Previously considered the domain of bikers and a rite of passage in the services, tattoos have crawled from society's fringes and onto the ankles of starlets and the biceps of bankers. In this volume, stories from writers including Sylvia Plath and Ray Bradbury capture the tattoo experience.

Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos

Biographies & Memoirs

Addonizio, Kim

Dumesnil, Cheryl

Arts & Literature

Grand Central Publishing

The poems in this collection are the proverbial spring bulbs abandoned in the basement, growing toward a slim crack of sunlight. They are both aware of the limitations of social structures and forcefully committed to breaking out of those traps, urging toward a better way of living. The characters in these poems resist the twenty-first century’s prescription for a life of emotional-spiritual bankruptcy, reaching toward an ever-elusive glimmer on the horizon.

In Praise of Falling (Pitt Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

University of Pittsburgh Press

The poems in Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes are survival songs, the tunes you whistle while walking through the Valley of Shadows, to keep your fears at bay and your spirit awake. The shadows here are many—cancer, poverty, a lost love, famine, suicide, war, an ever-encroaching existential angst. But so are the saving graces—a drag queen waitress whose “painted-on eyebrows arched like a bridge / toward starlight,” “strawberries / grown fat around dimpled gold seeds,” Pink Floyd’s “‘On the Turning Away’ sent through my car / radio like the ghost voice of a beloved long dead,” black phoebes rattling “winter / thistles, swollen throats percussing: / this is this is this is . . . ” Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes reminds us that where there is shadow there must, necessarily, also be light.

Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes (Pitt Poetry Series)

Editor: Gail Rudd Entrekin. Poetry by six Northern California Poets: Kirsten Casey, Gary Cooke, Cheryl Dumesnil, Judy Halebsky, Iven Lourie, Scott Young. Another anthology put together by the fiercely independent Hip Pocket Press, this book, according to poet Molly Fisk, "...includes poems of childhood, love, travel, myth, reminiscence and landscape. But its essential nature is commitment -- to experience, sensation and language -- beautifully encompassed by the closing line of Judy Halebsky's DOWN THE MOUNTAIN: "...whatever I came with I spent."

Yuba Flows

Halebsky, Judy

Hip Pocket Press

Love Song for Baby X is the moving and humorous story of a lesbian couple's struggles with infertility as they attempt to become parents, set against the backdrop of the marriage equality movement. While poet Cheryl Dumesnil suspects she'll confront some formidable obstacles on her path to parenthood, she is nevertheless unprepared for what she actually encounters, including navigating the maze of the high-tech fertility business, the emotional conundrum of pregnancy loss, and the gathering steam of the marriage equality movement. Love Song for Baby X follows Cheryl and her unlawfully wedded wife through four conceptions, three miscarriages, a temporarily legal wedding during San Francisco's Winter of Love in 2004, a stint as poster children for the marriage equality movement, and finally the arrival of their longed-for son—after twenty-five hours of labor. Along the way Dumesnil fails often (and comically) in her attempts to cultivate inner peace. Though she struggles mightily with the opposing forces of hope and fear, in the end, she finds the middle ground between them: acceptance. Winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of In Praise of Falling, editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall, and co-editor, with Kim Addonizio, of Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Indiana Review, Calyx, and Many Mountains Moving, among other literary magazines. Her essays have appeared on literarymama.com, hipmama.com, mamazine.com, and in Hip Mama Zine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their two sons.

Love Song For Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood

Ig Publishing

What Is Left to Say is Cheryl Dumesnil's love letter to a country on the brink, a state on fire, a world more broken than we ever thought possible. From climate refugees in California to imprisoned immigrants at the border, Dumesnil's poems locate the flicker of a butterfly's wings, the shimmer of light in the smoke, the beauty in a cultural and spiritual landscape hellbent on breaking us. At a time when hope feels dangerous and stupid, she reminds us of these simple, sacred truths: that we are never alone, that we must love, and keep on loving. It hurts how much I adore this book. - Domenica Ruta, author of With or Without You and Last Day

What Is Left To Say: Poems by Cheryl Dumesnil

Glass Lyre Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dumesnil, Cheryl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.