William Heyen

An anthology of essays and poems. On the subject of modern poetry he writes, "Old women with children do not live in it. / It does not harvest thought or associate with farmers. / It does not serve in the army, or follow a story. / It revels in skewed cubes, elliptical appositions."

Long respected for bringing his poetic vision to histories, stories and legends, William Heyen captures the successes and shortcomings of the world's most visible family - The Royals. Through poems that both startle and delight, Diana, Charles, & the Queen reimagines the lives of those born and wed into the House of Windsor. A young Elizabeth contemplates love while crying into a cloth woven by Mahatma Gandhi; a gallant Charles courts a wide-eyed Diana with anecdotes of his travels; and Mother Teresa reads in the papers about Diana giving "the royal finger/to a photographer who'd crowded her/once too often." Gradually, we see the marriage of Diana and Charles crumbling, and the Windsors contemplating their role in Britain's future.

William Heyen's Crazy Horse in Stillness is a powerful collection of more than 400 poems that explores the collision of North America's two civilizations - one moving in a cyclical, visionary rhythm of primal timelessness; the other racing in a linear time-driven thrust to fulfill its "manifest destiny.". This collision transpires through the lives and mythic personas of General George Armstrong Custer and the Sioux warrior-mystic Crazy Horse, both of whom believed themselves messianic, embodying the visionary and the historical. Crazy Horse in Stillness weaves their childhoods, adult lives and deaths, and the places, incidences and people through which they stand in relief: Elizabeth Custer, Lone Bear, the Civil War, the Great Plains, the 7th Cavalry, the Lakota, the buffalo and the Battle of Little Bighorn. The poems ask the reader to follow the wandering North American tribes and the expansionist Westerners, and, ultimately, to find epiphany in the hills where the spirit of Crazy Horse remains free.

128 p. ; 24 cm

xiii, 197 p. ; 22 cm

A promising young ballet student cannot afford to continue lessons when her Chinese grandmother emigrates from Hong Kong, creating jealousy and conflict among the entire family.