Many Faces of Life Captured Through Poetry is an anthology of expressions, capturing the different aspects of life. Journey with Alvin as he gives a voice to life’s joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and even suffering. Each poem is written to give inspiration, hope, and relief as you travel through each phase of your life. The author hopes readers will realize that every dream can become a reality. That they will face storms in life, however, we have the assurance that every storm will become calm, so with Christ in the vessel they can smile at the storm.

I can remember writing poetry as early as the age of fourteen. For me, writing poems was either an expression of young love or a means of escaping farm life. I do know I write what I feel deep in my heart. Sometimes I would daydream about what life would be like after leaving the farm. At that time, I did not appreciate or value the importance of farm life. Then falling in love for the first time gave me words that would flow like water. That was the beginning of my poetry. Then came my retirement from the Air Force. I took a job as a substitute teacher to test the waters and see if I wanted to go back to the classroom. On May 23, 1995, was my last substitute teaching positions for the year. The last period of the day was a literature class, and yes, you guessed it, it was an assignment to write a poem. After directing the students on what they were to do, I sat back, thought about my daughter, who was also graduating, and at that moment, I wrote with them. The poem that came out of that session, "Life Captured," was the first in this book. After that, the words would sometimes overwhelm me. It did not matter where or when. I would sometimes wake up from a deep sleep, and there were words on my heart. Driving down the street, I would have to pull off the road. And can you imagine sitting in church, concentrating on the words of the pastor, and poem comes into your heart? That is what it was like for next few years. When the word came, I made every effort to put them on paper. If I did not have a notepad, I would write on whatever was available, a store receipts, the back of an envelope, or even a paper bag. It did not matter; I just knew I had to capture the words. You see, there was a problem with these abrupt encounters with words. I found, through experience, that I could not ignore them because if I did, they would be lost. Yes, the words that were flowing so freely at the time would be gone if I did not take heed at that exact moment. So I learned incredibly early that it did not matter when or where the words came; I had to stop everything and write them down. So you see, my poetry comes to me at times when the spirit urges it. I cannot just will a poem to be. It must be stirred up in my spirit. My poetry is a combination of spiritual and emotional love. The love for people and my love of God. I never know which will spark the flame, and that does not matter, but I do know I must be ready to put pen to paper when it happens.

the Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception (HBR) provide comprehensive introductions to individual topics in biblical reception history. They address a wide range of academic fields and interdisciplinary matters, including reception of the Bible in various contexts and historical periods; in diverse geographic areas; in particular cultural, social, and political contexts; and in relation to important biblical themes, topics, and figures.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shifting of American foreign policy away from "old" Europe, long-established patterns of interaction between Germany and the U.S. have come under review. Although seemingly disconnected from the cultural and intellectual world, political developments were not without their influence on the humanities and their curricula during the past century. In retrospect, we can speak of the many different roles Germany has played in American eyes. The Many Faces of Germany seeks to acknowledge the importance of those incarnations for the study of German culture and history on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the major questions raised by the contributors is whether the transformations in the transatlantic dynamics and in the importance of Germany for the U.S. have had a major influence on the study of things German in the U.S. internally. The volume gathers together leading voices of the older and younger generations of social historians, literary scholars, film critics, and cultural historians.

The Tibetan Gesar epic has known countless retellings, translations, and academic studies. The Many Faces of Ling Gesar, presents its historical, cultural, and literary aspects for the first time in a single volume for both general readers and specialists.

The Many Faces of Ruan Dacheng: Poet, Playwright, Politician in Seventeenth-Century China is the first monograph in English on a controversial Ming dynasty literary figure. It examines and re-assesses the life and work of Ruan Dacheng (1587–1646), a poet, dramatist, and politician in the late Ming period. Ruan Dacheng was in his own time a highly regarded poet, but is best known as a dramatist, and his poetry is now largely unknown. He is most notorious as a ‘treacherous official’ of the Ming–Qing transition, and as a result his literary work—his plays as well as his poetry—has been neglected and undervalued. Hardie argues that Ruan’s literary work is of much greater significance in the history of Chinese literature than has generally been recognised since his own time. Ruan, rather than being a transgressive figure, is actually a very typical late Ming literatus, and as such his attitudes towards identity and authenticity can add to our understanding of these issues in late Ming intellectual history. These insights will impact on the cultural and intellectual history of late imperial China. ‘This work is exciting and reads almost like a novel. It has both a biographical and a literary component. It successively examines Ruan Dacheng’s biography in the context of his time, his complex relationships with his contemporaries, and the question of the judgment made on him in his time and by posterity.’ —Rainier Lanselle, École Pratique des Hautes Études, France ‘The author makes a persuasive argument that Ruan Dacheng deserves revaluation as a late Ming literatus and makes a contribution to the field of premodern Chinese literature and culture by presenting his life and work within a broader context, especially by examining examples of his poetry and discussing his plays.’ —Richard Strassberg, UCLA

This groundbreaking volume critically examines how writers in Japanese-occupied northeast China negotiated political and artistic freedom while engaging their craft amidst an increasing atmosphere of violent conflict and foreign control. The allegedly multiethnic utopian new state of Manchukuo (1932–1945) created by supporters of imperial Japan was intended to corral the creative energies of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, and Mongols. Yet, the twin poles of utopian promise and resistance to a contested state pulled these intellectuals into competing loyalties, selective engagement, or even exile and death—surpassing neat paradigms of collaboration or resistance. In a semicolony wrapped in the utopian vision of racial inclusion, their literary works articulating national ideals and even the norms of everyday life subtly reflected the complexities and contradictions of the era. Scholars from China, Korea, Japan, and North America investigate cultural production under imperial Japan’s occupation of Manchukuo. They reveal how literature and literary production more generally can serve as a penetrating lens into forgotten histories and the lives of ordinary people confronted with difficult political exigencies. Highlights of the text include transnational perspectives by leading researchers in the field and a memoir by one of Manchukuo’s last living writers. “This first-rate collection offers the most comprehensive overview of Manchukuo literature in any language. Containing an abundance of very original research and analysis, with relevant references to diverse sources in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian, the essays will be welcomed by scholars dealing with literary, historical, political, and colonization issues in Manchukuo and its neighbors.” —Ronald Suleski, Suffolk University, Boston “Manchukuo Perspectives is an excellent contribution to the field. Manchukuo was a fascinating and fraught experiment. Colonialism, imperialism, modernism, and nationalism were just some of the many different forces at play there. With an impressive set of contributors bringing both breadth and depth to the study of these issues, this collection fills a void in our understanding of the cultural and literary production of Manchukuo wonderfully.” —James Carter, Saint Joseph’s University