Bøker av Paul Gilliland

Charles Simic used to tell us that great poetry is a "superb serenity in the face of chaos," and that is where this volume of poetry finds its heart. An unflinching look at modern life and its personal chaos, whether it is the loss of a loved one, facing one's own mortality, or a range of other realities, Zampino shows us both the challenges and the options we have at our disposal in living a life worthwhile. He pays us the compliment of accurately describing modern reality - and then shows us why that is actually the power and the beauty that remains available to all of us.- Andre Vlok, Owner and Conflict Specialist at the Conflict Resolution Centre, South Africa and author of Hamlet's Mirror: Conflict and AI Sometime in the twentieth century - right around 1963, if I had to say - poetry lost its heart and its soul and its curiosity about, for a lack of a better term, the "permanent things." Thomas Zampino found them. They're in these verses.- Ben Boychuk, columnist and opinion editor, TheBlaze

A poetic anthology of 95 poems celebrating the gathering of families during the fall and winter holidays from 42 poets from around the globe. Poetic contributions from Pat Severin, Andrew McDowell, Linda Crate, Cathy MacKenzie, Celjoy P. Catapang, Marianne Tefft, Melanie D. Nora, Ran Krishna Singh, Lynn White, Nora V. Marasigan, Victoria Puckering, Cynthia Pratt, Karen A. VandenBos, Jerri Hardesty, Maureen C. Carasig-Paiton, Irina Tall Novikova, Sara L. Uckelman, April Garcia, Mark Fleisher, Ken Gosse, Joan McNerney, Ray Whitaker, Judge Santiago Burdon, Hanna Hays, Kenneth Robbins, Shirsak Ghosh, Colin James, Dibyasree Nandy, Joan Leotta, John Wojtowicz, Matt McGee, Jill Crainshaw, Jeanine Stevens, Luisa Kat Reyes, Genalyn Panganiban-Lualhati, Teejay D. Panganiban, Laurice E. Tolentino, Paul Brucker, Anna Eklund-Cheong, Catherine Phillips, Sa'ada Isa Yahaya, and Madeline Male.

A collection of 95 bedtime verses for children written by 34 poets from around the world. Poetry contributed by Victoria Puckering, Nancy Julien Kopp, Pat Severin, Lynn White, Rebecca Loggia, Celjoy P. Catapang, Ken Gosse, Diane Sahms, Dibyasree Nandy, Connie Carmichael, April Garcia, Ann Iverson, Luisa Kay Reyes, Mary Ann Cabuyao Abril, Rhiannon Owens, Joan McNerney, Nolo Segundo, Nora, V. Marasigan, Jerri Hardesty, Karen A, VandenBos, Tasneem Hossain, Mark A. Fisher, Richard M. Bañez, Cai Quirk, Rowena C. Madsa, Romardo Lyons, Katy Huth Jones, Reneé Drummond-Brown, Jullie Anne P. Belascuain, Michael Lee Johnson, Amie L. Mendoza, Melanie D. Nora, Eva Lianou Petropoulou, and Paul Gilliland.

Lori Regina Gilliland was taken from this world much too early of heart failure due to complications caused by cardiomyopathy in March of 1996; two days before her thirty-third birthday. She lived her life dedicating to bringing love and joy to all those she encountered through laughter and compassion. She is remembered for her infectious smile and laughter and the ability to find good in all things she encountered.She left a legacy of handwritten poems in numerous notebooks dated from 1979 through 1987; the contents of which were compiled in this volume of verse by her husband following her death in 1996. The collection of 139 poems is divided into chapters by subject matter: Historical and Biographical, Romantic, Ecclesiastic, Comic, Fantasic, and Zeitgeist.Reading her works gives an insight into the mind of a woman brought up in a close extended Catholic family in the late 1970s in southwest Michigan as she sought to develop her own poetic voice in the early 1980s. These works span her last two years of high school, four years of undergraduate study earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in secondary education and her early years working on a Master of Arts Degree in English Literature.

An anthology of 129 poems by 46 poets from across the globe celebrating spirits, ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night. Martin Gedge, Marvin W Wooten II, Pam Impson, Usha N Shrinivaasun, Jerry Langdon, Gavin Prinsloo, Lavern Spencer McCarthy, Joan McNerney, Moe Phillips, Steve Bowman, Rhiannon Owens, Ashley O'Keefe, Mariam Finch, Catherine Brogdan, Joshua Gage, Carl Butler, Rob Bristol, Deborah Mears, Ron Conway, Janelle Erin Elizabeth Peters, Elaine Reardon, Lynn White, Jeanie Sanders, Joseph A Farina, Joanne Lee, Ross Leishman, Andrew Turgeon, Pat Severin, Helen Kemp Zax, Courtney Glover, Ursula O'Reilly, Mdaba Sibanda, Jennifer O'Shea, RP Verlaine, Michael Minassian, Colleen Moyne, Mike L Nichols, Linda Imbler, Prayerlife Onyinyechi Nwosu, Dibyasree Nandy, Lennart Luhdn, Valerie Hunter, Linda Ahrens Brower, Jerri Hardesty, Michael Lee Johnson, Paul Gilliland.

Waiting for Better Times The Road of Being, Germain Droogenbroodt's latest poetry book, represents a new inflection in his already long career, with sixteen poetry collections published, several of them published in thirty countries. Although in the three parts that make up the set we will find diverse thematic approaches and interests, they all converge in that backbone that constitutes a concise and suggestive style that makes Germain Droogenbroodt's poetry unmistakable. The first block with which the book opens, refers to the mostly meditative part of his previous poetry, where the light of dawn, the flight of the birds detached from the earthly, the opening of the flowers, the miraculous beating of the heart . . . lead to a serene and peaceful panorama. And like that same dawn, territory of the unpredictable, of what is always to come, so the poet, "with words / that only silence / knows how to express," also does not know in advance the verses that will appear. To create is to obtain that vision, that luminosity, that illumination, which poetry offers and which is not only "a shelter for the word." A vision, with our eyes closed and turned inward, that allows us to see with total lucidity the external reality. The poem then becomes that bridge that reintegrates the inner with the outer, the poet, the human being, with nature. In Witnesses of a Time, not by chance the central part of the book, at the antipodes of all the above, we look at the crude reality in which we live: human alienation (entertainment) and control (surveillance by digital devices) in this technocratic world, in which also vanity and hatred so thriving in social networks represent the agony of discursive communication, of argumentation or even of personal thought itself: others (a robot, a chip) end up thinking for us. And with this agony, democracy is wounded and looks into the abyss of totalitarian horizons. Depersonalization, environmental deterioration, anxiety, and mental illness . . . lead us to ask ourselves "But is life / that is no longer dignified / still life?" In Without Return, the third and last part of the collection, we find poems that allude to the passage of time and our futile resistance to stop it, to the ephemeral and the changing, to our vulnerability and the ups and downs of life, to its fleetingness, to the non-return of what has already been lived, except in memory; to the autumn of man and his unavoidable path towards death. A death that, beyond the inequalities in which we live, definitely makes us all equal. Death sometimes also painful, and in the most absolute loneliness, as in the case of those killed by covid in the hospital: "None knocking at the door / nobody you expect, / no one, except death." The book closes with several poems about the invasion and war in Ukraine: all the horror of extreme violence and destruction in the image of a rope around the neck of the dove of peace, our most human helplessness, our immense fragility. After reading, it seems evident that the poet shows us by contrast how is the reality in which we live today and how it should be for it to be a dignified life. Thus, while man's search should lead him to the light (as expressed in one of the opening poems of the book), the reality we are witnessing leads us, through the subway tunnels of the technocratic mole, to the most fearsome darkness. Although if there is one thing Germain Droogenbroodt does not lose, as poets have never lost, it is hope: just as "that after the rain, / the sun will shine." Man continues to trust and hope-like the winter birds-for the arrival of "better times." That is his last verse in the book, his augured horizon, the greatest longing in these rather dark times. Such is, or should be, The Road of Being. -Rafael Carcelén

The Journey of the Fools is a poetic journey in three parts.Part 1 - The Journey of the Fool - a poetic journey through the 22 cards of the Major Arcana Tarot deck each written in a different poetic form. It takes the reader on the journey of the first card, The Fool, through the other cards in the deck to is completion. Part 2 - The Zodiac Sonnets - a collection of 25 Shakespearean sonnets about each of the Tropical and Chinese Zodiac signs. Part 3 - Full Moons and Druid Sabbats, is a collection of 45 poems depicting each of the full moons, Druid Sabbats, holidays, and other astronomical events presented in chronological order.

The Poppy: A Symbol of Remembrance examines the history of the poppy as a flower of remembrance, the story of Colonel John McCrae and his poem "In Flanders Fields", and the work of the "Poppy Ladies" Moina Michael and Madame Anna Guérin and how they influenced the adoption of the poppy as a memorial flower of remembrance. The volume includes 20 Answer or Response poems to John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" written between 1918 and 1925, 21 lyrics from songs about Flanders and the Poppy written between 1918 and 1924, 38 poems of Remembrance written by World War One poets between 1912 and 1921, and 79 poems written by 21st Century poets from around the globe in remembrance of the fallen heroes from all wars of the last century.

An acrostic poem is a composition where the first letter, syllable, or word on each line spells out a word or message. In this collection, poet Paul Gilliland examines the thought provoking Deeper Meanings of 33 words and famous quotations through the use of this poetic technique.