Praise for Slade's Poetry "Dr. Leonard A. Slade, Jr., is a gifted poet. His poems that deal with social issues reflect the complexity of people and relationships, as well as highlight some very troubling contemporary problems. Slade's poetry is truly a healing work of art." - Sandra M. Grayson Professor of English University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee "The beauty of Slade's poetry is the adequacy of their feeling and the fine images he discovers for their expressions. His poetry is a rich addition to our literary stores." - Houston A. Baker, Jr. Distinguished Professor of English Vanderbilt University "In spare, unpretentious verse Slade asks us to think about racism, history, love, the beauty of nature, the homeless, old teachers, young daughters, political hypocrisy - - and more. These are splendid, moving poems." -Elizabeth Ammons Former Dean The College of Arts and Sciences Tufts University "Dr. Leonard A. Slade, Jr.'s poetry presents a historical panorama of American blacks. His poems cover a range of subjects. They reflect the poet's values: family, education, love, nature, the history of blacks in the U.S., hypocrisy, and politics. Slade is a new breed of black poet." - R. Baird Shuman Professor Emeritus of English University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Leonard A. Slade, Jr., is Professor Emeritus, former Director of the Humanistic Studies Doctoral Program and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, Collins Fellow, and Citizen Academic Laureate at the University at Albany (SUNY). He has published in many journals and magazines and is the author of twenty-one books of poetry. He studied poetry with Pulitzer Prize winners Donald Justice and Stephen Dunn. For several summers, Slade studied poetry at Bennington College, Vermont; at The Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop, Middlebury College, Vermont; at The Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in Fiction and Poetry; and at The Ragdale Artists' Colony, Lake Forest, Illinois. The recipient of many awards for his writing, teaching, and service, Slade has taught English and Africana Studies at the University at Albany (SUNY), Skidmore College, Union College, and RPI. He lives with his wife in Albany, New York.

A collection of poems about peace by Anna Grossnickle Hines, accompanied by illustrations that feature quilts made by the poet.

Poems of humor, protest, love and wonder, by one of America's most original voices.

If you stop and look around you, you'll start to see. Tall marigolds darkening. A spring wind blowing. The woods awake with sound. On the wooden porch, your love smiling. Dew-wet red berries in a cup. On the hills, the beginnings of green, clover and grass to be pasture. The fowls singing and then settling for the night. Bright, silent, thousands of stars. You come into the peace of simple things. From the author of the 'compelling' and 'luminous' essays of The World-Ending Fire comes a slim volume of poems. Tender and intimate, these are consoling songs of hope and of healing; short, simple meditations on love, death, friendship, memory and belonging. They celebrate and elevate what is sensuous about life, and invite us to pause and appreciate what is good in life, to stop and savour our fleeting moments of earthly enjoyment. And, when fear for the future keeps us awake at night, to come into the peace of wild things.

"The poems gathered here span the last three decades of Levertov's life, their subjects ranging from Vietnam to the death-squads of El Salvador to the first Gulf War." -- Back cover. -- Provided by publisher.

Each square represents snapshots of life capturing time within each border. Peace in Pieces is a collection of forty-one poems that grapple with the complexity of living. Writing has been Peggy Belles's uncensored outlet throughout her life. Documented here in captivating verse are the immense challenges and indelible experiences of one woman's journey from a childhood marred by abuse, family addiction, and death into adulthood and the pursuit of a purposeful life for herself by helping others. Much like squares of a quilt, each poem in Peace in Pieces serves as a story of its own-a distinct sliver of Belles's life-but together they illustrate the humbling lessons that come with experience. Loss, shame, abuse, and regret are influences of Belles's words, but ultimately the power of vulnerability and the cyclical nature of blame and forgiveness are the prizes waiting in reflection. The poems run the gamut of some of life's most tragic themes. But through shimmering stanzas comes a sense of triumph amid challenge and the uplifting notion that inner peace is only waiting to be discovered. Ultimately, Belles's autobiography as told through her poetry is much more than it seems. Peace in Pieces captures a powerful sense of self-a deep consciousness and awareness that reveals that true inner strength is more than the mere ability to march on through adversity.

From the Preface: I love the �Precedent� poems included here, for they remind us that our work includes history and models which we can learn from and adapt to our own times. These writers all take us back through Walt Whitman to Emerson�s definition of the poet�s role: �The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty,� and so a truthful �naming� and �saying� are a part of all of these beautiful poems. Denise Levertov�s poem �Life at War,� written during the Vietnam War, speaks to us immediately and directly by naming what has been lost in adopting a contemporary mindset of warfare: �our nerve filaments twitch in its presence/ day and night, / nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, / nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, / the deep intelligence living at peace would have.� For her and the poets and readers here the poem bravely confronts the world and yet moves us to imagine the peace within it and ourselves. We offer this book as part of that intention.-Larry Smith