Dorianne Laux's long-awaited third book of poetry follows her collection, What We Carry, a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In Smoke, Laux revisits familiar themes of family, working class lives and the pleasures of the body in poetry that is vital and artfully crafted-poetry that "gets hard in the face of aloofness," in the words of one reviewer. In Smoke, as in her previous work, Laux weaves the warp and woof...

A Study Guide for Dorianne Laux's "For the Sake of Strangers," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

Winner of the 2011 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry Selected by Dorianne Laux This collection examines how the loss of a parent at a young age can color the way that child looks at the world even when the child is no longer a child.

When the Rewards Can Be So Great is a selection of craft talks delivered by faculty at the Pacific University MFA in Writing program. The essays in this exciting collection are at times deeply personal, providing insight into the development of the writers in their craft, and at times sharply practical and filled with long-tested approaches for writing with power and effectiveness. All are, characterized by care, generosity, and good humor, and reflect,...

A collection of poetry with "resilience throughout and an awareness of the common world that both comforts and devastates" (Dorianne Laux, award-winning author of Only As the Day Is Long). From Tina Schumann, recipient of the American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal and a Pushcart Prize nominee, comes a full collection of fifty-six poems reflecting on the concept of self, loss, fragility, and the constructs we must create in order to...

Here is the good stuff: poetry written by women that actually excites the thinking reader. This anthology, spanning work of the last 75 years, will broaden its readers' notions of what defines erotic poetry. For what is more intriguing, more satisfying than strong, self-assured writing? This groundbreaking anthology includes the most popular women writers―among them Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Alexander, Anne Sexton, Dorianne Laux, Denise Levertov, Adrienne...

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop is a poetry tutorial designed to inform and inspire poets. It includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews with poets. Organized into ten sections, the book covers such concepts as Diction, Sound, Voice, and Imagery. It is geared towards the experienced poet as well as those just getting started and is ideal for individual use at home or group use in the classroom or workshop. Contributors include...

Teachers, exercises, mentors, critiques, humor, and inspiration: these form the fuel all writers need when they get down to work every day. For decades the Loft Literary Center has provided this fuel to an enormous community of writers. Views from the Loft brings together the collected wisdom of that community - its authors, students, and editors - giving anyone the tools and inspiration necessary to thrive in the writing life. A who's who of writers...

In last year's Pushcart Prize, editor Bill Henderson noted that the Pushcart Prize, "the small good thing, has evolved into an international prize drawing nominations from small presses around the globe." As always, the selections are made by a distinguished panel of Guest Editors and hundreds of Contributing Editors. The list of authors, selected and encouraged over the decades, is immense. (An index to previous volumes is included in each edition.)--Amazon...

From the Publisher: In this beautiful collection of poems and paintings, Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate, joins with David Allen Sibley, America's foremost bird illustrator, to celebrate the winged creatures that have inspired so many poets to sing for centuries. From Catullus and Chaucer to Robert Browning and James Wright, poets have long treated birds as powerful metaphors for beauty, escape, transcendence, and divine expression. Here,...