- Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry
- Letting Myself In — Poems by Anne McCrady
- Redefining Beauty — Poems by Karla K. Morton
- Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar
- 2013 Texas Poetry Calendar
Letting Myself In
Poems by Anne McCrady
Cover Design by Kristee Humphrey
$15.95 – 88 pages
This is Texas, land of dusty pickup trucks, farmers in red flannel shirts, hot biscuits and honey. McCrady is writing the score of a woman’s life: marriage, family, leaving something behind, moving on. Always, she’s an acute and keen observer: “at the portal of this kitchen window / lifted from waves of worry, / I am a sailor who can finally see home.” McCrady is “a woman who sings / to meet the morning,” who wants “the roux to be perfect,” while at the same time mindful that “yes everything / that is precious / breaks and is remade.” Open this book, come along with her on the journey. It will crack open your heart.
~ Barbara Crooker, winner of the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence
From “cold, oatmeal mornings” to “gun-barrel afternoons,” the poems of Letting Myself In allow the reader into the mind of a poet who fully inhabits life, whose careful eye misses nothing, and whose empathy is tempered with a wise and wry irony. McCrady’s spirited heart-felt writing is full of unique Texas themes and idioms; however, there are also many universal pastorals ringing clear, sweet, and eternally true, as when “cicadas kazoo / the last verses of their camp song, / that tinnitus of summer.”
~ Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas Poet Laureate
Anne McCrady takes us on a walk through her beloved East Texas, through life and death and everyday moments of grace in Letting Myself In. We hear the farmer, “hoe in brown hands,” as he describes his land as Paradise; we feel the church choir in “103 Degrees” singing “gospel songs about mercy”; we watch hunters “shaking sleet from their shoulders /and pulling mud-caked boots loose.” This is the journal of a beloved place and a beloved people, with bits of the holy finding their way into each—fishermen, “like saints, / each seeking a secret / piece of freshwater heaven”; sand-hill cranes, “pure ballet: all leg and wing and skirt.”
~ Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate
Redefining Beauty
Poems by Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate
Photographs by Walter Eagleton
Cover Design by Kristee Humphrey
$17.55 – 64 pages
Redefining Beauty grew out of author Karla K. Morton’s diagnosis, treatment and recovery from breast cancer. In a series of passionate and powerful poems, accompanied by photographer Walter Eagleton’s stunning black and white images, Morton offers readers hope and comfort through her intimate candor, good-humored defiance and unfiltered honesty. Redefining Beauty has been named the Winner in the Women’s Issues category of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
“Morton’s Redefining Beauty presents a fresh perspective on cancer. In effect, it is a redefining of more than just what is beautiful concerning our bodies, relationships, and poetry; it’s a redefining of cancer in those spaces as well. Her ability to combine beauty and ugliness, sickness and sweetness, and humor and fright makes her collection an intriguing and entertaining one.”
— Laura E. Decker, in Texas Books in Review
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Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair:
Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar
Scott Wiggerman and Jason Robberson, Editors
Cover Design by Kristee Humphrey
$17.95 – 224 pages
The Lone Star State comes to life in Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair. From the Gulf Coast to the Big Bend, from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley—the people, flora, fauna, places, weather, and seasons of Texas are well represented among the collection’s almost 300 poems, all published during the first decade of the Texas Poetry Calendar. The 187 poets are as diverse as the poems themselves, from housewives to university professors, from those just starting in poetry to those with numerous credits and world renown—all touched by Texas in some way. Everything about this volume is big, especially the rewards.
“From the freak South Texas snowstorm to the summer day with ‘cicadas winding up their missionary pitch,’ from grackles to gadwalls to collared pecaries—Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair showcases the everyday as well as the extraordinary.”
— Susan Hanson, in Texas Books in Review
2013 Texas Poetry Calendar
Scott Wiggerman and Cindy Huyser, Editors
Cover Photograph by Joe O’Connell
Cover Design by Kristee Humphrey
$13.95
You’re going to love our 2013 calendar. The cover itself is a treat—Joe O’Connell’s breathtaking photograph of a windmill at sunset, with Kristee Humphrey’s crisp, clean graphic design.
Inside you will discover 96 poems as diverse and original as the state itself. Texas State Poet Laureate Jan Seale opens the calendar with a feature you’ll find next year and beyond—a poem by the current state Poet Laureate on the inside front cover. As you turn the pages, you’ll see names that have appeared in our calendar before, keeping company with poets who are published here for the first time. You’ll find young poets, established poets, and award-winning poets. You’ll find poems that invite multiple readings.
Enjoy.
The Poets:
Thomas Ames, Gloria Amescua, Evelyn Corry Appelbee, Linda Banks, Diane Gonzales Bertrand, Patricia Spears Bigelow, Alan Birkelbach, Ginnie Siena Bivona, Travis Blair, Barbara Blanks, Christine Boldt, Donna Bowling, Barbara Ann Carle, Ida Moreno Chavira, Sally Clark, Elzy Cogswell, Kay L. Cox, Stan Crawford, Carolyn Dahl, Mary S. Dallas, C. Downs, Cyra S. Dumitru, Chris Ellery, Sue Bartel Foster, Dede Fox, Alan Gann, Martha K. Grant, Barbara Randals Gregg, Laura Quinn Guidry, Mike Gullickson, Jerry Hamby, Michael Harty, Ralph Hausser, J. Todd Hawkins, Kurt Heinzelman, Katherine Hoerth, Joanne Holladay, Beth Honeycutt, Katherine Horrigan, Ann Howells, Ken Jones, Monty Jones, Carie Juettner, Larry Kelly, Elizabeth Kropf, Susan Langan, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Catherine L’Herisson, Becky Liestman, Nikki Loftin, Jean Donaldson Mahavier, Darla McBryde, Anne McCrady, Lianne Mercer, Sheila Tingley Moore, Annie Neugebauer, Katherine Durham Oldmixon, Graham Oliver, Michael Owens, Michelle Paulsen, Laura Peña, Jane Cocke Perdue, Barbara Green Powell, Sheree Rabe, Elizabeth Raby, Elena Lelia Radulescu, Carol Coffee Reposa, Brenda Nettles Riojas, Gerard Robledo, Margie McCreless Roe, Susan Rooke, Gary S. Rosin, Shubh Bala Schiesser, Steven Schroeder, Anna Scotti, Jan Seale, Kelsey Erin Shipman, Carol Lavelle Snow, Sandra Soli, Jan Spence, Marilyn Stacy, Mary Bryan Stafford, Sandi Stromberg, Sharon Ann Stuart, Mary Tindall, Rebecca Hatcher Travis, Sylvia Riojas Vaughn, Beverly Voss, Andrea L. Watson, Sarah Webb, Christine Wenk-Harrison, Allyson Whipple, Jill Wiggins, Debra L. Winegarten, Patrick Allen Wright, Robert Wynne