From as little as the snail to as big as the giraffe, from the thundering mastodon of long ago to the ordinary backyard squirrel of today, the animals in this book inspire our imagination. Here is a fascinating cornucopia that exudes a whimsical affection and respect for the creatures with whom we share our kingdom.

With his father gunned down in a petty robbery and his aunt haunted by the threats of the Gestapo, Richard Michelson's experiences growing up in Brooklyn were far from ordinary, yet they remain all too common--too much a part of ongoing violence--to be dismissed as merely private events, safely past. In Counting to Six Million he writes out memory, anxiety, and grief, worry over his wife and children, and the recurring clashes between love and cruelty that test wisdom with suffering, day after day.

The modern world is a crucible of risks and pressures. Katia Kapovich's new poetry collection, Cossacks and Bandits, addresses a coherent range of cultural, aesthetic, psychological, philosophical, social and political issues relevant to the complexities of modern life. How does one survive war, terror, loss, injustice, trauma, displacement, marginalization and other hurtful experiences without embracing cynicism or indifference? What resources of strength must we rely on in a society that is ideologically and economically fluid and at times cynical and indifferent, where mass culture, institutional religion and national belonging have only weak and doubtful remedies to offer? The book focuses on the personal histories of men and women who are survivors of sociopolitical and economic distress. To Kapovich such individuals are the true modern hero and heroine. They show that at the limits of experience, survival and dignity depend on creative thinking, on a leap of imagination, as in the Russian children's game of Cossacks and bandits. Set in the US, Eastern Europe and the Middle East - regions that the poet knows intimately, having spent a considerable part of her life in each - this volume is a poetic survival guide to cultural and geographical displacement, alienation and marginality. With feeling and mastery, with sadness and humor, Kapovich fuses a diverse polyphony of voices and themes into original, full-blooded, lyric American verse of great general and literary interest.

Product Description Annie Reiner's poetry explores our deepest thoughts and feelings in a sometimes profound, sometimes playful way. Often they are both, achieving a balance that echoes the balance in the mind which her poems describe. Writer Benjamin Weissman found her work to have "genuine insight that is comic and surreal." The title poem of The Naked I was a winner of the 1992 Los Angeles Poetry Festival. Review A young poet with a playful turn of mind visits her private places 'though I don't know the way/and cannot go there without you.' Delightful journey -- Weaver, John D. Annie Reiner is a poet, and a fine poet at that. I am glad my friends will be able to enjoy The Naked I -- Angelou, Maya Here are parables in primary colors, full of a survivor's wisdom and the power of a poet in her prime, about being alive in the last moments of the old millennium and the first moments of the new one. Annie Reiner's The Naked I is an astonishing book -- Saroyan, Aram From the Publisher Reiner is a writer, painter and author/illustrator of four children's books. In addition, she is an LCSW conducting psychoanalytic therapy and extensive teaching and supervision of other psychoanalysts, psychologist and social workers.

A collection of sixteen poems, by twelve contemporary authors, celebrating Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur and Purim.

A collection of poems by a variety of authors celebrating the joys of canines, from puppies to old hounds, from Chihuahuas to mongrels.

Algorithmic Shapeshifting is the first poetry collection of Bogi Takács, winner of the Lambda award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and finalist for the Hugo and Locus awards. The collection includes poems from the past decade and previously unpublished work. The scope of pieces extends from the present and past of Jewish life in Hungary and the United States to the far-future, outer-space reaches of the speculative—always with a sense of curiosity and wonder. “Bogi Takács is a poet of visceral exuberance and Talmudic invention. Moving as dazzlingly between genres as languages, e makes the reader eir kaleidoscope where ancient traditions, unenvisioned technologies, and children's toys tumble with ordinary, transcendent precision, imagining new ways of being and observing others signally extant. These poems draw blood and spark synapses, make dauntingly familiar and tenderly strange. You should let them change you.” Sonya Taaffe, author of Forget the Sleepless Shores “Bogi Takács's poetry is gleefully and unabashedly itself, pulling the reader through surreal worlds of visceral magic, body modification, political wit, and interpersonal devotion. Whether looking back into Talmudic history, forward into a science fictional psychic war, or sinking into the earth and growing flowers from its own eye sockets, "Algorithmic Shapeshifting" presents a voice that is consistently fresh, startling, and sincere.” Ada Hoffmann, author of The Outside

A collection of poems about the moods and fascinations of childhood.

Poetry. "'Call it immersion': take Michael Ruby's sibilant heterographic tour of the underworld's underwords and rediscover in these homophonic burrows that sonic intersection is ear + imagination. At once 'tenebrous children' and a 'jangling ring of skeleton keys, ' these poems ghost- grasp their father (or was it patrimony's patter?), then intrafiliate to interlock in lines that haunt: we watch these 'seals kiss' as 'bus urn, ' to 'out vain era// air a care//none inferior' and 'still soak to a purpose somewhere.' Ruby, take a golden bow this work's ' to elicit] a response from littoral folk' and figural ones, too." Judith Goldman "'Ghostly cooing fills the moist dark places, ' and the reader and dreamer returns to the Underworld, together, already there, 'Circling in an eddy for the time being.'" Christophe Casamassima After studying Louis Zukofsky's Rudens in graduate school, I always wanted to write a homophonic translation. A decade later, I settled on the long opening of Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, the famous Underworld book, and wrote 'Sic Fatur Lacrimans.' Soon afterward, sensing the translation itself needed translation, I decided to derive other poems from the words and phrases of 'Sic Fatur Lacrimans' poems that would be connected to the long poem and to each other, in a sort of literary Rayonism. I saw the book as the verbal equivalent of St. Sebastian pierced by arrows, with 'Sic Fatur Lacrimans' as St. Sebastian and the shorter poems as the arrows, crisscrossing each other. Michael Ruby"

These poems come straight from the heart of childhood and will speak directly to all the children who read or listen to them.

Incandescent poems about living and aging—about being awake in this young century—by one of our most moving and eloquent poets. These poems chart the journeys of sleepless nights when whole lifetimes seem to pass with their stories: loves lost and gained; children and seasons in their phases; and the world beyond, both threatening and enriching life. The time before sleep acts as an invitation to reflect on the world's quieter movements—from gardens heavy after a first storm to the moon slipping into darkness in an eclipse—as well as on the subtle but relentless passage of time. Insomnia embodies Linda Pastan's graceful and iconic voice, both lucid and haunting.

An anthology of poetry dealing with strange phenomena for which there is no rational explanation.

Robins Poet-Tree is a collection of Poems that come straight from the heart. I hope that as you read the poems you can draw in the same warm feeling that I felt as I wrote these selections. My writing is about real life issues and events that have happened in my life. I feel these are issues that many others can also relate to. I have many memories, feelings and important people in my life intertwined in my words. Some of the topics written about in Robin's Poet-Tree are God, children, Love, & family. As you Read these selection you can find How & Where they fit into your life.

Within the court, before the judge, There stand six wretched creatures, Theyre lame and weary, one and all, With pinched and pallid features. The father is a broken man, The mother weak and ailing, The little children, skin and bone, With fear and hunger wailing.

Imperfect Paradise , published in 1988, is Linda Pastan's 4th collection and was a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Poems deal with birds, the past, children, beauty, rituals, myths, the moon, vacations, aging, death, family life, and hope.

John G. Paton was an evangelist for Jesus Christ among the South Sea cannibals. Since beginning Vision Forum, we have made it our goal to urge fathers to turn their hearts to home and to rise up with courage to address the issues of the age. When I share this message before an audience, I usually begin by quoting at length an autobiographical account, penned by John G. Paton in the 19th century, describing how his father's love and training prepared him to endure bitter hardship, to persevere against unspeakably difficult circumstances, and to resist sin. This may be the most important narrative of missionary work you will ever read. The book touched me on the deepest level and has become an important part of my life and personal vision. We have republished it because it contains the finest testimony of multi-generational love and devotion between a father and son that I have ever read outside the Scriptures. Paton, a descendant of the Scottish Covenanters, was able to love and lead to Christ the very people who tried to eat his wife and child. One of the most important books you will ever read to your children. An Autobiography.

Yingl Tsingl, chafing from an endless autumn that is ruining his village, manages to bring welcome winter to it.