Poetry

Poems in three parts: "Placenta," "Ireland," and "Waiting for Something to Happen."

From the back cover: "Step into the Light" is a collection of poetry that casts a cold, hard eye on the coke-snorting, beer-swilling, pill-popping world of contemporary America as it lurches into the twilight of the twentieth century. This book speaks with a literary tongue that tells the grim story of addiction with honesty and gut-wrenching detail. But it also sings with joy and triumph about recovery, sobriety, and serenity.

Chapbook of poems, on a variety of topics, related to the African experience, the passage of time, growth of good friendships, the city and death.<br />

One in a series of chapbooks published of writers at the Guild Complex. A collection of dedication poems taken from a larger varied collection. "These poems are not observations, rather, they attempt to assemble the initial call to subject and infuse the the response through use of anticipated response, or channeling."

From the foreward: "About Paul Carroll's poetry, you can never say one thing... He knows that to be modern he must also be classical: Plato, Aristotle, and the Church fathers move among modern artists and poets, American presidents and Chicago politicians, and social matrons who patronized the arts, architects who have added to or detracted from the city Carroll inhabits at the foot of Lake Michigan-- all these, and other figures, populate the dense, swirling, and always surprising democracy of his imagination."

A collection of varied poems, mostly observations on contemporary culture and freedom. Much on writing and being a poet, as well as personal struggles.

One in a series of chapbooks published of writers at the Guild Complex. &ldquo;Maureen Tolman Flannery has grounded her poetics in the various landscapes of her life: Wyoming, where she grew up the daughter of a rancher; Mexico, where she has become infatuated with the rich complexity of Mexican culture and geography; and Chicago, where she has settled to raise her family fo three sons and a daughter. These offspring, along with her husband of thirty-five years, provide much grist for her poetical mill.&rdquo;

One in a series of chapbooks published of writers at the Guild Complex.

<p>From the introduction: &quot;Poetry as Social Engagement.&quot;</p><p> &quot;Through distilled verse and hard imagery, I expose the effects of our social, cultural, and political practices on the human condition. My poetry explores the twisting of language for both political and personal gain. Growing up in domestic violence taught me about structures of power and dominance, about the use of violence and fear in order to control, and about the role of language in breaking the spirit.&quot;<br /></p>

Wayne Allen Jones is subject to &ldquo;en-too-ziasms&rdquo; (Southside for not knowing when to stop). This volume is the third in eighteen months. Written in 1999 and 2000, these poems speak with a new voice &ndash; bolder, more forceful, more energetic, more passionate. The risks are manifold &ndash; in subject, point of view, tone, and length &ndash; the history of a steel mill and its workers, the ritual of fathers giving guns to sons, a dramatic monologue from a piece of the cross borne by Jesus, a nine-part study on types of rope, and an even longer poem about a misguided walkabout in the Arizona desert.<br /><br />Shorter poems put breathing room between the longer ones, and many speak to the theme of the first book, Stone Works &ndash; the way people make sense of the world by imposing their own meanings on what they perceive, what happens, and how they respond. <br />