The title of Blue-Tail Fly comes from an antebellum song commonly known as "Jimmy Crack Corn." The blue-tail fly is a supposedly insignificant creature that bites the horse that bucks and kills the master. In this collection, poet Vievee Francis gives voice to "outsiders"-from soldiers and common folk to leading political figures-who play the role of the blue-tail fly in the period of American history between the Mexican American War and the Civil War. Through a diverse range of styles, characters, and emotions, Francis's poems consider the demands of war, protest and resistance to it, and...
The title of Blue-Tail Fly comes from an antebellum song commonly known as "Jimmy Crack Corn." The blue-tail fly is a supposedly insignificant crea...
Voices of the Lost and Found is the first full-length collection of fiction from accomplished Metro Detroit writer Dorene O'Brien. In eleven first-person stories, a variety of authentic and unexpected voices come to the forefront to confess or retell stories of lost innocence or betrayal-from the urban graffiti artist who plots the downfall of a rival gang, to the middle-aged woman reliving a harrowing childhood abduction, to the young man who remodels his house in a misguided attempt to win back his wife, to the teenager who is lured into a crime spree after trusting a dark and disturbed...
Voices of the Lost and Found is the first full-length collection of fiction from accomplished Metro Detroit writer Dorene O'Brien. In eleven first-...
"A Bird-while. In a natural chronometer, a Bird-while may be admitted as one of the metres, since the space most of the wild birds will allow you to make your observations on them when they alight near you in the woods, is a pretty equal and familiar measure" (Ralph Waldo Emerson's Journal, 1838). Without becoming didactic or pedantic about the spiritual metaphor hidden in the concept of the "bird-while," Keith Taylor's collection evokes certain Eastern meditative poets who often wrote in an aphoristic style of the spirit or the mind mirroring specific aspects of the natural world....
"A Bird-while. In a natural chronometer, a Bird-while may be admitted as one of the metres, since the space most of the wild birds will allow you t...
Rowing Inland, Jim Daniels's fifteenth book of poetry is a time machine that takes the reader back to the Metro Detroit of his youth and then accelerates toward the future. With humor and empathy, the author looks at his own family's challenges and those of the surrounding community where the legacy handed down from generation to generation is one of survival. The economic hits that this community has to endure create both an uncertainty about its future and a determined tenacity.
Divided into four sections, Rowing Inland calls out key moments from the author's life....
Rowing Inland, Jim Daniels's fifteenth book of poetry is a time machine that takes the reader back to the Metro Detroit of his youth and the...
In As If We Were Prey Michael Delp presents working-class male characters who are tried, tested, and pushed to their limits. Struggling with the demons of childhood and the indignities of adult life, they work dead-end jobs, keep the peace within their families, and attempt to assert themselves against authority whenever they can. While Delp's characters are fathers and sons, students and teachers, they all share a sense of alienation and melancholy that propels them to antics and ill-conceived plans. Although they hope that their rash actions will prove their independence, they generally...
In As If We Were Prey Michael Delp presents working-class male characters who are tried, tested, and pushed to their limits. Struggling with the de...
In Birth of a Notion, poet and playwright Bill Harris confronts contemporary stereotypes and prejudices by looking back to their roots in early American history. In a hybrid work of prose and poetry that takes its cues from nineteenth-century minstrelsy, Harris speaks back to preconceived notions about 'blackness' through many different characters and voices.
In Birth of a Notion, poet and playwright Bill Harris confronts contemporary stereotypes and prejudices by looking back to their roots in early Americ...
In An American Map, Anne-Marie Oomen, award-winning writer and self-confessed northern Michigan homebody, chronicles her recent travels across America, in essays that span rediscovered landscapes, wild back roads, vital cities, and everything in between. Oomen takes both a wide and narrow lens to her destinations, giving readers a vivid sense of each locale while finding resonances between each place and her own experiences. With each new adventure, Oomen finds her sense of self deepening and becoming more clearly rooted in the larger adventure of America.
The evocative essays of An...
In An American Map, Anne-Marie Oomen, award-winning writer and self-confessed northern Michigan homebody, chronicles her recent travels across Amer...
In 1903, a preacher named Benjamin Purnell and five followers founded a colony called the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where they prepared for eternal life by creating a heaven on earth. Housed in rambling mansions and surrounded by lush orchards and vineyards, the colony added a thousand followers to its fold within a few years, along with a zoo, extensive gardens, and an amusement park. The sprawling complex, called Eden Springs, was a major tourist attraction of the Midwest. The colonists, who were drawn from far and wide by the magnetic "King Ben," were told to keep their...
In 1903, a preacher named Benjamin Purnell and five followers founded a colony called the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where they pre...
For "Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them" editors Keith Taylor and Laura Kasischke asked twelve celebrated Michigan writers to submit new stories on one subject: ghosts. The resulting collection is a satisfying mix of tales by some of the state's most well-known and award-winning writers. Some of the pieces are true stories written by non-believers, while others are clearly fiction and can be funny, bittersweet, spooky, or sinister. All share Michigan as a setting, bringing history and a sense of place to the eerie collection.
Ghosts in these stories have a wide range of motivations and...
For "Ghost Writers: Us Haunting Them" editors Keith Taylor and Laura Kasischke asked twelve celebrated Michigan writers to submit new stories on on...
