This collection of poems and essays offers an introduction to what is happening in American poetry today, and to how and what those who write poems think about it. It contains one poem each by 31 contributors, followed by an essay by the poet explaining the poem. These poems by living American poets exemplify strong, new styles -- some leaning on structures of prose fiction, some using traditional prosodic forms, some wandering between prose and poetry -- and a variety of thematic passions. Contributors include: James Dickey, Marvin Bell, Robert Bly, Tess Gallagher, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Czeslaw Milosz, William Stafford, and Robert Penn Warren. ISBN 0-380-89876-4 (pbk.) : $9.95.

"Three short plays for one (female) actor - all featuring mothers on the edge. Two have been staged to great acclaim, the third - a new piece by Catherine Johnson - has yet to be performed. Jordan by Anna Reynolds with Moira Buffini: based on the true story of a young mother who kills her baby boy rather than have him taken away by his abusive father, it won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe Play. The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by Catherine Johnson: the alternating stories of two women (played by one actress) who 'lose' their sons, one apparently murdered, the other a runaway. Catherine Johnson wrote the book for Mamma Mia! as well as several plays for theatres in London and Bristol. Unsuspecting Susan by Stewart Permutt: a middle-aged, upper-middle-class woman, originally played by Celia Imrie, reveals more than she means to about her increasingly odd 33-year-old son."--BOOK JACKET.

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, LGBT Latinas/os faced several forms of discrimination. The greater Latino community did not often accept sexual minorities, and the mainstream LGBT movement expected everyone, regardless of their ethnic and racial background, to adhere to a specific set of priorities so as to accommodate a “unified” agenda. To disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism, and homophobia that they experienced, LGBT Latinas/os organized themselves on local, state, and national levels, forming communities in which they could fight for equal rights while simultaneously staying true to both their ethnic and sexual identities. Yet histories of LGBT activism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s often reduce the role that Latinas/os played, resulting in misinformation, or ignore their work entirely, erasing them from history. Queer Brown Voices is the first book published to counter this trend, documenting the efforts of some of these LGBT Latina/o activists. Comprising essays and oral history interviews that present the experiences of fourteen activists across the United States and in Puerto Rico, the book offers a new perspective on the history of LGBT mobilization and activism. The activists discuss subjects that shed light not only on the organizations they helped to create and operate, but also on their broad-ranging experiences of being racialized and discriminated against, fighting for access to health care during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and struggling for awareness.

Stories do not actually exist in the world but are created and structured- modeled- through the process of mediation, i.e. through the means and techniques by which they are represented. This is an important field, not only for narratology but a

Drawing on the concept of hypermediacy from media studies, this book situates opera within the larger context of contemporary media practices, and particularly those that play up the multiplicity, awareness and enjoyment of media. It is driven by the underlying question of what politics of representation and perception opera performs within this context. This entails approaching operas as audiovisual events (rather than works or texts) and paying attention to what they do by visual means, along with the operatic music and singing. The book concentrates on events that foreground their use of media and technology, drawing attention to opera's inherently hypermedial aspects. It works with the recognition that such events nevertheless engender powerful effects of immediacy, which are not contingent on illusionism or the seeming transparency of the medium. It analyzes how effects like presence, liveness and immersion are produced, contesting some critical claims attached to them. It also sheds light on how these effects, often perceived as visceral or material in nature, are related to the production of meaning in opera. The discussion pertains to contemporary pieces such as Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway's Rosa and Writing to Vermeer, as well as productions of the canonical repertory such as Wagner's Ring Cycle by Robert Lepage at the Met and La Fura dels Baus in Valencia.

Jazz can be uplifting, stimulating, sensual, and spiritual. Yet when writers turn to this form of music, they almost always imagine it in terms of loneliness. In Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, Sam V. H. Reese investigates literary representations of jazz and the cultural narratives often associated with it, noting how they have, in turn, shaped readers’ judgments and assumptions about the music. This illuminating critical study contemplates the relationship between jazz and literature from a perspective that musicians themselves regularly call upon to characterize their performances: that of the conversation. Reese traces the tradition of literary appropriations of jazz, both as subject matter and as aesthetic structure, in order to show how writers turn to this genre of music as an avenue for exploring aspects of human loneliness. In turn, jazz musicians have often looked to literature—sometimes obliquely, sometimes centrally—for inspiration. Reese devotes particular attention to how several revolutionary jazz artists used the written word as a way to express, in concrete terms, something their music could only allude to or affectively evoke. By analyzing these exchanges between music and literature, Blue Notes refines and expands the cultural meaning of being alone, stressing how loneliness can create beauty, empathy, and understanding. Reese analyzes a body of prose writings that includes Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and midcentury short fiction by James Baldwin, Julio Cortázar, Langston Hughes, and Eudora Welty. Alongside this vibrant tradition of jazz literature, Reese considers the autobiographies of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, as well as works by a range of contemporary writers including Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Zadie Smith. Throughout, Blue Notes offers original perspectives on the disparate ways in which writers acknowledge the expansive side of loneliness, reimagining solitude through narratives of connected isolation.

Lingis's singular works of philosophy aren't so much written as performed, and in this work the performance is brilliant, a consummate act of philosophical reckoning. This book is, at the same time, an elegant cultural analysis of how subjectivity is differently and collectively understood, invested, and situated.