Poetry Authors

Greg Rappleye, JD'76

Figured Dark: Poems, University of Arkansas Press, 2007.

The book: Linda Gregerson, poet and U-M professor, writes of this book: Oh the fine, brawling, pungent observation of these poems: "the smog-brown sea, the baggies-drooping sea"; Homer would be exhilarated and appalled. Greg Rappleye revives the language and revives our powers of seeing. "Figured Dark" is shot through with light.

The author: Greg Rappleye is corporation counsel for Ottawa County in Grand Haven, Michigan. He’s the author of two poetry collections, "Holding Down the Earth" and "A Path Between Houses," and two chapbooks. A past Bread Loaf fellow in poetry, he has won a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and the Brittingham Prize, and was the first runner up for the 2007 Dorset Prize.

Ted Lardner, MFA'85, PhD'91

Tornado, Kent State University Press, 2008.

The book: Reviewer Alicia Ostriker states the following about this chapbook: "Tornado" is a book of ravishing and precise beauty. Death, said Wallace Stevens, is the mother of beauty, and so it is here; around the loss of a beloved sister in childhood, Ted Lardner has spun a radiant web of language by which he reveals what does not and cannot die, in the scale of nature above and underground, in the movements of time, and in the ongoing reach of human tenderness that "glides through our skins like a wave, lighting it up from inside."

The author: Ted Lardner's poems have appeared in Arsenic Lobster, 5am, Rhino, Luna and Pleiades and in a previous chapbook, "Passing by a Home Place." He teaches writing at Cleveland State University.

Joe Fletcher, '99

Sleigh Ride, Factory Hollow Press, 2008.

The book: One of the lines from this chapbook is the following: "I couldn't see the far shore, but / directly before us a suspension bridge arched out over the dark waters."

The author: Joe Fletcher lives and teaches in North Carolina.

Barbara Bialick, '73

The book: This new collection contains thought-provoking poems that are tied together by multiple levels of time and thyme, from a Jewish mailman who worked in Detroit's inner city to a World Peace Tree growing in Massachusetts and beyond.

The author: Detroit native and Newton, Massachusetts, resident Barbara Bialick has published as a journalist and a poet in a variety of publications, with articles in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Detroit News, McCall's and Pittsburgh Magazine and withpoetry in Ibbetson Street, Istanbul Literary Review, Pemmican, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Bagel Bard Anthologies, Mid-America Poetry Review and Jewish Currents.

Web site: www.lulu.com/content/1884973  

Nancy Baker Fate Heers, MA '72, Wendel Ward Heers

The book: Poetry and sculpture come together and illuminate each other in this book, which speaks of keeping the word. It reaches down into the blue earth and up into the galaxy and feels the rhythm of the earth and the movement of dance.

The author: Nancy Baker Fate Heers dances, both liturgical and modern, and writes poetry. She previously co-published "Forest of Algae and Ivy Outside/in" and "Rock Rhythms." She and Wendel Ward Heers have two children and two granddaughters.

Web site: http://paupacpress.com/  

Laura Kasischke, '84, MFA'87

Lilies Without, Ausable Press, 2007.

The book: Admired for her use of metaphor and her nervy, surprising syntax, Laura Kasischke continues in this book to peel back the skins of our ordinary lives to reveal the underlying anxieties and complexities. Funny, irreverent, personal and at the same time unnerving, these poems take us to familiar places made entirely strange so that we may see them again as they really are, without the trappings and disguises we invent to remain blind to what disturbs us. Few poets write about parenthood with the combination of tenderness and steely insight that Kasischke brings to her work.

The author: Laura Kasischke is the author of six other books of poetry and four novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay diCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches at the University of Michigan.

Janet Anderson-Davis, JD'78

Dance of the Warriors, 2007.

The book: Each poem in this collection is dedicated to a player in the 2005 Detroit mayoral election recount, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Poetry styles include haiku, traditional, jazz and rap. The cacophony of rhythmic beats contrasts with unconventional freestyle. The poems encompass hope, love, grief and joy. The work salutes not only the election process, but the patriotic men and women involved in the process.

The author: Janet Anderson-Davis, who practices law in the areas of transactions and elections, has written poetry for many years. An aficionado of the espionage novel, she enjoys studying foreign languages, spinning, weightlifting and reading. She lives with her family in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

Manly Johnson, '46

Holding Out for What Is: New & Selected Poems, 2006.

The book: This collection explores the nature of friendship and memory, the ways in which the attachments of the present and the images of the past reveal beliefs that have shaped our lives. The book interweaves more than three dozen new poems with the author's poems from previously published volumes and his archives.

The author: Manly Johnson has published poems, reviews and translations in a variety of anthologies, journals and small magazines. He has taught at U-M, Johns Hopkins, Williams College and the University of Tulsa. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his wife, Francine Leffler Ringold.

Tung-Hui Hu, MFA '03

Mine, Ausable Press, 2007

The book: In "Mine," Tung-Hui Hu makes myths out of the personal. He speaks of desire and awkwardness and of the earth that contains both. Resonant and blunt, this is writing that excavates. As history unfolds over and over the same soil, these poems become, Hu writes, "practice for the living."

The author: Tung-Hui Hu lives in San Francisco, California, where he writes on film and new media. He is also the author of "The Book of Motion," and recent poems have appeared in The New Republic, Harvard Review and Prairie Schooner.

Roy Jacobstein, '69, MD'73, MPH'96

A Form of Optimism, University Press of New England, 2006

The book: Filtered through the twin lenses of human history and personal memory, and suffused with ironic appreciation, this book engages in a meditation on beauty and evil, cornucopia and loss. Drawing on the author's cross-cultural work in international health, the poems range widely and naturally across setting, personage and tongue-from Istanbul to Detroit, Mother Teresa to Gorm the Old, Swahili to Sanskrit. Variously anxious, rueful, witty, tender and worn, "A Form of Optimism" transcribes an arc of compassion and hope, embracing the mysteries of the world and the word.

The author: Roy Jacobstein's poetry appears in many literary publications and has won many awards, including the Felix Pollak Prize for his first book of poetry, "Ripe." A former official of the US Agency for International Development and a public health physician who works in Africa and Asia, he lives with his wife and daughter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.