Bookshelf

(Delete Press, 2024). 

Poet Dan Beechy-Quick shared this observation about Naughton's book of poetry: "Near the end of her stunning debut, Katie Naughton asks a simple question, not so simple at all: 'and what is mine?' The question tunes the ear to the undergirding ethic these poems explore, a frequency that cancels the static of capital’s all-too-easy 'time is money' to reveal the deeper economy, one that knows the real, letter by letter, is embedded within the ethereal, with an E as the only excess, calling out so quietly the heart’s inner urgent more. More what? More days, more time, more of the honest inheritance that makes a life — for any of us — mine. Naughton is a spare poet of life’s wild abundance, practicing poetry’s oldest motions, the garland and the crown, weaving together inner life with worldly experience, stitching day to day, asking what the hours are in hopes of honoring what the days bring. It is the worthiest kind of work I know, to play us the tune of 'time our oldest song the wind wilt blow.'” 

(Parlor Press, 2023).

As the publisher notes, this volume "brings together 18 essays from the Rhetoric Society of America's 20th Biennial Conference, held at the end of the pandemic period. The conference call asked for participants to 'engage with rhetoric's purposes, demands, and energies' as the world moved toward a 'post-pandemic' world. The first section of essays confronts issues that existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic but were exacerbated by it: race and colonialism. Each essay offers suggestions on confronting biases too common in the world. The essays in the second section confront how rhetoric has impacted various concerns of the early 21st century, including the pandemic, the political world, and housing insecurities. Essays in the third and final section explore eternal issues from a kairotic perspective as they celebrate and reconsider people and elements of the field of rhetoric. In sum, the collection shows how rhetoric can change the world-even as it offers instructions on how to do so."

(Brynmorgen Press, 2024).

More than 50 organic collages and hand-crafted musings complement each other as naturally as do their creators, the husband-and-wife team of printmaker Susan Webster and poet Stu Kestenbaum.

They have this to say about their process: “From the start, whenever we have made our collaborative art pieces, we don’t actually work together in the same space. We work separately, passing work back and forth, without conversation. Perhaps because we’ve known each other for a long time, we find being in this unspoken place allows us to communicate differently. As in any making process, there is something beneath it or within it that we’re trying to get at (or it’s trying to get at us). In this back-and-forth between our studios, we are thrilled when we discover something unexpected — something that is more than the two of us emerging.”

(Lexington Books, 2022)

Wright, a professor of writing studies at University of Minnesota Duluth, builds on various feminist theories of ethos in this collection that explores how North American Catholic women from various periods, races, ethnicities, sexualities, and classes have used elements of the group’s positionality to make change. According to the publisher, "The women considered in the book range from the earliest Catholic sisters who arrived in the United States to women who held the Church hierarchy accountable for the sexual abuse scandals. The book analyzes women such as those in an African American order who developed an ethos that would resist racism. Chapters also consider better known Catholic women such as Dolores Huertas, Mary Daly, and Joan Chittister."

(BookBaby, 2024).

In this book, Parker reveals timeless wisdom through poetry and dramatic photography. According to the publisher, “It imaginatively communicates the topics of values, manners, love, leadership, and fears in the lifelong journey. These messages are metaphorically illustrated through birds, boats, designs, and notes: What we can learn from birds. The wisdom of the sea. Lessons in art and design. The importance of love.”

(Marrowstone Press, 2024).

In this book of poems, the last in a four-part series, Weltner follows loss or what remains enduring after time or an era has passed. “It is about memory and what it clings to or holds on to despite all that inevitably, inexorably changes. It is about how new work always follows in the steps of the old toward the future, about influence and inspiration, whatever the source,” he notes.

(self-published 2024).

These two volumes are the latest editions in the author’s “anatomy” series, designed to explore how the activities of humankind have evolved and provide insight into the puzzle of human behavior. Anatomy of Antisemitism takes readers through the journeys of the Jewish people and the hardships they’ve faced. As one reviewer comments, “An eye-opening view of antisemitism written in a conversational tone. We read a chapter during our Passover Seder which will become a new tradition.” Anatomy of Addiction focuses on the history and current treatment of many forms of addiction, mainly concentrating on drug addiction, but also delving into such addictive tendencies such as sex and gambling.

(Black Lawrence Press, 2024).

This literary chapbook of flash fiction — essentially a short book of 12 very short stories — includes tales of longing and desire for escape. “Whether the characters yearn for a different, unknown life, or they wish themselves out of something else, Turner’s surreal yet relatable collection offers glimpses to the depths beneath, above, or in-between our own domestic realities,” notes the publisher.

(BookBaby, 2024).

Do you want to be free? Come fly with me. The publisher describes this children’s book as a story with adventure, fun, scary things, and a happy ending. “The story takes the child on an adventure, with our symbolic heron, who finds friends, goes on a fun adventure, has scary moments, and comes home for a happy ending. However, reading it will stir the parent’s imagination, too.”

(Scribner’s, 2024).

The author, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, takes us on a fast-paced and entertaining tour of playful animals and the scientists who study them. The publisher notes, “From octopuses on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to meerkats in the Kalahari Desert to brown bears on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, we follow adventurous researchers as they design and conduct experiments seeking answers to new, intriguing questions: When did play first appear in animals? How does play develop the brain, and how did it evolve? Are the songs and aerial acrobatics of birds the beginning of avian culture? Is fairness in dog play the foundation of canine ethics? And does play direct and possibly accelerate evolution?