BOOKS OF POETRY BY LOCAL AUTHORS Western Massachusetts Authors

Belly Songs: in celebration of fat women, by Susan Stinson (1993)

This collection of poetry, short fiction, and personal essays examines fat oppression and celebrates the beauty, strength, and sensuality of fat women.

Carry On, by Price Van Ray (2003)

From the author: Just believe in your dreams and your dreams will believe in you. Then you will succeed and rise on dream wings inside of you.

Climbing to the Moon, by Jane Schneeloch (2009)

These poems are both intensely felt and exquisitely crafted. In honoring the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, Schneeloch has made her own, sensuous, and entirely original art. Climbing to the Moon gives cause for celebration.

Enough of a Little to Know the All, by Richard Ballon (2007)

This masterful collection of poetry and prose swings and sways with delightful rhythms both strong and gentle. Mr. Ballon is as deft with short form poetry as he is with short stories and monologues. His tone cannot be caught, it races around you, fills you and leaves you in awe of life's beauty, smiling and shaken from sombre honesty with heart breaking words of truth. Read one poem, or take the ride all the way through, this collection won't disappoint.

Gathering words = Recogiendo palabras, by Maria Luisa Arroyo (2008)

Arroyo writes with spine-tingling candor that does not allow us to deny the truth. Shaped by her family's background in Puerto Rican music, her poems, written mostly in English, are reminiscent of folksongs with their narrative storytelling and activist representation of the disenfranchised, disillusioned, and neglected.

G*d's Rainbow Grocery Store, edited by Gineen Cooper (2011)

Poems, flash fiction, and narratives about music, medications, dogs & rabbits, recovery, sanctuary, death, and the value of ice cream.

Haiku Emily!: Haiku-inspired poetry based on the work of Emily Dickinson, by Everett Decker (2011)

Haiku Emily! is the result of a haiku poet's fascination with Emily Dickinson. Convinced that the elements of haiku could complement the hymnal lyric style of Emily Dickinson's poetry (both often relate nature to human nature, and even to the very nature of human existence), Everett Decker devoted a year to creating 1,789 haiku-influenced poems based on Dickinson's 1,789 poems, in the process distilling the best of both poetry worlds.

A Piece of My Mind, by Brend's Child. (2007)

This is a poetry collection that speaks to and for the modern-day female. It is raw with emotion as it explores love, sexuality, and social issues from subjective and objective points of view.

Set on Freedom, by Martina Dianne Robinson (2007)

A six volume set of ‘zine poetry inspired and collated by topic including disability, feminism, queerness, faith, and more.

9/2012

Visit our Local Authors page for more about writers from Western Massachusetts.

Do you have recommendations for additions? Email us at askalibrarian@springfieldlibrary.org