Download or read book Self Portrait with Dogwood written by Christopher Merrill and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-16 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the course of researching dogwood trees, beloved poet and essayist Christopher Merrill realized that a number of formative moments in his life had some connection to the tree named—according to one writer—because its fruit was not fit for a dog. As he approached his sixtieth birthday, Merrill began to compose a self-portrait alongside this tree whose lifespan is comparable to a human’s and that, from an early age, he’s regarded as a talisman. Dogwoods have never been far from Merrill’s view at significant moments throughout his life, helping to shape his understanding of place in the great chain of being; entwined in his experience is the conviction that our relationship to the natural world is central to our walk in the sun. The feeling of a connection to nature has become more acute as his life has taken him to distant corners of the earth, often to war zones where he has witnessed not only humankind’s propensity for violence and evil but also the enduring power of connections that can be forged across languages, borders, and politics. Dogwoods teach us persistence humility and wonder. Self-Portrait with Dogwood is no ordinary memoir, but rather the work of a traveler who has crisscrossed the country and the globe in search of ways to make sense of his time here. Merrill provides new ways of thinking about personal history, the environment, politics, faith, and the power of the written word. In his descriptions of places far and near, many outside of the average American’s purview—a besieged city in Bosnia, a hidden path in a Taiwanese park, Tolstoy’s country house in Russia, a castle in Slovakia, a blossoming dogwood at daybreak in Seattle—the reader’s understanding of the world will flourish as well.
Download or read book What Light He Saw I Cannot Say written by Sidney Burris and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-04-14 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Light He Saw I Cannot Say, a new poetry collection from Sidney Burris, explores the interplay of human consciousness and objective reality, always in celebration of the imaginative spirit that brings them into a productive and often spiritual conversation. Poems both demanding and beguiling gain a deeper resonance as they encourage us to understand the often mysterious links that unite the people and events that crowd our daily lives. Deploying themes that encompass the physical, the spiritual, and the meditative, What Light He Saw I Cannot Say remains rooted in the human condition while showing how this experience is rich with vision and transcendence.
Download or read book John Currin written by John Currin and published by DISTRIBUTED ART PUB. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "John Currin worked on the painting that became 'The Dogwood Thieves' for six years. Starting with a photograph from a magazine advertisement, he altered the painting several dozen times until he was satisified with the composition. This publication is based on a lecture given by John Currin in August 2010 at the Acadia Summer Arts Program"--P. [3].
Download or read book Self Portrait written by Annette Hackney Evans and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self Portrait is an empowering book for women who have searched for happiness in all the wrong places. When artist Annette Hackney Evans only found fleeting happiness through relationships, material things, and accomplishments, she was driven to discover the answer to a universal question: How can I be happy more often? For twenty-five years Annette studied books written by or about the most the most influential people of our past and present. Gathering quotes and stories into a scrapbook, the secret, the secret to her personal happiness revealed itself. She compiled this timeless wisdom into Self Portrait, and brings her storytelling to life through thirty fine-art portraits of both ordinary and well-known people. To increase your happiness, simply increase your grateful and loving thoughts. Turn your life into a masterpiece through the gentle guidance of this creative, extraordinary book. Follow the 5 STEPS outlined and you will soon be living an authentically happy life. For more information please visit www.annettehevans.com.
Download or read book The Thinking Woman written by Julienne van Loon and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While women have struggled to gain recognition in the discipline of philosophy, there is no shortage of brilliant female thinkers. What can these women teach us about ethics, politics, and the nature of existence, and how might we relate these big ideas back to the smaller everyday concerns of domestic life, work, play, love, and relationships? Australian novelist Julienne van Loon goes on a worldwide quest to answer these questions, by engaging with eight world-renowned thinkers who have deep insights on humanity and society: media scholar Laura Kipnis, novelist Siri Hustvedt, political philosopher Nancy Holmstrom, psychoanalytic theorist Julia Kristeva, domestic violence reformer Rosie Batty, peace activist Helen Caldicott, historian Marina Warner, and feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti. As she speaks to these women, she reflects on her own experiences. Combining the intimacy of a memoir with the intellectual stimulation of a theoretical text, The Thinking Woman draws novel connections between the philosophical, personal, and political. Giving readers a new appreciation for both the ethical complexities and wonder of everyday life, this book is inspiration to all thinking people.
Download or read book American Anti Pastoral written by Thomas Gustafson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the best-known novels taking place in New Jersey, Philip Roth’s 1997 American Pastoral uses the fictional hamlet of Old Rimrock, NJ as a microcosm for a nation in crisis during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s-70s. Critics have called Old Rimrock mythic, but it is based on a very real place: the small Morris county town of Brookside, New Jersey. American Anti-Pastoral reads the events in Roth’s novel in relation to the history of Brookside and its region. While Roth’s protagonist Seymour “Swede” Levov initially views Old Rimrock as an idyllic paradise within the Garden State, its real-world counterpart has a more complex past in its origins as a small industrial village, as well as a site for the politics of exclusionary zoning and a 1960s anti-war protest at its celebrated 4th of July parade. Literary historian and Brookside native Thomas Gustafson casts Roth’s canonical novel in a fresh light as he studies both Old Rimrock in comparison to Brookside and the novel in relationship to NJ literature, making a case for it as the Great New Jersey novel. For Roth fans and history buffs alike, American Anti-Pastoral peels back the myths about the bucolic Garden State countryside to reveal deep fissures along the fault-lines of race and religion in American democracy.
Download or read book Things of the Hidden God written by Christopher Merrill and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If I had learned anything during the war, it was that our walk in the sun is brief, and so I resolved to wander from monastery to monastery, a sojourner in the world of last things." So poet and journalist Christopher Merrill tells us near the beginning of this gripping account of the transforming pilgrimages he made to Mount Athos, in Greece, in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "It was time for me to come to terms with the way my life had turned out: the love I had squandered, the misgivings I had about my vocation and my faith, the dread I felt at every turn." In despair and longing to end his spiritual desolation, Merrill became one of a handful of visitors permitted entry to Mount Athos--a mysterious land that for more than a thousand years has been the secret heart of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There, amid the beautiful terrain, the ancient rhythms, and the spiritual rigor of this holy place, he found a haven. As Merrill's story unfolds, we, too, hike the rough trails of Athos, exploring a place and a way of life scarcely altered since medieval times. We share encounters with monks and spiritual seekers; visit Athos's twenty monasteries, where exquisite art treasures are sequestered; make our way to lonely hermitages that clutch the cliffs above the sea. Like Merrill, we come to consider existence in a new and different light. Part journal of personal discovery, part meditation upon the history and traditions of the contemplative life, Things of the Hidden God takes us where the temporal and the eternal intersect, where community and solitude coexist, and where centuries-old practices offer insight for how to live today.
Download or read book A Map of Longings written by Manan Kapoor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beautifully written first biography of one of the world’s finest twentieth-century poets Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) was one of the most celebrated American poets of the latter twentieth century, and his works have touched millions of lives around the world. Traversing multiple geographies, cultures, religions, and traditions, he mapped the varied landscapes of the Indian subcontinent and the United States. In this biography, Manan Kapoor narrates Shahid’s evolution, following in the footsteps of the “Beloved Witness” from Kashmir and New Delhi to the American Southwest and Massachusetts. He charts Shahid’s friendships with literary figures such as James Merrill, Salman Rushdie, and Edward Said; explores how Shahid responded to events around the world, including the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the AIDS epidemic in America; and draws on unpublished materials and in-depth interviews to reveal the experiences and relationships that informed his poetry. Hailed upon its release in India as “lush” and “poetic,” A Map of Longings is the story of an extraordinary poet, the works he left behind, and the legacy of his singular poetic vision.
Download or read book FEM written by Magda Carneci and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This modern classic of global feminist literature, the only novel by one of Romania's most heralded poets, styled as a long letter addressed to the man who is about to leave her, a woman meanders through a cosmic retelling of her life from childhood to adulthood with visionary language and visceral, detail. Like a contemporary Scheherazade, she spins tales to hold him captivated, from the small incidents of their lives together to the intimate narrative of her relationship to womanhood. Through a dreamlike thread of strange images and passing characters, her stories invite the reader into a fantastical vision of love, loss, and femininity.
Download or read book Hearth written by Annick Smith and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multicultural anthology, edited by Susan O’Connor and Annick Smith, about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world. A hearth is many things: a place for solitude; a source of identity; something we make and share with others; a history of ourselves and our homes. It is the fixed center we return to. It is just as intrinsically portable. It is, in short, the perfect metaphor for what we seek in these complex and contradictory times—set in flux by climate change, mass immigration, the refugee crisis, and the dislocating effects of technology. Featuring original contributions from some of our most cherished voices—including Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Pico Iyer, Natasha Trethewey, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Chigozie Obioma—Hearth suggests that empathy and storytelling hold the power to unite us when we have wandered alone for too long. This is an essential anthology that challenges us to redefine home and hearth: as a place to welcome strangers, to be generous, to care for the world beyond one’s own experience.
Download or read book Borderline Citizen written by Robin Hemley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Borderline Citizen Robin Hemley wrestles with what it means to be a citizen of the world, taking readers on a singular journey through the hinterlands of national identity. As a polygamist of place, Hemley celebrates Guy Fawkes Day in the contested Falkland Islands; Canada Day and the Fourth of July in the tiny U.S. exclave of Point Roberts, Washington; Russian Federation Day in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad; Handover Day among protesters in Hong Kong; and India Day along the most complicated border in the world. Forgoing the exotic descriptions of faraway lands common in traditional travel writing, Borderline Citizen upends the genre with darkly humorous and deeply compassionate glimpses into the lives of exiles, nationalists, refugees, and others. Hemley's superbly rendered narratives detail these individuals, including a Chinese billionaire who could live anywhere but has chosen to situate his ornate mansion in the middle of his impoverished ancestral village, a black nationalist wanted on thirty-two outstanding FBI warrants exiled in Cuba, and an Afghan refugee whose intentionally altered birth date makes him more easy to deport despite his harrowing past. Part travelogue, part memoir, part reportage, Borderline Citizen redefines notions of nationhood through an exploration of the arbitrariness of boundaries and what it means to belong.
Download or read book You Can Fly A Sequel to the Peter Pan Tales written by Chuck Rosenthal and published by Whitepoint Press. This book was released on 2017-09-23 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Pandora is the son of Peter Pan and Wendy, but Thomas doesn't know it. They've hidden it from him, wisely or not, to protect him, and they plan to hide it from him all their lives. On the eve of Thomas Pandora's thirteenth birthday, he's visited by a mysterious fairy named Tink who tells him that Hook is back, and without Peter Pan there to protect Never Never Land, Hook will soon have it conquered and despoiled. He, Thomas Pandora, is the only one who can save them.
Download or read book Theatres of War written by Lauri Scheyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do so many writers and audiences turn to theatre to resolve overwhelming topics of pain and suffering? This collection of essays from international scholars reconsiders how theatre has played a crucial part in encompassing and preserving significant human experiences. Plays about global issues, including terrorism and war, are increasing in attention from playwrights, scholars, critics and audiences. In this contemporary collection, a gathering of diverse contributors explain theatre's special ability to generate dialogue and promote healing when dealing with human tragedy. This collection discusses over 30 international plays and case studies from different time periods, all set in a backdrop of war. The four sections document British and American perspectives on theatres of war, global perspectives on theatres of war, perspectives on Black Watch and, finally, perspectives on The Great Game: Afghanistan. Through this, a range of international scholars from different disciplines imaginatively rethink theatre's unique ability to mediate the impacts and experiences of war. Featuring contributions from a variety of perspectives, this book provides a wealth of revealing insights into why authors and audiences have always turned to the unique medium of theatre to make sense of war.
Download or read book The Kiss Intimacies from Writers written by Brian Turner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kisses from Nick Flynn, Rebecca Makkai, Pico Iyer, Ilyse Kusnetz, Andre Dubus III, Christian Kiefer, Camille T. Dungy, Major Jackson, Bich Minh Nguyen, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limón, Honor Moore, Téa Obreht and Dan Sheehan, Kazim Ali, Beth Ann Fennelly, and others In this wide-ranging collection of essays, stories, graphic memoir, and cross-genre work, writers explore the deeply human act of kissing, and share their thoughts on a specific kiss—the unexpected and unforgettable, the sublime and the ambiguous, the devastating and the regenerative. Selections from beloved authors “tantalize with such grace that they linger sweetly in your mind for days” (New York Times Book Review), as they explore the messy and complicated intimacies that exist in our actual lives, as well as in the complicated landscape of the imagination. This is a book meant to be read from cover to cover, just as much as it’s meant to be dipped into—with each kiss pulling us closer to the moments in our lives that matter most.
Download or read book The Way of Imagination written by Scott Russell Sanders and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prize–winning essayist turns to the imagination as a spiritual guide and material method of living through climate disruption, as climate change and broad extinction forever alter our place on the planet and our lives together. Scott Russell Sanders shows how imagination, linked to compassion, can help us solve the urgent ecological and social challenges we face. While reflecting on the conditions needed for human flourishing, he tells the story of his own intellectual and moral journey from childhood religion to an adult philosophy of life. That philosophy is tested when his first wife and then their son fall ill. Compelled to leave their beloved old house, they design a new one, and then transform their vision into a home and their raw city lot into a garden.
Download or read book In the Unwalled City written by Robert Cording and published by Slant Books. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Unwalled City takes its title from Epicurus, who wrote: “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city.” This affecting book—which weaves prose memoir with poetry—explores that feeling of being open to attack—in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording’s thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died. To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, here is “a grief observed,” encompassing not only the big questions but also the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief takes is that of speaking to his son. In “Afterlife,” Cording has a vision of his son replying: “let the emptiness remain empty . . . Stop writing down / everything you think I’m telling you. / This is your afterlife, not mine.” At the heart of In the Unwalled City is a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one chart a new life that both acknowledges a son’s death and still finds a way back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city?
Download or read book New Micro Exceptionally Short Fiction written by James Thomas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection of very short stories selected by Flash Fiction editor James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro. All of the stories in this book are exceptionally short, revealing themselves in no more than 300 words. With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.
