Product Description

POEMS OF: Elders—Birth—Children—Couples—Parenting—Family Portraits—Family Life—Aging—Death



POEMS BY: Elders: Louise Bogan, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Galway Kinnell, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Edgar Lee Masters, Kenneth Patchen, Theodore Roethke, Muriel Rukeyser, William Carlos Williams, James Wright

Contemporaries: Nin Andrews, Maggie Anderson, Antler, Ellen Bass, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Laura Treacy Bentley, Abigail Beckel, CL Bledsoe, Don Bogen, Allen Braden, Jeanne Bryner, Gregory Byrd, Neil Carpathias, Richard Carr, Johnson Cheu, Daryl Ngee Chinn, David Citino, Paola Corso, Alice Cone, Barbara Crooker, Thomas Rain Crowe, Jim Daniels, Kate Daniels, Todd Davis, Susan Elbe, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Diane Gilliam Fisher, Kathleen Fraser, Allen Frost, Richard Garcia, David Lee Garrison, Suzannah Gilman, William Greenway, Tina Mozelle Harris, Joy Harjo, Steven Haven, Rasma Haidri, David Hassler, Michael Hettich, Marianna Hofer, Holly Hughes, Bonnie Jacobson, Hershman John, George Kalamaras, Arthur Winfield Knight, Ted Kooser, Lolette Kuby, Li-Young Lee, Jim Lenfestey, Cathy Lentes, Lyn Lifshin, Diane Lockward, Laura Loomis, Jack McGuane, Michael McGriff, Irene McKinney, Sandra Marshburn, Peter Meinke, Andrew Merton, Corey Mesler, Robert Miltner, Greg Moglia, Sean Nevin, Edwina Pendarvis, Lynn Powell, David Pichaske, Chad Prevost, David Ray, Susan Rich, William Pitt Root, Michael Salinger, Vivian Shipley, Penelope Scambly Schott, Derek Sheffield, Noelle Sickels, Larry Smith, Gary Soto, Margo Solod, P. J. Taylor, Marianne Taylor, Richard Tayson, Susan Terris, Carine Topal, Jim Tolan, Eric Torgersen, Pamela Uschuk, Jeff Vande Zande, Claudia Van Gerven, Adam Vines, Gail Waldstein, Ron Wallace, Toshi Washizu, Mary E.Weems, Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1148185 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-02
• Released on: 2005-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Review
"The poems in this anthology capture the joys and struggles of families, while clarifying what it is like to be human, or more importantly, while defining what it is like to be alive. The poems center on all family matters or on all that matters within the family, from the most ordinary issues of parenting and birth, to the subtle changes of aging and death." -Katharine Studer, Ohioana Quarterly, Summer 2006

In our Harmony Series of anthologies:

200 pages of poems we love treating family:

Elders--Birth--Children--Couples--Parenting--Family Portraits--Family Life--Aging--Death.

Edited by husband and wife team: poet Larry Smith and family counselor Ann Smith

About the Author
Ann Smith grew up in a large, extended Italian-American family in Mingo Junction, Ohio. The family gathered around food. She now lives in Huron, Ohio, with her husband Larry. They have three grown children and four grandchildren and one grandchildren due by the publication of this book. Dr. Smith is a retired Professor from Medical University of Ohio in Toledo. She is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Adult Mental Health Nursing and provides family counseling in the Behavioral Medicine Department of Firelands Regional Medical Center. She also provides counseling, Therapeutic Touch, and Reiki at the Reiki and Counseling Center in Sandusky, Ohio. She has written several articles on family relationships in those families experiencing chronic pain and is currently researching the effects of Therapeutic Touch on arthritis of the knee.

Larry Smith was raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio Valley in Mingo Junction, Ohio. He received his masters and doctorate of literature from Kent State University. He and his wife Ann are the parents of three adult children and live along the shores of Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio. He has taught at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University since 1970, where he directs the Firelands Writing Center. He is editor-in-chief of Bottom Dog Press and is the author of six books of poetry, two fiction books, and literary biographies of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His forthcoming book is A River Remains: Poems (Word Tech Press, 2006).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PERHAPS THE WORLD ENDS HERE Joy Harjo



The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.



The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.



We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.



It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.



At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.



Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.



This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.



Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.



We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.



At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.



Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.