Near Death / Near Life strikes a meaningful and tender balance between the appreciation for life's poignant moments, and the human experience of war, both as a construct and a memory.  Poetry: 114 Pages, Paperback Dennis Maulsby is a retired bank president living in Ames, Iowa with his wife, Ruth, a retired legal secretary, and his dog, Wally, a retired CIA operative. His poetry and short stories have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, The Des Moines Register, The North American Review, Spillway, Haiku Journal, The Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Briarcliff Review, and other journals.  Maulsby is a native of Iowa and a graduate of Marshalltown High School and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa. A U.S. Army Vietnam veteran, he served with the 25th infantry Division while in country. He is a past president of the Iowa Poetry Association.  "To read Dennis Maulsby's powerful, uncompromising poems is to inhabit the vivid, surreal dream of a soldier--to see the world as he, a Vietnam veteran, did, many years ago. The poems are about the horror of war, and loss, and the road back to civilian life, described in hauntingly beautiful and precise images that you cannot forget. As they bear witness to the reality of war and its lasting effects, they are a triumph of honesty and the power of art. Read them."  Karen E. Bender, author of Refund   "In his newest collection of poetry, Near Death/Near Life, Dennis Maulsby captures a devastating universe of visceral juxtapositions with acuity and grace. His sensual images alternate between the raw and highly polished, move from being softly lyrical to staccato-rapid firing, blend unique jazz riffs with discordant turbulence. The language is compelling, interestingly fresh, concise and layered. Maulsby's poetry is intense and immediate, and can leave the reader breathless as memories of war-time nightmares take on tender overtones, but he intersperses well-crafted haiku, musical interludes, historical fragments and love poems throughout his book to offer moments of respite from the symphonic killing fields he depicts. Complicated, intelligent, moving, fascinating, horrifying—Maulsby's book is a rare glimpse into the creative spirit struggling to reconcile the brutal realities of death with the compassionate beauty of life." Marilyn Baszczynski, President of the Iowa Poetry Association  "Maulsby's third collection of poetry begins in violence and ends in an aria, carrying the reader along in an intimate and tender journey through decades of love, life, war and peace. Along the way, we touch on all the things we've come to expect from Maulsby--haiku, Vietnam, deep imagery, capital-R Romanticism, etc--but we also see an expansion both in the scope of the content and in the exuberant and musical prosody. Settle in, fasten your seatbelt, and plan to spend some time with this book!" Jim Coppoc, Senior Lecturer, Iowa State University Author of Manhattan Beatitude; Reliquary; and Blood, Sex & Prayer

Near Death / Near Life

Literature & Fiction

Maulsby, Dennis

Poetry

Prolific Press

Welcome to the Free Fire Zone. In Vietnam, it was enemy territory. Anyone found there could be killed on sight, no questions asked. Each of the sixteen stories in this book originate from this zone, any subject, any genre fair game.Follow American soldier Rod Teigler as he adventures through war, the old west, jungles and beyond. Teigler's war experiences, helped along by government experimentation, leave him with a severe personality disorder. Fear or anger turn the unlikely hero into something enemies fear and a handful of troubled souls adore. Published by Prolific Press Inc., with a Foreword by W. H. "Bill" McDonald Jr., Vietnam Veteran - 128th Assault Helicopter Company; Founder and first president of the Military Writers Society of America.

Free Fire Zone

Genre Fiction

Prolific Press Inc.

Winterset, Iowa. A peaceful, rural Midwest town... with a secret: it harbors a gateway to another world, a world filled with supernatural creatures of legend. Irish-born Father Donahey has been assigned to Winterset, Iowa after many years of service as a Catholic priest in South America. But he finds something quite different from the life of books and long rural walks that he expects. The community is awash with supernatural creatures, some friendly, many decidedly not. From selkies and pookas of Irish mythology to pixies, demons and shape-shifting werecreatures, Father Donahey must deal with them all to protect his new parish, and the world at large, from chaos and destruction.

Winterset: Short Stories of Pixies, Demons, and Fiends.

NeoLeaf Press

Twenty-eight-year-old Army Major Hugh de Gracie returns to his half a millennium old family home in the Adirondacks for the first time in a decade. He is close to death, due to the cumulative effect of wounds and an untreatable virus acquired as a Taliban prisoner in Afghanistan. Kept ignorant by father and family during his childhood and rebellious teenage years, he does not realize the true nature of the family residence. The de Gracies both serve and are served by their domicile. The multistory de Gracie chateau is a living plant, a mythical tree of life, whose human companions have evolved over tens of thousands of years to function as symbiotes to what they call the mother-tree.Complicating matters, the fighting in Afghanistan has earned him an implacable human enemy, one whose culture insists on vendetta. Fahad, a Taliban commander, backed by the vast resources of a wealthy Saudi family, seeks revenge for Hugh's killing of his relatives. In less than a year, the war will come to upper New York State.

House de Gracie

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

Books by Maulsby, Dennis

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

Near Death / Near Life

Free Fire Zone

Winterset: Short Stories of Pixies, Demons, and Fiends.

House de Gracie