A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck


Book Description

There's an extraordinary amount of wit and wordplay- outrageous puns, fractured homilies, garbled quotations, double entendres-in his short book. A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck recalls those planetarium shows that, in their vertiginous final minutes, whirl the audience through the cosmos.To say that Williamson is one of the three or four contemporary American masters of light verse may be a less grand pronouncement than it sounds, given how few serious poets these days would aspire to the title.Williamson's rhymes are likewise dexterous, with a number of unexpected combinations.and here and there he comes up with something so neatly preposterous that Byron might have been proud to claim it. The book holds up so well, richly repaying rereading, because there's a somber, eerie iciness at its core.Readers of A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck - this yes, marvelous book - are now and then disturbingly aware that behind its jokes is an apparition whose skeletal smile is no joke at all. -Brad Leithauser, NYRB "His verse is gripping and full of black comedy, sure to give fans of his work more of what they have come to love." The Midwest Book Review "Williamson's buoyant voice is constant - we're given a blast of amiable poetry on each page... playful and quick-witted." Poetry







Luck of the Loch Ness Monster


Book Description

Once upon a time, on a long, slow trip to Scotland, a little girl named Katerina-Elizabeth tossed her oatmeal overboard—again, and again, and again. She was a picky eater, and oatmeal was her least favorite food. And once upon a time, a small worm, no bigger than a piece of thread, swam alongside an ocean liner bound for Scotland and ate bowl after bowl of tossed oatmeal. He had never tasted anything as wonderful as oatmeal in his whole life. A. W. Flaherty and Scott Magoon unravel the Loch Ness legend in this whimsical picture book for the picky (and not-so-picky) eater in all of us.




Chance, Luck, and Statistics


Book Description

In simple, non-technical language, this volume explores the fundamentals governing chance and applies them to sports, government, and business. Topics includenbsp;the theory of probability in relation to superstitions, betting odds, warfare,nbsp;social problems, stocks, and other areas. "Clear and lively ...nbsp;remarkably accurate." —Scientific Monthly.




Luck and Circumstance


Book Description

The acclaimed director of such films as Brideshead Revisited shares the story of his youth and career, providing coverage of such topics as his childhood as the son of star Geraldine Fitzgerald, his relationships with Hollywood elite and the allegations that Orson Welles was his real father.




A Streak of Luck


Book Description




Love Unknown


Book Description

An illuminating new biography of one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Bishop "Love Unknown points movingly to the many relationships that moored Bishop, keeping her together even as life—and her own self-destructive tendencies—threatened to split her apart.” —The Wall Street Journal Elizabeth Bishop's friend James Merrill once observed that "Elizabeth had more talent for life—and for poetry—than anyone else I've known." This new biography reveals just how she learned to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create a brilliant array of poems, prose, and letters—a remarkable body of work that would make her one of America's most beloved and celebrated poets. In Love Unknown, Thomas Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society, tells the story of the famous poet and traveler's life. Bishop moved through extraordinary mid-twentieth century worlds with relationships among an extensive international array of literati, visual artists, musicians, scholars, and politicians—along with a cosmopolitan gay underground that was then nearly invisible to the dominant culture. Drawing on fresh interviews and newly discovered manuscript materials, Travisano illuminates that the "art of losing" that Bishop celebrated with such poignant irony in her poem, "One Art," perhaps her most famous, was linked in equal part to an "art of finding," that Bishop's art and life was devoted to the sort of encounters and epiphanies that so often appear in her work.




The Good Luck Of Right Now


Book Description

For almost four decades, Bartholomew Neil has done nothing but live with his mom. When she begins calling him Richard—for reasons unknown—and then dies, Bartholomew is woefully unprepared.” A clue comes in the form of a “Free Tibet” letter he finds in his mother’s underwear drawer, and so Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate fan letters. Jung’s theory of synchronicity, the mystery of women, the Dalai Lama’s teachings, alien abduction, cat telepathy and the Catholic Church are all explored in depth by Bartholomew’s epistles—but mostly the letters outline one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own. A struggling priest, a “girlbrarian,” her foul-mouthed brother and Richard Gere (well, sort of) join the quest. In a rented Ford Focus, they travel to Canada in search of Bartholomew’s biological father and end up finding so much more.




The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True


Book Description

In this narrative poem, Kirby the sneaky, dog-genius steals the hole Arlo dug in the yard and the social order begins to break down. Kirby faces grave, injurious peril in restoring cosmic harmony. In rhyming couplets he reflects on the hole's eerie influence, he contemplates spider webs, Newton, The Old West, Scottish history, Templars, the Roundta




Far from Luck


Book Description

At the crossroads where the Great Depression and the Great Recession meet, Charles O'Hay's poignant and often edgy words remind us just how quickly and easily one can become FAR FROM LUCK.




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