Naked Swans is a bittersweet anthology filled with poetry and fantasy short stories showcasing women's lives.During the writing of Naked Swans, I shared the work in progress with friends and critics. The following are two of my favorite responses. The strongest response was from a fellow worker. The night he read the manuscript he placed it on my desk, then started to leave. He said he was going to beat up my companion for me. I caught him as he was going out the door. Whoa I put an end to his actions immediately. Later, I found a friend from Florida crying after having read the first handwritten draft. She had identified so closely with what she had read that she was convinced that I had written about the events in her life. The story of the Naked Swans is about life maybe yours.

Isabelle d’Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, born into privilege and the political and artistic turbulence of Renaissance Italy, is a stunning black-eyed blond and an art lover and collector. Worldly and ambitious, she has never envied her less attractive sister, the spirited but naïve Beatrice, until, by a quirk of fate, Beatrice is betrothed to the future Duke of Milan. Although he is more than twice their age, openly lives with his mistress, and is reputedly trying to eliminate the current duke by nefarious means, Ludovico Sforza is Isabella’s match in intellect and passion for all things of beauty. Only he would allow her to fulfill her destiny: to reign over one of the world’s most powerful and enlightened realms and be immortalized in oil by the genius Leonardo da Vinci. Isabella vows that she will not rest until she wins her true fate, and the two sisters compete for supremacy in the illustrious courts of Europe. A haunting novel of rivalry, love, and betrayal that transports you back to Renaissance Italy, Leonardo’s Swans will have you dashing to the works of the great master—not for clues to a mystery but to contemplate the secrets of the human heart.

Following Lynn V. Andrews on the continuation of her life’s journey as an initiate of a secret organization called the Sisterhood of the Shields, Crystal Woman, the fifth book in the internationally bestselling Medicine Woman series, takes Lynn into Australia and the uncharted territory of the soul. On a quest to free a story that dwells within her spirit, Lynn V. Andrews goes to Australia where she is initiated in the traditional ceremonies of the First Peoples’ clever women. It is here in the stark desert landscape of the Red Centre, not far from the mysterious Ayers Rock, that this extraordinary woman begins a new cycle in her search for selfhood. With her Cree mentors, Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs, by her side, Lynn seeks out Ginevee, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields and a Koori shamaness. It is Ginevee and numerous other women of high degree who teach Lynn to enter the legendary Dreamtime of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia using crystals as energy links and psychic amplifiers. There she encounters ancient sky beings, evil sorcerers, and animal allies, and visits the hidden places of the psyche—where terror lurks in the conflict between male and female selves, where her healing powers are called upon in a battle between the forces of life and death, and where she discovers the knowledge of becoming a whole person that is essential to us all.

J.M. Cohen Wrote That Yeats Was The Greatest Figure In English Poetry Since The Death Of Tennyson , And Ezra Pound, Who Once Went To Yeats To Learn How To Write Poetry, Wrote About Him : I Dare Say ... That Up To Date No One Has Shown Any Disposition To Supersede Him As The Best Poet In England Or Any Likelihood Of Doing So For Some Time... Yeats Is A Very Complex And Difficult Poet, Because There Is In Him A Curious Intermixture Of Romanticism, Realism, Mythology, Supernaturalism, Magic, Ocultism, Automatic Writing, Nationalism, Private Philosophy , And Even Prejudices. His Poems Are Very Compact, Allowing No Elaborations, And Leaving Gaps For The Reader To Imaginatively Fill Them Up, And Thus Making Them More Difficult. Great Explicators And Commentators Have, Of Course, Come Forward, But They Themselves, Sometimes, Are Either Difficult Or Not Enough. Therefore, The One Single Objective Of This Book Is To Introduce The Poet To The General Reader In An Easy Manner.To Give An Idea Of The Poet, As Many As Forty-One Poems, Selected From His Four Stages Of Poetic Development, Have Been Explained (And All Those Poems Have Been Quoted In Full). Yeats Had Also A Métier For Drama, And Had Been A Pioneer Of One Act Plays, And Wrote No Fewer Than Thirty Plays. And So Yeats Has Also Been Discussed As A Dramatist, And, In Addition, Eight Of His Plays Have Been Discussed At Some Length.

Matthew Bourne and His Adventures in Dance is an intimate and in-depth conversation between the prize-winning pioneer of ballet and contemporary dance Matthew Bourne and the New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay. In 1987, a small, aspirant dance group with a striking name made its debut on the London fringe. In 1996, Adventures in Motion Pictures made history as the first modern dance company to open a production in London's West End. From this achievement, AMP sailed triumphantly to Broadway - winning three Tony Awards - guided by Artistic Director Matthew Bourne. Even before the inception of AMP, Bourne was fascinated by theatre, by characterization, and by the history of dance. In his early works - Spitfire, Town & Country and Deadly Serious - Bourne brought a novel approach to dance. And in his reworkings of the classics of the ballet canon - Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Cinderella - Bourne created witty, vivid, poignant productions that received great acclaim. In the first decade of the new millennium, the company name was changed to New Adventures, and Bourne's 'classics', as well as Bourne's new works - The Car Man, Play Without Words, Edward Scissorhands and Dorian Gray - achieved levels of box-office popularity that have seldom, if ever, been matched in dance. In addition, his choreography for various musicals - My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and Oliver! - have run for years in the West End and on Broadway. The detail in which Bourne discusses his work with Alastair Macaulay is unprecedented. The two explore Bourne's upbringing, his training and influences, and his distinctive creative methods. Bourne's notebooks, his sources and his collaboration with dancers all form part of the discussion in this book.