Poetry
Cancer as Spiritual Teacher is a collection of poems about reclaiming and engaging our spirits during the cancer journey. It encourages the reader to view the cancer healing journey as a spiritual pilgrimage, much like pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain in search of spiritual insight and direction. The poems in this book speak to the inner (mind and spirit) and outer (body) dimensions of this journey. As pilgrims, the Camino requires our commitment to walk each day with openness, gentleness gratitude, and healing intention. Our cancer journeys require the same of us. About the Author
Don Iannone serves as a faculty member at the Business School of the European Union-based Transcontinental University. Together with his wife, Mary, he has been providing part-time complementary medicine services to patients at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center for the past seven years. Don's expansive 47-year career has led him to 32 states, 10 countries, and 10 American Indian reservations. He is the author of twenty-two books that cover nonfiction, poetry, and photography, in addition to numerous articles in academic and professional journals. Born in the steel and coal regions of Eastern Ohio, Don's early life in Martins Ferry and St. Clairsville lends a genuine depth to his life story. He and his wife reside in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Don holds doctorates in Divinity and Philosophy.
About the Author
Don Iannone is a writer, poet, photographer, business school professor, and complementary medicine therapist. He is the author of twenty nonfiction, poetry, and photography books. His latest nonfiction work, Stories from an Hourglass, narrated his life's journey, enriched by the contributions of countless others. Don holds doctoral degrees in Divinity, and Metaphysics and Philosophy. His formative years unfolded in the towns of Martins Ferry and St. Clairsville, nestled in the heart of Eastern Ohio. Don and his wife Mary, and their cherished feline companion, Tilly, call Greater Cleveland home.
Allow me to introduce you to this second edition of Chasing Cosmic Butterflies. The journey began with the initial release of the book in 2016, and since then, the ideas behind this book have evolved. This collection of poems delves into the enchantment of reality and the reality of enchantment. It's a treasury of poems infused with contemplative humor. In this renewed edition, many of the poems have undergone a significant transformation, carefully reworked to resonate with the ever-shifting landscapes of today's world. Cosmic butterflies, a whimsical metaphor for our deepest dreams, fantasies, visions, and ultimate life goals, flutter through the very fabric of our existence. Much like the ethereal and delicate creatures they evoke, these aspirations are a source of boundless beauty and wonder in our lives. They represent the profound yearnings that drive us forward, the aspirations that stretch the limits of our imagination, and the relentless pursuit of that which makes us feel most alive. In the grand tapestry of human existence, we are all cosmic butterfly chasers. These dreams, whether they involve achieving personal success, experiencing profound love, making a lasting impact on the world, or simply finding happiness, are the threads that weave our life stories. They inspire us to spread our wings and venture into the unknown, to dance with the possibilities of the cosmos, and to embrace the extraordinary potential that resides within each of us. As we chase these cosmic butterflies, we not only discover the brilliance of our own existence but also contribute to the ever-evolving narrative of the universe itself. As a special treat, I have included a section at the end of the book containing my analysis of fifteen of the book's poems. As a preface, the poems in this book reflect my desire for rhyme and musicality in my life. The writing of this collection was guided by this desire. Don Iannone
"Sara Holbrook continually works miracles by giving substance to steam -- in these keepsake poems she is matriarch, mojo and mind-bender, guiding us toward insight with an unerring hindsight. It is not important whether you discover Sara through her electrifying performance work or through these gems of humor, heart and lyricism. What's important is that you discover her, this wondrous wordsmith, one of the reasons poetry has a pulse again." --Patricia Smith, Boston Globe Columnist, Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion
* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more . . .
Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.
Arkham House, 1981. 1st edition; paperback; black covers with gilt lettering; no creases, looks unread. VG+
Rita Dove's Collected Poems 1974-2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove's fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America's kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove's mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the "precise, singing lines" for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove "has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental" (Poetry magazine).
In these wise and lovely mortal ruminations Neil Carpathios, long one of my favorite poets, turns fifty, that perilous promontory from which the world starts to flicker like an old neon sign. But age just makes Carpathios pay attention all the more keenly. The joy of this book is that it makes us pause with him on our little human journey and take in the view while we still have time. You couldn't ask for a better guide. --George Bilgere
The poems in Neil Carpathios' new book, though much concerned with death, are very much alive: intelligent, tender, humorous, entertaining, and even profound--sometimes all at the same time. As the best poets do, Carpathios celebrates our astonishing luck in being able, however limited our time, to "behold the lipstick kiss on a glass's rim," and "listen to the crickets." --Charles Harper Webb