What critics are saying about Empty like a Pocket. “Molly McDonald has emptied her pockets for us, and -- inverted and convoluted in the fabric of her poems -- they've become little black holes, revealing truths that previously hid as lies. Her deceptively clean language will shake you up with philosophical blindsiding, then explode kaleidoscopic like a Jackson Pollock painting made of your bone marrow. ‘I'm burrowed so/ far inside my head I found a China no one knows/ about,’ she writes, but it feels like somehow she burrowed inside my head. McDonald's emotional archaeology feels necessary, though, not invasive; amid ice cream and dissections of car crashes, the ‘microscopic looming everything,’ holds taut dichotomies together under her watchful eye” – Claire Kruesel, MFA lecturer, Iowa State University “McDonald's poetry first left me speechless, then all the places in me that used to be cracks started shining, as I'd always secretly wanted them to.” – Brett Brinkmeyer, host of radio show Firsthand Poetry

Empty like a Pocket

Literature & Fiction

McDonald, Molly

Poetry

Up On Big Rock Poetry Series

In Domestication, collected poems (1996-2016), Rob Hardy brings together the wide range of gifts that place him among the few whose common touch makes them exceptional. In work that is at once accessible, enjoyable, and wonderfully well-made Hardy shows, without pretentious display, that poetry is not an outsider’s cryptic game. His poems demonstrate what Henry David Thoreau teaches: That profundity may best be found in simplicity. Hardy gracefully combines his deep knowledge of the ancient classics and his wide interest in scientific learning with his first-hand experience of nature and human relationships. When “An early thaw tempts the earth into expectation,” he writes, “birds modulate into spring.” As we read his work we are modulated into the renewals our varied seasons of life require. For good reasons, Hardy was appointed official Poet Laureate of the city of Northfield, Minnesota. Emilio DeGrazia Author of A Canticle of Bread and Stones, and most recently, Eye Shadow (Rocket Science Press, 2014).

Domestication: Collected Poems 1996 - 2016

Hardy, Rob

Poet, English teacher, writer, and literary editor, Nicole Borg has been published in Nodin Poetry Anthology 2015, Lost Lake Folk Opera, and Eclectica Magazine. She was a 2014 recipient of the SEMAC Emerging Artists Grant. For five years, she was the lead editor of Green Blade Magazine of the Rural America Writers’ Center. Originally from North Dakota but having grown up in Colorado, Nicole has an appreciation for place—the mountains, the plains, and everything in between. She loves Yoga, cooking and eating, night-walks, and spending time with her family. She now lives along the lovely Mississippi River in Minnesota with her husband Glen and sons, Lyzander and Lynx.

All Roads Lead Home

Borg, Nicole

New and Selected Poems from Land and Water by the author of the award winning chapbook "Bottom Right Corner."

A Mark of Permanence

Watkins, Justin

I used to pile into the breakfast nook across from my dad a long time ago. We lived in Detroit. He would have an atlas out, and it would be turned to the pages of the Southwest. I would sit and follow his words as I read upside-down the many places where he had been. He told me stories about Dallas, El Paso, the Arizona rocks, Yuma, and the California coast. He longed to be there again. He loved the heat, the dryness, the desert, the mountains—it was his endless daydream of remembered adventure.

Road to Duncan

Benvenuto, Joyce

Literary

Ghosting

McCown, Steve

Poetry Collection exploring the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh

Dreaming with Open Eyes: Poems for Vincent Van Gogh

Martinelli, Louis

Arts & Photography

Poetry collection -- These are poems from the earth and sky and they rise from a spirit that has moved mountains with a lifetime devotion to poetry. Delta Eddy's vision is far reaching because what she sees brings us closer to the truths we carry in our lives. We turn to these poems because they not only sustain us through the music of faith but, they remind us of what the great poet Pablo Neruda once declared, “Poetry is power.” Ray Gonzalez, author of Beautiful Wall and Feel Puma.

Sparks

Eddy, Delta

There is much wisdom in Bob Love's book, Pathfinder. He has been sharing this wisdom with his immediate community for the 50 years he's been writing and working in the woods. His essays bear this out. His life has been lived intentionally and with integrity. He is a poet because he can't be otherwise. He is a logger but also a conservationist, who practices Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic.

Pathfinder: Selected Poems, Essays & Tales

Love, Robert

Empire: Poems

Armstrong, James

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Books by Up On Big Rock Poetry Series