Baghdad: The City in Verse captures the essence of life lived in one of the world’s great enduring metropolises. In this unusual anthology, Reuven Snir offers original translations of more than 170 Arabic poems—most of them appearing for the first time in English—which represent a cross-section of genres and styles from the time of Baghdad’s founding in the eighth century to the present day. The diversity of the fabled city is reflected in the Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, Kurdish, and Jewish poets featured here, including writers of great renown and others whose work has survived but whose names are lost to history.

Through the prism of these poems, readers glimpse many different Baghdads: the city built on ancient Sumerian ruins, the epicenter of Arab culture and Islam’s Golden Age under the enlightened rule of Harun al-Rashid, the bombed-out capital of Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime, the American occupation, and life in a new but unstable Iraq. With poets as our guides, we visit bazaars, gardens, wine parties, love scenes (worldly and mystical), brothels, prisons, and palaces. Startling contrasts emerge as the day-to-day cacophony of urban life is juxtaposed with eternal cycles of the Tigris, and hellish winds, mosquitoes, rain, floods, snow, and earthquakes are accompanied by somber reflections on invasions and other catastrophes.

Documenting the city’s 1,250-year history, Baghdad: The City in Verse shows why poetry has been aptly called the public register of the Arabs.

Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, an annual anthology of exceptional short fiction rooted in the western United States, debuted in 1988 and continued publication until 1992. Recognizing that the West remains rewarding territory for literary explorations, James Thomas and Seth Horton are now reviving the series in Best of the West 2009.

Thomas and Horton combed some 250 literary journals and magazines to gather these eighteen stories published since the fall of 2007. They come from both emerging and established writers, including Lee K. Abbott, Louise Erdrich, Dagoberto Gilb, Antonya Nelson, Joyce Carol Oates, and Annie Proulx. Like Bass, the editors believe "the Western short story" inhabits a wide territory; the subjects in this collection range from illegal immigrants tending illegal crops in California's national forests, to mismatched Mormon missionaries on the conversion trail in Nevada, to a Native American college student exploring her sexuality, to Papa Hemingway's meditations as he loads the shotgun in his Idaho cabin. As these stories make clear, the West continues to shape our literary landscape. Thomas and Horton have preserved the best of that work in this vital anthology.

Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, an annual anthology of exceptional short fiction rooted in the western United States, debuted in 1988 and continued publication until 1992. Recognizing that the West remains rewarding territory for literary explorations, James Thomas and D. Seth Horton revived the series in 2009.

Best of the West 2010 brings together established and emerging writers who reinterpret this most vital of literary regions and create, as Kent Meyers puts it in his foreword, "gift[s] the nation needs right now." Editors Horton and Thomas have chosen nineteen stories by writers including Sherman Alexie, Rick Bass, Ron Carlson, Julia Glass, William Kittredge, Kent Nelson, and Deb Olin Unferth. Their subjects vary from a Greek community in Wyoming dealing with a suicide, to a re-creation of Christ's crucifixion in New Mexico, to an unlikely friendship that peaks at a burial ground in Alaska. Best of the West 2010 is the latest indication that the West has become one of the most crucial settings for contemporary American fiction.

Contributors:

• Sherman Alexie
• Rick Bass
• John Blanchard
• Elea Carey
• Ron Carlson
• Natalie Diaz
• Darren Dillman
• Ben Ehrenreich
• Julia Glass
• Dina Guidubaldi
• Ben Kostival
• William Kittredge
• Paul Mihas
• Kent Nelson
• Daniel Orozco
• Kirstin Valdez Quade
• Aurelie Sheehan
• Justin St. Germain
• Deb Olin Unferth

Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, an annual anthology of exceptional short fiction rooted in the western United States, debuted in 1988 and continued publication until 1992. Recognizing that the West remains rewarding territory for literary explorations, James Thomas and D. Seth Horton revived the series in 2009.

Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri is the latest volume in what has become one of the nation's most important anthologies. Editors Horton and Thomas have chosen twenty stories by writers including Rick Bass, T. C. Boyle, Ron Carlson, Philipp Meyer, Dagoberto Gilb, Yiyun Li, Antonya Nelson, and Sam Shepard. Subjects vary from an Idaho family that breeds lions and tigers with disastrous results, to a Mormon veteran whose mind is taken over by a nineteenth-century consciousness, to a Texas boy who spends an afternoon with Bonnie and Clyde shortly before their deaths. Taken together, these stories suggest that the West has become one of the most exciting and diverse literary regions in the twenty-first century.

"This volume of poetry and prose is written by nurses about their experiences of caring. It describes their disasters, their triumphs, their joy and sorrow. It is, quite simply, wonderful. . . . Beg, steal, or borrow this book; if that fails, buy it."--Nursing Times "Their [the nurses'] words expand the practice of nursing as well as the practice of language. By bearing witness to the intimate details of nursing, from the mundane to the beautiful to the tragic, they reveal the epiphanies of life and death."--ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners "A striking, often beautiful collection which brings to speech what occurs between the caring and the cared for--moments at the edges of life when, for most of us, even crucial communication seems beyond the reach of words. Coming now, Between the Heartbeats seems a particularly important book, breaking as it does the silence of women and men who, perhaps more than any others, live the essentials behind the health care debate."--Honor Moore, author of The White Blackbird "Powerful, honest and vivid, this collection of stories and poetry gives voice to the compassion and grief felt by nurses from around the world. A compelling and graceful anthology which will touch any reader, regardless of medical background."--Creative Health Care Resources "A new class of authors who are experienced professionals as well as skilled and talented writers, these nurses write out of a powerful sense of the immediacy of the body, the concreteness of suffering, and the nuanced individuality of their patients. Honest, vivid, and unsentimental, the works of this collection will not fail to move--at times even astonish--medical and nonmedical readers alike."--Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University "The best nurses have always been holistically oriented: they are the inevitable sharers of our mind, body, and soul secrets. Reading Between the Heartbeats, we share theirs. These fine poems, stories, and memoirs are honed, harrowing, and surprisingly life-affirming vignettes of the here and now. Between the Heartbeats is a splendid merger of the healing and written arts."--Dick Allen, Director of Creative Writing, University of Bridgeport Nurses who are also creative writers have a powerful empathetic outlet for the joys and griefs of their everyday experiences. In Between the Heartbeats an international, diverse community of nurses write honestly and compassionately about their work. By unsentimentally translating out suffering into prose and poetry, the registered nurses in this brave, graceful anthology perform another enduring act of loving care. THIS HAPPENED Cortney Davis My point is that illness is not a metaphor ... --Susan Sontag The intern and I begin our rounds. In room two, the intern watches me; he doesn't like this patient anyway-- she's messy, a see-through plastic tube pulls bile from her stomach to a bottle near her head. A small balloon inside her throat keeps pressure on vessels wrecked by years of gin. The patient's wide awake, but she can't talk. I see her eyes open, her skin pale at the moment these veins blow, like a tire blows. Blood backs up her nose. She tries to sit; her wrists are tied. I take her hand and say, OK. OK. The intern leaves. Next the patient's gut lets go. Stool and blood clot between her legs, hot and soft, not like sex, more like giving birth. OK, I say. We let our fingers intertwine. By 8:15 the woman calms. Clots thicken in her throat; she holds her breath. At nine, blood coins close her eyes. I breathe deep, stroke the patient's arm. The intern, who went downstairs to sleep, will ask me later. But what happened here can't be said again and be the same. WHAT ABEL SAYS Patricia Maher Abel talks in stories. He tells me a string of them about the sea and a small boat anchored yet moving with the wind and water. Abel tells me he too is anchored anchored to his house by the dirt, he says. I listen, realizing my silence is the precious thing I bring. It makes space for hope. My breathing is shallow the stench is so deep at Abel's. My foot stamps to keep the gray mice away his pets, he says since he lost his dog. He eats cold beans out of the can happy for my company. Frayed shirt and long beard his shoes are molded to his feet. I took them off for him once but now we just stand facing his mantle and look at the pictures and bills. His wife's pocketbook although she's long gone sits open as if she might return like an anchor he can't bear to pull up nor can I, yet. INSTRUCTING A NEW MOTHER Dawn Ramm Like a Little Barracuda the newborn latches on-- nurses until a nipple bleeds. Move him to the other breast, I advise-- speak for the hospital and for the numerous books I have read: how to hold him how to open his mouth how to break the suction with a finger. Yet I never knew my body as this mother does-- its natural capacity. I measured exact amounts of evaporated milk, Karo syrup and water. The efficient nurse who contaminated nothing.

An inclusive collection of modern Czech short fiction that features overlooked women writers.

Bringing together Czech fiction published by women between 1890 and 1910, Beyond the World of Men presents works that confront pivotal issues of the time, including the “woman question” and women’s rights, class conflict, lesbian love, and the relationship between the aristocracy and the Czech peasantry (as in two stories originally written in German by the aristocrat Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach). The collection contains stories that are of literary merit, but also hold historical value. In these works, the authors offer trenchant social commentary while injecting both comic and sentimental elements into their writing, employing humanity and subtlety.

As a whole, the collection suggests a revision of the critical understanding of Czech literary modernism; these writers represent voices that were not usually heard in the male writing of the period. They also demand evaluation in their differing (but constant) reactions to earlier women’s writing in Czech and in other European languages, but particularly that of the central figure of Božena Nemcová, to whose canonic novel Babicka they constantly return.

The Korean genre known as shijo is short song lyrics. Originally meant to be sung rather than recited, these short poems are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a firsthand account of his personal experience of life and emotion: the rise and fall of dynasties, friendship, love, parting, the pleasures of wine, the beauty and transience of life, the inexorable advance of old age. In this anthology of translations of 612 shijo, Kevin O'Rourke introduces the English reader to this venerable and witty style of verse. The anthology covers the entire range of shijo production from the tenth century to the modern era.