"A kaleidoscope of creativity . . . unsentimental and sometimes unpredictable."-- Journal of the American Medical Association Founded just six years ago, Bellevue Literary Review is already widely recognized as a rare forum for emerging and celebrated writers--among them Julia Alvarez, Raphael Campo, Rick Moody, and Abraham Verghese--on issues of health and healing. Gathered here are poignant and prizewinning stories, essays, and poems, the voices of patients and those who care for them, which form the journal's remarkable dialogue on "humanity and the human experience." Danielle Ofri, MD , author of Incidental Findings and Singular Intimacies , is the editor in chief of Bellevue Literary Review . She lives in New York City.

2013 marks Dannie Abse's 90th birthday. In his lifetime he has published an astonishing array of work including poetry, fiction, criticism, plays and autobiography but it is as a poet that he is best known and loved. In Speak, Old Parrot he returns to themes of loss, love, medicine and its moral implications, the nature of creativity, Jewish folk tradition and the passing of time. The poems are observant of the outside world as well as the inner life and emotions but most of all they are a joy to read.

"Another winning collection from one of our most read and enjoyed poets: a bountiful group of poems that reflect on language, nature, old age, young love, Judaism, and our current politics--all in her usual direct and mind-tingling fashion. "Words are my business," Marge Piercy begins her twentieth collection of poetry, a glance back at a lifetime of learning, loving, grieving, and fighting for the disenfranchised; and a look forward at what the future holds for herself, her family and friends, and her embattled country. In the opening pages, Piercy tells of her childhood in Detroit, with its vacant lots and scrappy children, the bike that gave her wings, her ambition at fourteen to "gobble" down all knowledge, a too early marriage ("I put on my first marriage / like a girdle my skinny body / didn't need.") We then leap into the Twilight Zone "after the knee has been replaced," where she is "learning to be quiet," learning to give praise despite it all. There are funny poems about medicine ads with their dire warnings, and some possible plusses about being dead: "I will never have to do another load of laundry . . ." There is "comfort in old bodies coming together," in a partner's warmth--"You're always warm: warm hands / smooth back sleek as a Burmese cat./ Sunny weather outside and in." Piercy has long been known for her political poems and her love of cats, and here there are plenty of both. Illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, President-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language--it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life"--

"In Alicia Jo Rabins' second collection, Fruit Geode, the terrifying power of maternal love coexists with sorrow for the loss of one’s younger self. In lyrical, unflinching poems, Rabins investigates the passages of pregnancy, birth, and early infancy through a constellation of ancient and modern experience: Sumerian storm demons, astronauts, herbal medicine, Neanderthal DNA, Jewish mysticism, climate change. In tracing the ritual mysteries of motherhood, Fruit Geode examines what it means to be transformed, to leave behind our certainties and walk into the unknown. "I regard my former life / With a distant affection, / As an astronaut / Looks through a porthole / At the small green planet / Where she used to live," writes Rabins. This is a book about what it means to live in a human body, how love changes us, and what we pass on from one generation to the next."--

William Carlos Williams was born on September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey. As well as being a poet he painted and maintained a lifelong interest in it. Williams was also a physician in both paediatrics and general medicine. He served at the Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey as chief of paediatrics from 1924 until his death. Williams is most well-known for his poems that are closely associated with the Modernism and Imagism movements. In addition to poetry he occasionally wrote short stories, plays, novels, essays, and worked on translations. He practiced medicine by day and wrote at night. Early in his career, he briefly became involved in the Imagist movement via friendships with Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.). Soon his opinions moved away from theirs and his style began to confirm his alignment to a modernist expression of his surrounding environment. From the late 40's health became a major issue in his life but with himself as the patient. He suffered a heart attack in 1948 and, after 1949, a series of strokes. One such stoke in 1953 left him in hospital for four months and brought about severe depression. In these later years, Williams mentored and influenced many younger poets especially the American literary movements of the 1950s; the Beat movement, the San Francisco Renaissance, the Black Mountain school, and the New York School. One of Williams's most productive relationships was with fellow New Jersey poet Allen Ginsberg. Williams included several of Ginsberg's letters in Paterson, stating that one of them helped inspire the fifth volume of that work. Williams also wrote the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in 1956. William Carlos Williams died on March 4th, 1963, at the age of 79 at his home in Rutherford. He was buried in Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

In this second book of poems, oncologist Marc J. Straus addresses the hopes and the tragedies of his profession. The work is a commentary on his experience in the medical field and a collection of rich, vivid monologues written from the points of view of both doctor and patient. These poems show a rare sensitivity not only to those who are suffering but also to the details that distinguish each life.

The Laws of Verse is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1870. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.