Lost and Local


Book Description

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Suzanne Lummis. Leaving the theater I stand outside in a dark of black lipstick the world wears when everyone leaves. Language like this--savory, sensuous and ripe with the unexpected--is among Carol Ellis' strengths, along with an intelligence that converts the ordinary into the wild and the strange. They pour from her, these poems, not in the form of stories exactly, narrative, but in a profusion of responses to the world, the seen, the experienced and the imagined. Thunder. The dogs bark. The gods are angry say those who believe in gods. The gods are always angry or out in the back alley by the dumpster smoking a cigarette. Reader, think of Carol Ellis' poems this way: like stepping into the realm of dreams, but dreams wittier and more sumptuous than those that favor most of us each night.




Procol Harum


Book Description

The one-hit wonders who weren't. Nine classic albums that redefined the rock/classical interface.




Black Indian


Book Description

A moving memoir exploring one family’s legacy of African Americans with American Indian roots. Finalist, 2024 American Legacy Book Awards, Autobiography/Memoir Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker's The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony—only, this isn't fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, alcoholism, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan's memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family's legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society's ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance. Buchanan was raised as a Black woman, who grew up hearing cherished stories of her multi-racial heritage, while simultaneously suffering from everything she (and the rest of her family) didn't know. Tracing the arduous migration of Mixed Bloods, or Free People of Color, from the Southeast to the Midwest, Buchanan tells the story of her Michigan tribe—a comedic yet manically depressed family of fierce women, who were everything from caretakers and cornbread makers to poets and witches, and men who were either ignored, protected, imprisoned, or maimed—and how their lives collided over love, failure, fights, and prayer despite a stacked deck of challenges, including addiction and abuse. Ultimately, Buchanan's nomadic people endured a collective identity crisis after years of constantly straddling two, then three, races. The physical, spiritual, and emotional displacement of American Indians who met and married Mixed or Black slaves and indentured servants at America's early crossroads is where this powerful journey begins. Black Indiandoesn't have answers, nor does it aim to represent every American's multi-ethnic experience. Instead, it digs as far down into this one family's history as it can go—sometimes, with a bit of discomfort. But every family has its own truth, and Buchanan's search for hers will resonate with anyone who has wondered "maybe there's more than what I'm being told."




The Ibero-American Baroque


Book Description

The Ibero-American Baroque is an interdisciplinary, empirically-grounded contribution to the understanding of cultural exchanges in the early modern Iberian world.




Wide Awake


Book Description

Named one of Los Angeles Times Book Critic David Ulin's "Top 10 Books of 2015", Wide Awake draws together nationally acclaimed poets and gifted newer writers-one hundred twelve poets of Los Angeles and its surrounding territories-whose work speaks to the humanity, pathos and comedy, of what may be the most romanticized and scorned, disparaged and exalted, of the world's great cities. With respect to style, the selections range from the narrative to the more open-ended or non-sequential, classic formal verse to robust vernacular, and in this way speak to the lively state of North American poetry in our age. Poets include David St. John, Wanda Coleman, Cecilia Woloch, Lynne Thompson, Timothy Steele, Kate Gale, Gail Wronsky, Terry Wolverton, Luis J. Rodriguez, Tony Barnstone, Robin Coste Lewis, William Archila and Melissa Roxas.




Italian Baroque Sculpture


Book Description

Italian baroque sculpture often has been criticized for portraying a sham world, distracting the spectator from its spiritual poverty by dazzling technical displays. Bruce Boucher offers a fresh view of this rich and varied subject, published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the births of 17th-century artists Bernini and Algardi. 200 illustrations. 35 in color.




Dementia, My Darling


Book Description

As with Constantine's previous titles, Dementia, My Darling can be enjoyed at random or in order. However, when taken in sequence, the poems construct a thesis on life as we remember it from moment to moment. What is your first memory of love? How soon will you forget answering that question?




Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis


Book Description

Analyses of early modern Latin American literature have often portrayed it either as a continuation of the Iberian tradition, or as a reaction against Spanish imperialism. However, such overgeneralisations cannot account for the complex corpus of writing produced in the 'New World'. This is particularly true for the study of Gongorism, the new style developed by the Spanish author Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), which transformed Baroque poetics on both sides of the Atlantic. In this monograph, Luis Castellví Laukamp examines Góngora's impact on the visual and artistic imagination of two major Spanish American authors: Hernando Domínguez Camargo (1606-1659) and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695). Its implications extend beyond the Hispanic world to inform broader discussions about poetic influence, transmission of culture, and the relationship between art and poetry. Luis Castellví Laukamp completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and is now a Lecturer in Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester.







Neworld


Book Description