Winner of the 2002 Morse Poetry Prize, All The Blood Tethers is a collection of intense and powerful images crafted by the award-winning poet Catherine Sasanov illustrating and evoking the severe side of Roman Catholicism, life in the brutal city, wandering past veils of death, and so much more. "Walk into the patio. / Look up at the stars. / No one's left / to decipher God's language / held just out of reach. / The royal cosmographers / died centuries ago."

There are few books of poetry that so directly speak to the reader as the poems in "All the Blood Tethers" do. This book is the much deserving winner of the prestigious Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. However, this book deserves more then prizes. Ms. Sasanov has created a world so personal that it transcends many poets' attempts at communicating inner soul. This book allows the reader to feel these poems inside their own bodies. Ms. Sasanov's voice is strong and beautiful. The poems are at once real and tied to the earth as they are soaring to the heaven. This book deserves to be widely studied and discussed. It deserves to be taught and pondered. It deserves to be read.

The Franconia, New Hampshire, farm of the American poet Robert Frost was turned into a museum and center for poetry and the arts in 1976. From that time, "The Frost Place" has been annual event wherein an emerging poet has been invited to spend the summer living in the house where Frost once lived and wrote some of his greatest poetry. The Breath Of Parted Lips: Voices From The Robert Frost Place, Volume One is a remarkable anthology of twenty-four poets, each of whom won that honor of a summer's residency and document the success of the original concept as a means of generating outstanding poetry while nurturing the poet's muse in the rooms and views that were once the inspiration of the great Robert Frost. Poem At 40: Windwashed--as if standing next to the highway,/a truck long as the century sweeping by,/all things at last bent in the same direction./An opening, as if all/the clothes my ancestors ever wore/dry on lines in my body:/wind-whipped, parallel with the ground,/some sleeves sharing a single clothespin/so that they seem to clasp hands,/seem to hold on.//And now that I can see/up the old women's dresses,/there's nothing but a filtered light./And now that their men's smoky breath/has traversed the earth,/it has nothing to do with them./And now that awkward, fat tears of rain/slap the window screen,/now that I'm naked too,/cupping my genitals, tracing with a pencil/the blue vein between my collar bone and breast,/I'll go to sleep when I'm told.

Although not as popular as his first period ("La ossi di seppia" through "La bufera"), Satura is Montale's best work, and his lyrics are considerably more pointed and biting than they were before. I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in Montale's work, and the "Selected Poems" published by New Directions is a helpful introduction to his first period. My personal favourites: "Xenia," "La repertorio." This is a facing-page translation from the Italian done by William Arrowsmith, which he'd published after his death although the footnotes were added by another critic.

While this book may not be for everybody, and it might not include all the aspects that a reader might expect - kind of a one stop shopping to tell everything that is necessary to understand this sect - it nevertheless tells you what the Amish are really like and why they wear the unusual clothes they do, as well as preach against the "worldly wisdom." You get to follow Rosanna through her childhood, youth, courtship, and marriage, and child-rearing. Not only that, you see how her Amish life will differ from that of her Catholic friends, especially when they visit from their Philadelphia home.

While this is not a modern day presentation, it is really useful as a historical piece. Just don't get bogged down by expecting a thorough intellectual examination of the Amish. The book is not intended for that. It is written as a honest, sympathetic and straightforward reflection of these folks from a religious, social, and economic snapshot. The traditions of the Amish are celebrated, and it's done very nicely. Recommended!!!

I loved this book....and was sorry to see it end. The author (son of Rosanna) wrote a beautiful yet simple and compelling biography on the life of his mother, and the people closest in her life. I felt privileged reading this story - almost as if I were a member of this close-knit community. This story of honor and simple values would be wonderful today as it was then. Probably the most surprising statements which helped me to put it in perspective were comments made about Lincoln.....while I would prefer to believe this was a modern day story - stage coaches were in use and Lincoln was the President of the day. I highly recommend this book as an insight into the wisdom of how people should hold respect for one another, how families could work together for each other's good......and how communities can thrive without the aid of much of the electronic gadgetry of our modern times. This is a book of simple wisdom and peaceable lives. I am so grateful to son Joseph for his writing. There is even a very few pages at the end of the book, telling a bit about him......I highly recommend this book and hope you find value in it as I certainly did.

The author is the son of the main character, Rosanna. Rosanna is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who is born around 1840 (my estimate as it is never given in the book). Rosanna's mother dies following Rosanna's birth. She is given to an Amish family on a temporary basis. When her father dies some months later, she ends up being permanently adopted and rasied by this old order Amish woman who later marries and bears more children.

The author tells this interesting story, all the while weaving information about the lives of the old order Amish. I found this an interesting read. Explanations for why the Amish do things the way they do are given. There are details about their religious services, weddings, and funerals. Why they refuse to buy medical or fire insurance, why they refuse government aide, and why they refuse to fight in American wars is all explained.

The author ends up going to college and later leaves the old order Amish to become a Mennonite. The old order Amish don't allow attending college as the author chose to do, to further his formal training as a teacher, so he had to change religious affiliations.

What is missing from this book is a true spirit for Rosanna as a woman. Specifically, there is not much emotion or thoughts about certain things such as what it is like to mother children. There was virtually nothing about the experience of pregnancy, childbirth from her point of view, or how she could balance all that work and rearing so many children. The emotional aspect of losing her only daughter when she was just a toddler was not really elaborated on. I understand that it may be the custom to not verbally express emotions but I refuse to believe that emotions are not experienced...then again, if she was quiet about expressing her emotions I guess she would not have told her son therefore making these thoughts impossible for him to know and write about. Also missing was an explanation for what an Amish childhood is like, how much do they play and work? How much do they contribute to the laborious farm work the families accomplish? How does a busy Amish mother have time to pamper and enjoy her newborn baby? Also I'd like some parenting information such as common philosophies such as "is corporal punishment used"?

Something else that I would have appreciated is a bit of an overview of the differences between the different orders and about the differences with the Mennonites. A better explanation of when and why people are ex-communicated, banned or shunned would put things more in perspective. There is nothing about this except a couple of sentences of inferred information. To get that information will take further research and reading.

The account of the old order Amish is tastefully and respectfully written about in this book. I think this would make a great read aloud book for young children or as a book for a young person to read to themselves, perhaps if learning about American history or just to satisfy a curiosity about the Amish. There is nothing in here that is controversial such as sexual content. Since they live such a clean and virtuous life, there is nothing that needs censoring here for young children.

The old order Amish are portrayed as a content, happy, and peaceful people. If we each changed a few things we non-Amish do to follow in their footsteps we'd be all the better for it.

The suppliants in this play by Euripides are seven women and their king (Adrastus, King of Argos) who have come to Athens and its leader, Theseus, to ask for aid in their quest. The women's seven sons had been killed in battle against Thebes in the attempt by Polyneices to regain his inheritance from his brother Eteocles (both sons of Oedipus). Argos lost the battle and both of the sons of Oedipus were killed. The new ruler of Thebes, Creon (the brothers' uncle), refused the mothers the right to recover their sons' bodies for burial. Theseus, at first, refuses to help them since it was Adrastus's folly to get involved in that war; however, Theseus is persuaded by his own mother. This is another of Euripides's "irony" plays in which he points out the folly of war, particularly wars whose origins are long in the past (such as the war Athens was currently involved with Sparta).