Poetry Style

The smiling Buddha, or the Buddha of laughter, was a vagabond monk in the 10th cenury. Known as Pu Tai in China and Hotei in Japan, he found supreme happiness one stormy day under a bridge after a loud thunderclap illuminated his purpose. From that day forward, he traveled throughout China sharing his wisdom with laughter and good humor.

Marina’s talent for powerful, evocative song lyrics finds a new outlet in her poetry. Each poem resonates with the same creative melodies and emotional depth that have made her an artistic sensation. Hailed by The New York Times for “redefining songs about coming of age, and the aftermath, with bluntness and crafty intelligence,” Marina delves even further into trauma, youth, and the highs and lows of relationships in these profound, autobiographical poems to form a collection that transcends the boundaries of music and literature.

Saved at Sea is the amazing story of Alick, a young man who lives in a lighthouse with his grandfather, who is the lighthouse keeper. During a terrible storm, Alick and his grandfather try to rescue people from a shipwreck. A baby is thrown into their lifeboat, and turns out to be a pretty two-year-old little girl, who brings a sunbeam to their lives. Alick's grandfather is shocked into conversion by the drowning of a dear friend. An unexpected event occurs when Alick's father, a sailor presumed to be dead, whom he never met, turns up.

Drawing inspiration from the art of Kintsugi, the Japanese technique of mending broken pottery with gold, Carol beautifully weaves together the shattered fragments of her heart, transforming them into a life worth living. Divided into three sections, "Shattered", "In Pieces", and "Making Broken Beautiful", this book of poems chronicles the full spectrum of the grieving experience. With raw honesty, Carol illuminates the pain and loneliness that accompany loss, the disorienting struggle to adapt to a changed world, and the gentle steps towards self-discovery.

When little Zanna's oldest brother died just before Christmas, she was left with the gift she had made for him - a picture that only he would have understood. Every Christmas, Zanna's gift is brought out and displayed as a way of including their lost brother in the celebration. This is the story of the life of that family, and of the many gifts they gave each other that could only be understood with love.

Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award-winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the other-than-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting.

A special live recording at London's Soho Theatre - plus two exclusive bonus tracks. Since forming in 2008, Mark Grist and MC Mixy have been challenging the preconceptions of poetry and hiphop across the country. This audio was recorded at the Soho Theatre in London in 2012, during their third national tour, titled 'Anywhere and Everywhere'. During the tour the pair performed in schools, pubs, nightclubs, office blocks, market places, theatres, parks, taxi cabs, sitting rooms and universities across the country.

Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems written over a lifetime, capturing its many forms: from rapture, infatuation and urgency to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. Poetry was de Bernières' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience.

Yesterday's Eyes is an inspirational story about three generations of women who must come to terms with the negative issues from their past and learn how to forgive one another. Yesterday's Eyes exposes the journey traveled by these three women. It reveals how a chain of events leads them to discover the healing power of Jesus Christ, and how through His power, the lost will be found, the broken healed, the guilty redeemed, and three generations of emotional bondage will finally be set free.

In awe of her DNA, at war with her anxiety and at odds with her heartstrings, author Kaitlyn Wylde is never at a loss for words. In her new collection, The Head, The Heart & The Home, she gives her listeners orchestra seats to a timeless drama of love and intimacy, and struggling with the absence of them. Under the white-knuckled grip of anxiety, the chainmail blanket of despair and the windless knock of heartache, Wylde thrives as a storyteller.

Kahlil Gibran’s reflections on the wistful beauty, lofty majesty, and abiding peace of Eastern wisdom revolutionized Arab literature. This collection of dramatic poems uses the dialogue between age and youth as a platform to discuss deep subjects such as freedom, death, and the eternal soul. From “Of Life and Sorrow” to “Of Science and Knowledge”, Gibran’s vision transcends boundaries of religion and culture, finding beauty and wisdom in the universal struggles of everyday life.

A failed prodigy and child of divorce, Francesca Dunn is also an adolescent like any other, trying to find her identity and figure out her place in the world. One night, Chester, a visionary homeless man (or an insane one, depending on your point of view) "sees" Francesca hovering over the river, bathed in celestial light. Days later, as Francesca serves meals to the needy in a local cafi, Chester falls to his knees before her in adoration.

Inspired largely by the poet's experiences as a young man working in the Saskatchewan oilfields, Mathew Henderson's The Lease explores masculinity and the roles morality, violence, and hard labor play in it. Equal parts character study, cultural documentary, and coming-of-age narrative, Henderson's poems make it clear that however we may try to stay apart from them, the stubborn and often unflattering realities of masculine culture persist, not just in isolated, dangerous environments like this, but in our very idea of what work is.

With loyal fans around the world and across the Internet, Tyler Knott Gregson is reinventing poetry for a new generation, using Instagram and Tumblr to reach fans where they are. Tyler's third collection includes more of his popular Typewriter Series poems (featured in his first book) as well as never-before-published scenes that paint the world as only Tyler sees and experiences it. Filled with vivid photographs and even more vivid emotions, Wildly into the Dark is a must-have for longtime fans as well as newcomers to Tyler's unique brand of words and images.

Library of Small Catastrophes, Alison Rollins's ambitious debut collection, interrogates the body and nation as storehouses of countless tragedies. Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges's fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss. "Memory is about the future, not the past", she writes, and rather than shying away from the anger, anxiety, and mourning of her narrators, Rollins's poetry seeks to challenge the status quo.

In her striking second collection, Natalie Scenters-Zapico sets her unflinching gaze once again on the borders of things. Lima :: Limon illuminates both the sweet and the sour of the immigrant experience, of life as a woman in the US and Mexico, and of the politics of the present day. Her lyrical poems focus on the often-tested resilience of women. Scenters-Zapico writes heartbreakingly about domestic violence and its toxic duality of macho versus hembra, of masculinity versus femininity, and throws into harsh relief the all-too-normalized pain that women endure.

Kenda Tyson has lived a pretty wonderful life. Her parents are lawyers who own their own firm, and they provide their 17-year-old daughter with only the finest. Kenda has come to expect that the men in her life will continue to offer her that same level of luxury, and when she meets the good-looking, smooth-talking Jerome Smith, she’s sure she’s hit the jackpot. Her perspective quickly changes, however, when she finds herself caught up in a whirlwind of love, lies, and abuse.

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

In the days of Samuel the Seer, the Philistines are at the climax of a long war with Israel over the land of Canaan. There are still giants in Philistia left from Joshua's search and destroy mission of holy war generations earlier. Their numbers have grown.

Ever since his father died, eight-year-old Jordan has wished his mother, Maggie, could believe in love again. A busy lawyer, she spends long hours at work and has little time for affection. When Maggie enrolls Jordan in the Healing Hearts mentoring program, he is overjoyed. As soon as the boy meets his adult mentor, Casey, Jordan knows this man is the answer to his prayers. But when Maggie meets him, she is haunted by bittersweet memories she just can't place.