Aaliyah is a star basketball player thanks to her dad, Boogie-G. Then she sees her father killed on the park basketball courts and completely shuts down. Now she's set on revenge. Aaliyah makes a deal with Land-Lord, a gang boss who promises to find her father's killer and arrange for his death in exchange for an unknown favor. Aaliyah soon realizes that getting even with her father's killer might compromise everything she's worked for in her life...

In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper: a rallying cry for hope, purpose . . . and rocks. Send me a rock for the person you lost, and I will build something life-giving. When the poem spreads farther than he ever intended, Robert Bliss's humble words change the tide of a nation. Boxes of rocks inundate the tiny, coastal Maine town, and he sets his calloused hands to work, but the building halts when tragedy strikes....

It is Impossible not to be impressed by the remarkable range and erudition of the irrepressible, intellectually voracious, Australian-born critic Clive James. As of This Writing is James's most ambitious and expansive work to date, a book that features forty-nine penetrating essays on poetry, film, fiction, and criticism, presenting the most comprehensive view of his writings between 1968 and 2002. In the tradition of Edmund Wilson-himself the subject...

In Amherst, Massachusetts, in spring, 1834, young Emily Dickinson uses scraps of paper and a pencil nub to write a poem, before she even knows her ABCs, and shares it with her household and garden. Includes author's note about Dickinson's life and work.

As penpals for a high school English assignment, poetry-loving sophomore Jonathan and popular-athlete senior Adam explore their growing relationship through a series of letters. Jonathan Hopkirk and Adam "Kurl" Kurlansky are partnered in English class, writing letters to one another in a weekly pen pal assignment. With each letter, the two begin to develop a friendship that eventually grows into love. But with homophobia, bullying, and devastating...

"This is the first anthology to bring together Diné writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose into a single collection of Navajo literature. The book includes author biographies and interviews with a selections of the writers' most important creative work, as well as a chronology and resources for teachers and readers"--

"His poems succeed on the basis of an open heart and a still-ravenous appetite for life."--The Texas Observer"Harrison doesn't write like anyone else, relying entirely on the toughness of his vision and intensity of feeling."--Publishers Weekly"Harrison's essential honesty is deeply affecting."--Library JournalThe title Dead Man's Float is inspired by a technique used by swimmers to conserve energy when exhausted, to rest up for the long swim to shore....

"La vida de un niño nacido en la frontera no es fácil, pero Güero sabe cómo hacerle frente: escribiendo poemas. Güero tiene doce años y es mexicano y americano al mismo tiempo. Sabe sentirse en casa en ambos lados del rio, y en su vida hay tanto español como inglés. Güero ha comenzado el séptimo año en la escuela, y su profe de inglés hace que hasta los poemas suenen cool. Güero es como llaman a los chicos como el: pálidos. Pero no te...

"The United States has never existed without a Black Samson. Before Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King were identified with Moses, African Americans linked those who challenged racial oppression in America with Samson. In Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon, Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper investigate legal documents, narratives by enslaved persons, speeches, sermons, periodicals, poetry, fiction, and visual arts to tell the unlikely...

"Many remember the 1980s as the era of Ronald Reagan, a conservative decade populated by preppies and yuppies dancing to a soundtrack of electronic synth pop music. In some ways, it was the "MTV generation." However, the decade also produced some of the most creative works of punk culture, from the music of bands like the Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys to avant-garde visual arts, literature, poetry, and film. In We're Not Here to Entertain, Kevin...