Literary Nonfiction. African & African American Studies. Memoir. THE NEW PLANTATION: LESSONS FROM RIKERS ISLAND chronicles Trask's quest to cross the cultural divide between his students and him. While he is a white guy from rural Maine--among the whitest states in the nation--nearly all of the young men in his classroom are African Americans or Hispanics from New York City. We see him break a number of rules, not only those established by the Departments of Correction and Education, but also many of the rules of tradition and, in some cases, common sense. We see him fall on his face time after time, but in the end, though his educational methods seldom meet the standards of orthodoxy, he connects with his students in a meaningful way, and in the process, helps many of them to pass the GED. "THE NEW PLANTATION takes us into the chaos of Rikers Island, giving us the vivid voices of young men--kids, really--caught in the unrelenting grip of institutional racism. I found it riveting."--Monica Wood "One story is that of a young man in the midst of bizarre, even outrageous interactions with a group of boys. He is inexperienced, but perseveres, learns, and overcomes what looks like a dead-end situation. The other story is about these imprisoned teenagers conveying a notion of their own racial oppression through dialogue with the same man, who is their teacher. The combination of the two is extraordinary."--W.T. Whitney "It's easy to forget people of whatever age who have been disappeared by incarceration. Jason Trask doesn't let this happen. He isn't just an observer passing along statistics but is with these kids, a fellow traveler on the tangled up-and-down-and-around road that is the predicament of American life."--Carolyn Chute

The New Plantation: Lessons from Rikers Island

Literature & Fiction

Jason Trask

History & Criticism

Deerbrook Editions

Stuart Kestenbaum s new book includes some experimental poems using source words supplied by others. Imaginative, observant poems on life, nature, dilemmas, conditions, both humorous and tragic, written to grab your attention and reflect on it all.

How to Start Over

Stuart Kestenbaum

Poetry

Daughter of the Rain

Gail Gauldin Moore

Poetry. Women's Studies. California Studies. Environmental Studies. "Newberry's poems arrive like a friend bearing news. We think we are to hear something ordinary, then suddenly it becomes unusual. Or we find ourselves being told something odd... and it gets even odder. Newberry is a poet of spiritual surprise, a poet of transcending images pulled from a very real, contemporary, attentive woman's life."--John Balaban "Herein you will find poems in which the sky can break into jigsaw puzzle pieces and fall to the ground, the setting winter sun apologizes for leaving homeless people still cold, and a sky full of stars consider their own mortality. These are poems full of magic and ghosts: the corpulent ghost with 'a thunderstorm of a smile' in the title poem and the 'great ghosts' of Geodes. Or the magic can be as simple as the transcendence of snow falling expressed by one who's never seen it fall. Current events creep into these pages in the form of politics ('Me and Amy Lowell'), nuclear contamination ('Act of Retrieval'), and California's wind-driven wildfires. In fact strong winds, primarily the seasonal Santa Ana, blow through many of these poems stirring and clearing the air around them and the reader."--Michael J. Arcangelini "Here is longing for what was and what never was. Newberry uses juxtaposition freely to illuminate life's dichotomies, and in doing so, reminds us that there are always opposites to consider and choices to make. And in the end, those choices define us, both inwardly and outwardly. Where some would object to this collection as being depressing, I found it to be an affirmation of life, of hard times survived, and still kicking. It explores what I believe are common reactions to common experiences...So what do I mean by all this? Only that these poems are worth a careful read, with heart, mind, and memory open to the pain that life deals us, and a ready recognition that none of us are alone in our struggles."--Jim Lewis

Blues for French Roast With Chicory

Newberry, Martina Reisz

Brothers of Morning: Poems

Martin Steingesser

House of Thanksgiving poems range from topics about location to reflections on religion, medical operations, and more mysterious existential questions, but while these poems relate on a personal level they also have quite accessible insights into extraordinary reveries.

House of Thanksgiving

Poetry. "One of the most difficult things in poetry is to control the 'I,' to let it stay innocent, to let it act and be acted upon freshly in the poem. Dawn Potter manages this difficult trick with ease. In her poems, no matter where she is, the consciousness is always fresh, the perceptions always immediate and the human connections always moving, moving us, as we are by the moments of life coming into focus, newly seen and absolutely clear"--Howard Levy.

Boy Land and Other Poems

Potter, Dawn

Fiction. Children's Literature. Illustrated by the author with pastels and graphite. Marlowe is a cat, and he's big, red, and lazy, but he thinks of himself as a detective in the style of the film noir characters. "Katharine Whild ... would be a shoo-in for membership in the Cat Writers' Association.... Small children will be won over, as will those adults reading to them"--Carl Little, Bangor Daily News. Katharine Whild has been a visual artist for over twenty years. This is her first picture book.

Marlowe the Great Detective

Children's Books

Whild, Katharine

This is sturdy notch paper binding with beautiful fine art illustrated cover, 6 x 9 inches.

Ocean Drinker, New & Selected Poems

Carl Little

Poetry. "Stuart Kestenbaum is a poet of immense fluency, elegance, and deep humanity. I bow to his work"--Naomi Shihab Nye. "Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love"--Ted Kooser. Kestenbaum is the author of two previous poetry collections, Pilgrimage and House of Thanksgiving, and is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.

Prayers & Run-On Sentences

Kestenbaum, Stuart

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