Scattered Syllables is a collection of modern poetry designed to echo the wonder of natural growth. Split into three sections - Scattered, Growing and Love; poet Linda Lokhee explores life's challenges and how to light and maintain the flame of hope we all need to navigate our way through them. Linda's unique voice speaks to the universal truths we face and guides us on how to nurture love within every facet of our existence; connecting to nature, family, community and self.

In studying one of the world's oldest and most enduring musical cultures, academics have consistently missed one of the richest forms of Chinese cultural expression: performed narratives. Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson explores the relationships between language and music in the performance of four narrative genres in the city of Tianjin, China, based upon original field research conducted in the People's Republic of China in the mid 1980s and in 1991. The author emphasizes the unique nature of oral performances in China: these genres are both musical and literary and yet are considered to be neither music nor literature. Lawson employs extensive examples of the complex interaction of music and language in each genre, all the while relating those analyses to broader cultural issues and to patterns of social relationships. The narrative arts known as shuochang (speaking-singing) are depicted as genres that constitute a unique communicative discourse”the communication of stories in song. The genres subsumed under the native conception of shuochang include Tianjin Popular Tunes, Beijing Drumsong, Clappertales and Comic Routines. The maximum utilization of shuo (speaking) and chang (singing) in all their varying manifestations constitutes the vitality of the traditional narrative arts in the city of Tianjin”the center for these arts in North China. The variety of narrative forms provides entertainment for audiences representing all social strata of Chinese society. The author argues that Chinese narrative traditions represent a foundation from which certain Chinese literary and operatic traditions have borrowed, such as how the novels from the Ming-Qing period draw on the performed narrative arts both in style and in content. Hence, an understanding of performed narratives is not only useful to scholars in Chinese literature and music, but also to scholars interested in broadening their understanding of China generally.

Adrift in history and myth, fairy tales and TV, the tedious and the marvellous, you'll find Dislocations in Crystal. These poems move through the world opened by Prince Henry the Navigator's epoch-shifting push to open a sea route around Africa to the Spice Isles. They pick their way through the detritus of the world bequeathed by his success, looking for a land as promised, not of the given but the taken. Crossing and re-crossing untold regions disguised as a New World, these carefully crafted poems, in the tradition of Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer, scatter the seeds of the yet-to-be-thought, drawing readers onward towards a dream that lies past apocalypse.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

"An engaging tale, spun from the author's wilderness experience and his imaginative treatment of a male-female relationship-in-the-making."-Jerry Schad, author of the Afoot and Afield series September 29, 1991-Roy Ogilvie walks out of a Fresno bank to his waiting getaway car with nearly $1 million. By the end of the day, his stolen airplane has crashed into the side of a mountain in the remote Sierra Nevada Mountains. Searchers find the wreckage, but not Roy, or any trace of the stolen money. September 28, 2003-Nathan Rubideau knows where the searchers went wrong. With his present life in shambles, he sees the million-dollar treasure as his ticket to a new life. Only his inexperience in the wilderness has the potential to spoil his plan. As he gazed, satisfied, out the cockpit window, he pulled back on the control lever. The forest petered out and the land began to lump itself into weird shapes of granite. Ahead rose even higher peaks, that would force him to climb even higher. Once over the Sierra crest, he'd be home free. He could glide down into any desert town he wished. He was just zipping the bag shut and marveling at its weight when the plane's nose took an almost-imperceptible dip, and the engine made a spluttering sound. A man not accustomed to small planes might not have noticed, but nothing about a plane escaped Roy's attention. With a stab of fear, he glanced at the fuel gauge. Its pointer had settled on "E".