On December 1, 1941, the author's unit was sent to the southern Philippine island of Mindanao to establish an air base. Less than six months later, on May 10, 1942, Sergeant Nordin was captured by the Japanese. For two years he was imprisoned on Mindanao before boarding a Japanese hellship destined for Moji, Japan. He spent the remainder of the war working on the railroad in Yokkaichi. Throughout his time in captivity, the author detailed the conditions and his thoughts on the camps in a secret diary that became the basis of this work. This powerful story recounts the horrors of the prison camps, the torturous journey on the hellship, and the little things that provided him and his fellow prisoners the strength to survive.

O. Henry Prize-winning author Keith Banner's new collection of short fiction recounts the troubled lives of ne'er-do-wells and outsiders. Few writers capture the quintessence of awkward domesticity and growing up queer like Banner. The banality of life, whether it be trapped in front of the television or popping pills for E.D., is exposed and mocked with aplomb.

A lesser-known tradition in theology--the apophatic--has resurfaced in our time. Simply stated, this tradition has long recognized that discussion of what God is not is central to theological discernment. The apophatic emphasis on giving the negative its due has been rediscovered and enlarged today in several ways. Above all, this theological orientation warrants our radical questioning and honors the importance of doubt. It also leads us to greater awareness of our hidden fears of loss and of the costs of our unconscious flight from death. At the same time, it can open the door to new perceptions of what lay persons--as well as theologians such as Eckhart and Tillich--have understood as our deepest relationship to the God beyond God. This development is significant for those in progressive faith communities, for those who call themselves "spiritual but not religious," and those who assume that religion and spirituality have no place in their lives.

In God as Form, Curtis Bennett discusses the nature of godhead, the function of image for art and religion expressive of its instinctive functioning in dream imagery, the radical distinction between the Greek and Christian views of incarnation, Xenophanes' disclaimer of the Greek human forms for divinity, Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite, The First Olympian, and more. "Seeing the modern predicament not in the revolt of human will against God but in its rebellion against its own givenness, in the reversal not of values but of effect and cause, God as Form pushes hard against the limits of the exploratory essay. What rises in the memory, though, with the force of the 'realized' image as one lays down this book, are the readings of poetic texts from which the thesis springs: dawn breaking for immortals and mortals alike, the hall of the symposium, Sappho and Pindar in consonance across millennia with Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens. Demonstrating the claimed relation between poetry and theology in the critical act itself, these readings may one day do for literary criticism and the theory of poetry what Erich Auerbach's Mimesis has done in its time." — from the Foreword by Gregor Sebba

An inner journey across space and time linking the "author" to other poets, this lyrical essay-poem continues Helene Cixous's rewriting of notions of boundary, self, other, and author. Cixous here interrogates the status of the author, connecting distant instances of herself with other writers who traverse genders, generations, and national boundaries. First Days of the Year is a celebration of beginnings and future possibilities, based on necessity and hope, constantly mediating writing and living, life and death. Like all of Cixous's profoundly original works, it seductively leads the reader into a new way of thinking by disrupting fixed ideas of psychic identity, subjectivity, and language.

Two ten-year old boys and a nine-year old girl meet in Denver during the 1952 Huckleberry Finn fishing contest at Washington Park. They become fast friends and soon discover a cave in a nearby swamp that becomes the focal point for a summer of adventure that ends with a tragedy and a miracle! The three friends go their separate ways in life but reconnect, again in Denver, thirty-three years later. The girl, now a woman, hears Dr. Morris Massey advance the thesis: What you are is where you were when you were ten. She shares this concept with her old friends at their reunion and, as their lives intertwine again, they experience an even worse tragedy and a greater miracle! This exciting and fast-paced tale serves to validate Masseys theory for the reader. It also prompts worthwhile introspection, not only of ones own life, but the lives of those ten-year olds who may come under our influence.

"Will Jacqua find forgiveness and return to Eric, or will she be looking for a new love with Ramon? Find out how in 72 hours Jacqua goes from having everything to almost nothing in this fascinating romance novel"--P. [4] of cover.