Poetry
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Farm-Rhymes
James Whitcomb Riley
First published in 1883, this charming book includes many of James Whitcomb Riley's signature poems, including "Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer" and "When the Frost Is on the Punkin." Also graced by noted Brown County artist Will Vawter's folksy illustrations of farm scenes from our past, this Library of Indiana Classics edition faithfully reproduces the 1905 edition. A must-have for Riley enthusiasts everywhere, it offers a warm look at how farm life was depicted over a century ago.
cloth 192pp / 2013 / 9780253009593 / $18.00
Order no. 2977
Songs in Sepia and Black & White
Norbert Krapf
A collaboration born of a shared love of music, photography, poetry, and Indiana, this book celebrates the history, literature, and art that informs the present and shapes our identity. Richard Fields’s black and white and sepia photos are evocative imaginings of Norbert Krapf's poems, visual metaphors that extend and deepen their vision. Krapf’s poems pay tribute to poets from Homer and Virgil to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Wendell Berry, and to singer-songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. They also explore the poet's German heritage, question ethnic prejudice and social conflict, and praise the natural world. The book includes a cycle of 15 poems about Bob Dylan; a public poem written in response to 9/11, "Prayer to Walt Whitman at Ground Zero"; "Back Home," a poem reproduced in a stained glass panel at the Indianapolis airport; and ruminations on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, "Questions on a Wall."
paper 234pp / 2012 / 9780253006325 / $24.00
Order No. 2930
And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana
Jenny Kander
A collection of the best from Hoosier poets from the days of James Whitcomb Riley and Jessamyn West to such contemporary masters of the craft as former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, Jared Carter, Etheridge Knight, and Mary Ellen Solt.
As Kander and Greer not in the preface of "And Know this Place: Poetry of Indiana:" "Our central criterion for selection was quality of writing, and we chose those poems which cover the spectrum of experience in both place and time, in setting from city streets to wilderness tracks, covering the state from Goshen in the north to Floye's Knobs by the Ohio River, and from Gessie on the Illinois line to Cottage Grove a hundred and fifty miles east."
cloth 411 pp / 2011 / 978-0-871952-92-9 / $24.95
Order No. 2866
Going Over All the Hurdles: A Life of Oatess Archey
John A. Beineke
"To hurdle means to go over something, but it also can mean to go forward or make progress. All people are confronted with barriers in their lives. Some choose to go around those barriers, while others have no choice but to go over them. Oatess Archey made the choice in his life to go over the hurdles-all the hurdles." -John A. Beineke
cloth 137 pp. 2008 / ISBN 9780871952608 / $17.95
Order No. 2701
The Airpoets present: Rivers, Rails and Runways
Rivers, Rails, and Runways' Introduces the work of five distinctive voices from the Heartland. Rooted in Indiana, the poems capture the lure of the landscape and its relevance to each poet's journey. Pulsating throughout are the authors' personal histories and meditations. Notable for its thematic range, the anthology gains its strength from a juxtaposition of styles, each elegant and attuned to the rhythms of everyday life.
paper 89 pp. 2008 / ISBN 978-1-60461-007-9 / $14.95
Order No. 2764
Cross this Bridge at a Walk
Jared Carter
This is Jared Carter's fourth collection of poems. He continues to tell us about a place called Mississinewa County. His poems reach out to the stories, myths, and recollections of an entire continent.
paper / $15.00
Order No. 2657
Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem
In the tradition of the Langston Hughes classic Montage of a Dream Deferred, Mitchell L. H. Douglas uses persona poetry to explore the personal and professional struggles of soul legend Donny Hathaway in his debut collection Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem. Evoking the sense of listening to a concept album, Douglas presents a narrative in two sides: side one focusing on Hathaway’s development as a young musician and subsequent rise to fame and side two bearing witness to the adversity that plagued his later years. Readers will see Hathaway as true to his family, true to his faith, and uncompromising in his quest for musical innovation.
Paper 109 pp. 2009 / ISBN 978-1-59709-104-4 / $19.95
Order No. 2759
You Don't Know the Half...
LaTasha Boyd Jones
Collection of poems.
paper 2006 / $12.95
Order No. 2772
Poet 24/7
Collection of poems.
paper 2008 / $14.95
Order No. 2771
Metropolis Burning
Karen Kovacik
"The beloved and ruined cities of Karen Kovacik’s Metropolis Burning are the substance of an individual and human history of the last century. In Warsaw, Krakow, and its near-neighbor Auschwitz; in Dresden, Prague, New Orleans, Belgrade, and Cleveland, she finds “Poetic justice: when image fits idea like a workboot.” Out of her generous heart, her strict understanding of the crimp of labor on the free imagination, and her rare sense of humor, Karen Kovacik has made a gorgeous, multi-layered music I want to listen to again and again and again."
paper 54 pp. 2005 / ISBN 1-880834-66-9 / $14.00
Order No. 2765
Beyond the Velvet Curtain
In Beyond the Velvet Curtain, Karen Kovacik illustrates Czeslaw Miloxz’s dictum that “the purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.” Peopled with such diverse characters as Richard Nixon, Nikita Khruschev, Kafka’s father, Dorothea Lange, William Carlos Williams, Lawrence Welk, Robespierre, and a feisty Catholic saint, this original collection of poems takes us on an amusement-park ride through world history and art. Kovacik’s poetry places us in the strange drama of cataclysmic events and ordinary life.
paper 66 pp. 1999/ ISBN 0-87338-647-7 / $14.00
Order No. 2767
Bloodroot: Indiana Poems
Norbert Krapf, photos by David Pierni
Bloodroot showcases poetry from the collected works of Jasper, Indiana, native Norbert Krapf. Spanning 35 years, these poems focus on Krapf's experiences living in southern Indiana and the intersection of his life with his German ancestry. Forty of the poems are published here for the first time.
Photographs by David Pierini, inspired by Krapf's work with many taken in and around Dubois County, grace this evocative portrait of a poet and place.
paper 303 pp. 2008 / ISBN 978-0-253-35224-8 / $24.95
Order No. 2706
Sweet Sister Moon
Norbert Krapf's Sweet Sister Moon is a rich celebration of the feminine spirit, manifested through a wide range of subjects. Krapf's carefully-crafted poems encompass history, emotion, and the natural world.
paper 171 pp. 2009 / ISBN 978-1-93499-962-2 / $20.00
Order No. 2762A
Child's Life at Christmas
Pamela Lawrence, illustrated by Lori Compton
A collection of poetry and art looking at Christmas through the eyes of a child.
cloth 48 pp. 2008 / ISBN 9780982001905 / $15.95
Order No. 2714
The Best of James Whitcomb Riley
Donald C. Manlove, ed.
A collection of best-loved poems about nature, home, and country as well as the dialect poems for which Riley is famous.
cloth 224 pp. 1982 / ISBN 0-253-10610-9 / $20.00
Order No. 2192
paper 224 pp. 1982 / ISBN 0-253-20299-X / $12.95
Order No. 2193
The Complete Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley
This publication brings back into print the complete repertoire of more than 1,000 poems by James Whitcomb Riley, including such favorites as "Little Orphant Annie," and "When the Frost is on the Punkin."
paper 886 pp. 1993 / ISBN 0-253-20777-0 / $24.95
Order No. 2292
Porthole Views of the World
Paintings by Hazel Stoeckeler / Poems by Elizabeth Weber
This collection of watercolors and poems both surprise and delight, taking readers on a meditative journey that opens and extends their horizons. Stoeckeler's paintings depict exotic locales around the world, and Weber's poems fill in the history and culture.
Paper 96 pp. 2008 / ISBN 978-1-932472-77-6 / $29.95
Order No. 2763
The Floating Bridge
David Shumate
The Floating Bridge, David Shumate’s second collection of prose poems, transports its readers over the chasm between the mundane and the enchanted. We traverse one bridge and find ourselves eavesdropping on Gertrude Stein and her gardener. We take the night bus to Gomorrah to have a look around. Halfway across, each bridge vanishes beneath our feet. Our world shifts. The commonplace begins to glow. We turn the page. Another bridge awaits.
Paper 73 pp. 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8229-5989-2 / $14.00
Order No. 2761
High Water Mark
Winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. These fresh and unpredictable prose poems announce the arrival of an exciting new voice. Every page is filled with unexpected delights.
Winner, 2004 Best Books of Indiana (poetry category)
Paper 69 pp. 2004 / ISBN 0-8229-5858-9 / $12.095
Order No. 2760
Small Mercies
Elizabeth Weber
A collection of poems.
paper 57 pp. 1983 / $12.00
Order No. 2766
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