufts Awards Judges Committee editor of \u003cem\u003ePoetry\u003c\/em\u003e magazine\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Constellarium\u003c\/em\u003e is a bold announcement of a new poetic voice to be reckoned with. These poems make us stare down shame and celebrate transition celebrate the body inside. Jordan Rice does not flinch from what society would have us try to look away from instead she carefully constructs a book in which we are forced to reckon layer by layer with her being. Let us be thankful that such a voice exists that it is brilliant and shattering and here to take us all on her journey.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eFatimah Asghar\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Jordan Rice's stunning debut a shooting star of a first book if there ever was one may be the most important volume you read this year. Its taut rich language of visceral vulnerability sharply articulates the missing in-between and liminal experiences of consciousness that trans and cis readers alike have never before seen discussed in literature. These poems split open our hearts enlarging the frame of reference and provoking us to reconsider everything about what it means to be a poet a trans woman a trans person. They renew and revive our sense of what it means to be human.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eTrace Peterson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Jordan Rice's \u003cem\u003eConstellarium\u003c\/em\u003e summons the pleasure and perils of the body the rhetorical and physical damages it can endure. She rescues childhood from memory and makes real again the moments that make or obscure us. Unlike so many contemporary elegies these poems do not chronicle losses with tepid nostalgia they bend time to lead you to griefs at their most unpredictable at the places most poems would look away. Rice's sentences hold more than you thought you could bear. Her masterful control of syntax teaches me what spells already know -- subject object modify modify arrive at the awe that you are knowing too much and refusing sorrow.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eTraci Brimhall\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321564405910,"sku":"9780990691778","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_14b7412c-3e55-486b-928c-05317a4c19a5.jpg?v=1642156758"},{"product_id":"two-worlds-exist-1","title":"Two Worlds Exist","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: book antiqua palatino;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: medium;\"\u003eFinalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYehoshua November's second poetry collection \u003cem\u003eTwo Worlds Exist\u003c\/em\u003e movingly examines the harmonies and dissonances involved in practicing an ancient religious tradition in contemporary America. November's beautiful and profound meditations on work and family life and the intersections of the sacred and the secular invite the reader-regardless of background-to imaginatively inhabit a life of religious devotion in the midst of our society's commotion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eYehoshua November\u003c\/b\u003e's first poetry collection \u003ci\u003eGod's Optimism\u003c\/i\u003e won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and was a finalist for the \u003ci\u003eLA Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize. November's poems have appeared in \u003ci\u003ePrairie Schooner\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Sun\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eVirginia Quarterly Review\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Writer's Almanac\u003c\/i\u003e. He teaches at Rutgers University and Touro College and lives in Teaneck NJ with his wife and children.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"November manages to bring the same gravity and grace to both the common and the cosmic.\" --\u003cem\u003eThe Rumpus\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"November inspires welcomes surprises enriches wrestles and consoles in these poems that matter.\" --\u003cem\u003eThe New York Jewish Week\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"These poems are like a documentary film-close to life narrating episodes from everyday life (many of them happening within the Chassidic community). But under the skin of these poems a flame of passion-or compassion-is hidden. Hidden and palpable at the same time. That's how Yehoshua November creates such beautiful surprises for his readers.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eAdam Zagajewski\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I have read these beautiful poems many times over. Each time I find something new and wonderful and deeper and more spiritual therein. \u003cem\u003eTwo Worlds Exist\u003c\/em\u003e is an even stronger book than November's first collection. So full of sorrow and humility and reverence love and pain and the actual stuff of our lives-the guilt of the small cruelties we inflict the large cruelties life inflicts wavering and unwavering faith that there is something greater than ourselves behind it all.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eLiz Rosenberg\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Yehoshua November's poems are deeply felt carefully crafted insightful and moving. While contemporary American literary culture tends to view \u0026amp;lsquoreligious' and \u0026amp;lsquoliterary' values in opposition November's poetry brilliantly bridges this divide. He writes with tenderness understanding and disarming modesty at the same time his characteristic subjects-the challenges posed by married life child rearing and suffering both physical and spiritual-are among the great subjects of literature and life.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Caplan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321572401302,"sku":"9780990691792","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_eb2bede5-e62d-4b79-85e7-159c393e9ecf.jpg?v=1642157285"},{"product_id":"ghost-child-of-the-atalanta-bloom-1","title":"Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eGhost Child of the Atalanta Bloom \u003c\/em\u003eRebecca Aronson combines myth and memory history and landscape dream and the everyday in arresting painterly poems that sweep the reader beyond the ordinary. With a practiced hand Aronson crafts shapely poems in which no word is wasted. In fact nothing is wasted and Aronson's poems redeem all manner of powerful images and experiences from time's grasp forming a new mythology out of the raw material of her life and imagination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRebecca Aronson\u003c\/strong\u003e's first book \u003cem\u003eCreature Creature\u003c\/em\u003e won the Main-Traveled Press poetry contest and was published in 2007. She also received the 2010 Strousse Award from \u003cem\u003ePrairie Schooner\u003c\/em\u003e. Aronson's poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003eTin House\u003c\/em\u003e the \u003cem\u003eGeorgia Review\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eCream City Review\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eMas Tequila Review\u003c\/em\u003e the \u003cem\u003eParis-American\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eQuarterly West\u003c\/em\u003e among other places. She lives in New Mexico where she teaches writing facilitates a community writing group and coordinates a visiting writers series for Central New Mexico Community College.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Rife with hunger and volatility these poems rooted in the dry heat of the American Southwest circle an unnamed longing and seek release. [. . .] Through the heat of fire or the joy and fear of new motherhood [Aronson] follows that trail of want searching endlessly for 'a reason and a reason and a reason for joy.'\" -\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBooklist\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Her lines storm out of the gate and maintain a thrilling cogent sense of direction as if Rebecca Aronson has only recently been given permission to communicate and she is eager to share.\" - \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Explosive turbulent haunting magnetic Rebecca Aronson's \u003cem\u003eGhost Child of the Atalanta Bloom \u003c\/em\u003ebegins with a girl who sets a field on fire an apt metaphor for poems that are themselves fiery. Mortality and death undergird Aronson's fantastical visions where a child becomes a seagull a woman turns tarantula and a house threatens to fill with blood. Fierce vulnerability and brutality excite the perceptions of the ill and the grief-stricken the child and the new mother who claims: \u0026amp;lsquoWith teeth I guard the home and with breathing.' Details are vaulted to life wild with electricity-from a canoe to a pearl to a bobbin \u0026amp;lsquoeven the grass \/ could be an engine of desire.' An acute and visceral brightness-an aliveness-reaches under the eyelids floating the reader across startling landscapes and dreamscapes from Pompeii to Jersey City. I could stare all day at the riot of gasping colors enthralled by Aronson's poems and her \u0026amp;lsquoRavenous god of little things.'\"- \u003cstrong\u003eHadara Bar-Nadav\u003c\/strong\u003e judge of the 2016 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The poems in Rebecca Aronson's collection achieve a longed-for but near-impossible mark-they change the very shape and length of the momentary to make time last longer. How does the present each held breath bloom and stretch and become an ever-ness a sustained cherishing? This poet infuses more life into a line than almost any of her peers. This book belongs in a canon with the works of Brigit Pegeen Kelly Naomi Shihab Nye James Richardson and Rita Dove-we have always needed new paths into that deep attentive porous and mindful way of being that only poetry can offer. Aronson's is a new route into our oldest and most familiar paradoxes and mysteries those of love beauty connection (im)materiality and consciousness. Nobody but Rebecca Aronson turns a reality inside out just by the way she looks at it the way she listens to reveal ever deeper colors and music than we could have suspected were all around us and in us.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eBrenda Shaughnessy\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321580757142,"sku":"9780996439701","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_3fef36c0-c2b1-468b-a8c6-29be68339810.jpg?v=1642157557"},{"product_id":"the-long-weeping-1","title":"The Long Weeping","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Essays\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this collection of portraits  the eye is the vital \"lamp of the body \" a spiritual organ van Eerden uses to craft essays that are as much encounters as they are likenesses  as much being seen as seeing. Historical subjects like Simone Weil and the Beguines confront the author's imaginative and intellectual being  while the viscerally close foci of family and a lost marriage must also be reckoned with. The author's religious tradition and the rural landscape of Terra Alta  West Virginia are two backgrounds that are neither chosen nor fully understood  but van Eerden's attention to these matters becomes its own form of devotion  a longing to see and to believe-the longing itself taking on the robustness of faith. This is the common goal of these essays  to fully meet each subject and return to it some form of wholeness  a quest full of lush imagery and insights.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJessie van Eerden\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two novels  \u003cem\u003eGlorybound\u003c\/em\u003e (WordFarm)  recipient of the 2012 Editor's Choice Fiction Prize from \u003cem\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e  and \u003cem\u003eMy Radio Radio\u003c\/em\u003e (Vandalia Press  2016). Her work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Oxford American\u003c\/em\u003e  \u003cem\u003eImage  Cimarron Review \u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe River Teeth Reader\u003c\/em\u003e  and \u003cem\u003eBest American Spiritual Writing\u003c\/em\u003e  among other places. Van Eerden received an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa in 2007 and was awarded the 2007-2008 Milton Fellowship at \u003cem\u003eImage\u003c\/em\u003e and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel. She currently directs the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview(s)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial  helvetica  sans-serif font-size: medium\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"caret-color: #000000 color: #000000 font-style: normal font-variant-caps: normal font-weight: normal letter-spacing: normal text-align: start text-indent: 0px text-transform: none white-space: normal word-spacing: 0px -moz-text-size-adjust: auto -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px text-decoration: none display: inline !important float: none\"\u003e\"Van Eerden sidles into her Appalachian past carrying Simone Weil on her shoulders and her own grit between her toes  'speaking out of fury  knowing that fury can have the same source as love.' [...] Van Eerden may be working out her faith  awash in fear and trembling  through these essays  leaving the unanswerable questions unanswered but reckoned with through lyric.\"\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e-Sarah Wells \u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eRiver Teeth\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Van Eerden's fundamentalist religious upbringing is recognized  not despised  as a vital part of her past  even as she moves into larger spiritual circles. Humility  warmth  and charm underscore the collection's darker brushes with death  divorce  and self-doubt. Essays extend an invitation to peer through van Eerden's particular window  which reveals the commonality of humanity despite differing circumstances. Traversing the full range of human experiences with grace  \u003cem\u003eThe Long Weeping\u003c\/em\u003e insists that solace awaits on the other side of even the blackest tumult  if only it can be perceived and grasped.\" \u0026amp;ndash\u003cem\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e  starred review\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Van Eerden is one of the best essayists working today if judged by her craft and intellect alone  but her gifts go beyond those: she is also one of the most honest. \u003cem\u003eThe Long Weeping\u003c\/em\u003e turns a visionary eye and a laser mind on subjects often simplified or even scorned by contemporary culture: white poverty  mysticism  love of family  the wisdom of modest people. Van Eerden is brave enough to say the hard things. She's strong enough to love the hard places. \u0026amp;ndashAnn Pancake  author of \u003cem\u003eGiven Ground\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eMe and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In these startlingly honest and imaginative essays  ​van Eerden enlarges the world around her  giving flesh to what is all too often flattened by the outside eye  anointing places and people and the throbbing spaces between them as she searches out and sings litanies to what she calls the \u0026amp;lsquolarger body I belonged to and could not leave.' Lush and razor-sharp  \u003cem\u003eThe Long Weeping \u003c\/em\u003eshimmers with intelligence and grace. The truest essays I've read in a long time.\" \u0026amp;ndashSonja Livingston  author of \u003cem\u003eGhostbread \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e Queen of the Fall \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Jessie van Eerden's wholehearted essays are acts of ardent and radical comprehension  contending with mysteries and memories that would lead many to declare an impasse  or to employ miniaturizing disdain. Van Eerden is too adventurous a comprehender to be easily thwarted  though  and she is too serious for disdain. In these portrait essays she takes all of her subjects seriously-the \u0026amp;lsquoWoman with Dog with Mange ' the concubine shooing the birds away from her sons' dead bodies  the checkout lady at the Dollar General  as well as her younger self  who at the time felt herself \u0026amp;lsquoscruffy and insignificant.' Here is no nefarious regularizing of the past or imposition of ideology here is the shock of experience-funny  warm  odd  grievous-in a West Virginia childhood  twelfth-century Belgium  or an interior desert where you learn how to love. Like someone fleeing to the desert from supposedly desirable  supposedly enviable things  Jessie van Eerden's book is \u0026amp;lsquomad for something else' and I was thrilled to follow her.\" \u0026amp;ndashAmy Leach  author of \u003cem\u003eThings That Are\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321599828118,"sku":"9780996439756","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_e5414a96-7f5d-427b-aa85-d0d55c535fbd.jpg?v=1642158394"},{"product_id":"its-the-soul-thats-erotic-1","title":"It's the Soul That's Erotic","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this revised and expanded version of an essay that originally served as an introduction to \u003cem\u003eEx Voto: Poems of Adélia Prado\u003c\/em\u003e (Tupelo Press 2013) renowned poet and translator Ilya Kaminsky examines the embodied religious devotion of one of Brazil's greatest poets asking what it means to be a mystic in our time. The chapbook also includes an uncollected Prado translation by Ellen Doré Watson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIlya Kaminsky\u003c\/strong\u003e was born in Odessa former Soviet Union in 1977 and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of \u003cem\u003eDancing in Odessa\u003c\/em\u003e (Tupelo Press) which won the Whiting Writer's Award the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award and the Dorset Prize.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize Kaminsky is the co-editor of \u003cem\u003eThe Ecco Anthology of International Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e an anthology of 20th-century poetry in translation. Kaminsky teaches English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. His second poetry collection \u003cem\u003eDeaf Republic\u003c\/em\u003e is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321607954582,"sku":"9780996439794","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_1b576a35-b3e3-4563-a93a-6913d793e65a.jpg?v=1642158807"},{"product_id":"ceremonial-1","title":"Ceremonial","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn her debut poetry collection Carly Joy Miller surprises and enraptures on every page. The visceral poems of \u003cem\u003eCeremonial\u003c\/em\u003e figure the body at its most sublime and at its most feral with equal attention. With an unflinching eye Miller crafts psalms of petition and praise from the raw material of life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCarly Joy Miller\u003c\/strong\u003e's work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Adroit Journal Blackbird Boston Review Gulf Coast West Branch\u003c\/em\u003e and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at \u003cem\u003ePoetry International\u003c\/em\u003e and a founding editor of Locked Horn Press. Her chapbook \u003cem\u003eLike a Beast\u003c\/em\u003e won the 2016 Rick Campbell Prize and was published by Anhinga Press in 2017.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In her luscious debut [...] [Miller] conjures powerful images of refusal to be confined by societal expectations of womanhood. On display is an inner life marked by the active embrace of both victories and defeats garnered in the face of defiance of others' demands. [...] In the process of discovering the self Miller cuts a new path through an old wood.\" \u003cstrong\u003e-\u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Miller's book is a strange testament teeming with some of the most original poems you'll encounter this year. ...Metamorphoses saturate this book suggest our bodies and souls are in flux. There's a lot of wonder to get lost within here this is a book to awaken the imagination.\"\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003e-\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Carly Joy Miller is relentless. She doesn't want you to breathe normally.\"\u003cem\u003e -\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCeremonial\u003c\/em\u003e disturb in such a way as to make us entirely rethink who we are and where. \u003cem\u003eCeremonial\u003c\/em\u003e offers a post-apocalyptic landscape to be navigated by poems that together become a moral compass-the compass Protean however ever-shifting maybe trustworthy and maybe not. Here to bless a thing can mean to put an axe to it the impulse to save what's broken competes with an impulse to look indifferently away from it the topography is one of damage-accident or what only looks or is meant to look like accident. And yet there is tenderness too and vulnerability. The poems variously revel in regret and feel strange compassion for the beast of desire-of restlessness-inside us all: \"Still I kiss \/ his jaw wild with yellow \/\/ jackets. I shepherd \/ too long in his furs.\" Part of the power of these poems is the coolness of their sensibility a refusal to back entirely down: 'Don't blink in disbelief ' we're told at one point 'ill from the chandelier with a pearl strand. Swing the lights.' I stand persuaded.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eCarl Phillips\u003c\/strong\u003e judge of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Carly Joy Miller's poems are wild restless creatures. They scare me in the best way balancing between pleasure and pain and brokenness and wholeness with lyricism intelligence and disarming composure: 'Nothing delights more \/ than his horns. \/\/ How they rouge me.' Reading Miller's thrilling debut \u003cem\u003eCeremonial \u003c\/em\u003e I'm reminded of what happens when something breaks: there's a brightness more facets to reflect the light.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMaggie Smith\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Here is the poet who knows the sensual art of speaking in tongues. ...'To be young and lopsided in faith'- not a kind of prayer one would expect from the young poet in any age nevermind 2018. And yet here it is the surprise of discovery. The new voice which is instantly recognizable as that rarest of occurrences: \u003cem\u003ethe real thing\u003c\/em\u003e.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e lya Kaminsky\u003c\/strong\u003e from the foreword\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321611362454,"sku":"9780996439770","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_819c93be-32de-4ac7-a270-481d74c049e1.jpg?v=1642159123"},{"product_id":"you-or-a-loved-one-1","title":"You or a Loved One","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWinner of the 2017 Orison Fiction Prize\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn unhappy switchboard operator at SaveLine comforts distressed callers while her own life collapses around her. A man hired to perform choreographed fights for children in a Spider-Man costume comes undone and breaks a client's jaw. An adolescent Dungeon Master discovers the fact of his queerness while traversing the spooky realm that lies beyond childhood. And a lonesome bachelor hides a fugitive woman in his underground bunker while reckoning with the ghosts of dead loved ones.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith sly wit and tenderness Houck swings open a door into a peculiar existence that few writers are willing to enter. Even more remarkably \u003cem\u003eYou or a Loved One\u003c\/em\u003e captures those rarest of moments when a character hears an uncanny whisper of comfort from nowhere or defies the unrelenting tug of gravity and glides out into the void. While shining a light on those who often hover in the periphery in life Houck's stories recall the strange tales of grief and redemption we privately tell our loved ones and ourselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGabriel Houck\u003c\/strong\u003e is originally from New Orleans where his family still lives and in which many of the stories in \u003cem\u003eYou or a Loved One\u003c\/em\u003e are set. Houck holds an MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he is currently a Lecturer in the English Department. His story \"When the Time Came\" was selected as a distinguished story in the 2015 edition of \u003cem\u003eThe Best American Short Stories\u003c\/em\u003e edited by T.C. Boyle and other stories have appeared or are forthcoming in \u003cem\u003eGlimmer Train The Sewanee Review Mid American Review \u003c\/em\u003e(2014 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize) \u003cem\u003eWestern Humanities Review New Delta Review PANK Fourteen Hills Bayou Fiction Southeast Sequestrum \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e The Cimarron Review \u003c\/em\u003eamong other places.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"\u003c\/b\u003eThe stories in \u003cem\u003eYou or a Loved One\u003c\/em\u003e explore the messy and complicated lives of characters from hardscrabble Florida and the bottom rungs of Louisiana in the tangled devastation of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. These characters are often one desperate decision beyond anything resembling normal. All of these lives are rendered with compassion and authenticity. There's an impressive array of types of stories in this collection Gabriel Houck isn't afraid to experiment with form and structure while always doing so in service to the story being told. What an impressive collection this is!\" -\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Haynes\u003c\/strong\u003e judge of The 2017 Orison Fiction Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Gabriel Houck is a terrific young writer and this innovative collection shows off his intelligence his humor and his soulfulness it's a diverse and entertaining inquiry into-as the author aptly puts it-'the meaning of our deeds and the truths of our hearts.'\"-\u003cstrong\u003eJess Walter\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eWe Live in Water\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Gabriel Houck's stories are beautifully layered in ways that mirror the many choices and chances a character's life might offer while also focusing on their vulnerabilities...  This is an accomplished debut by a very talented writer.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eJill McCorkle\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eLife After Life\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been so excited about a new writer. This guy's for real. Savor his work.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eSteve Yarbrough\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eThe Unmade World\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A stunning book of stories! I read it with growing exhilaration as Houck broke new ground in story after story challenging our notions of history reality and imagination. This is the work of a terrific new voice we'll listen to for years.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eJonis Agee\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eThe Bones of Paradise\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Gabriel Houck's debut collection \u003cem\u003eYou or a Loved One\u003c\/em\u003e is stunning: delicate and muscular risky and tender haunting and vulnerable-all at once. Wrenching skilled heartbreaking.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eJoy Castro\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eHow Winter Began\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321614966934,"sku":"9780996439787","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_41d78201-bfce-4524-9131-4ad00964568f.jpg?v=1642159398"},{"product_id":"with-the-dogstar-as-my-witness-1","title":"With the Dogstar as My Witness","description":"\u003cp\u003eOrganized around the canonical prayer hours beginning in the evening and moving into morning (vespers compline vigils lauds) and set in an ethereal South Texas landscape the poems in John Fry's debut collection \u003cem\u003eWith the Dogstar as My Witness \u003c\/em\u003e wrestle with theological and deeply personal concerns in language that is wrenched almost to breaking but which holds after all and forms a tapestry of (sometimes tortured) prayer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Fry\u003c\/strong\u003e received an AB in English from Davidson College in North Carolina and an MFA in Poetry from Texas State University-San Marcos. He is the author of the chapbook \u003cem\u003esilt will swirl\u003c\/em\u003e (New Border 2012). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in \u003cem\u003eColorado Review West Branch Blackbird Tupelo Quarterly Bellingham Review Washington Square Ruminate\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWaxwing\u003c\/em\u003e among other places as well as in the anthologies \u003cem\u003eNew Border Voices \u003c\/em\u003e(Texas A\u0026amp;ampM UP 2014) and \u003cem\u003eImaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzald\u0026amp;uacutean Borderlands\u003c\/em\u003e (Aunt Lute 2016). Fry is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin where he is writing a dissertation on medieval English literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eWith the Dogstar as My Witness \u003c\/em\u003eis a document of terrible longing that we are born for so many hearts \u0026amp;lsquopromised benediction our goodbyes \/ blackened our altars.' In poems spread across the page-syntactic breaks in breath and hope-Fry suggests that we are never truly content with divine absence. He looks not for substitute but salves. He travels the wilderness the desert of desire.\" -\u003cstrong\u003eNick Ripatrazone \u003cem\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the tradition of the literature of the spirit one hopes to find both breath (spirit) and matter (body) rather than an old and exclusionary divide between what in the human can be admitted to the divine. John Fry's poems like the lyrics of Fanny Howe or Jean Valentine seem committed to this light unlacing of truths from traditions place the experience of the spiritual with the individual life not with a canon of law or institution. Doubters are saintly and certainty is dispersed in this wise warm book.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eKazim Ali\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"When Flannery O'Connor wrote \u0026amp;lsquoI have been reading Mr. Kafka and I feel his problem of getting grace ' she wrote it in a prayer. With John Fry's impressive debut comes the call to join with the voices he embodies where the possibility and history of grace might touch. Do touch. The view is celestial: literal stars actual God. From inside these poems we sense pressure at the mouth in lines often made with necessary brevity engaged with silences as they are. His sumptuous enjambments insist on inquiry as the highest unfurling gesture and the body as its most reliable source. These poems are earthly tender wounded and sharp as they contend with spiritual pain and its redress undress.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eKathleen Peirce\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Perhaps the promises of Christianity-forgiveness redemption everlasting life-are felt most keenly by those from whom they are withheld by orthodoxy. And though \u003cem\u003eWith the Dogstar as My Witness\u003c\/em\u003e describes the inevitable painful estrangement felt by a queer raised in the church Fry's beautifully wrought lyrics refuse to let go of the faith. Built in part from repurposed Biblical language and narrative they articulate a theology of want populated by startling images that capture \u0026amp;lsquothe loneliness of limestone's \/ memory of water.' Rejecting the orthodox assumption that queers are prodigal Fry persists as a rightful pilgrim who places desire at the center of a prayerful language fashioned from ecstatic ravishing embodiment. Like any ritual done in good faith these poems offer up the starkest needs of a soul that never stops expecting a blessing.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eBrian Teare\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"John Fry's debut collection of poetry movingly recounts the peregrinated process of holy reencounter as a walk through the watches of the night into a dawn light of acknowledgment. These poems wrestle their way through a series of new names-Eve and Lazarus Mary and Judas and others-in order to produce a new physicalized credo: breathing itself as a manifestation of spirit \u0026amp;lsquolistening with \/ my whole skin.' Such work in Fry's playful music honors how entwined are \u003cem\u003ebewilder\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ebelieve\u003c\/em\u003e.\"-\u003cstrong\u003eKimberly Johnson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321620406422,"sku":"9781949039207","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_bb22f04e-eea0-4b2c-9d39-b4e04d3da556.jpg?v=1642159687"},{"product_id":"stars-shall-bend-their-voices-1","title":"Stars Shall Bend Their Voices","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eStars Shall Bend Their Voices\u003c\/em\u003e some of the most respected living poets meditate on the role of hymns and spiritual songs in their lives and writing. Representing many spiritual traditions and many approaches to personal spiritual practice \u003cem\u003eStars Shall Bend Their Voices \u003c\/em\u003eis a testament to the lasting impact of spiritual music on many of today's best poets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJeffrey L. Johnson\u003c\/strong\u003e studied at St. Olaf College Yale Divinity School and Boston University and he is the author of \u003cem\u003eHarbors of Heaven: Bethlehem and the Places We Love \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eAcquainted with Night: The Shadow of Death in Contemporary Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e. He has received the Thomas Merton Foundation Poetry of the Sacred Award andhis poems and essays have appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe Christian Century First Things Christianity and Literature Anglican Theological Review Encounter\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Mars Hill Review\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"It's a privilege to read the various hymns that are life-changing, and because poets feel as they write, it makes tender reading. The hymns' lyrics are reproduced in their entirety, which gives us the key to each essayist's experience, and makes the book a dialogue between the speaker and his\/her hymn.\"\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGrace Cavalieri\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e,\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Washington Independent Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"'I like to sing' begins Alicia Ostriker in her essay that joins so many necessary voices of contemporary poetry. Each piece collected in this book allows for memoir prayer and rebellion in its examination of what hymns have meant and can mean to the culture to the heart. In these pages the writers you'd think of as most interested in skepticism lay bare their politics and their personal history in order to better know their relationship to faith.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eJericho Brown\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eThe New Testament\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"From Zeina Hashem Beck's memories of hearing prayers from Tripoli's mosques to Linda Gregerson's most beloved Christmas hymn these essays reveal contemporary poets' connections to spiritual songs: the lyric impulse the importance of breath the pull of anaphora and rhyme. \u003cem\u003eStars Shall Bend Their Voices\u003c\/em\u003e is an illuminating-and luminous-collection.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eMaggie Smith\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eGood Bones\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Poets craft words to affect us hymns sing words into our bodies. How wonderful then to read skilled poets speaking personally about hymns and spiritual songs they know. I love this wonderful compendium of poets who have taken hymns to heart-insightful moving and revelatory.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eDon E. Saliers\u003c\/strong\u003e author of \u003cem\u003eMusic and Theology\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321623027862,"sku":"9781949039214","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_63e09b5d-c821-4195-afa0-0bc79ba6fa79.jpg?v=1642159906"},{"product_id":"intimations-of-ghalib-translations-from-the-urdu-1","title":"Intimations of Ghalib: Translations from the Urdu","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThese vibrant new versions of Ghalib’s ghazals bring his wit and irreverence, as well as his devotion, to a 21st-century English-language audience afresh. In presenting multiple versions of many of these poems, Alam highlights the tonal complexity of Ghalib’s work and both the limitations and possibilities of translation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eM. Shahid Alam\u003c\/strong\u003e is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His translations from the Urdu of Ghalib have appeared in numerous periodicals, including \u003cem\u003eBlackbird, The Critical Muslim, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e Western Humanities Review.\u003c\/em\u003e Alam is the author of \u003cem\u003ePoverty from the Wealth of Nations \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eGovernments and Markets in Economic Development Strategies\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e“This not just a translation but a reimagining of the entire rhetorical situation, bringing Ghalib’s performance—his verse in all its orality—into the twenty-first century. This book goes a long way not only to redefining Ghalib but also to reconfiguring the immense potential of the ghazal as a new cadence in Western ears.” —\u003cstrong\u003eM.A.R. Habib\u003c\/strong\u003e, Professor of English, Rutgers University\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Translation loses things, and readers from outside a writer’s culture lose a great deal more. But translators help us recover some of what we’ve lost or otherwise could never have at all. I’m thankful to M. Shahid Alam for bringing so much of Ghalib‘s world and the world of the ghazal to the English page. I think other readers will be grateful, too.” —\u003cstrong\u003eGuy Rotella\u003c\/strong\u003e, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Northeastern University\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e“M. Shahid Alam’s elegant rendering of Ghalib’s poetry will delight its readers. It will acquaint them with the sensibilities and abstract vision of one of Urdu language’s greatest poets, which the translator has ably captured in a fluid language. This book will make a wonderful introduction for the students of world poetry, and claim a prominent place among the few excellent translations of Urdu classical poetry.” —\u003cstrong\u003eMusharraf Ali Farooqi\u003c\/strong\u003e, translator of \u003cem\u003eThe Adventures of Amir Hamza\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e“M. Shahid Alam’s translations of Ghalib are brilliant flashes of poetic illumination. Again and again, they convey the rich polyvalence of the original ghazals—from metaphysical insights to wordplays. His work brings to life the Divan’s meanings and forms in poems reminiscent of the Urdu ghazal in their tenor and English lyric in their resonance. Alam has read Ghalib religiously over decades and is an accomplished poet of English in his own right—both these traits are reflected in the exquisite gems bound in this volume. Alam’s acumen as a translator-poet is breathtaking, and this volume is a gift to world literature.” —\u003cstrong\u003eTaimoor Shahid\u003c\/strong\u003e, translator of \u003cem\u003eThe Madness of Waiting\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321624895638,"sku":"9781949039191","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_ea78738f-b64d-484a-8570-ed709ce55737.jpg?v=1642160037"},{"product_id":"as-one-fire-consumes-another-1","title":"As One Fire Consumes Another","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat happens when metaphysics and social critique meet? Poetry that has to find a new form to express the tension it embodies. John Sibley Williams’ newspaper-like columns in \u003cem\u003eAs One Fire Consumes Another\u003c\/em\u003e do just that. Here, transcendent vision and trenchant social insight meet, wrestle, and end up revitalizing one another.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Sibley Williams\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the poetry collections \u003cem\u003eSkin Memory\u003c\/em\u003e (Backwaters Prize), \u003cem\u003eDisinheritance\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eControlled Hallucinations\u003c\/em\u003e. He serves as the editor of \u003cem\u003eThe Inflectionist Review\u003c\/em\u003e and has edited two Northwest poetry anthologies,\u003cem\u003e Alive at the Center \u003c\/em\u003e(Ooligan Press, 2013) and \u003cem\u003eMotionless from the Iron Bridge\u003c\/em\u003e (barebones books, 2013). Williams is the winner of numerous literary awards, including the Laux\/Millar Prize, the Philip Booth Award, the \u003cem\u003eAmerican Literary Review \u003c\/em\u003ePoetry Contest, the Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, the 46er Prize, the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, the \u003cem\u003eConfrontation\u003c\/em\u003e Poetry Prize, and the \u003cem\u003eVallum\u003c\/em\u003e Award for Poetry. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, twin toddlers, and a voracious Boston Terrier.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"John Sibley Williams confronts the violent side of American history and its effect on our notions of self, fatherhood, and citizenship. […] The poems, which veer from elegiac to declarative to prayerlike, drill down into the beliefs and fears that underpin this violence.\"\u003cstrong\u003e–\u003cem\u003ePoets \u0026amp; Writers\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"John Sibley Williams’ collection \u003cem\u003eAs One Fire Consumes Another\u003c\/em\u003e transcends beyond the boundaries of family and history and country, beyond the body’s tragedies, the “silenced bones of others.” These poems rise as invocation, as testimonial to life’s unfiltered beauty, violence, and faith, to the “light . . . already in us.\"\u003cstrong\u003e–Vandana Khanna\u003c\/strong\u003e, judge of The 2018 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"As One Fire Consumes Another\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a rare creation full of song and seethe. […] It is a book of radiance and ruin that manages to be benevolent while breathing fire.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e–Simone Muench\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"If America’s collective conscience is at war, the wounds and battle scars are in full display in John Sibley Williams’ arresting book. […] Poem after poem, the strange elegance of \u003cem\u003eAs One Fire Consumes Another\u003c\/em\u003e is remarkable and daunting.\"\u003cstrong\u003e - Rigoberto González\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Full of passion and heart, this book is always digging through the rubble towards life.\" \u003cstrong\u003e–Tyree Daye\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"One of the most original books of poetry I have read in decades.\" \u003cstrong\u003e–Sean Thomas Dougherty\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321638297750,"sku":"9781949039016","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_6f74c6df-fb61-4918-993e-447224442a7f.jpg?v=1642160456"},{"product_id":"some-unimaginable-animal-1","title":"Some Unimaginable Animal","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003eIn his much-anticipated second poetry collection, David Ebenbach addresses the full scope of the human condition—past, present, and future. Exploring the vast sweep of history, from our ancient evolutionary origins to our future archaeological remains, Ebenbach’s deceptively light-handed poems penetrate to the core of what it means to be human, a brief but exquisite being, full of appetites both healthy and harmful. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Ebenbach\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the novel \u003cem\u003eMiss Portland\u003c\/em\u003e, selected by Peter Orner for the 2016 Orison Poetry Prize, and three short story collections: \u003cem\u003eThe Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e (winner of the Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press), \u003cem\u003eBetween Camelots\u003c\/em\u003e (winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, University of Pittsburgh Press), and \u003cem\u003eInto the Wilderness\u003c\/em\u003e (Winner of the Washington Writers Publishing House Fiction Prize, WWPH). He is also the author of a full-length collection of poetry, \u003cem\u003eWe Were the People Who Moved\u003c\/em\u003e (Winner of the Patricia Bibby Prize, Tebot Bach) and a guide to the creative process called \u003cem\u003eThe Artist’s Torah\u003c\/em\u003e (Cascade Books). Ebenbach holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. He teaches creative writing at Georgetown University.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e“Ebenbach is a seeker and seer, steeped in Jewish tradition and, like Walt Whitman, a poet who so loves the world, with its griefs, mysteries, and joys, that he teaches us to love the world with him.” – \u003cstrong\u003eJesse Lee Kercheval\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e“Sometimes wisdom is offered with a light touch, with a wink and a nod. Sometimes the poem that charms us is the poem that disarms us, not because we are persuaded that we no longer need to be on constant guard against the threats of the world, but rather because our sense of wonder is restored to us, wonder that is wide enough to hold the pleasure and pain of the world. […] Cling to this book. It will add life to your life.” – \u003cstrong\u003eRichard Chess\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e“These are poems that rejoice in all that is creaturely and make sharp fun at our brief place on earth. And if we are ever tempted to get whiney and world-weary, these wise and important poems remind us in the most generous way that ‘the snow \/ follows us just to say, get over yourselves, \/ we all have our problems.’” – \u003cstrong\u003eVictoria Redel\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321638527126,"sku":"9781949039238","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_6dcbf761-af4d-415b-a3d3-c826b454b68b.jpg?v=1642160461"},{"product_id":"oceanography-1","title":"Oceanography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eOceanography\u003c\/em\u003e, his second story collection, Jeremy Griffin hovers like a loving but non-interventionist angel over the lives of characters at their most fragile, as they find within themselves unknown reservoirs of strength. These profound stories are marked by wisdom about hope and loss of hope, about attempts at healing on the paths of wounding.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeremy Griffin\u003c\/strong\u003e is originally from Louisiana. He received his MFA in Fiction from Virginia Tech. He is the author of a collection of short fiction, \u003cem\u003eA Last Resort for Desperate People \u003c\/em\u003e(Stephen F. Austin State University Press). His stories, poems, and book reviews have appeared in such journals as \u003cem\u003eBlackbird, Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Mid-American Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eShenandoah, \u003c\/em\u003eamong others. He was the 2017 Prose Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission, and he teaches at Coastal Carolina University, where he serves as faculty fiction editor for \u003cem\u003eWaccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The stories in \u003cem\u003eOceanography\u003c\/em\u003e are peregrinations into unmapped territory: the survival of innocence. An elderly man who has outlived his wife seeks solace in building bird-feeders while noting the ‘surprising strength of his heart.’ A failing businessman prays to a photograph of his grandsons on the beach, an adolescent girl begins to comprehend the consequences of her attraction to an older boy, and the survivors of a school shooting reconsider their homicidal classmate. This beautiful collection is distinguished by unvarnished honesty, depth of compassion, and an uncanny awareness of that liminal region between our knowledge of what is irretrievable and our hope for deliverance.” –\u003cstrong\u003eLan Samantha Chang\u003c\/strong\u003e, judge of The 2018 Orison Fiction Prize\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“I’ve just finished reading Jeremy Griffin’s exhilarating collection \u003cem\u003eOceanography,\u003c\/em\u003e and now I need to catch my breath and recover. Then I’m going to read it again. The title story alone is worth the price of admission. Brianna Copland’s desperate love will haunt your dreams and your days. The prose in these propulsive and unsettling stories is luminous and incandescent; the characters are riveting; the themes, complex and resonant. Jeremy Griffin is one savvy, lyrical, and fearless writer.” –\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Dufresne\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eNo Regrets, Coyote\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“A couple of days ago, I sat down with Jeremy Griffin’s collection \u003cem\u003eOceanography,\u003c\/em\u003e to see if the stories could capture my interest. I think I first came up for air about 75 pages later. I did not previously know this young writer’s work, but suffice it to say that until I breathe my last, he will remain on my reading list. I almost never feel such enthusiasm for a book of stories. Every single one of them immediately engaged me and kept me engaged all the way to the end. There is so much life in these pages, so much genuine empathy for so many memorable people—I say ‘people’ rather than ‘characters,’ because they became so real for me. Griffin is one hell of a writer.” –\u003cstrong\u003eSteve Yarbrough\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Unmade World\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321654976662,"sku":"9781949039047","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_ecc145f5-a3c4-4473-9ea6-2bdb2426af1e.jpg?v=1642161181"},{"product_id":"side-by-side-but-never-face-to-face-1","title":"Side by Side but Never Face to Face","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSide by Side but Never Face to Face \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003easks, Can new love be found in old age? Greta has been wrenched from a long and tightly-circled marriage to Manfred, an Austrian Holocaust survivor. Together they mourned the accidental death of a daughter and experienced a widening of spiritual horizons as they grieved. Shifting between Chicago, Austria, and rural Wisconsin, the present and decades past, these linked narratives unfold the story of Greta—daughter, wife, mother, widow, survivor, and seeker—with profound insight into the emotional conflicts, spiritual yearnings, and everyday experiences that connect us all.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMaggie Kast\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Crack Between the Worlds: A Dancer’s Memoir of Loss, Faith and Family\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e and a novel, \u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Free Unsullied Land.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e She received an MFA in writing from Vermont College and has published fiction in \u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Sun, Nimrod, Rosebud, Paper Street,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e and other places. A chapter of her memoir, published in \u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eACM\/Another Chicago Magazine\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e, won a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council. Kast’s essays have appeared in \u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAmerica, Image, The Writer’s Chronicle\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. She is a board member of Links Hall, incubator and presenter of dance and performance art in Chicago\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Maggie Kast has a gift for illuminating her characters’ inner lives, and these beautiful stories, as they shuttle gracefully between past and present, Europe and America, strike a profound and satisfying balance between intimacy and mystery. A wise and powerful book.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e–Garth Greenwell\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eCleanness\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWhat Belongs to You\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Maggie Kast’s \u003cem\u003eSide by Side but Never Face to Face\u003c\/em\u003e is a fascinating and unusual collection. Her fiction is what we might call adjacent to fact—convincing and complex stories spun from but not intended to be autobiography. They combine family and marital history, spiritual longing, profound questioning of boundaries between cultures and, finally, via a beautifully evoked passionate encounter, a reassuring bringing-together of body and soul.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e–Rosellen Brown\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Lake on Fire\u003c\/em\u003e and\u003cem\u003e Before and After\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“From the joy of ‘Joyful Noise’ to the tense marital ambiguities of ‘Side by Side but Never Face to Face,’ these fictions speak to each other across generations, ethnicities, and religious belief. Maggie Kast has assembled a resilient and vivid group of characters from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Hmong of Door County, Wisconsin. Connecting all these is the story of Greta, who, attached to the others by heritage or circumstance or love, seeks to understand herself and the ineffable. A gripping and richly thoughtful collection.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e–Janet Burroway\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eWriting Fiction\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eRaw Silk\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321678897302,"sku":"9781949039085","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_2b35be6d-dbde-483c-997b-a8ff45a85610.jpg?v=1642161901"},{"product_id":"obscura-1","title":"Obscura","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn his long-anticipated third poetry collection, Frank Paino sheds his singular light on the most obscure corners of history and human nature, assembling a hagiography of unorthodox saints. Paino’s poems teach us to look deeply at the unsettling realities from which we instinctually look away—and they show us the rich rewards of beauty and wisdom we can gain by doing so.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrank Paino\u003c\/strong\u003e's first two volumes of poetry were published by Cleveland State University Press: \u003cem\u003eThe Rapture of Matter\u003c\/em\u003e (1991) and \u003cem\u003eOut of Eden \u003c\/em\u003e(1997). He has received a number of awards for his work, including a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from The Ohio Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize, and The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature. His poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003eAntioch Review, Catamaran, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e World Literature Today,\u003c\/em\u003e among other places.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis work, with a fetish-like attention to detail, enters the chambers of history we often avoid, stepping into skins both human and beast. [. . .] [Paino’s] fascinations sift the wreckage out of grief, desperate to find a way we can all rightly live with so much loss. Because, reader, be warned: within these pages is no typical lyric meditation on how our bodies are destroyed or what becomes of them after their end. No, this is a book unlike anything else being written today. You won’t be likely to forget what you encounter here. To quote [Paino]’s description of an exquisitely beautiful photograph of a suicide victim who fell to her death: Once you’ve seen it, you’ll be \"powerless to turn away.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eNickole Brown\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cem\u003efrom the foreword\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn Frank Paino’s long-awaited new book, \u003cem\u003eObscura\u003c\/em\u003e, the blessed and the profane both belie a state of bewilderment. The rapturous lyricism and the searing interiority zero in on what is difficult to behold. [. . .] In impeccably musical language, the poems in \u003cem\u003eObscura\u003c\/em\u003e will consume you in their \"ravenous fire.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eOliver de la Paz\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrank Paino’s lavishly dark \u003cem\u003eObscura\u003c\/em\u003e questions our species’ seemingly endless ability to impose harm and destroy others in the name of faith, progress, or pleasure. In poems that unsettle—in the severely sensual way that Dickinson does, in the nauseatingly precise way that Plath does—Paino makes the historical timely, illuminating, like a brush tipped in toxic radium, our deepest interiors. I have been waiting a long time for this book, and will be reading it for years to come.\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eKathy Fagan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321680371862,"sku":"9781949039078","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_d7bbcf10-6a97-4aee-ab2a-55445002738c.jpg?v=1642161999"},{"product_id":"divining-1","title":"Divining","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn Brooke Sahni's debut, \u003cem\u003eDivining\u003c\/em\u003e, the complexities of a young woman's religious and cultural inheritances are plumbed in poems that resist easy simplifications. Sahni fashions a web of her own between Sikhism and Judaism, India and America. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBrooke Sahni\u003c\/strong\u003e is a native of Cleveland, Ohio but has been living in the Southwest for the past ten years. Her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as \u003cem\u003ePrairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Massachusetts Review, 32 Poems, Cimarron Review,\u003c\/em\u003e and elsewhere. She holds a BFA and an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently living and teaching in New Mexico.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"'Sikh or Jewish?' Brooke Sahni asks herself in \u003cem\u003eDivining\u003c\/em\u003e, her award-winning chapbook debut, delving into her mixed heritage from India and America, from Judaism and Sikhism—Sikh, which as a child she spelled \u003cem\u003eseek\u003c\/em\u003e, which is what Sahni does in this beautiful, searching collection. 'Torah, they say you are holy...' she writes in a poem that explores both text and body, mapping one to the other, concluding, 'There's a way to read myself—' To read these poems is to witness a young writer finding herself as both a woman and as a person with a unique spiritual identity. - \u003cstrong\u003eJessica Jacobs\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"In \u003cem\u003eDivining\u003c\/em\u003e, Brooke Sahni's poems exalt the borders between human and divine, child and woman, and her personal need to understand her inheritances. Sahni writes, 'so many things are calling us \/ in and out of ourselves,' which is the way these fine poems operate, moving in and out of the seemingly incongruent wisdoms this world offers, to create a spiritual self. Who else could write: 'I am too young to conceptualize the soul \/ what I mean is, I don't think about metaphor'? In poems full of beauty and inquiry, Sahni takes nothing for granted.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eConnie Voisine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321684467862,"sku":"9781949039108","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_c9a601e0-5da2-4100-bb46-d6598b2f132d.jpg?v=1642162203"},{"product_id":"a-sense-of-the-whole-stories","title":"A Sense of the Whole: Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe fable-like stories in A\u003cem\u003e Sense of the Whole\u003c\/em\u003e—reminiscent of the best of Kawabata, Hrabal, Lispector, and Kafka—feature characters who refuse to believe that we are unconnected, refuse to not aspire to the notion of the human family. These characters are girls and boys, men and women, Iranians and Americans, all seeking a home for the body and the soul.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSiamak Vossoughi\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Seattle. His first story collection, \u003cem\u003eBetter Than War\u003c\/em\u003e, received the 2014 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in \u003cem\u003eGlimmer Train, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and\u003cem\u003e The Rumpus\u003c\/em\u003e, among other places. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"These are moral tales with uncertain answers. One might read them as anecdotal for the Iranian-American experience, but rendered in Vossoughi’s epigrammatic prose they ultimately unfold through the language of the universal. Each lights on a minor encounter—between strangers, neighbors, lovers—and what emerges is the sense that anyone you meet has a story.\" —\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“[This] collection examines human connectedness with short stories that are snapshots of seemingly ordinary moments as they take on a whole new perspective. Vossoughi’s stories are masterfully crafted with a tender honesty that will speak to readers.”\u003c\/span\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eBooklist\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Siamak Vossoughi is a flat-out brilliant writer, and his latest collection, \u003cem\u003eA Sense of the Whole\u003c\/em\u003e, fills me with awe and delight. How can stories so compact be so absorbing, so tender and truthful and funny? I have no answer, only gratitude that a book like this exists, a testament to the wonders all around us, hiding in plain sight.”—\u003cstrong\u003eTania James\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Tusk That Did the Damage\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eAerogrammes\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“These are masterful short stories. Their wisdom, warmth, and beauty overwhelmed me. This is among the strongest and most artful collections I've read in some time.”—\u003cstrong\u003eElizabeth McKenzie\u003c\/strong\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Portable Veblen \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e MacGregor Tells the World\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321695740054,"sku":"9781949039115","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_afdf5234-55e9-4427-9846-e71572105c12.jpg?v=1642162549"},{"product_id":"arsenal-with-praise-song","title":"Arsenal With Praise Song","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRodney Gómez's \u003cem\u003eArsenal With Praise Song \u003c\/em\u003esomehow manages to yoke together lament and celebration, reproach and veneration across the borders of eras and nations. Set in the stark desert landscape of the México–U.S. border all too familiar to so many refugees and migrants, these poems scrutinize human bodies and the body of the earth as the sites of great injustices and violences—political, social, and spiritual—and as the vehicles that carry our collective legacy generation to generation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRodney Gómez\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the poetry collections \u003cem\u003eGeographic Tongue\u003c\/em\u003e (Pleiades Press, 2020), winner of the Pleiades Press Visual Poetry Series, \u003cem\u003eCeremony of Sand\u003c\/em\u003e (YesYes Books, 2019), and \u003cem\u003eCitizens of the Mausoleum\u003c\/em\u003e (Sundress Publications, 2018). He is the winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize. Gómez is a member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop and edits an annual anthology for youth poets from the lower Rio Grande Valley. He works in mobility demand management as Executive Director of Parking and Transportation at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and lives in McAllen, Texas, where he serves as poet laureate.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The nights were hive and I grew used to them\" writes Gómez as we follow the swarm through radiating deserts and dreamscapes. Something ancient troubles these poems into being. They are lit with the gleam of a knife's edge, as though the law declared: \u003cem\u003eyou will sing even though your throat be slit\u003c\/em\u003e. These praise songs drift over kin and graves, river-water and history, so tender in their tendering. 'She said the wind \/ would vole into a voice \/ plant its bugle \/ in every ear,' and we will listen.\"\u003cstrong\u003e—Carolina Ebeid\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"There is a moment in Rodney Gómez's \u003cem\u003eArsenal With Praise Song\u003c\/em\u003e when the poet offers that \"Where there is fire \/ there is mourning,\" and yes, these poems indeed are fire. Rife with it. From the wounds and the owls to the knives and the gasoline and the rivers and the cages and the fire of belonging, Gómez's poems invite us to mourn but also to give honor and to live and to name things and to remember, because as Gómez tells us, 'We are all holy smoke.' In the beginning, Gómez dedicates this book 'For the missing,' and I leave his collection with this line written on my wall: 'We carry their dust \/ inside our bodies.'\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Joe Jiménez\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"'If no one remembers, the stain disappears—' But Rodney Gómez won’t let that happen in his haunting collection, \u003cem\u003eArsenal With Praise Song\u003c\/em\u003e. And praise we do, as readers, joining in, when a father 'born \/ with bombardment in his mouth' must leave his family as 'cicadas wept'; when a 'wound is disarmed by the sound of waterfalls'; when faced with 'a salvage \/ birds rush to unpiece collapse \/ buzzard, vulture \/ the dove, surprisingly \/ with urn-like wings.' And we equally praise and come to examine those wings as much as the bee that comes 'projectile to the next world' and the 'brown recluse carries \/ the elevating poison of heaven.' In a world where violence and 'bullets \/ cannot possibly feed \/ a collapsar,' the speaker who is 'not a romantic \/ about pain' but wears it 'loose like the hand’s bones around my throat,' transforms lyrical testimony into a wounded but awakened landscape through a series of questions that refuse simple answers. We walk alongside the speaker and feel the force of praise that can only exist as unflinching candor, in which Gómez asks us all to reexamine the very myths we treat as truth, challenging us to look closer at our world where “every animal is a fuse” and 'the heart is a weapon.'\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—Rosebud Ben-Oni\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"At its heart, this collection is an exploration of compassion itself, its rooms and its limits, which haunt the communities we create—like the family, like the borderlands, like the nation. Rodney Gómez's poetry, both intimate and expansive, is a gift to treasure.\"\u003cstrong\u003e—José Antonio Rodríguez\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321698099350,"sku":"9781949039139","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_8c21a2f9-d781-47f0-9edd-4285413e5b59.jpg?v=1642162782"},{"product_id":"post-mortem","title":"Post-Mortem","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSpanning ages and species and cultures, Heather Altfeld's \u003cem\u003ePost-Mortem \u003c\/em\u003epays tribute to the passing glory of this planet and all that our hands have made. These often long-form, expansive poems take many shapes and modes, including prose poem sequences, sestinas, kaddishes, and obituaries. No matter the form it inhabits, however, Altfeld's voice is unmistakable and one-of-a-kind. Whether considering mythical creatures, historical lives, or contemporary culture, Altfeld's poems are hilarious and deeply moving, somehow, at the same time. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHeather Altfeld\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003eThe Disappearing Theatre\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the 2016 Poets at Work Prize, selected by Stephen Dunn. She is the 2017 recipient of the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 2015 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in \u003cem\u003eConjunctions, Orion, Aeon, Narrative Magazine, The Georgia Review, ZYZZYVA\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eBest American Essays.\u003c\/em\u003e She lives in Northern California, where she teaches in the Comparative Religion and Humanities Department and the University Honors Program at California State University, Chico.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Heather Altfeld and others of her inquisitive ilk lead the interrogation of a mad world.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—\u003cem\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"An extended meditation on language, an atlas of the visible and the invisible, as well as a memorial book to all that is lost and will be lost to us, \u003cem\u003ePost-Mortem\u003c\/em\u003e is a brilliant, baroque, and word-crazed collection of poems. While the primary mode of the poems is elegiac (many taking as their forms obituaries, autopsies, and kaddishes), one cannot help but delight in Altfeld’s reverie and in the breadth and depth of her inquiry, her exploration, her katabasis as she leads us like Virgil through a stunning and elaborate posthumous world.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Eric Pankey, judge of The 2019 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The poems in \u003cem\u003ePost-Mortem\u003c\/em\u003e take on the weightiest subjects—the deaths of everything from the first-born of Egypt to no-longer-spoken languages to silence to the planet Earth—with an impressive mix of lyricism (“that wail of loss, the true noise of god, \/ holiness rising over the dunes”), intelligence (“Protons, electrons, neutrons, \/ all in an invisible symmetric vaudeville”), and humor (“Who are we kidding? \/ Our lives are the size of gnats”). “Now even the dead can hear us thinking” ends “Obituary for Silence,” and, given the distinctiveness and power of Heather Altfeld’s audible thinking in \u003cem\u003ePost-Mortem\u003c\/em\u003e, I find myself half believing that she’s right.\"\u003cstrong\u003e—Jacqueline Osherow\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"'Listen, little ghost. Don't be confused. \/ You are not haunting anyone yet' writes Heather Altfeld in this most fun morbid book I have seen in a while, a book that is filled with beautiful obituaries to things as different as snow and elves and silence, and planet Earth itself. Make no mistake, reader, you will love it when \"Pliny's Traveling Apothecary\" stops in a town near you. You will love it, too, when you hear the \"Broadcast from the Sarcophagus.\" Rarely has there been a book about death so filled with life. Among the many elegies, dirges, and songs of this book, one thing is constant—the inability to stop seeing the wail of loss, and yet also the inability to stop seeking harmony. This tension, this duality, is what makes the book sing. I love it.\"\u003cstrong\u003e—Ilya Kaminsky\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321703243926,"sku":"9781949039146","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_d9b486aa-c00d-4d0a-b8ba-20788c24bc73.jpg?v=1642162996"},{"product_id":"wolf-lamb-bomb","title":"Wolf Lamb Bomb","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: small;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the The 2021 \u003cem\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003eAward in Poetry\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAviya Kushner's debut poetry collection, \u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e, revives and reimagines the Book of Isaiah in an intimate conversation between woman and prophet. In the aftermath of September 11\u003csup\u003eth\u003c\/sup\u003e, ongoing violence in the Middle East, and resurgent antisemitism, Kushner reflects on a Biblical understanding of humanity and justice. \u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e wonders equally about our relationship with an inherited past and our desire to understand the precarious present. These poems place the prophet Isaiah in the position of poet, crooner, and rival as they search for a guide in poetry and in life.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAviya Kushner\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of \u003cem\u003eThe Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible\u003c\/em\u003e (Spiegel \u0026amp; Grau \/ Penguin Random House), which was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Finalist, and one of \u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e‘s Top 10 Religion Stories of the year, as well as the poetry chapbook \u003cem\u003eEve and All the Wrong Men\u003c\/em\u003e (Dancing Girl Press, 2019). Kushner is \u003cem\u003eThe Forward\u003c\/em\u003e‘s language columnist, and previously wrote a travel column for \u003cem\u003eThe International Jerusalem Post.\u003c\/em\u003e She is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, a founding faculty member at the Randolph College MFA program, and a member of The Third Coast Translators Collective. Her work has been supported by the Howard Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Kushner channels the prophet Isaiah, 'lone \/ crooner in the wilderness,' and recasts his 'raving mad' vision for a post-9\/11 age of terrorism and geopolitical conflict.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eturns and turns Isaiah's verse, and dis­cov­ers the ways in which it speaks to our con­tem­po­rary strug­gles, but per­haps the most strik­ing poet­ry comes when Kush­n­er faces the bib­li­cal and speaks back.\"—\u003cstrong\u003eThe Jewish Book Council\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"[\u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e] feels like a chevruta session with an especially humane and close reader...deeply affecting...Kushner’s fluency with her source text is something to behold.\"—\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Jewish Exponent\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis is verse that stretches from antiquity to tomorrow—prophetic to personal, exhilarated to anguished, lines that leave you breathless and lines that help you breathe. A gift from a new and vital poetic voice. \u003c\/span\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eRabbi David Wolpe\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"'To live is a form of music,' writes Aviya Kushner in this devastating, luminous collection. To call \u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e a poetic conversation with the prophet Isaiah does not capture the experience. Yes, a conversation; but also a tango, a song, a eulogy, a takedown, a meditation, and a midrashic re-singing, two and a half millennia later. In the great tradition of the Hebrew scriptures, these poems hold opposites in a single consciousness: feminine and masculine, wolves and lambs, subways and sacred text, Jerusalem and Iowa, text and lust, the blinding light of prophecy and the salve of human tenderness. Among vast visions of 'all the singers \/ on all the stages of the earth,' the intimate, undeniable voice of the human self never wavers. 'I traded love \/ for music,' writes Kushner; the distance between prophet and poet collapses, and we lucky ones listen to the song.\"—\u003cstrong\u003eAlicia Jo Rabins\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003e'In the imagined life,' Aviya Kushner writes in her first collection of poems, \u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e, 'the next step is always \/ a problem.' Guided by her reverence for the poetry of the Prophet Isaiah, Kushner steps gingerly toward the problems of contemporary existence—which are, of course, but variations on the themes of faith and freedom, heartbreak and healing, that have inspired poets from time immemorial. 'In my body,' she writes, 'I carry clarity and crime and the harp.' Hear her!\"\u003cspan\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eChristopher Merrill\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The poems in \u003cem\u003eWolf Lamb Bomb\u003c\/em\u003e, with their radiant clarity, encompass both the daily and the spiritual while casting light on the dark moments of our recent history. They ask unanswerable questions of the biblical Isaiah, and Kushner's tremendous power—like Isaiah's—stems from a depth of vision that is everywhere matched by the beauty of her imagery and music. Whether describing the aftermath of September 11th in New York City, or flooding in the Midwest, or a bomb in Jerusalem, she guides us through the wilderness of despair to that place where we might imagine, in some redemptive future, the wolf and the lamb lying down together. As charged and revelatory as lightning, his is an unforgettable book.\"—\u003cstrong\u003eJennifer Barber\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321705898134,"sku":"9781949039177","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_932cbc15-7cc0-4891-88e4-03b1c6ecab2a.jpg?v=1642163171"},{"product_id":"a-husband-and-wife-are-one-satan","title":"A Husband and Wife Are One Satan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis new collection of linked short stories from award-winning author Jeff Fearnside explores the lives of ordinary people in Kazakhstan as they face the challenges of post-Soviet transition in the early 21st century. These stories illuminate the soul of a people tested by their circumstances: a man struggling between tradition and his conscience, a woman remembering her coming of age during perestroika, a woman who through memory comes to identify with \"the other,\" a husband and wife who seek reconciliation through the words they've used to hurt, and a grandfather who lost his loved ones and now must face his past.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJeff Fearnside\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two full-length books, the short story collection \u003cem\u003eMaking Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air\u003c\/em\u003e (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and the essay collection \u003cem\u003eShips in the Desert\u003c\/em\u003e (forthcoming from the SFWP Press). His work has appeared widely in literary journals such as \u003cem\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eStory\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Pinch\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Sun\u003c\/em\u003e. Awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project's Literary Awards Program, the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, and an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. Fearnside lived in Central Asia for four years and has taught writing and literature at the Academy of Languages in Kazakhstan and various institutions in the U.S.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Literature's best magic trick may be to entice us to enter lives\/countries\/cultures we otherwise have no access to—in this case contemporary Kazakhstan—whereupon we immediately recognize the Kazakh version of ourselves. In these poignant, good-humored, heart-breaking, and well-crafted stories, fiery women attempt to hold their own against toxic masculinity, tribalism dies hard, if at all, and the human heart most wants something to believe in.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In this beautiful, solemn collection of stories, Jeff Fearnside has employed Chekovian precision to bring to life a place of transition and turmoil, its people holding to the traditions of old as a new world forms around them in all its damning weight and splendor, each tale intimate and soulful and profound. This book is moving and thoughtful, delivering insights into love and war and family and country with the depth and sincerity found only in the best of literature.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eAlan Heathcock, author of VOLT and 40\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Jeff Fearnside's A Husband and Wife Are One Satan captures everyday life in the Republic of Kazakhstan, a place that feels darkly different and hilariously familiar. Rich with memorable characters and stark beauty, Fearnside's stories are deft in their crafting, and often they pivot from funny to bleak in a flash. The truths here, of what it is to be a human being, are universal and a joy to read.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMargaret Malone, author of People Like You\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Jeff Fearnside is a writer of great range, complication, and empathy. Rooted in place, awash in history, often cornered by cultural expectations, his characters are nevertheless living, breathing human beings, possessed of their own desires and dreams, their own failures and heroisms. I only wish there were more of these stories.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eJoe Wilkins, author of Fall Back Down When I Die and The Mountain and the Fathers\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321711042710,"sku":"9781949039276","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_a01030c0-ae45-425a-8ad5-0ee907d85a63.jpg?v=1642163448"},{"product_id":"not-yet-transfigured","title":"Not Yet Transfigured","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eNot Yet Transfigured\u003c\/em\u003e, Eric Pankey extends his poetic oeuvre in ways simultaneously foreseeable and fresh. Seeing itself becomes a metaphysical activity in these poems, whether the object in view is the unmediated natural world or a work of art. The influence of poetic masters in the meditative mode such as Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, and Charles Wright is evident in Pankey's latest collection. Concluding with a major new prose poem, \"Landscape in Theory: A Meditation,\" \u003cem\u003eNot Yet Transfigured \u003c\/em\u003eis an essential volume for every lover of contemporary poetry.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEric Pankey\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of fourteen collections of poems and a book of essays. His work has been supported by fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and The Brown Foundation. He is the Heritage Chair in writing at George Mason University.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"[Pankey's] wisdom, sometimes sidelong, sometimes direct, both knows and feels.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eJane Hirshfield\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In this age of both religious extremism and cynical atheism, Eric Pankey's poems gleam with authenticity. From his earliest work, his abiding interest has been in probing the place where human consciousness confronts what lies outside of our understanding.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Chase Twichell\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Eric Pankey's sensibility is an unerringly generous one: he is always willing to step first onto unsteady ground, to test it for those who might follow.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMary Szybist\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Pankey writes poems that give us back, if not the world, our relation to it—where we can learn from what resists understanding, where even withholding reveals, where the future includes all the past, and though the mind might be obliterated by the light it seeks, it seeks it still, in the ruins and in the orchard.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDan Beachy-Quick\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321723297942,"sku":"9781949039269","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_5d0a1553-c9b4-4abb-8a5c-23494f968086.jpg?v=1642163843"},{"product_id":"the-distortions","title":"The Distortions","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Frayed relationships populate...\u003ci\u003eThe Distortions\u003c\/i\u003e..., set in and around Zagreb during and after the Serbo-Croatian War. [...] These vivid stories remind us how quickly perceived difference can lead to conflict.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This richly textured collection reminds us of the tether to our geographical homes.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eBuzzFeed\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eIn\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Distortions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewe glimpse a pageant of characters struggling to understand their lives after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Scarred by the Serbo-Croatian War, the women and men of these stories question what such a violent past can mean in comfortable, capitalistic modern Europe. From London and Brooklyn and Norway, to the Blue Grotto of Biševo and the war-torn fields of Slavonia, this collection blends Yugoslavian and American stories of great emotional and geographical amplitude.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA former resident of Zagreb, \u003cstrong\u003eChristopher Linforth\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two previous story collections, \u003cem\u003eDirectory \u003c\/em\u003e(Otis Books\/Seismicity Editions, 2020) and \u003cem\u003eWhen You Find Us We Will Be Gone\u003c\/em\u003e (Lamar University Press, 2014). Linforth's stories have appeared in \u003cem\u003eNotre Dame Review, Witness, The Arkansas International, Fiction International, Consequence\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eBest Microfiction 2021\u003c\/em\u003e, among other places.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Linforth's chiseled, captivating stories follow scarred, haunted people who are struggling to heal from the Yugoslav Wars. […] With compassion and brutal honesty, the stories in \u003cem\u003eThe Distortions\u003c\/em\u003e deal with how war tears people apart, but also with the stubborn resistance of those who search for redemption.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKristen Rabe, \u003cem\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eThe Distortions\u003c\/em\u003e takes us deep into the transgenerational trauma of the Croatian-Serbian war, but it does so with skill and nuance that make each story shine as a well-crafted gem. […] This book is a perfect example of how art can be a vehicle for remembrance, understanding, and most importantly, healing.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eSamrat Upadhyay, judge of The 2020 Orison Fiction Prize\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In illuminating and perceptive prose, The Distortions bears witness to the haunt of postwar Croatia. These deeply felt stories illustrate the dilemma of a generation once removed from trauma, living amid the ghosts of war and tasked with the impossible—yet urgent—project of memorialization.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKate McQuade, author of\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTell Me Who We Were\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The remarkable Christopher Linforth is a storyteller at the top of his game, writing about shattered lives and broken dreams, about hopeless love and grieving families. […] You're not going to read many collections as powerful, as honest, and as compassionate as \u003cem\u003eThe Distortions\u003c\/em\u003e. Yes, it's that good, and you're going to thank me for telling you to buy this book of Chekhovian gems.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eJohn Dufresne, author of \u003cem\u003eI Don't Like Where This Is Going\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321724215446,"sku":"9781949039313","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_95f75886-bbb8-4da3-8cb2-a6772fba5d9b.jpg?v=1642163940"},{"product_id":"traveling-with-the-ghosts","title":"Traveling With the Ghosts","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn her latest collection of English-language poems, trilingual Romanian-American poet Stella Vinitchi Radulescu continues to explore the capabilities and limits of language itself as the nexus where thought and physicality meet. Gathering fragments of idea and image from a vast constellation of influences, Radulescu's nimble, ever-surprising poems weave a tapestry that embodies what it feels like to be both intensely alive and knowingly transient. \u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/em\u003ecalls these \"meditative, metaphysical poems\" that are \"rewardingly dense with surprising turns and images.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStella Vinitchi Radulescu\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was born in Romania. She left the country in 1983, at the height of the communist regime. She holds a PhD in French Language \u0026amp; Literature, and she was a professor of French at Loyola University and Northwestern University for many years. The author of numerous poetry collections published in the United States, France, Belgium, and Romania, Radulescu writes in three languages, though she does not translate any of her work between languages. In 2019, a volume of Luke Hankins's English-language translations of her French poetry, \u003cem\u003eA Cry in the Snow \u0026amp; Other Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Seagull Books. Orison Books released a collection of Radulescu's English-language work, \u003cem\u003eI Scrape the Window of Nothingness: New \u0026amp; Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, in 2015.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The impressionistic latest from Radulescu weaves fragmentary poems that explore themes of time, memory, writing, and death. […] These meditative, metaphysical poems are rewardingly dense with surprising turns and images.\" - \u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321725427862,"sku":"9781949039252","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_be9011a4-03be-477d-a582-2736db075e2f.jpg?v=1642163975"},{"product_id":"i-scrape-the-window-of-nothingness-new-selected-poems","title":"I Scrape the Window of Nothingness: New \u0026 Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eI Scrape the Window of Nothingness: New \u0026amp; Selected Poems \u003c\/em\u003eis a selection from Stella Vinitchi Radulescu's English-language work published over several decades, along with a substantial collection of unpublished work. Melding the mystical, surrealist, and modernist traditions, Radulescu's work is unique in American poetry. Words become tactile objects in Radulescu's hands, and her poems enable us to experience language as if for the first time. As one reads these poems, gleaming fragments of experience accrue and begin to cohere in unanticipated ways, forming a monument to the mystery of existence.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eStella Vinitchi Radulescu\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was born in Romania and left the country permanently in 1983, at the height of the communist regime. She holds a Ph.D. in French Language \u0026amp; Literature and has taught French at Loyola University and Northwestern University. Writing poetry in three languages, she has published numerous books in the United States, France, and Romania. Radulescu's French books have received several awards, including the Grand Prix de Poésie Henri-Noël Villard and the Prix Amélie Murat.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e''Stella Vinitchi Radulescu's poems are rich in connotations, metaphysically profound in some great unlocatable fashion. Surreal, ethereal, some of the poems enact ghostly things, and a very powerful world view glitters and solidifies…. It's a dark poetry shining with the ecstasy of the imagination let loose, a triumph of being, a war against banality.'' -- \u003cstrong\u003eDavid Dodd Lee, author of \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Nervous Filaments\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e''Daunting to even try to put into a few words a poetry that is sui generis, whose moving language of images, displaced from any single set of cultural signs, seems the distillation of a thousand occasions, a legion of losses--a universal language 'at the edge of spoken time,' a vision 'wildly sad, diffused, beautiful, a tactile absence.' In this poetry of passionate paradox, embodied thought becomes the solid clarity through which what we can't see is glimpsed.'' -- \u003cstrong\u003eEleanor Wilner, MacArthur Fellow and author of \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTourist in Hell\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e''Remarkable for their condensed form, Radulescu's poems privilege image over narrative, unpredictability over certainty, and pensive contemplation over exhilaration. Hermetic and shrouded from easy interpretations, the poems in this collection give voice, speech, and language stunning corporeality.'' -- \u003cstrong\u003eRoxana L. Cazan, \u003cem\u003eThe Chattahoochee Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e''Stella Vinitchi Radulescu's poetry irradiates, like a magnetic field charged with mysteries, the movements and the rituals of her bright vision. One of the strongest characteristics of her poems consists in the unabridged relationship she establishes with words, a pact that sends us to their origins. The poet dares to carry the shadow of her own loneliness, keeping pace with that of her words, up to the line of a horizon where sky and earth, life and death merge.''-- \u003cstrong\u003eAlexandru Lungu, editor of \u003cem\u003eZarathustra\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eArgo \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321725558934,"sku":"9780990691716","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_9e34e8dc-8865-4bbb-a5bd-af9d184c8492.jpg?v=1642163984"},{"product_id":"the-orison-anthology-vol-6-2021","title":"The Orison Anthology: Vol. 6, 2021","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe Orison Anthology\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is an annual collection of the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals in the preceding year. Our anthology aims to not only fill, but expand the space left by the absence of the \u003cem\u003eBest American Spiritual Writing\u003c\/em\u003e series. In addition to reprinted material, each year the anthology will also include new, previously unpublished works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the winners of The \u003cem\u003eOrison Anthology\u003c\/em\u003e Awards, judged by different prominent writers each year. The judges for Vol. 6 were Blair Hurley (fiction), E. J. Koh (nonfiction), and Joy Ladin (poetry).\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLuke Hankins\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two poetry collections, \u003cem\u003eRadiant Obstacles\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWeak Devotions\u003c\/em\u003e, and a collection of essays, \u003cem\u003eThe Work of Creation\u003c\/em\u003e. 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Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321725624470,"sku":"9781949039344","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_452453d8-d253-4707-9d1e-1174ece53c9a.jpg?v=1642163988"},{"product_id":"sanctuary-vermont","title":"Sanctuary, Vermont","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv dir=\"ltr\" class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\"Wisniewski’s debut builds to a novelistic sense of place and plenitude with shades of Thornton Wilder or Edgar Lee Masters.\" —\u003ci class=\"\"\u003e\u003cb class=\"\"\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSelected as the winner of The 2020 Orison Poetry Prize by Katie Ford, \u003cem\u003eSanctuary, Vermont\u003c\/em\u003e gives voice to present, past, and future residents of a richly imagined Vermont town. Laura Budofsky Wisniewski joins the lineage of Edgar Lee Masters, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Louise Glück in inhabiting and valorizing the extraordinary inner lives of everyday people. Sanctuary's townspeople endure hardships and loneliness, suffer injustice and racism, but still find moments of solace, beauty, and communion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLaura Budofsky Wisniewski\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the chapbook \u003cem\u003eHow to Prepare Bear\u003c\/em\u003e (Redbird Chapbooks, 2019). Her work has appeared in \u003cem\u003eImage\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eHunger Mountain, Passager, Poetry International, Ruminate, The American Journal of Poetry, Confrontation\u003c\/em\u003e, and other journals. She is winner of The 2020 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, The 2019 \u003cem\u003ePoetry International\u003c\/em\u003e Prize, and The 2014 \u003cem\u003ePassager\u003c\/em\u003e Poetry Prize. She lives and writes in a small town in Vermont.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Beware the soothing stories of history, that a town named Sanctuary in a Vermont known for bucolic, liberal values has no stories of systemic inequity and violence: 'My mother used to say \/ If you are ever drowning, raise your eyes; \/ a rich man will be watching.' This is a book of lost voices, of selfless persona poems shot through with a lyric control so unfaltering it seems Laura Budofsky Wisniewski has written an impossible book. [. . .] When Wisniewski illuminates one person, all of humanity suddenly brightens. This is an unbelievable, moving book that knows, in the end, the only true sanctuary is the one we make of our lives, and our language, for each other.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKatie Ford, judge of The 2020 Orison Poetry Prize\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eSanctuary, Vermont\u003c\/em\u003e creates a history of Vermont through a rich range of voices that evoke the state's nuanced and complicated past, a past that takes readers far beyond the mythic pastoral landscape many may conjure up when they think of Vermont. Here, the word sanctuary takes on the ironies of a complex history, and Wisniewski creates a tapestry of Vermont and its people.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMary Jane Dickerson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In\u003cem\u003e Sanctuary, Vermont\u003c\/em\u003e we see our neighbors—imagined, yes—but imagined so well we join each voice as it comes to us across a span of time, from the 19th century to our own present. These neighbors reveal their struggles with class and loneliness, racism and the damage of war, but also show us kindness, beauty, and resilience in a time of pandemic. Each poem is beautifully vivid and clear, but taken together they swell like a chorus—maybe one of those spontaneous crowd events that gets us all singing the Hallelujah Chorus with a host of strangers, until suddenly no one is a stranger and our hearts are open wide to each other. This is an enormous gift for which we should thank the poet and her poems.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eBetsy Sholl\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"If the dead could talk—and here they do—the quaintness of American small-town life would quickly lose its veneer to reveal a more harsh and anguished reality. The locals in this stark book [. . .] are all too frequently sucked into the maw that is American history—particularly our adventures in war. The result isn't triumph, but temerity, and a sense of community based on endurance and the turn of season that may or may not bring with it promise. \u003cem\u003eSanctuary, Vermont \u003c\/em\u003eis a poignant collective song of going forth and going on.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMaurice Manning\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41681180721302,"sku":"9781949039337","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_b8d46187-4afc-4e7a-bccc-21cef1f5a9b2.jpg?v=1650377854"},{"product_id":"dear-if","title":"Dear If","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGrounded in nature and the body's knowledge of death, Mary B. Moore's fifth poetry collection queries the divine, evoking its traces in doubt, dread, and awe; in language's music and its ability to make be; in earth's prismatic effulgence and its cataclysm and charism. Inventive in image, metaphor, and wordplay, Moore mourns belief and its loss. Moore's poems are influenced by Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore in their keen eye toward the natural world, and by John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Mary Szybist in their ardor to stretch language to address the sacred.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMary B. Moore\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the full-length poetry collections \u003cem\u003eFlicker\u003c\/em\u003e (Dogfish Head Award, Broadkill River Press, 2016) and \u003cem\u003eThe Book of Snow\u003c\/em\u003e (Cleveland State University Press, 1997), as well as the chapbooks \u003cem\u003eAmanda and the Man Soul\u003c\/em\u003e (Emrys Award, 2017) and \u003cem\u003eEating the Light\u003c\/em\u003e (Sable Books Prize, 2016). She is also the author of the scholarly volume \u003cem\u003eDesiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism\u003c\/em\u003e (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000). Moore's poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003ePoetry, Prairie Schooner, 32 Poems, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Catamaran, Nelle, Nimrod\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eBirmingham Poetry Review\u003c\/em\u003e, among other places. A native Californian with a Ph.D. in Renaissance poetry and prose (University of California, Davis), she taught poetry, Shakespeare, and writing at Marshall University. She is married to the philosopher John Vielkind.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"The way one clocks spring moving northward in the coifs of the trees or collects the baseball card of a player bound for the Hall of Fame, cognoscenti of poetry will mark \u003cem\u003eDear If\u003c\/em\u003e as Mary B. Moore's emergence as a writer bearing the earmarks of a major American poet. A self-avowed agnostic and ex-Catholic, Moore wrestles with the orthodox concept of a Triune godhead, apprehending a more palatable presence that she is willing to entertain in the dear here of trees, birds, and cloud. [...] Her rapier deployment of conceit, metaphorical density, and word-music mark Moore as a contemporary American Metaphysical.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eLise Goett\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mary B. Moore's poems have always been deeply contemplative and brave, marked by the sonic and inventive brilliance of her craft. \u003cem\u003eDear If\u003c\/em\u003e extends this legacy, gifts us with new poems that confront and transcend the often-debilitating weight of doubt and uncertainty, especially when it comes to faith and health. [...] I'm sure this book will leave you stunned and transformed as well, its music continuing to reverberate through your heart long after you've read its last lines.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eFaisal Mohyuddin\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"'Oh look…dear gaudy blue, dear if \/ and rift, dear void,' writes Mary B. Moore and, oh look, dear reader, how this poet is restless and questing, insisting on a new seeing of everything from the seed head of a sycamore to 'the cloud snit, snow thistle.' Oh listen to one who is as much a daughter of Hopkins as of the mother these poems so often invoke, her rhymes packed plentiful and tight as a peony's petals.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eJessica Jacobs\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41681180950678,"sku":"9781949039306","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_d7437d58-70ba-48b4-a9e2-c8111d41b7ad.jpg?v=1650377859"},{"product_id":"whats-left-to-us-by-evening","title":"What's Left to Us by Evening","description":"\u003cp\u003eHow does one live in a world that is both beautiful and broken—a world of cherry blossoms and gun violence, fellowship and political enmity, plague and rebirth? \u003cem\u003eWhat's Left to Us by Evening\u003c\/em\u003e, David Ebenbach's unsparing and timely new poetry collection, examines the obligation—and privilege—of carrying all these things. The wide-ranging influences on the poems in Ebenbach's third collection include Judaism, the Asian poetic tradition, the natural and built environments, and current events.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDavid Ebenbach\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of numerous books of fiction (\u003cem\u003eHow to Mars, Miss Portland, The Guy We Didn't Invite to the Orgy, Into the Wilderness, Between Camelots\u003c\/em\u003e), poetry (\u003cem\u003eSome Unimaginable Animal, We Were the People Who Moved\u003c\/em\u003e), and essays (\u003cem\u003eThe Artist's Torah\u003c\/em\u003e). He lives very happily with his family in Washington, DC, where he teaches creative writing at Georgetown University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"There’s something reassuring about the way David Ebenbach writes about even the most troubling issues of our time. His poems, often deceptively gentle, offer a kind of tender good humor born of long-suffering patience.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003eRon Charles, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"'The world is on its way to you' writes David Ebenbach, and the world in these pages is one made of equal parts grit and tenderness. It's a world of work, violence, politics, and little apocalypses, but also singing, birdwatching, prayer, and flowers bursting into bloom. At one point, a 'worker lowers \/ his bag of tools \/ through the cherry blossoms'—and this might be an apt metaphor for the perspective of this evocative book: behind the world's tough machinery is an undeniable beauty, and these poems are made by a poet skilled enough to help us see it.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMatthew Olzmann\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"David Ebenbach's poems in \u003cem\u003eWhat's Left to Us by Evening\u003c\/em\u003e are funny, engaging, kind, generous-spirited, moving, clever, even childlike. It's almost easy to forget he's writing again and again about a world-wide pandemic, a bitterly-contested election, earth-threatening climate change—in short, the apocalypse. In this book, 'our children \/ ask for pie' while the poet carries with him the consciousness of great and irretrievable loss, 'the passport \/ of someone who died.' Ebenbach talks to us in such a way that we can't help but look. He hits all of our world's pressure points in a simple, straightforward, yet wholly imaginative and unforgettable fashion.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDana Roeser\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"David Ebenbach asks us to look on as 'from the scaffolding \/ the worker lowers \/ his bag of tools \/ through the cherry blossoms.' The blossoms may put one in mind of Imagist poets, but Ebenbach won't settle for mere imagism. He suggests, as Walter Benjamin did, that every monument to civilization is a monument to barbarism. And yet however starkly aware he is of the human world's exploitations and injustices, he won't settle either for facile, fashionable despair. Considering an abandoned subway tunnel, Ebenbach claims that 'we light this expanse of \/ soda bottles and human waste and see the verdant \/ potential,' just as elsewhere he notes 'that joy is not passive, \/ but something \/ you move toward, \/ however awkward.' Precious few current poets move in that direction more deftly or affectingly than Ebenbach.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Sydney Lea\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42034883133590,"sku":"9781949039368","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039368ita.jpg?v=1660853032"},{"product_id":"anchor","title":"Anchor","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of The 2024 Philosophical Society of Texas Poetry Award\u003cbr\u003eWinner of The 2024 Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThreaded with epistolary poems to Gravity—envisioned as a capricious god as the author's father began to fall frequently at the outset of a progressive illness—Aronson's latest poems contemplate and address what anchors us, literally and figuratively. The poems in Aronson's third collection excavate grief during the process of losing parents, one to physical illness and the other to dementia. But even in the midst of grief, Aronson never loses sight of the larger world, ever present in all its danger and beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRebecca Aronson\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003eGhost Child of the Atalanta Bloom\u003c\/em\u003e, winner of The 2016 Orison Poetry Prize and The 2019 Margaret Randall Book Award from The Albuquerque Museum Foundation, as well as a finalist for The 2017 Arizona\/New Mexico Book Award. Her first collection, \u003cem\u003eCreature, Creature\u003c\/em\u003e, won The Main-Traveled Roads Poetry Prize (2007). She has received The \u003cem\u003ePrairie Schoone\u003c\/em\u003er Strousse Award, The Loft's Speakeasy Poetry Prize, and The Tennessee Williams Scholarship to The Sewanee Writers' Conference. Aronson is co-founder and host of Bad Mouth, a series of words and music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Rebecca Aronson's incredible new collection is full of verve and a syntax of ecstatic vocabulary. Whether it's through abecedarians or epistles to gravity, Aronson's poems carry the weight of a life, its pressures, its miraculous brevity. \u003cem\u003eAnchor\u003c\/em\u003e is a balm against grief. These poems face off against loss with 'Technicolor blooming and bird riot,' and every line hums with urgency.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eTraci Brimhall\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We know from Newton, who named it, that gravity is the force of attraction drawing bodies together. Etymologically, it shares itself with gravid and grave—beginning and end. In \u003cem\u003eAnchor\u003c\/em\u003e, Aronson has given us both the metaphor and the ballast: the harbor from which we venture into our lives on Earth, and the commonality of death that returns us to the earth. With a languid, meditative syntax reminiscent of Virginia Woolf—and an eye for detail equally sensuous and lethal—Aronson has achieved an intimate and artful collection about loss and the inevitable cycles of ebb and flow experienced by every life.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKathy Fagan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In her splendid third collection of poems, Rebecca Aronson writes of the degeneration and death of her parents. The darknesses of the subjects, however, are magicked into beautiful balance in a stunning juggling act which holds opposite forces spinning and gleaming in the empty air—gravity and flight, body and spirit, absence and presence, love and grief. Aronson devises exquisite metaphors on every page to illustrate the tensions it is our human lot to suffer. Gravity itself is a wonderfully personified character in these pages—it loves the dying father, is jealous of other forces that vie for his body, is a class bully here, an ally of the moon there. The poems here are graceful, wildly gorgeous, enriched by Aronson's vivid animation of earthly and heavenly forces—wind, sand, fire, air, sky, stars. The relative slimness of this volume belies the genuine gravity of the enormous beauties, wonders, and surprises within it.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eSidney Wade\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42035018268822,"sku":"9781949039351","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039351ita.jpg?v=1660855168"},{"product_id":"best-spiritual-literature-vol-7-2022","title":"Best Spiritual Literature: Vol. 7, 2022","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBest Spiritual Literature\u003c\/em\u003e is the new name of \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Orison Anthology\u003c\/em\u003e, under the same editorship and publisher, and it continues the same mission to collect the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals in the preceding year. In addition to reprinted material, each year the anthology also includes new, previously unpublished works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the winners of The \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBest Spiritual Literature\u003c\/em\u003e Awards. The award judges for Vol. 7 were SJ Sindu (fiction), Molly McCully Brown (nonfiction), and Leila Chatti (poetry).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLuke Hankins\u003c\/strong\u003e is the founder and editor of Orison Books. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, \u003cem\u003eRadiant Obstacles\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWeak Devotions\u003c\/em\u003e, as well as a forthcoming chapbook, \u003cem\u003eTestament\u003c\/em\u003e (Texas Review Press, 2024). He is also the author of a collection of essays, \u003cem\u003eThe Work of Creation\u003c\/em\u003e, and is the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including \u003cem\u003ePoems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eBetween Paradise \u0026amp; Earth: Eve Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (with Nomi Stone). A volume of his translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, \u003cem\u003eA Cry in the Snow \u0026amp; Other Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Seagull Books in 2019.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNathan Poole\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two books of fiction, \u003cem\u003eFather Brother Keeper\u003c\/em\u003e (Sarabande Books, 2015), a collection of stories selected by Edith Pearlman for The 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize and long-listed for The Frank O'Connor Award, and \u003cem\u003ePathkiller as the Holy Ghost\u003c\/em\u003e, selected by Benjamin Percy as the winner of The 2014 \u003cem\u003eQuarterly\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eWest\u003c\/em\u003e Novella Contest. He has been awarded The \u003cem\u003eNarrative\u003c\/em\u003e Prize, a Milton Fellowship at \u003cem\u003eImage\u003c\/em\u003e, and a Joan Beebe Fellowship at Warren Wilson College.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKaren Tucker\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the novel \u003cem\u003eBewilderness\u003c\/em\u003e (Catapult, 2021), which was selected as a \"Dazzling Debut\" by the American Booksellers Association and was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and The Crook's Corner Book Prize. Tucker's short fiction can be found in \u003cem\u003eThe Missouri Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Yale Review\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eBoulevard\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eEPOCH\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eTin House\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. The recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for Emerging Writers and a PEO Scholar Award, she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at UNC Chapel Hill.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42299229831318,"sku":"9781949039375","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039375ita.jpg?v=1667936775"},{"product_id":"the-body-problem","title":"The Body Problem","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe voice in Margaret Wack's remarkable debut chapbook is drenched in myth but also with the knowledge that all myths must fade in time, like every body, like every culture—like humanity itself. In \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Body Problem\u003c\/em\u003e, winner of The 2021 Orison Chapbook Prize, a vatic magnetism pulls the reader in as these poems reckon with impermanence and the impending end of the Anthropocene, but also unapologetically revel in the numinous viscerality of each present moment, insisting on making new songs to the end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMargaret Wack's\u003c\/strong\u003e work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including \u003cem\u003eEcoTheo Review, Ruminate, Passages North, Grist, Arion, Strange Horizons, Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Smith College and an interdisciplinary master's degree from St. John's College.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Visceral, vivid, voracious—what struck me most in Margaret Wack's stunningly lush \u003cem\u003eThe Body Problem\u003c\/em\u003e is how organic it is. Organic in the way of the densest heart of an old growth forest, where green bubbles up from decay and wood sinks into soil in a relentless cycle of wild abundance. 'You must be born each instant and rot each hour,' Wack declares as her images build on themselves like amino acids, proliferate like cells, and transform like 'flowers of fungi will bloom upon your bones.'\" - \u003cstrong\u003eErin Rodoni\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"\u003cem\u003eThe Body Problem\u003c\/em\u003e is a field guide to a world fluttering between promise and ruin, where ripeness is always turning the corner into rot. There is too much to harvest, too much to hunger for. Like Tantalus, we reach and reach, but 'cannot possibly close our hands upon the sweetness of it.' And the problem with time is that there is never enough of it. The problem with the body is that it will inevitably 'rot like a peony, over-plump and full of starving ants.' So be it. If these poems feel timely right now—if it feels like the world is pulsing with losses beyond calculation—Wack reminds us that some problems are timeless. We are no more or less cursed than we've ever been, no more or less desperate for beauty or survival. We steady ourselves with myth, and we will become the myths that steady whoever comes next.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eClaire Wahmanholm\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"\u003cem\u003eThe Body Problem\u003c\/em\u003e comes 'caught on the edge \/ of a new century like a colt on its raw legs in the first darkness.' Margaret Wack has given us a work in which love and instinct offer return from the letdowns of what we've been calling enlightenment. Reading this book means realizing you've had 'your back pressed up against the world,' the same world we've learned to 'navigate by touch alone.' Like the rain the poet's speaker describes, \u003cem\u003eThe Body Problem\u003c\/em\u003e won't clean you of yourself, but offers a world swallowed in its own thick atmosphere.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eC. T. Salazar\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44498135122237,"sku":"9781949039405","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039405ita.jpg?v=1675111187"},{"product_id":"between-paradise-earth-eve-poems","title":"Between Paradise \u0026 Earth: Eve Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe recent and contemporary poems about the biblical figure Eve gathered in this anthology refuse given narratives. Here, poets of diverse backgrounds and traditions conjure a heterogeneous concert of Eves to reckon with desire, blame, power, gender, the body, race, politics, religion, knowledge, violence, and time. She becomes a door for dreaming of origins, for considering naming and language, for challenging assumptions and structures of power, and for examining the human condition. In these poems, Eve loves, grieves, rages, and proves a perennially relevant figure in our contemporary mythos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44598626189629,"sku":"9781949039399","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039399ita.jpg?v=1784327024"},{"product_id":"prayershreds","title":"Prayershreds","description":"\u003cp\u003eSuppose the shreds of our prayers and of our faiths could themselves become a radical new form of devotion. In \u003cem\u003ePrayershreds\u003c\/em\u003e, Bruce Beasley confronts the apocalyptic zeitgeist of our time (political turmoil, societal division and isolation, spiritual despair, environmental catastrophe) and the crisis of faith in the human future. These poems make of the vocabulary of doubt a strange kind of sermon, summoning into chorus Heraclitus, Zeno, the Buddha, Roget's Thesaurus, ancient prayers and hymns and scriptures, and an AI chatbot. In these fractured and ecstatic psalms, Beasley makes his ruptured way toward a faith that relies not on dogmas and creeds, but on a broken utterance for a torn and living faith.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBruce Beasley\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of eight previous poetry collections, including \u003cem\u003eAll Soul Parts Returned\u003c\/em\u003e (BOA Editions, 2017), \u003cem\u003eTheophobia\u003c\/em\u003e (BOA Editions, 2012), and \u003cem\u003eThe Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (University of Washington Press, 2007). He has received The University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Award, The Colorado Prize for Poetry (selected by Charles Wright), The Ohio State University Press\/\u003cem\u003eThe Journal\u003c\/em\u003e Award, fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and The Artist Trust of Washington, and three Pushcart Prizes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One thinks of Hopkins on psilocybin, the Psalmist translating the Dhammapada. Our iconoclastic guide through this antic, homophone-driven, thesaural minefield of the discourse of belief and unbelief is as conversant with AI chatbots as with the Biblical gospels.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eLisa Russ Spaar\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"As a fan of Bruce Beasley's earlier work, I am glad to see this volume of new verse in which he makes an even deeper dive into the nature of language. Like E. E. Cummings and James Joyce, Beasley is a poet of language, someone who loves words so deeply he can't resist wrestling with them, sometimes syllable by syllable.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKathleen Norris\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"In Prayershreds, Bruce Beasley approaches prayer with a postmodern sensibility, but without irony—a rare combination. Or the irony is disarmed in wonder, a wide-eyed wonder equally accustomed to postures of terror and pleasure, of ecstasy and dismay. [. . .] I have never read a book more richly concerned with language-in-prayer, with prayer-in-language. It speaks with ancient knowledge, and yet somehow its song is wholly new.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eG. C. Waldrep\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44756242432317,"sku":"9781949039412","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781949039412ita.jpg?v=1678308582"},{"product_id":"with-death-an-orange-segment-between-our-teeth","title":"With Death, an Orange Segment Between Our Teeth","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMarie-Claire Bancquart (1932-2019) was a prolific and prize-winning French poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. In her poetry, she combines an erudite vocabulary and references to classical literature with an earthy sensibility and a fascination with experiencing the smallest moments of everyday life fully. The deceptive simplicity of her poems lays bare the mysteries underlying the world we inhabit and our very existence. Wendeline A. Hardenberg's careful and skillful translations are sure to broaden the audience for this significant poet as yet too little known outside of France.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMarie-Claire Bancquart\u003c\/strong\u003e (1932-2019) was a prolific and prize-winning French poet, novelist, essayist, and critic, as well as a Professor Emerita of French literature at the Sorbonne. Her final book\u003cem\u003e, De l'improbable, précédé de Mo(r)t\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Éditions Arfuyen in 2020.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWendeline A. Hardenberg\u003c\/strong\u003e studied at Smith College and Indiana University, where she earned master's degrees in Comparative Literature with a focus on translation and Library Science. She is the translator of numerous books, including \u003cem\u003eThe Bookshop of Forgotten Dream\u003c\/em\u003es by Emily Blaine, \u003cem\u003eWill You Ever Change?\u003c\/em\u003e by Aurélie Valognes, and \u003cem\u003eProject Anastasis\u003c\/em\u003e by Jacques Vandroux. Hardenberg's translations have been published in \u003cem\u003eAsymptote, Columbia Journal, Metamorphoses, Tupelo Quarterly, Two Lines\u003c\/em\u003e, and other places. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Deeply philosophical, these poems, originally published in French when the author was in her seventies, focus on the meaning of existence. The poet reminds us that our lives—'seven liters of water wrapped in skin'—are 'small,' but 'the universe [is] in us \/ us in the universe.' From our 'ephemeral perch on the earth,' writing achieves a kind of immortality, producing 'a few words warmed by the journey, \/ that scatter outside, vouching \/ that you gave them a little extra life.' Readers will be grateful to Hardenberg for carefully shepherding these provocative poems into English.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eNancy Naomi Carlson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Strange and wonderful translations of strange and wonderful poems... Marie-Claire Bancquart's voice is utterly unique; her poems—by turns lyrical and jarring, mystical and forthright, tender and brutal—sing and clamor in your head long after you've read them. Like their French originals, Hardenberg's excellent translations glitter and dart and unsettle; they dodge like wrestlers, then they grab you by the throat and won't let go. This is rich writing to come back to again and again; each time you're ambushed by some startling image or phrase or notion that you hadn't noticed before. A vital book, both in the sense of its aliveness and its urgency.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eBill Johnston\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47110318260541,"sku":"9781949039429","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039429ita.jpg?v=1696868921"},{"product_id":"best-spiritual-literature-vol-8","title":"Best Spiritual Literature Vol. 8","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eBest Spiritual Literature\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e is the new name of \u003cem\u003eThe Orison Anthology\u003c\/em\u003e, under the same editorship and publisher, and it continues the same mission to collect the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals in the preceding year. In addition to reprinted material, each year the anthology also includes new, previously unpublished works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by the winners of The\u003cem\u003e Best Spiritual Literature\u003c\/em\u003e Awards. The winners for Vol. 8 were Alan Sincic (fiction), Ed Madden (nonfiction), and Rose DeMaris (poetry).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLuke Hankins\u003c\/strong\u003e is the founder and editor of Orison Books. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, \u003cem\u003eRadiant Obstacles\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWeak Devotions\u003c\/em\u003e, as well as a chapbook, \u003cem\u003eTestament\u003c\/em\u003e (Texas Review Press, 2023). He is also the author of a collection of essays, \u003cem\u003eThe Work of Creation\u003c\/em\u003e, and is the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including \u003cem\u003ePoems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eBetween Paradise \u0026amp; Earth: Eve Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (with Nomi Stone). A volume of his translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu,\u003cem\u003e A Cry in the Snow \u0026amp; Other Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, was published by Seagull Books in 2019.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNathan Poole\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of two books of fiction, \u003cem\u003eFather Brother Keeper\u003c\/em\u003e (Sarabande Books, 2015), a collection of stories selected by Edith Pearlman for The 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize and long-listed for The Frank O'Connor Award, and \u003cem\u003ePathkiller as the Holy Ghost\u003c\/em\u003e, selected by Benjamin Percy as the winner of The 2014 \u003cem\u003eQuarterly West\u003c\/em\u003e Novella Contest. He has been awarded The \u003cem\u003eNarrative\u003c\/em\u003e Prize, a Milton Fellowship at \u003cem\u003eImage\u003c\/em\u003e, and a Joan Beebe Fellowship at Warren Wilson College.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKaren Tucker\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the novel \u003cem\u003eBewilderness\u003c\/em\u003e (Catapult, 2021), which was selected as a \"Dazzling Debut\" by the American Booksellers Association and was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and The Crook's Corner Book Prize. Tucker's short fiction can be found in \u003cem\u003eThe Missouri Review, The Yale Review, Boulevard, EPOCH, Tin House\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. The recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for Emerging Writers and a PEO Scholar Award, she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at UNC Chapel Hill.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47328655278397,"sku":"9781949039443","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039443ita.jpg?v=1699381095"},{"product_id":"the-last-of-the-light","title":"The Last of the Light","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne Wednesday evening, the governments of the world send out a mass text message announcing that the world will end in one month. In the thirty days leading up to the last day of the world, our protagonist, a young man in his late twenties, has watched the love of his life leave, has lost his job and friends and sense of meaning, and has moved back home to spend his final weeks with his survivalist father, Jewish studies\/author mother, and Yiddish-speaking grandfather. As everything draws to a close, the young man tries to make sense of faith, family, and how to live a worthy life even though it will be cut short.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAlexander Shalom Joseph\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of the short story collection \u003cem\u003eAmerican Wasteland\u003c\/em\u003e, the prose poetry collection \u003cem\u003eOur Mother, The Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e, and the poetry chapbook\u003cem\u003e Buttons and Bones\u003c\/em\u003e. He works as a carpenter and lives in a cabin in Colorado.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In this clear-eyed glimpse of what could well be the outcome of humanity's many follies, Alexander Shalom Joseph reveals a hidden heart of beauty and love that still shines amid the darkness, and a hope that the Righteous ones may yet prevail.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eSean W. Murphy\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Through the pure strength of his writing, Alexander Shalom Joseph has made the end of the world both a melancholy and beautiful affair. The characters are brought into such stark focus, the reader is invited to the table to share in the stockpiled pickles, oatmeal, and cigarettes—to make sense of our own lives and to realize what's important too late or maybe just in time.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Rachel Weaver\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47694005141821,"sku":"9781949039436","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039436ita.jpg?v=1705522714"},{"product_id":"blue-exodus","title":"Blue Exodus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlue Exodus\u003c\/em\u003e, Hussain Ahmed's second full-length poetry collection, was selected by Rajiv Mohabir as the winner of The 2022 Orison Poetry Prize. About the collection, Mohabir writes, \"I come away with the specters of the living and passed, asking me what it means to live as a story lives, to write a life's ghost into poem.\" This book charts a heart's history of home, war, dispossession, and displacement, as well as the human solidarity and sacred rituals that remain despite the loss of so much else. Populated by moons and oceans and birds, as well as missiles and gun magazines, these lush poems carry profound grief but also adamantine hope.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHussain Ahmed\u003c\/strong\u003e is Nigerian, poet, and environmentalist. He holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi and is currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati. His poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003eAmerican Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, A Public Space\u003c\/em\u003e, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook \u003cem\u003eHarp in a Fireplace\u003c\/em\u003e (Newfound, 2021) and the poetry collection \u003cem\u003eSoliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile\u003c\/em\u003e (Black Ocean Press, 2022).\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Prayer, refuge, inheritance, and loss beat in the heart of these poems. Things are not what they seem to be: even in paradise 'a baobab died \/ with roots inside the ground.' Indeed, these lines ask the reader to interrogate all things in new vocabularies of anguish, born from the inheritor of a war—still being fought in the muscle memory of the people who lived through it. [...] Reading this collection again and again, I come away with the specters of the living and passed, asking me what it means to live as a story lives, to write a life's ghost into poem. Entreaties to the Divine remain unanswered and unfulfilled as people are sent off to wars or drown in seas trying to escape as the poet reminds us, 'What twirls \/ over your roof \/ is either a kite \/ or a missile.' [...] The speaker-as-witness-as-refugee claims a place to stand in their mourning and grief, where 'echoes are translated into qasida.' Like the speaker calls out to the blackbird, I find myself calling out to the poet, 'saa magni dear bird, \/ tell me a story.'\" - \u003cstrong\u003eRajiv Mohabir\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Quietly searing, \u003cem\u003eBlue Exodus\u003c\/em\u003e is a revelatory book full of incisive declarations about grief, ancestry, and exile. Expressing both the sayable and unsayable between line and spacing, the poems are material artifacts that evoke a particular history, while deconstructing its silences. As an archive, the collection itself refuses to locate memory in time, but rather outside time, in people and places, including the sea which 'is not a cemetery, it does not date its memories.' [...] \u003cem\u003eBlue Exodus \u003c\/em\u003eis a beautifully rendered meditation on belonging and faith, loss and survival, that no one should miss.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eChelsea Dingman\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eBlue Exodus\u003c\/em\u003e is an entrancing collection of poems forged in a language of communal adversity, that skillfully paints a portrait of a world where faith and superstition elegantly intertwine, and spiritual rituals gracefully bridge the gap between the earthly and the divine. [...] \u003cem\u003eBlue Exodus\u003c\/em\u003e threads between silence and song, seamlessly blending cosmological reflections with intimate human experiences in a narrative that is as tender as it is beautiful. Hussain Ahmed is a poet whose voice and poetic instincts inspire trust, and one that we should hold in reverence.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eSaddiq Dzukogi\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48600745083197,"sku":"9781949039450","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039450ita.jpg?v=1714416807"},{"product_id":"our-lady-of-good-voyage","title":"Our Lady of Good Voyage","description":"\u003cp\u003eSet in the 1990s, \u003cem\u003eOur Lady of Good Voyage\u003c\/em\u003e captures the desultory and liminal feeling of the decade. In a tale reminiscent of McMurtry or Kerouac, cynical yet lyrical Joe and mystical, ridiculous Kenny light out for the territory, pursuing Kenny's dream-vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Their quest takes them from the backwater neighborhoods of Cincinnati, Ohio through many other less-loved provinces of America, all the way to the Mexican border and even, thanks to the US Army, on a brief stint in Somalia. Whether these young men find success of any kind is perhaps hard to say, but a strange blessedness nonetheless seems to preside over their many comical failures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKevin Honold \u003c\/strong\u003eis the author of a novel, \u003cem\u003eMolly\u003c\/em\u003e (winner of The 2020 Autumn House Book Prize), an essay collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Rock Cycle\u003c\/em\u003e (winner of The 2019 River Teeth Book Prize), and a poetry collection,\u003cem\u003e Men as Trees Walking \u003c\/em\u003e(winner of The 2009 OSU Press\/\u003cem\u003eThe Journal\u003c\/em\u003e Book Award). Honold is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, and is currently a History and Special Education teacher in Santa Fe, New Mexico.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I love this novel about the friendship between two childhood friends, negotiating their twenties. Both are seekers and visionaries in their own way. Kenny, who undertakes a spiritual pilgrimage, has visions (in the conventional sense). But Joe, the protagonist and Kenny's road companion, may be the actual seer. True, he is the secular, practical character, but his brilliant and original perceptions of the novel's multiple blighted landscapes and defeated characters drive the narrative. With poetic intensity and no-nonsense humor, Kevin Honold renders the down-and-out, as they limp toward a complicated transcendence.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDebra Spark\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Mikhail Bakhtin praised Dostoevsky's fantastic manner of combining 'a mystical-religious element with an extreme' and even crude 'slum naturalism,' wherein the 'adventures of truth on earth' take place in dens of thieves and taverns, marketplaces and prisons. \u003cem\u003eOur Lady of Good Voyage\u003c\/em\u003e inhabits the same strange admixture and adventure. With incandescent, well-tuned prose, the novel helps us to hear soulful wavelengths across wasteland America. Honold registers the sundry reasons why we should wane weary in a world where 'the light and mincing timbre of [a man's voice] sounded more like a gas leak than human speech.' But his depth perception allows him to see—and show us—what's worth salvaging along the voyage he dares call good—from the clogged toilets of a hard-knock childhood through the hellfire orange garb of prison, from Salvation Army tables set with scraps of sympathy to a dubious Army stint in Somalia.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Joshua Hren\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Honold’s luminous images and the characters’ interiority, especially Kenny’s imagination, transform the mundane into the otherworldly. […] In Honold’s skilled hands, the combination of poverty, hardship, and mysticism is evocative and lovely, elevating a youthful road trip to a haunting quest.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003eCary Holladay, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Hudson Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48933981356349,"sku":"9781949039467","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039467ita.jpg?v=1718130383"},{"product_id":"the-concealment-of-endless-light","title":"The Concealment of Endless Light","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe third poetry collection from Yehoshua November, whose previous books have been finalists for The National Jewish Book Award, The Paterson Poetry Prize, and The \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e Book Prize, extends the marriage of mysticism and everyday life that has become November's signature and particular strength as a poet. As Ilya Kaminsky puts it, \"In the same breath, he describes a soul's journey and eating breakfast with his children.\" Whether considering the trajectory of his marriage, the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting, the paradoxes of mystical Chassidic teachings, or an email from his grandfather when the poet was 18, November's poems never fail to penetrate beyond the surface to the mystery underlying the full spectrum of human experience.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYehoshua November\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of \u003cem\u003eGod's Optimism,\u003c\/em\u003e a finalist for The\u003cem\u003e Los Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e Book Prize, and Two Worlds Exist, a finalist for The National Jewish Book Award and The Paterson Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times Magazine, The Sun, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and on NPR and Poetry Unbound. November teaches writing at Rutgers University and Touro University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elegantly crafted, beautifully philosophical, and passionately devoted to exploring the profundity of earthly life, \u003cem\u003eThe Concealment of Endless Light \u003c\/em\u003echronicles a quest for the divine amid the ordinary. Never holier-than-thou, the speaker in November's poems is always conscious of the ways he's failed his family, himself, and his God. Nonetheless, he persists in reaching out to the divine to illuminate the experiences of a soul in a body.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eMaria Mazziotti Gillan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"How does Yehoshua November do it? How does he balance the lofty and mundane with such grace? This remarkable poet finds mystery in kitchens and hardware stores, dry cleaners and classrooms. In the same breath, he describes a soul's journey and eating breakfast with his children. In this world of ours where human beings do horrible things to each other, November looks for souls inside bodies. Certainly, that gives him a perspective on our species. But there is something else, too. Mystics have been trying to 'nail' this something for generations, to name it. November answers this metaphysical challenge—he names the unnamable—via his skillful use of figurative language. But there is more, yet. Friends, these days in our country, we go to school to learn to make sentences and to divide and multiply numbers. But where can we learn awe and wonderment? The answer is November's humane and deeply searching poems. He has a wisdom which is necessary if one is to travel from one day to the next. November is one of our most brilliant Jewish American poets of this moment.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eIlya Kaminsky\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A wonderful poet with a unique vision and distinct voice, Yehoshua November opens worlds within worlds. In \u003cem\u003eThe Concealment of Endless Light\u003c\/em\u003e, he describes poetry as 'that profession of rowing \/ through the rivers of the heart \/ with oars made of memory \/ and sadness,' though in his case memory and speculation are illuminated by the daily wakings of a father and husband scratching out a living as a teacher and backlit by the soul, despite 'a Divine concealment whose diameter is greater \/ than infinity.' In a moving poem about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, November gathers the dead around him on a street where the 'Jews of Pittsburgh \/ stand in the rain \/ holding candles' while 'eleven souls ascend to the region of mystery \/ then swoop down to hover, incandescently, over their former lives,' consecrating a place where 'no one can explain how [the body] limps forward \/ but has not faltered.' Neither does this poet falter, but moves forward with dignity and grace.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDorianne Laux \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Novem­ber speaks for those who know the ten­der­ness and frailty of the world and the dreams and con­cerns of being human. Ulti­mate­ly, his poems expose what is con­cealed, and let it rev­el in the light.\" —\u003cstrong\u003eJulie R. Enszer\u003c\/strong\u003e, Jewish Book Council\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\"[Yehoshua November] writes with rare ease, honesty, humility and beauty about the Divine as well as the mundane; worlds come together in his writing. 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Infused with a love of language and of place, Woolfitt's lyrical meditations reckon with the complex inheritance of both—language that holds as much cruelty as wonder, the place of Appalachia that holds histories of resilience and stewardship as well as Cherokee internment camps and ecological disaster. The author draws us into the intimate spaces of a son's speech delay and the loss of beloved grandparents even as he draws us outward across time and space, yielding portraits of self-taught artists like Bessie Harvey and Howard Finster and natural histories of yucca and the great auk. These essays seek the beauty and justice that might be remade in our ruined places, and, in their seeking, become a form of prayer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWilliam Woolfitt\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of four poetry collections and two story collections, including \u003cem\u003eRing of Earth\u003c\/em\u003e (stories) and \u003cem\u003eThe Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go\u003c\/em\u003e (poems). His fiction chapbook \u003cem\u003eThe Boy with Fire in His Mouth\u003c\/em\u003e (2014) was selected by Darin Strauss as the winner of The Epiphany Editions Chapbook Contest. He is the recipient of The Howard Nemerov Scholarship from The Sewanee Writers' Conference and The Denny C. Plattner Award from \u003cem\u003eAppalachian Review.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I read the whole book like I had been drowning and Woolfitt's words were air. \u003cem\u003eEyes Moving Through the Dark\u003c\/em\u003e documents loss, but Woolfitt fills that emptiness with sharp beauty and soft grace. If we no longer have the abalone, the letter ð, farm, Eden, buffalo, ash tree, coal, gray wolf, zinc violet, at least we are lucky enough to have these letters and these words. Hold onto this book like we should have held onto all that we have sent missing.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eNicole Walker\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A sprawling Appalachian palimpsest, writing and rewriting the lives and histories of this singular American region. William Woolfitt's gaze encompasses all that is beautiful and complicated about the land he calls home, and his family within it.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eAlejandra Oliva\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In \u003cem\u003eEyes Moving Through the Dark,\u003c\/em\u003e William Woolfitt works roots. He starts with the roots of language itself and tells the stories of the aleph and iota, the æ and the ƿ. He goes on to work with the roots of the trees and plants of the deep woods in and around his Appalachian home, a place rich with the work of folk artists, activists, grandmothers, and healers of all kinds. In such rich loam these roots stretch and entangle themselves, making collaborations, friendships, and kin with each other, just as each of Woolfitt's essays seeks to do. This is an extraordinary book that celebrates the beautiful possibilities for connection that exist between and among people, plants, critters, creeks, and the troubled waters of the hard histories we share.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eKathryn Nuernberger\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eEyes Moving Through the Dark\u003c\/em\u003e looks for flashes of transcendence in warped branches and silences, cracked hands and barbed wire. William Woolfitt curates and accumulates these bits of the world into an alphabetically arranged guide about what's around us but also far beyond this physical plane. This is a marvel of a book.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Jeremy B. Jones\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"We have in these pages a primer for those who are ready to take 'a long and careful look' at ourselves, the landscape, the English language, and the past. 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Eyes Moving Through the Dark shines a light on exemplars who, even in times of blindness, serve as guides.\" -\u003cstrong\u003e Amy Wright\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orison Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49302559424829,"sku":"9781949039498","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781949039498ita.jpg?v=1725034871"},{"product_id":"best-spiritual-literature-vol-9","title":"Best Spiritual Literature Vol. 9","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBest Spiritual Literature\u003c\/i\u003e is the new name of \u003ci\u003eThe Orison Anthology\u003c\/i\u003e, under the same editorship and publisher, and it continues the same mission to collect the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals in the preceding year. 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