If you've been combing the bookshops for a new collection of poetry that's likely to stimulate the intellect, fine-tune the senses, and simultaneously break the heart, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound is the volume you're after. Here, the gifted poet Yvonne Zipter exhibits an astonishing vocabulary, offering insights that perhaps we never realized we'd missed. One stunning example: in an elegiac poem for her beloved dog, she recalls the "sweet slenderness of that languorous / lick of calcium, like an ivory flute." Another: an ekphrastic take on discarded pencils, noting "how quick they are to deny their own musings"-a notion which suggests that virtually all writers and readers of poetry will savor this book. -Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, 2009-2010

The editor of the bestselling poetry anthologies How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness presents a collection of highly accessible, uplifting poetry celebrating the small wonders and peaceful moments of everyday life. James Crews, editor of two best-selling poetry anthologies, How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness, presents an all-new collection of highly accessible poems on the theme of celebrating moments of wonder and peace in everyday life. As Crews writes in the introduction: "[A] deep love for the world is present in every one of the poems gathered in this book. Wonder calls us back to the curiosity we are each born with, and it makes us want to move closer to what sparks our attention. Wonder opens our senses and helps us stay in touch with a humbling sense of our own human smallness in the face of unexpected beauty and the delicious mysteries of life on this planet." The anthology features a foreword by Nikita Gill and a carefully curated selection of poems from a diverse range of authors, including Native American poets Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Kimberly Blaeser, and Joseph Bruchac, and BIPOC writers Ross Gay, Julia Alvarez, and Toi Derricotte. Crews features new poems from popular writers such as Natalie Goldberg, Mark Nepo, Ted Kooser, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Jacqueline Suskin, along with selections from emerging poets. Readers are guided in exploring the meaning and essence of the poems through a series of reflective pauses scattered through the pages and reading group questions in the back. This anthology offers the perfect intersection for the growing number of readers interested in mindful living and bringing poetry into their everyday lives.

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology offers 54 poets’ takes on often-unsung facets of this diamond in a rhinestone world—calling in Dolly’s impeccable comedic timing, her lyric mastery, her business acumen, and her Dollyverse advocacy. These poems remind us to be better and to do better, to subvert Dolly cliché, and they encourage us to weave Dolly metaphor into our own family lore. Within these pages, Dolly takes the stage and the dinner table; readers see the public Dolly of the silver screen and the private Dolly of identity contemplation. Dolly raises praise and question, and she butterflies into our hearts to unabashedly to claim the mantra In Dolly We Trust. With Dolly poems from 54 contributors: Kelli Russell Agodon • Nin Andrews • Lana K. W. Austin • David-Matthew Barnes • Nicky Beer • Julie E. Bloemeke • Emma Bolden • Dustin Brookshire • Phillip Watts Brown • Marina Carreira • Denise Duhamel • teri elam •Rupert Fike • Diamond Forde • Chad Frame • Makayla Gay • Tyler Gillespie • Kari Gunter-Seymour • Robert Gwaltney • Beth Gylys • Karen Head • Raye Hendrix • Collin Kelley • Dorianne Laux • Chin•Sun Lee • Arden Levine • Katie Manning • Kelly McQuain • Lynn Melnick • Jenny Molberg • Rachel Morgan • Caridad Moro-Gronlier • Carolyn Oliver • Dion O’Reilly • Jeffrey Perkins • Stephen Roger Powers • Steven Reigns • Linda Neal Reising • Benjamin Anthony Rhodes • Micah Ruelle • Anna Sandy-Elrod • Roberta Schultz • Maureen Seaton • Gregg Shapiro • L.J. Sysko • Nicole Tallman • Kerry Trautman • Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer • Dan Vera • Isaiah Vianese • Donna Vorreyer • Julie Marie Wade • Jennifer Wheelock • Yvonne Zipter

Marya Zhukova is a woman of many passions. Her husband isn't one of them. It's mathematics and literature that captivate her, in part, but her lover, Vera, enthralls her most of all. These are, however, all dangerous obsessions in the socially turbulent St. Petersburg of 1875. Marya is the fiery center of a small solar system of characters, each of whom depends on her to light their own lives. There is her aunt Lidia, a spinster who, dying of consumption, exacts from her niece a promise to marry. There is Grigorii, Marya's one-time math teacher, who longs for his former pupil to achieve the scholarly glory he cannot. There is Vera, a young tutor surprised to find she's fallen in love with a woman. There is Sergei, an earnest librarian captivated by Marya and willing to do whatever it takes to be near her, even if that means a platonic marriage. But when Sergei is consumed with desire for Marya, his anguish over the promise he made sets in motion a deadly chain of events. St. Petersburg itself adds a richness to these characters as they walk and muse along the city's canals or bounce along the rutted streets behind a hardy droshky driver on their way to dine at Privato or Leiner's Deli or to watch ballet at the Marinsky Theater. Inspired by a real-life account, Infraction takes place at a time when women who yearn for more find that freedom comes at a cost. Praise for Infraction "Infraction re-creates 19th-century Russia and what it was like to be a woman who loved women in that time and place. Marya, Yvonne Zipter's brilliant and feisty young heroine, lives through the excitement of revolutionary new ideas about women's rights, the delirium of passionate same-sex love, and the anguish caused by a society's refusal to acknowledge and honor women's relationships. Through Zipter's vivid and compelling writing, we walk every step of the way with Marya." - Lillian Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and Naked in the Promised Land "Infraction, the first novel by accomplished poet and nationally syndicated columnist Yvonne Zipter, is a poignant tale of suppressed yearning and potential. In 19th-century Russia, which is more of an infraction for Marya Zhukova, her love for mathematics or for a woman? Zipter's evocative book is based on a true story of a gifted gay geometer who was forbidden to follow both her head and her heart. Infraction will leave you reeling for how much has been squandered in the name of tradition and status quo." - Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of Man Alive! and The Bowl Is Already Broken "Part adventure story, part cautionary tale, Infraction opens a door on the inner lives of women in 19th-century Russia whose desire to love and to live a life of the mind comes at a price. Daring, delightful, and dangerous, filled with vivid details and keen emotional insight, Zipter's novel is an important and intriguing exploration of the forbidden and transgressive at a time when what was not spoken too often hid a life-or-death truth." -Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men "With elegant prose and authentic period detail, Yvonne Zipter's Infraction brings to vibrant life an aspect of tzarist Russian society all-too frequently ignored: women's same-sex romances and struggles to secure the dignity of independence." - Daniel M. Jaffe, translator of the best-selling Russian novel, Here Comes the Messiah!

Inside Out and Back Again meets Millicent Min, Girl Genius in this timely, hopeful middle-grade novel with a contemporary Chinese twist. Winner of the Asian / Pacific American Award for Children's Literature!* "Many readers will recognize themselves or their neighbors in these pages." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewMia Tang has a lot of secrets.Number 1: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, ten-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests.Number 2: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed.Number 3: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when her mom thinks she should stick to math because English is not her first language?It will take all of Mia's courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, escape Mr. Yao, and go for her dreams?Front Desk joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!

In this inspired collection, poet and editor Diane Lockward has assembled over 100 poems about kisses written by many of our best contemporary poets. You'll find kisses longed for, kisses auditioned, kisses rehearsed. Ritualistic kissing. Delicious kissing. Kissing that comforts the grieving. Kissing that blesses a union.

"Country dykes, city dykes, dykes with four-year degrees, dykes who are feminists, dykes who aren't, dykes of different races and classes, dyke who have been athletes all their lives, and dykes who are just discovering, or rediscovering after year, the values of athletic endeavors--there are softball players among all their ranks"--Page 4 of cover.