Multiples

Really enjoyed reading these spicy stories. Especially liked "Give Me a Shine" by Melanie Votaw. Recommend.

This collection demonstrates the diversity of talents, voices and languages within the Chicano/ Latino ethnic canon. There is something here for any reader: if you are new to the literature this is the perfect introduction; if you are a seasoned reader of Hispanic writers then you will be glad to have the best of the best gathered in one volume. I would point out some favorites, but I wouldn't want to lessen the importance of those writings I don't mention. Check it out for yourself. The final section--the new navigators (i.e. younger writers) is full of awesome and promising work. A great read.

A wonderful multidisciplinary approach which shows that Dance can be political and literary, in addition to being physical and visual. Engages the reader to consider dance and choreography in a new way -- including that there need not be an edge to the stage, i.e. that the stage can be the world so that the performance can even be the self of the "viewer."

When you have a difficult time with your teenager these poems are great to read together. The poems help you say things to your child in a postive way when it is hard to think of the right words.

Fabulous collection of suspenseful stories -- many with realistic surprise endings and some with a whimsical flavor. If this was a paper book, it would be a real "page turner"...

This absolutely wonderful audiobook is available again, but they changed its title! Now its "Great American Suspense : Five Unabridged Classics" The reading is just amazing!

THE FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE : Contemporary Poets and Nature. Edited by Christopher Merrill. 176 pp. Salt Lake City : Peregrine Smith Books, 1991.

Some years ago wasps built a nest in the eaves of my house. Occasionally I'd see the odd wasp buzzing about my garden, but since I never bothered them, they never bothered me. But they did bother my neighbors in the next house, who asked me to destroy the nest. I felt pretty bad about hosing the nest away, and while watching the wasps buzzing about in confusion trying to take in what was happening, the loss of their home. The present book, a book in which "each of the poems ... is a plea on behalf of the wild," is a book for people like my neighbors and the many others like them.

Merrill's Preface and Introduction are fine pieces of writing. Both take up the desperate need for a new, healthier, and saner attitude to Nature and its creatures, the need to abandon current arrogance and selfishness, the need to cultivate a new respect. He cites Galway Kinnell on the infinite value of all creatures, and on the deep mystery which inheres in them.

He also cites W. S. Merwin as being firmly convinced of the impossibility of anyone becoming fully human without being "nourished" by the nonhuman. And there are equally true and important observations from many other sensitive, concerned, and intelligent writers. But I wonder if anyone is listening?

The book contains over 125 poems, one or two from each of 93 of today's best US poets. Of them Merwin writes : What these poems suggest in their various ways is the need to respect the earth, which has suffered so much at our hands" (page xvii). This is an entirely laudable aim, but although it's apparent in some poems, it seems to be curiously absent from others.

Personally I find it impossible to reconcile a respect for living creatures with a poem such as Carol Frost's 'To Kill a Deer' (page 50), a poem which - unless I've missed something - seems to celebrate that blasting of holes in the fabric of being which is euphemistically referred to as the sport of hunting. And there are other questionable poems in this anthology.

Fortunately, these are far outweighed by truly positive and inspiring poems such as A. R. Ammons 'Corsons Inlet,' Margaret Atwood's 'Elegy for the Giant Tortoises,' Hayden Carruth's 'Essay,' James Dickey's 'The Heaven of Animals,' Stephen Dunn's 'From Underneath,' Denise Levertov's 'Come into Animal Presence,' David Waggoner's 'Meeting a Bear,' and a host of others.

As an anthology I would rate this book very highly. The central idea around which most of the poems cohere is one that is vitally important for modern society to understand. In it's most sophisticated form it finds expression in A. R. Ammons' lines :

". . . not so much looking for the shape / as being available / to any shape that may be / summoning itself / through me / from the self not mine but ours" (page xix).

Readers of Dogen will understand at once what Ammons is getting at.

This anthology is very useful to anyone who wants to read contemporary poetry in traditional forms. I like the range of poets displayed ( from Rhina Esphillat to Nikki Giovanni to Honor Moore) and the way poets bend and extend the traditional forms we usually think of as confining. The authors also give a brief commentary on their work, which helps give the reader insight into how and why poets choose certain forms.

Since Amazon.com can't be bothered to list the contents of all the books, I thought I'd be helpful: this book contains The Maid's Tragedy (Beaumont and Fletcher), The Maiden's Tragedy (Middleton), The Tragedy of Valentinian, and The Insatiate Countess (from a draft by Marston).

Compiled and edited by Elzbieta Szoka, Fourteen Female Voices From Brazil is an impressive anthology of literature by female Brazilian authors featuring an interview with (and color photograph of) each author. Poetry, fiction, drama, and powerful literary voices and social messages fill the pages of this compelling anthology from cover to cover. Showcasing the lives and works of Nelida Pinon; Lygia Fagundes Telles; Helena Parente Cunha; Astrid Cabral; Marly de Oliveira; Jandira Martini; Leilah Assumpcao; Maria Adelaide Amaral; Myriam Campello; Sonia Coutinho; Esmeralda Ribeiro; Miriam Alves; Conceicao Evaristo; and Renata Pallottini, Fourteen Female Voices From Brazil is especially recommended for Women's Studies and 20th Century Brazilian Literature reading lists and reference collections.