Poet Me

One night, after an unsatisfying evening at a party, the author sat down and wrote her heartfelt poem 'The Invitation'. It travelled by word-of-mouth and the Internet across the globe. In this book, she expands on the ideas behind the poem and has created a guidebook for living a life full of integrity, commitment and passion.

Thinker isn't just an average puppy--he's a poet. So is his owner, Jace. Together they turn the world around them into verse in this new collection of poetry from the recipient of the 2018 Coretta Scott KingDVirginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. Full color.

On the “Best Poetry Books of the Year” list from Library Journal “A sophisticated and breathtaking writer, Reeves takes the reader on a harrowing journey: each poem comes packed with arresting imagery, relentless in its examination of how tragedy and trauma become internalized — cleaning out the wounds to understand the pain.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Roger Reeves' King Me stitches together many worlds into one startling and visceral book. His ranging, encyclopedic knowledge crosses history, medicine, biology, metapoetics and more, but he tackles it all with a bold and sonorous surrealist flow.”—American Microreviews From a horse witnessing the lynching of Emmett Till to Mikhail Bulgakov chronicling the forced famines in Poland in the 1930s, King Me examines the erotics of care and the place of song, elegy, and praise as testaments to those moments. As Roger Reeves said in an interview, "While writing King Me, I became very interested in the mythology of king, the one who is sacrificed at the end of the harvest season. . . . For me, the myth manifests in the killing of young black men, Emmett Till, and in the ways America deems young, black male bodies as expendable—Jean Michel Basquiat, Mike Tyson, Jack Johnson. These are the young kings whom we love to kill—over and over again." From "Some Young Kings": The hummingbirds inside my chest,with their needle-nosed pliers for tonguesand hammer-heavy wings, have left a messof ticks in my lungs and a punctured lullabyin my throat. Little boy blue come blowyour horn. The cow's in the meadow. And Dorothy's alone in the corn with Jack, his black fingers, the brass of his lips, the half-moons of his fingernails clickingalong her legs until she howls—Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker . . . Roger Reeves earned his MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing and his PhD from the University of Texas. His poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, and Boston Review. He teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

A deeply personal story of one man's life-long obsession with an ancient poet, and an exploration of what Horace's thoughts on life, leisure and love can teach us today 'A moving memoir that shakes the dust off Horace – and restores him to his rightful berth among the immortals' Harry Mount, author of Amo, Amas, Amat... 'Delightful ... Its seductive interweaving of a modern life and an ancient one will encourage a wider readership of this most appealing of Latin writers, even if only in translation' Economist Horace lived at a pivotal moment. Rome was facing a profound crisis: though it ruled the world, the values which had made it great were disintegrating. As efficiency and pragmatism became watchwords, Horace championed the 'supremely useless' endeavour of poetry, and glorified friendship and wine. Horace and Me charts Harry Eyres' evolving relationship with the Latin poet to show how, in an era of affluence and excess which seems to be hurtling out of control, Horace can help us navigate our way in uncertain times.

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, a leading poet (though he does not acknowledge it) and memoirist of the experience of autism, was born in India in 1988. Tito was diagnosed with severe autism at the age of three, but his mother Soma, with fi erce hope and determination, devised an intensive rapid prompting method to teach Tito to read and write. In 2001, Tito and his mother came to the United States to begin work collaborating with doctors, re-searchers, and advocates in order to better understand and support individuals with autism. At a very early age, Tito began expressing himself in prose and poetry and numerous collections of his work have been published (see below). More recently, Tito has become a leading fi gure in the neurodiversity movement, challenging conventional measures of mental states and abilities. As Tito describes himself: “Human beings have classifi ed each other based on religion, country, disorders and of course in today’s world their sexual choices. It is easy to recognize each other based on classifi cation. Hence, doctors have classifi ed me with Autism.” Tito’s life and work have been featured widely in the media, including “Sixty Minutes”,“Good Morning America,” The New York Times, Scientifi c American, National Geographic, PBS, CNN, Disability Studies Quarterly and in the documentaries Tito’s Story (BBC, 1999) and A Mother’s Courage (HBO, 2010) Tito now lives in Austin, Texas, where his mother directs the autism organization HALO http://www.halo-soma.org and Tito and his mother make frequent presentations to autism education and advocacy organizations nationwide.

A collection of interviews with 16 prominent Latino poets reveals how they found their niche in American literature and what political and social issues helped shape their personal and creative lives.