Why I Was Late

With kitchen-table candour and empathy, Charlie Petch's debut collection of poems offers witness to a decades-long trans/personal coming of age. Poems that fuse text with performance, and find heroes in unexpected places. Why I Was Late fuses text with performance, brings a transmasculine wisdom, humour, and experience to bear upon tailgates, spaceships, wrestling rings, and other traditionally masculine spaces. Fierce, tender, convention re-inventing--Petch works hard. And whether it's as a union lighting technician, a hospital bed allocator, a Toronto hot dog vendor, or a performer/player of the musical saw, the work is survival. Heroes are found in unexpected places, elevated by both large and small gestures of kindness, accountability and acceptance. No subject--grief, disability, kink, sexuality, gender politics, violence--is off limits. A poet so good at drag they had everyone convinced that they were a woman for the first forty years of their life, Petch has somehow brought the stage and its attendant thrills into the book. Better late than. And better. "Charlie Petch's Why I Was Late is a poetic debut with the wisdom of a sage and the emotional range of an expert comedian. ... Do yourself a favor and read this book. This is a master at work."--Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World "Why I Was Late is a vulnerable, authentic collection of poems - unpredictable and brilliant, sometimes grotesque and downright hilarious - Charlie Petch is a necessary voice in poetry." --Mary Lambert, author of Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across

A groundbreaking exploration of how finding one's way later in life can be an advantage to long-term achievement and happiness. “What Yogi Berra observed about a baseball game—it ain't over till it's over—is true about life, and [Late Bloomers] is the ultimate proof of this. . . . It’s a keeper.”—Forbes We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook—or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google, Facebook or Uber. We see coders and entrepreneurs become millionaires or billionaires before age thirty, and feel we are failing if we are not one of them. Late bloomers, on the other hand, are under-valued—in popular culture, by educators and employers, and even unwittingly by parents. Yet the fact is, a lot of us—most of us—do not explode out of the gates in life. We have to discover our passions and talents and gifts. That was true for author Rich Karlgaard, who had a mediocre academic career at Stanford (which he got into by a fluke) and, after graduating, worked as a dishwasher and night watchman before finding the inner motivation and drive that ultimately led him to start up a high-tech magazine in Silicon Valley, and eventually to become the publisher of Forbes magazine. There is a scientific explanation for why so many of us bloom later in life. The executive function of our brains doesn’t mature until age twenty-five, and later for some. In fact, our brain’s capabilities peak at different ages. We actually experience multiple periods of blooming in our lives. Moreover, late bloomers enjoy hidden strengths because they take their time to discover their way in life—strengths coveted by many employers and partners—including curiosity, insight, compassion, resilience, and wisdom. Based on years of research, personal experience, interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and countless people at different stages of their careers, Late Bloomers reveals how and when we achieve our full potential. Praise for Late Bloomers “The underlying message that we should ‘consider a kinder clock for human development’ is a compelling one.”—Financial Times “Late Bloomers spoke to me deeply as a parent of two millennials and as a coach to many new college grads (the children of my friends and associates). It’s a bracing tonic for the anxiety they are swimming through, with a facts-based approach to help us all calm down.”—Robin Wolaner, founder of Parenting magazine

A debut collection that welcomes a new modernist aesthetic for the twenty-first century. Aswirl with waking dreams and phantom memories, The Late Parade is a triumph of poetic imagination. To write about one thing, you must first write about another. In Adam Fitzgerald's debut collection, readers discover forty-eight poems that yoke together tones playful and elegiac, nostalgic and absurd. Fitzgerald's shape-shifting inspirations "beckon us to join an urban promenade" (McLane) with a multiplicity of chimerical stops: from the unreal cities of Dubai to the former Soviet Union, from Nigerian spammers and the Virgin Mary to Dr. Johnson and Cat Power. "The glory of this volume is the long title poem, which carries the primal vision of Hart Crane into a future that does not surrender the young poet’s love of the real," writes Harold Bloom. Mash-ups of litanies, monologues and odes, these poems spring from a modernist landscape filled with madcap slips of tongue, innuendo, archaisms and everyday slang. Though Fitzgerald's lines often hallucinate meanings that feel open-ended, they never ignore the traditional pleasures of poetic craft and memory, their music an ambient drone—part Technicolor, part nitrous oxide. Even so, what glues these fantasies together is more than the charm of the maddeningly chameleon rhetoric. Fitzgerald's sonorous voice is unabashedly that of a love poet's: melancholic, baroque and visionary. The Late Parade is a testament to the powers of confusion, which may disguise our sense of loss but offer in return that eloquent tonic known as poetry. As Richard Howard writes, "When the new poet turns up the heat, he gives us just the necessary outrages which make us understand what we never knew we could say."

"An award-winning author shares the inspiring and entertaining account of his pursuit to become a nationally competitive tennis player--at the age of sixty. Being a man or a woman in your early sixties is different than it was a generation or two ago, at least for the more fortunate of us. We aren't old.

Danny is always late for school. If he's not stopped by pirates, then zombies chase him. He escapes from trolls only to be cornered by gruff billy goats. Good thing Danny has a quick imagination. He may be late for school, but he does get there! From one ridiculous adventure to the next, readers cheer on Danny as he faces the most extraordinary situations until all of his newfound friends come to school with him. When zombies meet teachers, you can bet there will be a hilarious ending. The droll humor and witty drawings will keep the most reluctant reader turning pages, eager to see what will happen next.

Ever been late? Steve has. Lots. But he always has a good excuse. Here are 101 real corkers for you to enjoy, and maybe even borrow: Distracted by a surprisingly complicated Kinder toy. Overcome by the urge to alphabetize my pets. Forgot how trousers work. Became temporarily feral. Got stuck in a romantic montage. Why Steve Was Late is a book of hilarious (and even--occasionally--plausible!) reasons for tardiness, handily dreamed up and illustrated by someone else.

Oh no! Mr. Bungles has overslept and he’s going to be late for school. Teachers aren’t supposed to be late! Poor Mr. Bungles tries rushing off in his car, the train, and even a hot air balloon, but nothing works. The clock is still ticking. What will he try next?

The singer and actor best known for his role on "General Hospital" chronicles the ups and downs of his career, as well as his lifelong battle with depression and thoughts of suicide.