Rise Up!


Book Description

RISE UP! is a poetry collection that braids the voice of the past, the poems of a grandfather born to slave parents, and poems of the present, those of his granddaughter. Juxtaposed are two hearts linked not only by love, but also by the travesties of racism and slavery and the devastation and waste of war. Although generations apart, they navigate as one the injustices of mankind with hope, grace, and peace, their poems forming an uplifting chorus that decries evil while magnifying divine love as displayed in the beauty of Creation. Each poem reflects the rich legacy of this African American family, and how their writing creates a connection to one another and future generationsNC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green writes: "These poems are emblematic of the reality that many things that cause strife and sorrow are also the things that cause an uprising in the spirit. The pages of RISE UP! Poems of Protest, Poems of Praise is a metaphorical offering of a wellspring of solidarity that our world needs. These pages help us drink fully of the possibilities of laughter knowing that weeping dehydrates the body; reminding us that we are the water bearers of hope."




Poems, Protest, and a Dream


Book Description

A bilingual edition of writings by Latin America's finest baroque poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote her most famous prose work, La Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in 1691 in response to her bishop's injunction against her intellectual pursuits. A passionate and subversive defense of the rights of women to study, to teach, and to write, it predates by almost a century and a half serious writings on any continent about the position and education of women. Also included in this wide-ranging selection is a new translation of Sor Juana's masterpiece, the epistemological poem "Primero Sueno, " as well as revealing autobiographical sonnets, reverential religious poetry, secular love poems (which have excited speculation through three centuries), playful verses, and lyrical tributes to New World culture that are among the earliest writings celebrating the people and the customs of this hemisphere. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.




Protest and Prejudice


Book Description

Poetry. As one of the most exciting new voices in American poetry, Zachary Schomburg's previous books have enthralled thousands of readers with surreal landscapes populated by gorillas in people clothes, jaguars, plagues of hummingbirds, and even Abraham Lincoln. His poems have inspired art installations, shadow puppetry, rock albums, and string quartets. In FJORDS , Schomburg inhabits the icy landscape, walking among all his little deaths as he explores the narrow inlets between the transcendent and the mundane. These are poems to be read by torchlight or with no light at all. As Schomburg explains, There is so much blood in the trees. It will be easy to fall in love like this. "Zachary Schomburg may be one of the sincerest surrealists around.... These are wildly imagined poems to fall in love with and reread."—Publishers Weekly "Schomburg is possibly the man who will save poetry for all of those readers who are about to give up on the genre."—The Huffington Post




Bent to the Earth


Book Description

A collection of poetry by Blas Manuel De Luna.




Words of Inspiration


Book Description

Newborn Community of Faith Church is a small congregation that meets in West Baltimore at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Presstman Street. We worship in an area that has been historically marginalized but is also the historic center of Black Arts in Baltimore City. Famous and up-and-coming Black entertainers used to regularly come to our area of the city to perform and showcase their talents. We continue that legacy by showcasing the artistic talents of our community in numerous ways and outlets. Poetry is one of those outlets. Poetry is also one of the ways we protest the systematic and interpersonal challenges within our environment, express our hope and faith in Jesus the Christ, and affirm the inherent dignity of our congregants and neighborhood. The poems within this book reflect the hopes, pains, joy, and faith of our congregation. It also reflects a small portion of the talent contained within this powerful group. Poetry is one of the ways in which we express ourselves, name our experiences, and communicate with God. As such it is a pathway to healing and thriving, and an expression of prayer. Every week, one of our members recites a poem during our worship service. To us, poetry is as much a part of our worship experience as singing. This book represents a portion of the poems spoken each week. We intend for this publication to be the first of several volumes of individual and collective poems. We hope that you are moved by our words and find them relatable and inspirational for faithful living.




Poems, Protest, and a Dream


Book Description




For Them I Cried


Book Description

Cesar A. Cruz's belief that "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." is aptly demonstrated in For Them I Cried. This distinctive work is an emotionally stirring creation of poetry and prose. It is a must-read for anyone who has experienced or has walked alongside someone else who has experienced great hurt, grief, anger, oppression, frustration, empathy, or great joy. Before opening the book, readers between the ages of 13 to 103 should brace themselves for a journey of cathartic impact!




Poetry of Love and Protest


Book Description

My four books at this site are:- CHOSEN WORLD - OUR WAR ON ISLAM AND OUR OWN FREEDOMS; US INVASION OF CANADA AND ITS ABSORPTION; THE BLACK BUG - THE GENETIC BOMB & MORE BLACK HOLOCAUSTS; POETRY OF LOVE AND PROTEST. I grew up in a British Colony, British Guiana, and lived through its fight for independence, led by Cheddi Jagan with his wife Janet Rosenberg and Forbes Burnham. I also lived through the dark times of CIA and MI6 interventions. I left Guyana for Canada in 1971, while that county endured 40 years of darkness. After President Jimmy Carter eventually brokered fair elections Guyana is healing itself of its ethnic strife. Canada became my home in the 1970´s and I used my experience as a journalist for the "Guiana Graphic" and the "Chronicle" to research my books. My research for "CHOSEN WORLD - Our war on Islam and our own freedoms" led me to step beyond my own Christian faith and to investigate that of Judaism and Islam, primarily. My self education about Buddism, Hinduism, Zorastrianism and Bahiism was short and requires my followup. CHOSEN WORLD views contemporary events with as a ladder to future sequences and the lover rungs as leading to the origins of the events. This book then takes the reader into various futures that can arise from the events first discussed. One of the most challenging ´Chosen Worlds´ I examined forced me to enter the mind of a future Pope who is being blackmailed to cast the Church´s vote as directed by the world blight that American has become as it has become fully parasatized by foreign influences. My poetry of youth in Guyana and of my adult life in Canada, is also heavily influenced by my deep appreciation of women in my life and my love of nature. It speaks of my teen years when I was fortunate to have been romantically involved with ladies twice my age. Today, these older women would be called predators. Like all of my country people of those years, I grew up very close to nature and travelling in the tropical rain forests and on the mighty rivers of Guyana also influenced my POETRY OF LOVE AND PROTEST. The "protest" in the title of my poetry and in my novels stems my period of journalism in Guyana, writing about about the Amerindian, Chinese, Black and East Indian condition and of our overall poverty and despair. That protest reaches to my mid and later years. I experienced the same emotions of protest as I visited Canadian Reservations of slow genocide and experienced the fierce hatred that my Arab-Islamic name evoked among a small but active group in Winnipeg Manitoba. This group was weaned on the biblical stories of Ishmael and Isaac and carry with them their interpretation that they were short changed by God, in favour of the descendants of the biblical Ishmael. Millions of these nutcases are determined to contol the oil and water resources of the Islamic Middle East that they claim is their inheritance. CHOSEN WORLD addresses some of this. My Canadian experience is also shaped by experiences such as that with a former employer, who, when I gave him notice, played a Ben Franklin tape for me that said that to be successful I must not be like "Arabs who are dirty, lazy and failures."My name evoked passion simply by my speaking it, in Manitoba. Over the past decades, after Pierre Elliot Trudeau, I have been aghast at Canada´s steady morphing into an armed appendage of the Empire next door and at General Rick Hillier sending our lads and lasses to "kill the scum" in Afghanistan and to be sent back as dead "heroes.´ I flinch at the horror told by Palestinian survivors and Israeli journalists of the Sharon engineered genocides at Sabra and Chatilla. I am inured to the actions of those who react with outrage at criticism especially of the Occupation of Palestine. These antagonists were formed with their own prejudices and I came by min




Faith in Poetry


Book Description

In this ambitious book, Michael D. Hurley explores how five great writers – William Blake, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot – engaged their religious faith in poetry, with a view to asking why they chose that literary form in the first place. What did they believe poetry could say or do that other kinds of language or expression could not? And how might poetry itself operate as a unique mode of believing? These deep questions meet at the crossroads of poetics and metaphysics, and the writers considered here offer different answers. But these writers also collectively shed light on the interplay between literature and theology across the long nineteenth century, at a time when the authority and practice of both was being fiercely reimagined.