Part fable, part diatribe, part elegy, part love song, this extraordinary fifth collection by Campbell McGrath makes poetry of the most unlikely of materials -- his home state of Florida. While at times poignantly personal, McGrath also returns for the first time to the characteristically comic and visionary public voice displayed in the renowned "Bob Hope Poem." Moving effortlessly from prehistory to the space age, he catalogues Florida's natural wonders and historical figureheads, from Ponce de LeÓn to Walt Disney, William Bartram to Chuck E. Cheese -- "the bewhiskered Mephistopheles of ring toss,/the diabolical vampire of our transcendent ideals." In the brilliant sociohistorical monologue of "The Florida Poem," McGrath employs the Fountain of Youth as a mythic symbol for both the tragic consequences of a society built on greed and cultural erasure and the diverse human potential, "which must become the fountain/for any communal future we might dare imagine." Place-bound and tightly focused, Campbell McGrath's message is nonetheless universal, as his penetrating vision of Florida is also a vision of America -- its history and hopes, failings and fulfillments, and the eternal force that transcends it all.

The title poem of this book records a sojourn to a small island off the Florida Panhandle. Reachable only by boat, Dog Island provides a quiet respite where Miami poet-artist Laurence Donovan contemplates the sea, sand, and sky and transforms them into words and etchings. Donald Justice, in his foreword, calls Donovan "doubly gifted" in both his poetry and his art. This volume presents both, the latter in fifteen of his etchings. He was also known for his linocuts, represented here by the small scorpion at the end of the book.

Combing Florida's Shores is a poetic memoir. Part one depicts a man, his wife, and their girl and boy reveling in the joys of vacationing in Fort Lauderdale. The second section chronicles the now-divorced man returning to his old haunts, with a new love, to find that everything, and nothing, is the same.

A lyric mix of journalism, science, family lore, and lived experience reveals the complex realities of Florida and a redemption that's wondrously messy and surprising.

Poems of the Florida glades and islands. More poems on travels to Greece and China, Nature, and a general Potpourri.

To many, James Joyce is simply the greatest novelist of the twentieth century. Scholars have pored over every minutia of his public and private life from utility bills to deeply personal letters in search of new insights into his life and work. Yet, for the most part, they have paid scant attention to the two volumes of poetry he published. The nine contributors to The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsideredconvincingly challenge the critical consensus that Joyce’s poetry is inferior to his prose. They reveal how his poems provide entries into Joyce's most personal and intimate thoughts and ideas. They also demonstrate that Joyce's poetic explorations--of the nature of knowledge, sexual intimacy, the changing quality of love, the relations between writing and music, and the religious dimensions of the human experience--were fundamental to his development as a writer of prose. This exciting new work is sure to spark new interest in Joyce's poetry, and will become an essential and indispensable resource for students and scholars of his life and work.