{"title":"Barbara Crooker","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"how-to-read-a-poem-book-barbara-crooker-9780989854221","title":"How to Read a Poem","description":"How to read a poem. A lot of books want to teach you just that. How is this one different?\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Think of it less as an instructional book and more as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guide will open your senses to the combined craft and magic known as poems. For the well versed, if you will, this book might make you fall in love again.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eHow to Read a Poem\u003c\/i\u003e uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem Introduction to Poetry)-to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology included.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49521979228433,"sku":"GOR007730930","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49992518402321,"sku":"CIN0989854221G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51010955477265,"sku":"NIN9780989854221","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53188340220177,"sku":"CIN0989854221VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0989854221.jpg?v=1750706967"},{"product_id":"more-book-barbara-crooker-9781936196005","title":"More","description":"Poetry. Rarely has a book of poems been as aptly titled as Barbara Crooker's MORE. Propelled by her hunger for beauty and language, she flies in low over human experience, noticing every gesture, every flavor, every nuance of color and light. Whether she is pondering a spill of salt or stepping into a painting by Hopper, Crooker never for one second lets us forget what it is to be alive and how many ways we have been given to express our gratitude for this simple fact. 'How did all this loveliness \/ spring from the dark?' she asks in one poem. I don't know the answer, but by the timeI finished reading this book, I could only agree with its final sentence: 'I want all this to last'--Sue Ellen Thompson","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49805225591057,"sku":"CIN193619600XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50226056462609,"sku":"CIN193619600XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053058523409,"sku":"NIN9781936196005","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131654992145,"sku":"NLS9781936196005","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/193619600X.jpg?v=1750965016"},{"product_id":"gold-book-barbara-crooker-9781620329405","title":"Gold","description":"Description: Barbara Crooker's new book Gold focuses on one of the most profound life-altering experiences possible: losing one's mother. This collection is an elegy, not just to the speaker's mother, but to a lost Eden that cannot be reclaimed. Beginning with a series of lyrics set in autumn, the poems become more narrative, recounting the long illness of Crooker's mother, her death, and the profound journey along the shores of grief. Throughout, Crooker is aware of the complexity and strength of the mother\/daughter relationship and the chasm that this loss opens. The book includes other themes: poems about aging and the body, the loss of friends, the difficulties and joys in a long-term marriage, and always, the subtle ways faith influences the way Crooker experiences life. Her work has great scope, spanning the globe from rural Pennsylvania to Ireland, and reaching not just within herself but also outside of herself, to ekphrastic poems on the paintings of Gorky, Manet, Matisse, and others. This is the book of a mature writer, one who demonstrates an awareness of our own impermanence, our brokenness, and one who knows that if our parents go before us, we will have to learn to live with loss. In this book, we see the redemptive power of poetry itself to heal and to console.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50394650738961,"sku":"CIN1620329409G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50823063437585,"sku":"CIN1620329409VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51040192168209,"sku":"NIN9781620329405","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131463758097,"sku":"NLS9781620329405","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1620329409.jpg?v=1750831340"},{"product_id":"small-rain-book-barbara-crooker-9780944048634","title":"Small Rain","description":"Barbara Crooker's sixth collection of poetry, Small Rain, is an exploration of the wheel of the year, the seasons that roll in a continuous circle and yet move inexorably forward. Here, gorgeous lyric poems praise poppies, mockingbirds, nectarines, mulch and compost, yet loss (stillbirth, cancer, emphysema), with its crow-black wings, is also always present. In poems that narrow in on the particular (a cardinal twangs his notes of cheer; he has no truck with irony and post- \/ modernism), poems that focus on aging and the body (how many springs are left on my ticket?), poems that open out into the larger world of politics, war, global climate change, Crooker's work embodies Wendell Berry's words, Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts, reminding us that sometimes we need to stop in wonder, look at the natural world, which we are close to ruining forever, and let our mouths say o and o and o.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50425394561297,"sku":"CIN0944048633G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51009629880593,"sku":"NIN9780944048634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51322260128017,"sku":"CIN0944048633VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0944048633.jpg?v=1751108907"},{"product_id":"some-glad-morning-book-barbara-crooker-9780822965923","title":"Some Glad Morning","description":"Some Glad Morning, Barbara Crooker’s ninth book of poetry, teeters between joy and despair, faith and doubt, the disconnect between lived experience and the written word. Primarily a lyric poet, Crooker is in love with the beauty and mystery of the natural world, even as she recognizes its fragility. But she is also a poet unafraid to write about the consequences of our politics, the great divide. She writes as well about art, with ekphrastic poems on paintings by Hopper, O’Keeffe, Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and others. Many of the poems are elegaic in tone, an older writer tallying up her losses. Her work embodies Bruce Springsteen’s dictum, “it ain’t no sin to be glad we’re alive,” as she celebrates the explosion of spring peonies, chocolate mousse, a good martini, hummingbirds’ flashy metallics, the pewter light of September, Darryl Dawkins (late NBA star), saltine crackers.  While she recognizes it might all be about to slip away, “Remember that nothing is ever lost,” she writes, and somehow, we do.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50572120195345,"sku":"CIN0822965925VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008474218769,"sku":"NIN9780822965923","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822965925.jpg?v=1762422805"},{"product_id":"radiance-book-barbara-crooker-9781932339918","title":"Radiance","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50809220399377,"sku":"CIN1932339914G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331937599761,"sku":"CIN1932339914VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53368429347089,"sku":"GOR014883028","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53445751472401,"sku":"CIN1932339914A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1932339914.jpg?v=1750997042"},{"product_id":"book-of-kells-book-barbara-crooker-9781532606366","title":"The Book of Kells","description":"Barbara Crooker's eighth book of poetry, The Book of Kells, focuses on the illuminated medieval manuscript with a series of meditations on its various aspects, from the ink and pigments used by the scribes and illustrators to the various plants, animals, and figures depicted on its pages, including the punctuation and use of decoration in the capital letters. It also contains poems on the flora and fauna of Ireland (swans, hares, magpies, fuchsia, gorse, crocosmia, etc.) that Crooker encountered during writing residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan. The third thread in this volume is a series of glosas, a fifteenth-century Spanish form that incorporates a quatrain from other poems; here, Irish writers (Yeats, Heaney, O'Driscoll) provide the embedded lines. In her work, Crooker considers the struggle to pin lines to the page, to tie experience to the written word, to wrestle between faith and doubt, to accept the aging body as it tries to be fully alive in the world. Crooker contrasts the age of faith, when the Book of Kells was created, to our modern age of doubt, and uses as her foundation the old stones of Irish myth and lore from pre-Christian times. She juxtaposes a time when the written word was laborious and sacred against our electronic world, where communication by pixel is easy and brief. Above all, she captures the awe that the word inspired in preliterate times: The world was the Book of God. The alphabet shimmered and buzzed with beauty.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50827488952593,"sku":"CIN1532606362G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50993340711185,"sku":"NIN9781532606366","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618830184721,"sku":"NLS9781532606366","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1532606362.jpg?v=1751022529"},{"product_id":"book-of-kells-book-barbara-crooker-9781532606380","title":"The Book of Kells","description":"Barbara Crooker's eighth book of poetry, The Book of Kells, focuses on the illuminated medieval manuscript with a series of meditations on its various aspects, from the ink and pigments used by the scribes and illustrators to the various plants, animals, and figures depicted on its pages, including the punctuation and use of decoration in the capital letters. It also contains poems on the flora and fauna of Ireland (swans, hares, magpies, fuchsia, gorse, crocosmia, etc.) that Crooker encountered during writing residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan. The third thread in this volume is a series of glosas, a fifteenth-century Spanish form that incorporates a quatrain from other poems; here, Irish writers (Yeats, Heaney, O'Driscoll) provide the embedded lines. In her work, Crooker considers the struggle to pin lines to the page, to tie experience to the written word, to wrestle between faith and doubt, to accept the aging body as it tries to be fully alive in the world. Crooker contrasts the age of faith, when the Book of Kells was created, to our modern age of doubt, and uses as her foundation the old stones of Irish myth and lore from pre-Christian times. She juxtaposes a time when the written word was laborious and sacred against our electronic world, where communication by pixel is easy and brief. Above all, she captures the awe that the word inspired in preliterate times: The world was the Book of God. The alphabet shimmered and buzzed with beauty.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50993351131409,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50993354670353,"sku":"NIN9781532606380","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51630428487953,"sku":"NGR9781532606380","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52592339124497,"sku":"NLS9781532606380","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1532606389.jpg?v=1751149925"},{"product_id":"gold-book-barbara-crooker-9781498216517","title":"Gold","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51030719562001,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51030721921297,"sku":"NIN9781498216517","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52138906648849,"sku":"NLS9781498216517","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/149821651X.jpg?v=1751021250"},{"product_id":"dream-in-the-clouds-book-barbara-crooker-9780981988191","title":"A Dream in the Clouds","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51162123239697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51162130972945,"sku":"NIN9780981988191","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0981988199.jpg?v=1751171967"},{"product_id":"line-dance-book-barbara-crooker-9781933456928","title":"Line Dance","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51612358607121,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51612359426321,"sku":"CIN1933456922G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1933456922.jpg?v=1751218954"},{"product_id":"les-fauves-book-barbara-crooker-9781936196692","title":"Les Fauves","description":"Poetry. Art. Women's Studies. LES FAUVES is, as the title suggests, a collection of ekphrastic poetry, meditations on paintings from the Fauve and Post-Impressionist movements. But it also contains poetry's equivalent to Fauvism, poems that take a walk on the wild side. There are language experiment poems, poems of word play, poems in form both usual (end rhymes, sonnets, ghazals) and unusual (abecedaries, traditional, embedded, and double helix), palindromes, anagrams, and word scrambles. Crazy word salad poems. Crooker's subjects range widely, from living and working in a small village in the South of France, love in a long-term relationship, food as more than sustenance, faith in a secular age, grammar and usage, the pains and pleasures of the aging body. But always, what engages her most is what it means to be human on this fragile planet, at this time in our troubled history, still believing that Beauty will save the world (Fyodor Dostoevsky).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52405968240913,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52405968666897,"sku":"NLS9781936196692","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781936196692.jpg?v=1758768364"},{"product_id":"katharyn-howd-machan-book-barbara-crooker-9781942371441","title":"Katharyn Howd Machan","description":"Variety in subject, tone, and approach defines Katharyn Howd Machan's selected poems, a choice representation of more than four decades of her poetry. Tracing the literary journey of a woman who has been following the writing path since age 15, Machan's many volumes include poems about raccoons, the female shapeshifter Fox, feminist takes on fairy tales and classical mythology, the personal mythology of her family, her daughter's heroin addiction, her travels to France and Greece, her loves and lovers, her devotion to dance, her appreciation of food. Monologues from her 1888 fictional town of Redwing reveal stories the residents dare not speak aloud. Sonnets chronicle the life of the Professor, a male academic poet, while other poems honor the Wise Woman, the Crone, the Goddess. With the fractured fairy tale, Hazel Tells LaVerne, Machan's most widely reprinted poem, she gives us a reworking of the princess and the frog tale.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52757133754641,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52757134344465,"sku":"NIN9781942371441","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781942371441.jpg?v=1763577997"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-barbara-crooker.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}