A politically-neutral collection of poetry, prose, and art inspired by the 2008 United States Presidential Election. Contributions from a Grammy award nominee, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship winner, Pushcart award nominees and winners, writers from various continents, university professors, professional artists, and some amateurs too.

Description:
Barbara Crookers new book Gold focuses on one of the most profound life-altering experiences possible: losing ones mother. This collection is an elegy, not just to the speakers mother, but to a lost Eden that cannot be reclaimed. Beginning with a series of lyrics set in autumn, the poems become more narrative, recounting the long illness of Crookers mother, her death, and the profound journey along the shores of grief. Throughout, Crooker is aware of the complexity and strength of the mother/daughter relationship and the chasm that this loss opens. The book includes other themes:...

"Rarely has a book of poems been as aptly titled as Barbara Crooker's MORE. Propelled by her hunger for beauty and language, she flies in low over human experience, noticing every gesture, every flavor, every nuance of color and light. Whether she is pondering a spill of salt or stepping into a painting by Hopper, Crooker never for one second lets us forget what it is to be alive and how many ways we have been given to express our gratitude for this simple fact. 'How did all this loveliness / spring from the dark?' she asks in one poem. I don't know the answer, but by the timeI finished...

How to read a poem. A lot of books want to teach you just that. How is this one different?

Think of it less as an instructional book and more as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guide will open your senses to the combined craft and magic known as "poems." For the well versed, if you will, this book might make you fall in love again.

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry")-to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology included.

This collection brings together 102 poems from Barbara Crooker's previous ten chapbooks of poetry, two of which won national prizes, with a handful of uncollected poems at the end. Of Crooker's work, William Matthews has written, "Barbara Crooker's poems have been written with a deft touch and with that affection for their textures and pacings that we're accustomed to call, a little dryly, 'technical skill.' It's a form of love, actually, and since she's expended it on her poems, we can, too." Janet McCann, writing in the Foreword, says, "The poems in this collection come mostly from...