Category: Excerpts

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Featured poem

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James Crews’ poem, “The Bees Have Not Yet Left Us,” was recently featured on Verse Daily. This poem comes from his recent book of poetry, The Book of What Stays. Michael Simms from the Coal Hill Review said, "The Book of What Stays is one of the very best original books of poetry I've read in the past couple of years . . . . I feel that while this book may be the one that stays, there's a "part two" quickly on the way." To read Crews’ poem on Verse Daily, click here. Continue reading Featured poem

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Off the Shelf: Such a Life by Lee Martin

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Read the beginning of "Colander" from Such a Life by Lee Martin: "One summer morning the telephone rang in my grandmother’s house, and, because she was busy washing dishes at the sink, I ran to answer it. She kept the new dial phone on a library table by her bedroom window, a bedroom off the kitchen in the modest frame house where I’d spent the night. It was 1962, and I was seven years old. Progress had come to our sleepy, backwoods part of southern Illinois in the form of telephones you dialed instead of cranked and seven-digit numbers instead … Continue reading Off the Shelf: Such a Life by Lee Martin

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Off the Shelf: Homesteading Space by David Hitt, Owen Garriott, and Joe Kerwin

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HittNew in a paperback edition, read from Homer Hickam's foreword of Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story by David Hitt, Owen Garriott, and Joe Kerwin:

"The book that follows is a riveting, insightful account of the Skylab missions flown by the United States in 1973 and 1974. It is also simply a great yarn. Skylab began as an underdog, was nearly knocked out several times, staggered back to its feet, and fought on against overwhelming odds until it became a champion. In a lot of ways, it was the Rocky of space, and just like the story in that great film, it is an inspiration for all who know it. The difference is the remarkable saga of Skylab is all true.

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Off the Shelf: The Wink of the Zenith by Floyd Skloot

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SklootRead the beginning of "Going, Going, Gone" from The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life by Floyd Skloot:

"I was standing in the bedroom of our Brooklyn apartment with my ear pressed to the radio. It was dark outside, a spring evening in the mid-1950s, and through the open window I could hear people talking in the courtyard four stories below. I was eight or nine years old, and my brother Philip, a teenager, was sitting at his desk bent over homework. That explains why the radio’s volume was turned so low. Philip couldn’t hear it over the courtyard chatter or else he’d have told me to turn it down.

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Off the Shelf: The Least Cricket of Evening by Robert Vivian

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VivianLeastRead the beginning of "Ghost Hallway" from The Least Cricket of Evening by Robert Vivian:

"I live in a ghost hallway. They come and go whenever they want, like the transparent, blow-away wings of bees. Their spirits hover inside this house on Mechanic Street like a twilight hue filling a wine glass. I live more or less inside their moods, which they carry behind them in traces of light that flood the panes one window at a time and in the creaky flutes of rusty hinges. The ghosts don’t say “boo” and they don’t swing chains. They’re good ghosts as far as I can tell, calm as a cup of tea, considerate and watchful and able to pay attention to the least thing for hours.

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Off the Shelf: Private Property by Paule Constant

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ConstantRead the beginning of Chapter 1 from Private Property by Paule Constant, translated by Margot Miller and France Grenaudier-Klijn:
 
"The senior girl was helping Tiffany adjust her celluloid collar. A quick glance at the cuffs, the pleats of the skirt. It seemed alright. They had to hurry now, to catch up with the others. They were running. The refectory was that way, and over here, the bathrooms. Now they were tearing down the stairs. The infirmary, the laundry, the chapel, the parlor. At the back the classrooms, and at the far end, the gymnasium. Back that way, the kitchens. Here the playground.

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Off the Shelf: In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa

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HaslamRead the Prologue from In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa by Gerald W. Haslam with Janice E. Haslam:

"It remains one of the most gripping images from the 1960s: bantamweight Dr. S. I. Hayakawa—plaid tam-o’-shanter ensconced on his head—scrambling onto a sound truck parked in front of the San Francisco State College campus, hoping to use it to address the assembled crowd, but ripping out speaker wires instead, and halting an illegal demonstration—or denying First Amendment rights, depending upon your perspective. Either way, he shut down the sound system. Inside the truck that day, student activist Ernie Brill was “stunned, flabbergasted.”

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Off the Shelf: All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos) by Catherine C. Robbins

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Robbins Read the beginning of the Introduction, "Flying Together" from All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos) by Catherine C. Robbins:

"In 2006 the twelve bands of the Kumeyaay-Diegueño Nation raised a new national flag—their own—at Cabrillo National Monument on San Diego’s Point Loma. For the first time, their flag took its place alongside the banners of the nations that had invaded and gained control of their land: Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Those had flown regularly for years over historic Point Loma during an annual ceremony marking the European American arrival that had begun five centuries before. Now a Native American nation that has called the area home for millennia hoisted its own standard. The Kumeyaay-Diegueño flag flew firmly in a stiff breeze that day, a signal of the love and sacredness that American Indians attach to an occupied and besieged homeland. It also demonstrated the return of Kumeyaays to a place where historians estimate they had first set foot between eleven thousand and thirty thousand years ago. With energy and dedication plus the inspiration of one of their respected elders, Jane Dumas, they had circled back to a place they had never really left.1*

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Off the Shelf: Finding Oil by Brian Frehner

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Frehner Read the beginning of the Introduction from Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859-1920 by Brian Frehner:

"Shortly after walking over the dry west Texas plains, Jett Rink knelt on the ground while squeezing handfuls of oil-soaked dirt through his fingers and gazed in amazement at the black crude slowly bubbling to the surface. Later, Rink stood atop a cable tool drilling rig when a loud noise caught his attention. The black crude that had merely bubbled to the surface began to emit an awesome roar as it erupted from the hole Rink punctured in the earth. He stepped back to behold the spectacle he had created, as oil spewed from the earth and rained down on him. He held both hands in the air as if to thank Mother Earth for her beneficence, and jumped up and down to celebrate his good fortune.

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Off the Shelf: Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand by John Schulian

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Schulian Read the beginning of the Introduction from Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand: Portraits of Champions Who Walked Among Us by John Schulian:

"In an age when it seems that no royal perk is enough for the athletes who have been crowned our heroes, the helicopter that whisks Kobe Bryant to the Lakers’ home games strikes me as more practical than self-indulgent. After all, the drive from his manse can take as long as two hours, even in a Lamborghini. What better reason to fly over the traffic jams that snarl the sprawling mess of Los Angeles, where his name and likeness are indelible in every subdivision and strip mall? L.A. is his kingdom, and a kingdom must be a hard thing to ignore when it is yours, but still I hope Kobe looks beyond it once in a while. I hope he looks until he sees the past.

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