Set in England, Boston, and the Caribbean, this Pinteresque, artfully crafted story describes a relationship between Justine, a young dancer, and Roy, her philosophy teacher at Oxford. It is a story of love and sex, pain and intellect, and ultimate redemption. The story is narrated by Justine, who chronicles her own awakening from disciple to equal; from blind, yet innocent masochism to full personhood; from student/lover/wife to emancipation from Roy a tormented, though brilliant man who is obsessed with the question of free will and his own intense, yet twisted sexuality. Ultimately, this first novel describes a spiritual journey that leads Justine and Roy beyond pleasure, beyond renunciation, to a transcendent knowledge of the deepest meanings of love and loyalty.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-strand instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. Celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express the full range of human and artistic experience--joyful and gritty, raw and painful. In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled era. This magnificent volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.

Favorite Songs that people sang in the old days.

Every day people tune in to The Writer's Almanac on public radio and hear Garrison Keillor read them a poem. And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by the narrator for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m." The title Good Poems comes from common literary parlance. For writers, it's enough to refer to somebody having written a good poem. Somebody else can worry about greatness. Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" is a good poem, and so is James Wright's "A Blessing." Regular people love those poems. People read them aloud at weddings, people send them by e-mail. Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendance. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. It's a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry whether they know it or not.

Musicians and music scholars rightly focus on the sounds of the blues and the colorful life stories of blues performers. Equally important and, until now, inadequately studied are the lyrics. The international contributors to Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From explore this aspect of the blues and establish the significance of African American popular song as a neglected form of oral history. “High Water Everywhere: Blues and Gospel Commentary on the 1927 Mississippi River Flood,” by David Evans, is the definitive study of songs about one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States. In “Death by Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire,” Luigi Monge analyzes a continuum of songs about exclusively African American tragedy. “Lookin’ for the Bully: An Enquiry into a Song and Its Story,” by Paul Oliver traces the origins and the many avatars of the Bully song. In “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s,” Tom Freeland and Chris Smith study a ballad recorded in 1939 by a black convict at Parchman prison farm. “Coolidge’s Blues: African American Blues from the Roaring Twenties” is Guido van Rijn’s survey of blues of that decade. Robert Springer's “On the Electronic Trail of Blues Formulas” presents a number of conclusions about the spread of patterns in blues narratives. In “West Indies Blues: An Historical Overview 1920s-1950s,” John Cowley turns his attention to West Indian songs produced on the American mainland. Finally, in “Ethel Waters: ‘Long, Lean, Lanky Mama,’” Randall Cherry reappraises the early career of this blues and vaudeville singer

The Gig Book returns again with the chords an lyrics to over one hundred traditional songs; songs of hard travellin’, booze, the wild country and broken hearts. Presented with melody line arrangements in standard notation, with guitar chord boxes and complete lyrics, this is the perfect reference for guitarists, keyboard players and all other musicians, allowing you to quickly understand and learn every one of these historical pieces – how to sing it and what chords to play. The setlist includes: - Abide With Me - Amazing Grace - Barbara Allen - Battle Hymn Of The Republic - Cotton Fields - Dixie - Down By The Riverside - Down In The Valley - Four Drunken Nights - House Of The Rising Sun - John Brown's Body - John Henry - Midnight Special - Scarborough Fair - Shortnin' Bread - Streets Of London - The Blue Bells Of Scotland - The Camptown Races - Where Have All The Flowers Gone? - Auld Lang Syne - The Bells Of Rhymney - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen - Frankie And Johnny And many, many more!