These poems, born of the traumatic rape of the author's wife during a home burglary, depict the difficult but triumphant journey to the victory of healing and normalcy. These poems are an offering of love.
"This book is indeed a gift, both to the specific person to whom it is tenderly offered and to all of us readers who need or will need its heroic spirit." (Arnold Rampersad)
"Passing Over embraces the personal and political, and it is the emotional trajectory of each poem that pierces our modern armor." (Yusef Komunyakaa)
"Charting a journey through despair and back to love, Houston Baker proves the grace of poetry." (Toi Derricotte)
"Some of the poems are still wet on the page, a combination of blood and tears. Baker writes following the season of winter and the scarification of his soul. This book is a gift of hope, a ceremony reaching out to the living." (E. Ethelbert Miller)
James A. Emanuel,
The Force and the Reckoning
ISBN: 0-916418-88-X 365 pgs. (cloth) $35.00
"It is high time for James A. Emanuel, one of our finest and most adventurous poets, to receive his due acclaim. The Force and the Reckoning is a major event in American poetry-a book that deserves to be heard round the world." (X.J. Kennedy)
"World traveling poet James Emanuel mixes imagination and erudition, notes of travels to the Far and Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, handwritten texts and photographs, autobiography and research in order to let us share the genesis of his creative vision decade by decade. In The Force and the Reckoning, the author of Whole Grain and JAZZ fromthe Haiku King uses the ability of the spirit to restore reality. This is a splendid and original achievement. I know of no similar book." (Michel Fabre)
"From the tragi-comic ironies of the blues idiom to the Delphic wisdom of the haiku form, poet James Emanuel displays a full palette in portraying the mysteries of the human condition. Born and bred in Nebraska, farmer and cowboy in his youth, confidential secretary of General Benjamin 0. Davis during World War II, graduate of Howard, Northwestern, and Columbia universities, professor of English at CUNY, driven into exile by American racism, Parisian for a dozen years, and author of as many books of verse, Emanuel has been publishing his poems both in this country and abroad for a period of forty years." (Robert Bone)
Naomi F. Faust Visions for the 21st Century ISBN: 978-0-916418-99-1 $23.00
The poetry of Naomi F. Faust has a wide appeal for readers drawn to accessible verse. Her interests are varied, but whatever her subject matter might be, her work is usually hopeful, positive, inspirational and appreciative of the contributions of others. Such verse is refreshing at a time when much contemporary poetry is self-centered and negative.
In this new collection, Dr. Faust dwells on numerous topics, including the beauty of the natural world, spiritual faith, forgiveness, romantic love, joyful holidays, childhood, her hope for the future, and peace.
She also includes poems of praise about such famous people as John F. Kennedy, Jr., Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and Oprah Winfrey. Her pen also pays tribute to such little known individuals as a dentist, a fruit vendor and handyman.
This interesting mixture of subjects and styles invites the reader to participate in the poems without tiring of reading them again and again.
"As W.H. Auden has said, 'The duty of the poet is neither to copy nor deny the past but resurrect it.' Naomi does it mightily, monumentally-in superb manner." -Dr. Krishna Srinivas President,World Poetry Society International
"Naomi Faust is a poet of many excellencies. She expresses concern for the whole cosmos and is in essence a universal poet who seeks to promote global entity, universal harmony, and peaceful cultural co-existence. Professor Syed Ameeruddin Founder/president, International Poets academy
Ruth Ellen Kocher, Desdemona's Fire
ISBN: 0-916418-83-9
61 pgs. (paper) $12.00
While miscegenation has always been more a part of American history than many want to admit, these poems journey through this often forbidden landscape in poems that are sometimes painfully poignant, yet rich and fresh in their imagery and detail and finely crafted. This first collection is the 1999 winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.
"At the heart of these stunning poems is a precise and imaginative examination of the thin line that separates beauty and terror, wisdom and madness, tolerance and hatred." (Bruce Weigl)
"... the classical argument, the channeled mind stream, has a unique surface property; it brings commerce to two cultures. Here, argument becomes sublime and here the poet is truly a carrier of ladders and I think, as the Old Testament author intended, a carrier of ladders has the horizontal strength of the earth almost for a perfect burden." (Norman Dubie)
