The Secret of Me:
a book of poems for young adults
from Persea Books

Click here to access teacher's guide (PDF).

Ordering information:
$17.95 hardcover
Pub. Date: November 2005
ISBN # 0-89255-322-7
Distributed by W.W. Norton: order dept and
customer service phone # 800 233 4830.
Or call Persea Books is 212 260 9256,
or visit www.perseabooks.com

Read the reviews

A vivid, heartfelt tale of a teenager's poetic quest to discover her place within her adoptive family and within the wider world.

Being adopted is a fact of life in the McLane household: fourteen-year-old Lizzie, as well as her older brother and sister were adopted as infants. But dry facts rarely encompass feelings, and what it feels like to be adopted is something Lizzie never dares openly discuss with her loving parents—let alone with outsiders. More and more Lizzie yearns to confide in others, especially her boyfriend, Peter. But something stops her. Will Peter think she is "less" because her birthmother gave her away? Would telling be disloyal to her adoptive parents?

Told entirely through the poems Lizzie writes for herself, this intimate, moving story gives voice to the thoughts Lizzie cannot utter aloud. Lizzie transforms relationships and events in her daily life—family dinners, the school dance, hanging out with friends—into blues poems, list poems, sonnets, sestinas, and free verse that delve into her secret wishes and her fears. Often Lizzie feels like two people: the person everyone knows, and the one known to precious few. But when a tragic accident occurs, Lizzie finds the courage to say who she truly is and to set off on a new path of self-discovery and truth.

In an Afterword the author discusses her own experience as an adopted child and how writing can help make sense of one's life. Also included are a Guide to Poetic Forms and an Appendix of Poems (poems referred to in the novel, by Lucille Clifton, Hayden Carruth, Anne Sexton, Donald Hall, and others).

Available through major retailers.

An Unkindness of Ravens
Poems by Meg Kearney with a foreword by Donald Hall

Now in its second printing.

Ordering information:
ISBN# 1-929918-09-7 a paperback original
ISBB 1-929918-16-X Limited Edition cloth
Pub. Date: October, 2001

In An Unkindness of Ravens, Meg Kearney's poems weave voices of estrangement and redemption: mothers, daughters, lovers of gin and dead things. In the middle poems, the protagonist confronts "Raven": a figure of guises and disguises, revealing the speaker's fears and angst. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Donald Hall has written the Foreword.

To purchase a copy of An Unkindness of Ravens:
Meg suggests contacting Jett Whitehead (www.poetryjett.com).
Supplies are limited.

Jett Whitehead also has broadsides of Meg's poem "Ticket" available.

~ Listen to Garrison Keillor read "Ticket"
on the September 1st edition of "The Writer's Almanac" ~

~ Listen to Garrison Keillor read "Creed"
on the July 23rd edition of "The Writer's Almanac" ~

Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews
by Kurt Brown, Meg Kearney, Donna Reis, Estha Weiner
from The University of Akron Press

Ordering information:
Paperback, 185pp
ISBN: 1931968241
ISBN-13: 9781931968249
Pub. Date: February 2005

Blues for Bill celebrates the life and work of poet William Matthews through his own language, that of poetry. While the poems of William Matthews are well known and remembered, this collection of poems ensures that the world will remember Bill himself: his graciousness, intelligence, knowledge, style, good humor, capacity for friendship, immense talent, and wit. In this anthology, the editors memoralize the character and soul of this most unique man. The poems included are written by people who knew Bill in a variety of ways, under myriad circumstances: as friend, both old and new; as mentor and teacher; as colleague; as father. Their poems are remarkable, true testaments to Bill and his art.

Available through major retailers.

Ordering information:
Hardcover, 256pp, $12.50 US
Pub. Date: March 2007
SBN: 0307265455
ISBN-13: 9780307265456

This utterly delightful anthology gathers poetic responses to other poems in a dialogue conducted across space and time.

Here are poems that answer, argue with, update, elaborate on, mock, interrogate, or pay tribute to poems of the past. We hear Leda's view of the Swan; feel sympathy for La Belle Dame sans Merci, and find out how Marvell's coy mistress might have answered his appeal. Raleigh's famous reply to Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" sparked a centuries-long debate that John Donne, William Carlos Williams, C. Day Lewis, and Ogden Nash could not resist joining. In these pages we see Denise Levertov respond to Wordsworth, Randall Jarrell to Auden, Ogden Nash to Byron, Donald Justice to César Vallejo. We also see contemporary poets responding to their peers with the same intriguing mix of admiration and impatience.

Whether they offer approbation or reproof, the pleasures of a jazz riff or a completely different perspective, these remarkable poems are not only engaging themselves but also capable of casting surprising new light on the poems that inspired them.

Available through major retailers.

The Book of Irish American Poetry: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present
by Daniel Tobin (Editor)
from University of Notre Dame Press

Ordering information:
Hardcover, 760pp, $60.00 US
Pub. Date: January 2007
ISBN: 0268042306
ISBN-13: 9780268042301

This is the first major anthology of Irish American poetry. It collects, for the first time, the work of over two hundred Irish American poets, as well as other American poets whose work enjoins Irish American themes. The anthology contains exemplary poetry of the "populist period" of Irish American verse (in particular the work of poets such as John Boyle O'Reilly), with the work of those Irish Americans who have made an indelible imprint on American poetry: Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Louise Bogan, John Berryman, Thomas McGrath, John Montague, Robert Creeley, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Charles Olson, Galway Kinnell, X. J. Kennedy, and Alan Dugan, among others. The volume also includes distinctive poems by contemporary Irish Americans whose work is most likely to stand the test of time: poets such as Tess Gallagher, Alice Fulton, Brendan Galvin, Marie Howe, Susan Howe, Billy Collins, Michael Ryan, Richard Kenney, and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The poems in this collection cut across the broad spectrum of American poetry and place Irish Americans within every notable school of American poetry, from modernism to confessionalism and the Beats, from formalism to imagism, and from projectivism to the New York School and Language poets.

Available through major retailers.

Available through major retailers.

Never Before: Poems about First Experiences
by Laure-Anne Bosselaar (Editor), Laura Anne Bosselaar (Editor)
from Four Way Books

Ordering information:
Paperback, 224pp
ISBN: 1884800602
ISBN-13: 9781884800603
Pub. Date: November 2005

First haircuts, first kisses, firstborn children. Never Before: Poems About First Experiences explores the ways in which the unknown becomes known. These poems evoke a sense of wonder at the world around us, and amazement at our ability to navigate through it, with all of the necessary bumps along the way. The voices of both established and emerging poets include Kim Addonizio, Stephen Dunn, Beth Ann Fennelly, Jennifer Grotz, Kimiko Hahn, Mark Halliday, Edward Hirsch, Meg Kearney, A. Van Jordan, Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Thomas Lux, Michael Ryan, and Gerald Stern, among many others. This is a diverse grouping and a generous and lively sampling work is showcased on the pages of this anthology.

Available through major retailers.

The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales
by Jeanne Marie Beaumont (Editor), Claudia Carlson (Editor), Claudia Carlson (Editor)
from Story Line Press

Ordering information:
Paperback, 335pp
ISBN: 1586540270
ISBN-13: 9781586540272

Writers and readers have long been inspired by the haunting wisdom and sheer imaginative power to be found in the fairy tales of the immortal Brothers Grimm. The editors have collected more than a hundred poems inspired by Grimm tales and written by our finest living poets. A brilliant and informative anthology, a teachable text.

Available through major retailers.

Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City
by Laure-Anne Bosselaar (Editor), Emily Hiestand, Emily Hiestand (Introduction)
from Milkweed Editions

Ordering information:
ISBN: 1571314105
ISBN-13: 9781571314109
Format: Paperback, 265pp
Pub. Date: July 2000

Deep in the concrete canyons of even the largest cities, nature lurks. Its unpredictable energies animate not only squirrels and microorganisms, not only ginkgoes, roots, and rivers, but also the engines of human desire. Urban Nature captures the many faces of wildness in the city with poems by more than 130 emerging and recognized poets. Rather than just lamenting the loss of paradise, these poems celebrate nature's resiliency. They memorialize a salamander's last stand in a parking lot, link the cosmos to the consumer ethos ("The Pleiades / you could probably get downtown"), evoke horses galloping between skyscrapers, and track geological time in a pothole.

Available through major retailers.