Poetry can be daunting and hard to understand, but it doesn't have to be. I feel a poet has an obligation to write in a way that everyone can understand. Poems should flow softly through a poet's words, their meanings gently caressing the heart and mind of its reader. If a poem comes from the heart, it will reach other hearts, and this is what I've tried to do with the poetry in "Anatomy of a Poet." CJ Heck "Like a rose with many petals and sharing its sweet aroma, this is how I see and feel about the love of my life, CJ Heck. She is my electric blue-eyed girl. She can be both a little girl, or a strong woman, whenever and wherever the situation calls for it. She is both sensuous and exciting, and soft and affectionate. Tragedy struck her life early with the death of her husband in Vietnam. This experience laid open the very core of her heart and soul and opened the channel to a well of compassion and sensitivity that waited deep within. Her pain was the fertilizer that helped her bloom as a writer. CJ's poetry is not a surface observation, but a soulful interpretation of the events and people that inspired her. She writes both eloquently and simply of things that touch her heart, things she wants to share. She is gifted at painting a picture with words on the heart and imagination of others, thereby communicating not just an image, but a life experience. I feel very honored to have been asked to write this introduction and share my feelings about CJ Heck. She is the water for my soil, the sunlight for my petals and the nurturer of my growth. Sit back, open your heart and enjoy the journey as revealed through her words, images and emotions. You are blessed by this opportunity to know her in words, as I know her in life." Robert S. Cosmar, Author "This is my kind of poetry. Direct, beautifully expressed and without a hint of pretension." Allison Cassidy "CJ is predominately viewed as a writer of works for children, but CJ now carries over her approach to more adult themes. In doing so, she presents a profound world that is deeply sad, incredibly humorous and sometimes very intimate." Joseph Daly "I love learning new words, especially when they are explained with such diaphanous clarity. Whether she talks of love, children, life, or any other subject, CJ's words are always clear and harmonious. She makes us forget that easy to read is hard to write." Marc Mimouni (London, United Kingdom) "CJ Heck is a very talented author. Her words are enlightening and charismatic to people of all ages. It is a privilege and honor to read her prolific pen." Janet Caldwell (Managing Editor, Inner Child Magazine

"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

"Explores the vulnerable ways we articulate and reckon with fear: fear of intergenerational trauma and the silent, hidden histories of families. What does it mean to grow up in a take-out restaurant, surrounded by food, just a generation after the Great Leap Forward famine in 1958-62. Full of elegy and resilient joy, these poems speak across generations of survival. How much of the world do we fear? How can we find comfort and ancestral power in this fear?"--

A teenager struggles through physical loss to the start of acceptance in an absorbing, artful novel at once honest and insightful, wrenching and redemptive. (Age 12 and up) On a sunny day in June, at the beach with her mom and brother, fifteen-year-old Jane Arrowood went for a swim. And then everything -- absolutely everything -- changed. Now she’s counting down the days until she returns to school with her fake arm, where she knows kids will whisper, "That’s her -- that’s Shark Girl," as she passes. In the meantime there are only questions: Why did this happen? Why her? What about her art? What about her life? In this striking first novel, Kelly Bingham uses poems, letters, telephone conversations, and newspaper clippings to look unflinchingly at what it’s like to lose part of yourself - and to summon the courage it takes to find yourself again.

"What a strange and intense book this is! David Blair has a wild, restless imagination and he uses language like saw, a hammer, a velvet whip. He can write incredibly tender (and original) love poems and enfilading satirical poems, as well as many of the many other "kinds" of poems between those poles, and they all seem entirely at home, indeed, need to be in this book together. His music, his diction, his refusal to use (ever!) cliches, his syntax all drive his poems and their hearts forward. That is where his poems go: forward. He will be in the company of the best poets of his generation." --Thomas Lux "Nothing can remain horizontal or vertical for long" might as well be David Blair's mini ars poetica. A commitment to the pleasures and terrors of change, you might say. I have been reading Blair's poems for about ten years now--struck always by his unique pitch and tone, the tensile muscularity of his syntax and vibrational accents. His diction is totally unboxed. He reminds me a bit of August Kleinzahler or John Yau in this--a karaoke of urban hullabaloo sung slightly off the beat, all for the sake of swing....David Blair's acceptance of the world is signaled by his stylishness, provoked by the people and things he encounters. His brain knows that it's living in an animal body. And it moves among all these other minds and bodies in motion. Changed by the smallest of changes. Unbalanced but at ease. This poet's energy reminds me of Edwin Denby's comments about De Kooning's paintings from the 1930s: "He wanted everything in the picture out of equilibrium except spontaneously all of it...a miraculous force and weight of presence moving from all over the canvas at once." These poems wantthat, too. --David Rivard, /Boston Review/ "David Blair's work is both public and discreet, somewhere between black box theatre and a blind date with an utterly beguiling stranger. His poems are dinner parties, intimate and sumptuous, arranged with great care and yet full of unforeseen turns: the pope gives way to 'the first red coils of the peonies' and a the hair of a lost aviator becomes 'brown, fibrous light.' How refreshingly unlike contemporary poetry this book is; a pleasure. --D. A. Powell

An award-winning poet offers a brilliant introduction to the joys--and challenges--of the genre In Don't Read Poetry, award-winning poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry. Burt dispels preconceptions about poetry and explains how poems speak to one another--and how they can speak to our lives. She shows readers how to find more poems once they have some poems they like, and how to connect the poetry of the past to the poetry of the present. Burt moves seamlessly from Shakespeare and other classics to the contemporary poetry circulated on Tumblr and Twitter. She challenges the assumptions that many of us make about "poetry," whether we think we like it or think we don't, in order to help us cherish--and distinguish among--individual poems. A masterful guide to a sometimes confounding genre, Don't Read Poetry will instruct and delight ingénues and cognoscenti alike.