Author: Jenny George File Type: epub Jenny Georges debut showcases an astonishing poetic talent, a new voice that is intensely focused, patient, and empathic. The Dream of Reason explores the paradoxical relationships between humans and the animals we imagine, keep, fear, and consume. Titled after Goyas grotesque bestiary, Georges own dreamscape is populated by purring moths, bats that crawl like goblins, and livestockespecially pigs, whose spirit and slaughter inform a central series of portraits. The poems invite moments of stark realism into a spacious, lucid realm just outside of timefinding revelation in stillness, intimacy in violence, and vision in language that lifts from the dark. From Threshold Gods I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows across the porch like a goblin. It was early evening. I want to ask about death. But first I want to ask about flying. Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a foundation for Buddhist-based social justice. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. **About the Author The recipient of a 2015 Discovery Boston Review Poetry Prize, Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, NM, where she has served as program coordinator since 2010 for Hidden Leaf, a Buddhist-based social justice foundation. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Ploughshares, Narrative, Cimarron Review, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, FIELD, Inch, Indiana Review, and Shenandoah. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fund, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo Corporation. She holds a B.A. in Human Ecology and an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. Threshold Gods I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows across the porch like a goblin. It was early evening. I want to ask about death. But first I want to ask about flying. The swimmers talk quietly, standing waist deep in the dark lake. Its time to come in but they keep talking quietly. Above them, early bats driving low over the water. From here the voices are undifferentiated. The dark is full of purring moths. Think of itto navigate by adjustment, by the beauty of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes. The bats veer and dive. Their eyes are tiny golden fruits. They capture the moths in their teeth. Summer is ending. The orchard is carved with the names of girls. Wind fingers the leaves softly, like torn clothes. Remember, desire was the first creature that flew from the crevice back when the earth and the sky were pinned together like two rocks. Now, I open the screen door and there it is a leather change purse moving across the floorboards. But in the dream you were large and you opened the translucent hide of your body and you folded me in your long arms. And held me for a while. As a bat might hold a small, dying bat. As the lake holds the night upside down in its mouth. Everything Is Restored He swallows the last spoonful of prunes, their soft rapture in his mouth. Then the jar is washed under play of light, then the boys mouth is wiped with a cloth. He squalls for a moment, then stops. Everything is restored. Chime of spoon in the sink. The boy is lifted out of his seat, legs swimming in the slow element. He is a small seal. The kitchen ebbs and flows, sleek afternoon sunshine. Now the boy is placed in his crib, now he is slipping into the silvery minnows of his dreams, a disorder of shine, particles of motion flickering beneath the surface. Harm will come to him. Its the kind of knowledge that ruptures and wont repairan ocean that keeps on breaking. The day moves with the gradual logic of drowning. Evening fills the house. Oh, where are you? Where are you going? The mother folds up the ocean and shuts it in a cupboard. Death of a Childbr 1. This is how a child dies little by little. His breath curdles. His hands soften, apricots heavy on their branches. I cant explain it. I cant explain it. On the walk back to the car even the stones in the yards are burning. Far overhead in the dead orchard of space a star explodes and then collapses into a black door. This is the afterlife, but Im not dead. Im just here in this field. ol l ol It made a boy-shaped hole and filled the way a crushed hand fills suddenly up with new pain, or a well put down taps the liquid silt. The center pours toward the surface. Now the hand is given to the earth. The mouth draws up clay and drinks. ol l ol Theres something uneasy in the field. A wake. A ripple in the cloth. We see the green corn moving but not the thing that moves it. The atoms of our bodies turn bright gold and silky. Aimed at death, we live. We keep on doing this. Night unfolds helplessly into day. Beyond the field are more fields and through them, too this current. What is it? Where is it going? Did you see it? Can you catch it? Can you kill it? Can you hold it still? Can you hold it still forever? ol l ol The conductors baton hovers for a moment in the alert silence (a silence that leans forward saying This...! This...!) and then it drops into the chasm. Sound enters my bodyenters the bodies of all the people simultaneously, calling them to feel together an unconcealed fear, a cup over- flowing, a sense of absolute love vibrating in the dark passages the long-ago cry of pain and the crack of light coming in through the bars.

Author: John Haywood File Type: epub From Finland to Newfoundland and Jelling to Jerusalem, follow in the wake of the Vikingsa transformative story of a people that begins with paganism and ends in Christendom. In AD 800, the Scandinavians were just barbarians in longships. Though they held sway in the north, their power meant little more than the ability to pillage and plunder, which they did to bolster their status at home. But as these Norse warriors left their strongholds to trade, raid, and settle across wide areas of Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic, their violent and predatory culture left a unique imprint on medieval history. The twist that no one predicted, however, was a much slower, insidious takeover than any the Vikings would execute, and by a turn of the tide, they themselves became its target. For as they made their mark on Europe, Europe made its mark on them. By the year 1200, what remained of the Vikings pagan origins floated beneath the surface and the strong, strange territories of the north had become a part of Latin Christendom.Northmen is there to tell the tale, to pay homage to what was lost and celebrate what was won. Focusing on key events, including the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, medieval history expert John Haywood recounts the saga of the Viking Age, from the creation of the world through to the dwindling years of halfhearted raids and elegiac storytelling in the thirteenth century. He does so with meticulous research, engaging narrative, and sensitivity for his subject, shedding light and blood along the way.