17 Love Poems with No Despair resounds with the voice of a clear, powerful speaker. Ward does not naively deny despair but rather refuses it, making a case to the beloved and to the reader that proffers love as an antidote. This book is an offering of passion wrought with charm and poignancy. Always one is aware of the strength that is required to love long and well.

Sensual, earthy love poems that formed the basis for the popular movie Il Postino, now in a beautiful gift book perfect for weddings, Valentine's Day, anniversaries, or just to say "I love you!" Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda’s love poems caused a scandal when published anonymously in 1952. In later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner’s oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images that reveal in gentle lingering lines an erotic re-imagining of the world through the prism of a lover’s body: "today our bodies became vast, they grew to the edge of the world / and rolled melting / into a single drop / of wax or meteor...." Written on the paradisal island of Capri, where Neruda "took refuge" in the arms of his lover Matilde Urrutia, Love Poems embraces the seascapes around them, saturating the images of endless shores and waves with a new, yearning eroticism. This wonderful book collects Neruda’s most passionate verses.

Against the backdrop of Isla Negra — the sea and wind, the white sand with its scattering of delicate wild flowers, the hot sun and salty smells of the Pacific — Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda sets these joyfully sensual poems in celebration of his love. The subject of that love: Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, the poet's "beloved wife." As popular in the Hispanic world as the poet's renowned Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,One Hundred Love Sonnets has never before been published in its entirety in English translation. The reason for this astonishing neglect may lie in the historical circumstances that surrounded Neruda's "discovery " by English-speaking readers. In the United States he came to popularity during the turmoil of the sixties, when Americans needed a politically committed poet, and much of Neruda's canon answered that need. But, in his native Chile and throughout Latin America, Neruda has always been cherished as dearly for the earthly sensuality and eroticism of his love poetry as for his statements of political belief. To know this work, then is to understand the poet's art more thoroughly.

Donna Spector’s Lessons is a cycle of vignettes, arranged chronologically, that depicts, through specific moments in the speaker-teacher’s career, the wide sweep of emotions one experiences during a career in education. Often poignant (the loss of students we carry like stones with us, although we may have forgotten their names), sometimes funny (a reactionary principal who doesn’t actually read anything), this book is a welcome acknowledgement of everyday scenarios for Spector’s fellow teachers, as well as a window onto the happiness and heartache of the profession for those who have been affected by teachers—which, of course, is all of us. —BJ Ward, Gravedigger’s Birthday, 17 Love Poems with No Despair, Landing in New Jersey with Soft Hands Teachers are idealists who try hard to make the world a better place, in spite of all the interferences with demanding parents, inane politicians, and inept administrators who torment rather than lead. And we all fail miserably much of the time. In one poem in Lessons, Donna Spector advises her students “Don’t let fear stop you.” And she takes her own advice marvelously. These poems overflow with good students, immature students, even criminal students, with rejection and frustration, loving and loathing, pity and terror, and ultimately with bracing courage. Dr. Johnson defined a second marriage as “the triumph of hope over experience.” The serene wisdom Ms. Spector offers in these poems in the aftermath of classroom nightmares makes it a good definition of teaching, too. —Sander Zulauf, Editor Emeritus, Journal of New Jersey Poets, & Poet Laureate, Diocese of Newark. English teachers expect a certain amount of drama, but Donna Spector’s Lessons is especially rich in the comedy and tragedy of high school. Struggling to keep order in the classroom, luring students into literature, directing plays and a literary magazine, watching students navigate the chaotic halls of adolescence, Spector, a graduate of Berkeley’s hippie days, can be as provocative as her students. Outside the classroom, she’s the playwright wearing glittering red heels (paid for by her principal) to her Off-Broadway opening night. Quirky, witty, tender poems that remind us how challenging and rewarding education (on both sides of the desk) can be. —Mary Makofske, Tractio, Eating Nasturtiums Donna Spector’s book of poems, Lessons, takes us on a journey, as we follow her from her early days as a teacher through the numerous classrooms she inhabited in the years in between. Spector celebrates both her failures and triumphs as a teacher. What we learn in Lessons is just how much love and perseverance go into creating a great teacher. What a gem of a book! —Maria Mazziotti Gillan, The Silence in an Empty House, Ancestors’ Song, What We Pass On: Collected Poems

"In poems that both honor and transcend his blue-collar roots, BJ Ward blends poignancy and humor with downright good storytelling, and takes his place among the bright up-and-coming voices of his generation." —Stephen Dunn, Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Meet the women who wrote. They wrote against all odds. Some wrote defiantly; some wrote desperately. Some wrote while trapped within the confines of status and wealth. Some wrote hand-to-mouth in abject poverty. Some wrote trapped in a room of their father’s house, and some went in search of a room of their own. They had lovers and families. They were sometimes lonely. Many wrote anonymously or under a pseudonym for a world not yet ready for their genius and talent. We know many of their names—Austen and Alcott, Brontë and Browning, Wheatley and Woolf—though some may be less familiar. They are here, waiting to introduce themselves. They marched through the world one by one or in small sisterhoods, speaking to each other and to us over distances of place and time. Pushing back against the boundaries meant to keep us in our place, they carved enough space for themselves to write. They made space for us to follow. Here they are gathered together, an army of women who wrote and an arsenal of words to inspire us. They walk with us as we forge our own paths forward. These women wrote to change the world. The perfect keepsake gift for the reader in your life Anthology of stories and poems Book length: approximately 90,000 words

In 1909, William Carlos Williams published his first book of poetry in Rutherford, NJ and started the modernist revolution. In 2009, that tradition is continued by the release of the second Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, a literary journal featuring the best of New Jersey and New York poets. There's an unpublished poem by Williams, several essays on the poet, and rare items from the Rutherford Public Library's Williams Collection.