Frozen Teardrop

"World figure skating champion Lucinda Ruh, known as the "Queen of Spin" for her creative spinning and her holding of the Guinness world record for the longest spin on ice, tells her story of the harsh realities of the world of competitive figure skating to inspire young people to have the vision and strength to overcome adversity"--Provided by publisher.

Analyzing 30 years of Don McKay's achievements, this critique explores one of the most original bodies of work in contemporary English-language poetry. Emphasizing details of ornithology, botany, weather, industry, and the arts, as well as focusing on varied geographic settings, his poetry opens countless doors for analysis. Fourteen contributors examine the complex contradictions of McKay's work, including nuanced description and intricate metaphor, philosophical phrasing and folksy idiom, madcap humor and elegy.

Vivienne Brough-Evans proposes a compelling new way of reevaluating aspects of international surrealism by means of the category of divin fou, and consequently deploys theories of sacred ecstasy as developed by the Collège de Sociologie (1937–39) as a critical tool in shedding new light on the literary oeuvre of non-French writers who worked both within and against a surrealist framework. The minor surrealist genre of prose literature is considered herein, rather than surrealism's mainstay, poetry, with the intention of fracturing preconceptions regarding the medium of surrealist expression. The aim is to explore whether International surrealism can begin to be more fully explained by an occluded strain of 'dissident' surrealist thought that searches outside the self through the affects of ekstasis. Bretonian surrealism is widely discussed in the field of surrealist studies, and there is a need to consider what is left out of surrealist practice when analysed through this Bretonian lens. The Collège de Sociologie and Georges Bataille's theories provide a model of such elements of 'dissident' surrealism, which is used to analyse surrealist or surrealist influenced prose by Alejo Carpentier, Leonora Carrington and Gellu Naum respectively representing postcolonial, feminist and Balkan locutions. The Collège and Bataille's 'dissident' surrealism diverges significantly from the concerns and approach towards the subject explored by surrealism. Using the concept of ekstasis to organise Bataille's theoretical ideas of excess and 'inner experience' and the Collège's thoughts on the sacred it is possible to propose a new way of reading types of International surrealist literature, many of which do not come to the forefront of the surrealist literary oeuvre.

There nEver was a sunset so sumptuous as the first, when creation birthed the grand fire that dashed its light out upon the solar system, exploding into a brilliant blue across Earth's vast sky. There nEver was a girl so pretty and perfect as the girl next door, who would thief your heart with a stolen glance and make you dream of angels and futures and love found in your very own backyard. There nEver was a peach, so ripe and full of juices that the mound positively erupted in your mouth, overtaking every sense until you were slave to each bite, and all that was and ever would be again was that fuzzy fruit. There nEver was a day so perfect that you would enjoy every second, savor each moment as if time itself were joy unbound, and to reach the midnight hour and the closing of the day would be like unto death itself. There nEver was a love so grand that it defeated all time and space, not bound by the laws of physics but transcending all rules and crushing them under love's heel, defining its grandness by mocking all the barriers of science and faith, existing not only forever, but beyond even the meek words that bind its August majesty. There nEver was a tale told as thus . . .

All Nathaniel Turn wanted was steady employment. A regular guy with regular ideals, Nate was in no way prepared for what awaited him aboard the space station. He never intended to be a traitor to the entire Human race. How could he? After all, there was no such things as aliens…right? NOT!

For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few seventeenth-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead, and adorned bodies. What triggered such curious behavior was the belief that some fossils could cure illness, protect against being poisoned, ease the passage into the afterlife, ward off evil spirits, and even kill those who were just plain annoying. But above all, to our early prehistoric ancestors, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration. Drawing on archaeology, mythology, and folklore, Ken McNamara takes us on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and he explores humankind’s unending quest for the meaning of fossils.

The murdered victim of an undertaker--known as "the abominable suitor"--speaks of her dread and anguish of having been murdered.