Let the Games Begin!

The arrival of National Poetry Month has begun and with it comes not only the NaPoWriMo challenge (writing a poem for every day of April), but a giveaway started by the awesome Kelli Russell Agodon.  Last year, I hosted a giveaway here on this blog and had a lot of fun with it (and even won some books on other poetry blogs--there is a full list of who is participating on Kelli's page).  This year, I thought I'd go one step further and not only give away the standard two books, but up it to seven, so that you all have more chances to win!

The giveaway books are as follows:

Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes

“No book before Lorna Dee Cervantes’ Emplumada has so completely and sharply drawn the East Bay and San Jose, California experience with full justice. No book has so successfully made the Californian urban and rural worlds of unfinished freeways and ‘spinached specked shoes’ of cannery workers come alive. No book has so carefully elucidated what living as a Chicana in the West means, and how ‘an intelligent, well-read person could believe in the war between races.’ Emplumada offers a number of troubled and delicated portrait of a woman’s world and how that antipatriarchal world has come to have meaning.”

                                                                                                                        --Revista Chicano-Riquena

Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

"These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of the land for the first time."

                                                                                                    --Amazon review 

How to Photograph the Heart by Christine Klocek-Lim

"How to photograph the heart ignites our memories, not just with familiar visions of the natural world sewn into fluid language and personification but also with the raw release of images that takes us beyond what is normally perceived."

                                                                                 --Theresa Senato Edwards, Holly Rose Review

Uncommon Refrains by Gregory W. Randall

"Gregory W. Randall is a poet with the rare gift of being able to fuse intellect with passion and vulnerability. These smart, tender, harrowing poems explore what happens within an extended family when a young married daughter, herself a mother of a young daughter, suffers a major stroke. You will cherish this book for its compassionate concern and for its many moments of transcendence."

                                                                                                                   --Susan Terris, Contrariwise

No Rainbow by Judson Hamilton

"Don't reckon this as Darger-inspired literature or Dahl-hued imaginings. This is Judson Hamilton's No Rainbow, a uniquely intrepid tale about a group of youngsters who seek to expand themselves in a world that is slowly shrinking 'one word, one creature, one color at a time.'"

                                                                                                      --Goodreads review

The Wait of Atom by Jessie Carty

"Jessie Carty is skilled at making the reader experience the 'everyday' from a different angle or point of view. Rich details such as the kohl lining the parts speaker's face in "Fantasy," the colors and gestures in 'Pink was the Color of his Weakness,' and evolution of tin sheets in 'Arts & Crafts' come to life on the page. 'Ars Poetica' and 'Covalent Bonds' are my favorites in this quirky and creatively themed chapbook."

                         

                                                                                                          --Goodreads review

The Language of Shedding Skin by Niki Herd

"The Language of Shedding Skin is a resolute wind song of chimes strung with steely nerves, a song winding its way through and around America, what we have been, what we are, what we can be. The poet challenges the stasis of contentment with a spellbinding beauty crafted from her will to justice. These poems will stand as they come out of the compassionate quietude of a mind that will let not let go the dream of a better state of the heart we all can have if we accept the courage she offers us. Niki Herd has taken up the charge of those before her, poets with names like Lourde and Hughes, spirits that looked into the deep well of what we can be to see the face of love."

                                                                                                                           --Afaa Michael Weaver

To enter, just leave a comment below with your name and email address and specify which books you'd like to win!  I will choose the winners on May1st and announce them here.  Good luck!