University of Akron Press Publications

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  Delicate Bait: Poems by Roger Mitchell

  Roger Mitchell

  In Delicate Bait, Roger Mitchell explores the small histories of the self in the larger world, intent on giving everything its just place and name. The poems roam over field and seashore and city, “inventing a world so similar to the world itself / it becomes the world.” Whether musing on the past or searching for “something even memory can’t reach,” Mitchell faces up to “the wobble of most things human,” with a combination of stoicism and wonder and a language as supple as the spoken word.

  “Not many poets now writing have as wide a range as he does, both in terms of subject matter and form. His poems are rich in detail, masterly in execution, and always a good read. He is savvy about the way we Americans live and tries to make sense of our lives in this moment in history.” —Charles Simic

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  Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market

  Christopher L. Peterson

  Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market chronicles the historic, economic, legal, and political factors breeding America’s feverish high cost debt industry. The ideas presented are novel, progressive, and controversial. Historians have long argued that interest rates provide a sort of economic and political health of nations. If true, the contemporary American market for credit shows troubling signs of distress. While Federal Reserve Board monetary policy has kept commercial and prime consumer interest rates low, the past two decades have seen explosive growth in an industry specializing in high-cost consumer debt. Payday loan outlet chains, automobile title loan companies, rent-to-own furniture stores, pawnshops, and sub-prime and manufactured home mortgage lenders are transforming the personal finance patterns of millions of Americans. Many observers have complained this industry charges excessive prices, uses unfair business practices, and is generally causing more harm for its borrowers than good. Industry insiders retort they are merely responding to a legitimate demand for financial services that, in effect, consumers vote with their feet. Echoing problems of past centuries, today’s consumers face difficulty comparing credit prices, patterns of reckless lending and borrowing, as well as distressing economic externalities. With an idea on the future, Peterson’s book hopes to find ingredients of a compromise to protect working-poor borrowers while simultaneously preserving economic competition.

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  The Inside Game Race, Power and Politics in the NBA

  Wayne Embry and Mary Schmitt Boyer

  Wayne Embry went from being an All-Star basketball player at Miami University to an NBA Executive of the Year. In his new autobiography, The Inside Game, Embry chronicles his 40 years in The National Basketball Association (NBA) and discusses the problems threatening to undermine it. Embry, who was once sent home from a game in the old Richfield Coliseum when a bullet was found on his seat, tells the inside story of his fall from grace.

  Prejudice is nothing new to Embry, a pioneer who became the first African American general manager in sports when the Milwaukee Bucks named him to that post in 1972—long after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Now—31 years after his groundbreaking appointment—Embry, no longer employed by the league, is finally free to speak his mind.

  “This book blends basketball and inspiration into a must read for all ages.” —Pete Newell, Hall of Famer and Legendary Coach

  “All along the way, he was a pioneer. Like all pioneers, he faced hard times and incredible challenges. Ultimately, Wayne Embry’s life is an inspiration to everyone who has been told that they cannot get to the top.” —Richard Lapchick, Director, Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, University of Central Florida

  “Wayne Embry doesn't just take you to the backboards of basketball, the former center takes you into the backrooms where the real deals are cut. His discussion of the Shawn Kemp deal and the inner workings of the Cleveland Cavaliers front office are eye-opening.”—Terry Pluto, Akron Beacon Journal

  “[A] riveting read.”—Pat Williams, Senior Vice President, Orlando Magic

  “[A] compelling, thought-provoking journey from his childhood days, his professional basketball days, and his business experiences to the pinnacle of his chosen profession as a franchise executive.—Al Attles, Golden State Warriors, Vice President and Assistant General Manager

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  The Ohio Hopewell: Episode Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

  A. Martin Byers

  Ohio Hopewell Episode, Byers presents a new interpretive reconstruction of the culture of the prehistoric Native American groups who were responsible for these monuments. Basing his interpretation on a careful analysis and classification of the monumental archaeological record, he lays out an empirically and theoretically well-grounded and broad-based symbolic ecological reconstruction of the way of life of the responsible peoples.

  Byers’ central premise hinges on the notion that the builders and users of these earthworks perceived the world as immanently sacred. From this he argues that these monuments were to serve as symbolic iconic media by which the balance of sacred life forces of the cosmos could be sustained through world renewal ritual. This central premise, termed the Sacred Earth principle, is thoroughly grounded on his empirical analysis of the embankment earthworks.

  Using this as his base, Byers develops the claim that this period of monumental earthwork construction, termed the Ohio Hopewell episode, was the unique expression of a complex social system based on two social principles: kinship and companionship. Kinship was the basis of the egalitarian clans that occupied the land, and companionship was the basis of a system of autonomous world renewal cults.

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  Ascending Order

  William Greenway

  Ascending Order is the work of a poet who has thought hard about the circumstances of his past and present, and found an attitude, part concerned and part amused, that serves him well in both his life and his art. The poems in William Greenway's new book range widely, from memories of childhood and family through meditations on works of art, from humorous topics such as the cars in Hell's garage or a dead celebrity golf tournament to deep-felt contemplations of cultures American and otherwise or the ailments of middle age and the shadows of mortality. But whether the subject are serious or playful, the rich vision and inventive language displayed in these poems are Greenway's alone.

  William Greenway keeps a watchful eye on the human condition, from sex and religion to points in between, with a sensibility sharp enough to miss none of our foibles and embracing enough to forgive them all. The poems express amazement at life's odd turns that sometimes leave us bereft and lonely, and sometimes surprise us by sudden grace and abundance. In the end, Ascending Order is a book of warm compassion for all we suffer and endure, with gratitude for everything that moves us beyond our troubles towards a higher light.

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  Downstairs, Upstairs: The Changed Spirit and Face of College

  John A. Flower

  Money and privilege no longer describe college students who, books in hand, stroll across campuses. Changes in American college life since the 1960s make the previous 300 years—from the founding of Harvard in 1636—benign by comparison. Today, universities in gritty downtowns admit welfare mothers who struggle to escape grinding poverty. Sometimes they have to take their babies to class with them. Felons from prison enroll through special programs hoping for training that will enable them to surmount previous misdeeds. Men and women in low-paying jobs enroll part-time. They head families, struggle with car and rent payments, and are always tired. But they attend college classes, struggling to stay awake, preparing themselves for better jobs.

  Author John A. Flower—World War II combat pilot, concert pianist, university president—takes us on an extraordinary professional and personal odyssey in this new book. As dean at Kent State University he was engulfed in the Vietnam War protests and witnessed the shattering events of May 4, 1970. During 20 years as vice president, then president, of Cleveland State University he was the target of racial protests that took place on campus. At the same time a lurid scandal involving the high-profile basketball coach required Flower to dismiss him. For more than 50 years he participated from the inside as profound changes across the nation caused ivory towers to crumble.

  Flower writes eloquently and powerfully, helping readers to understand how forces for change reshape colleges and universities. He illustrates how external special-interest groups influence campus affairs, and analyzes their influence on curriculum, affirmative action, contract issuance, land acquisition, unionism, and a multitude of other issues. He uses his experience to present ways in which concerned citizens and community leaders can address change in positive ways. Downstairs, Upstairs is a wake-up call and a must-read for all Americans who recognize the imperative for higher learning.

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  Gum-Dipped: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood

  Joyce Dyer

  Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town tells the story of growing up in the rubber community of Firestone Park in Akron, Ohio—the former Rubber Capital of the World. The book begins with the rededication of the bronze Harvey Firestone statue on August 3, 2000, at the Centennial celebration for the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. The statue—perched high on a hill at the entrance to Firestone Park, the residential community Harvey built for his workers in 1915—was sacred to the author, Joyce Coyne Dyer, and her father, Tom Coyne, during the fifties, a time when the Coynes worshipped the company and thought themselves members of the Firestone family.

  Tom Coyne, a thirty-seven-year man with the company, dreamed of being manager of Firestone's reclaim plant, but the script the company wrote for him turned out to be very different. It included demotions, a firing, illnesses from chemicals and despair, and the razing of the plant where he spent his life. After her father died and she found a large manila folder that documented his history with the company, the author realized how much she didn't know about Tom Coyne. She sets out to find her father, and begins to understand how his hard history with the company led to despair and illness, but also to the strength he found later in his life to stare down trouble and never be fooled again—even by Death.

  Preoccupied with plant safety and the annual safety slogan contest, Tom Coyne came to learn that safety is something invisible, on the inside. He had thought that moving to Firestone Park would keep his family safe—the Park's curvy streets, his little Tudor house, the Firestone name on everything (the school, the streets, the Clubhouse, the bank, his tires, his stove and radio). But Tom Coyne was safe only when he realized that the town that Harvey built was no more real—and certainly no more safe—than flimsy scenery flown in for a movie about a perfect kingdom.

  Joyce Coyne Dyer, who grew up in Firestone Park and whose family has worked for Firestone nearly from the day of its founding in 1900, discovers her own Firestone legacy as she thinks about her father. She tries not to turn away from the truth of his life—or of her own. She looks at her father—and the years they both grew up in Rubber Town—with humor and irony, with love and regret.

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  Lest We Be Marshall'd: Judicial Powers and Politics in Ohio, 1806-1812

  Donald F. Melhorn Jr.

  George Tod and Calvin Pease were tried by the Ohio Senate in 1809, charged with subverting the state constitution by undertaking as judges to decide on the constitutionality of an act of the legislature. Both trials ended with guilty votes of a majority of the senators—one short of the two-thirds required for conviction. Frustrated by the inconclusiveness of this result, opponents of judicial power invoked a novel interpretation of the state constitution's tenure provision to purge Ohio courts of all judges considered insufficiently deferential to the legislative branch. Known as the “Sweeping Resolution,” this action raised the broader constitutional issue of the judiciary's independence as a branch of government.

  The controversy lasted from 1806, when the first of the court decisions invalidating an act of the legislature was rendered, until 1812 when the “Sweeping Resolution” was effectively repealed. The constitutional issues were themselves addressed by political processes, in statewide elections as well as in the impeachment trials, and were the subject of prolonged and widely participatory public discourse. Lest We Be Marshall'd tells the story of the adventures and challenges to the legal profession in frontier Ohio.

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  Mixing the Waters: Environment, Politics, and the Building of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway

  Jeffrey K. Stine

  [Stine] has likely written the definitive history of the navigation project. The analysis is balanced and thoroughly researched, and captures the nuances of changing values and attitudes toward pork-barrel politics, benefit-cost evaluation, and interest group politics in American natural resource policy from the 1930s through the early 1980s. –Choice

  A study that is competently written and deeply researched, with heavy emphasis on primary sources, a solid grounding in the existing secondary literature, and a welcome leaven of oral history. It is a model monograph, which should find an audience not only among public historians, whose craft it exemplifies, but also among makers of policy in the construction and environmental agencies whose concerns it treats with insight and generally admirable balance. –The Public Historian

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  The Ireland That We Made: Arthur and Gerald Balfour's Contribution to the Origins of Modern Ireland

  David R.C. Hudson

  The Ireland That We Made examines the origins, the ideas, and the development and collapse of the policies pursued by Unionist chief secretaries for Ireland between 1887 and 1905. These policies were generally referred to collectively as Construction Unionism, and also (more critically) as "Killing Ireland with Kindness." The principal exponents of Constructive Unionism-Arthur and Gerald Balfour and George Wyndham-transformed Ireland beyond recognition, though in the end they (and Ireland) were the victims of their own success as Ireland left the Union with Great Britain in 1922. This study challenges a number of orthodoxies, most notably the claim that the policies associated with Constructive Unionism were both inconsequential and incoherent-essentially an aberration when set against the broad trend of British policy in Ireland. Furthermore, this study will suggest that there was nothing inevitable about Ireland's departure from the Union with Great Britain in 1922. Previous studies have perhaps been too ready to assume that Britain's Irish policy between 1887 and 1905 savored more of Westminster than the west of Ireland. Compelling evidence is offered here that Constructive Unionism may in fact have represented Britain's finest hour in Ireland.

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  The Zones of Paradise: Poems by Lynn Powell

  Lynn Powell

  In The Zones of Paradise, Powell extends her range and raises her language to a new intensity. These poems travel from Australia to New Mexico, from the Garden of Eden to her own back yard in Ohio, and everywhere they tremble with the restless exploration of desire, thwarted or fulfilled: my heart another / Magellan of memory and want. The Zones of Paradise may offer a vision of what it is like to live in the fallout of The Fall, but Powell's lines dazzle with their sensuous intelligence and vivid wit, introducing an undaunted Eve who can announce, “I want to take April as my personal savior.”

  In Powell's world everything is alive and connected, rich in reference, yet spoken with ease, as words open up hidden worlds. She soars and pauses, in the erotic errata, the vocal colors, of discovery, of the struggle to love, in poems exact and moving, down to the quick stabs of the final lines. Lynn Powell is one of our finest poets, and this is her best work yet. —Robert Morgan

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  Thick Description and Fine Texture: Studies in the History of Psychology

  David B. Baker

  The essays contained in this volume offer a unique and personal perspective on the archival research process in the history of psychology. Celebrating the achievements of John A. Popplestone and Marion White McPherson, founders of the Archives of the History of American Psychology at The University of Akron in 1965, nine leading scholars describe the value, frustration, and satisfaction inherent in the archival process in the history of psychology. The essays provide valuable information on modern historiography in the history of psychology and the construction of historical narrative based on archival resources.

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  A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians

  Henry Clay Alder and Larry Nelson

  A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians is one of the most extensive first person accounts to survive from Ohio's pioneer and early settlement eras. Alder's reminiscence spans half a century, from his capture at the age of nine in 1782, when Ohio had no permanent European settlement and was still the exclusive domain of the Ohio Indian nations, to 1832, nearly a generation after the pioneer era had ended. The narrative provides a unique perspective on frontier Ohio and its transformation from wilderness to statehood. It illustrates the continuing evolution in the relationship between Ohio's Indians and whites from the Revolutionary War era to a time when many of the state's native peoples had been removed.

  Alder's recollection provides an exceptional look at early Ohio. The portrait of his captors is revealing, complex, and sympathetic. The latter part of his narrative is an extraordinarily rich account of early pioneer life in which he describes his experiences in central Ohio. Further, Alder was fortunate in that he encountered many of the persons and took part in many of the events that have become touchstones in Ohio's pioneer history, including Simon Kenton, Simon Girty, and Colonel William Crawford. He participated in the Battles of Fort Recovery and Fallen Timbers, and his recollection of these actions are among the few extant accounts that describe these events from a Native American perspective.

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  Bok!: The 9. 11 Crisis in Political Cartoons

  Chip Bok

  Has the world changed since September 11, 2001? It has for at least one band of subversive operatives who scheme in the shadows to ambush politicians. I'm speaking, of course, of the small yet poorly organized cells of individuals who take advantage of the freedoms this nation provides in order to carry out their roles as political cartoonists. I'm one of them and this is my story. I've operated inside these borders for many years, confounding immigration officials by the simple yet elegant strategy of being born here. The primary targets of my drawing have always been the leaders of my own government from city council to Congress to the president. That's what cartoonists do and that's what the public expects of us.

  But what happens when an enemy force attacks the government, not with sarcasm and satire, but with commercial aircraft loaded with jet fuel, and destroys national landmarks in New York City and Washington D.C., killing thousands of people? In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attack a lot of things changed, and I felt like one of them was my job description. No more mucking around with Gary Condit. The social security lock box was now a dead issue. And while it was tempting to make something of the president's disappearing act in Air Force One on that day, it's tough to attack the commander-in-chief when the United States itself has just been attacked. This book contains a collection of my cartoons from that day forward.

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  Henry Addington, Prime Minister 1801-1804: Peace, War, and Parliamentary Politics

  Charles John Fedorak

  No modern British Prime Minister has been so thoroughly misunderstood or simply dismissed as Henry Addington. Fedorak demonstrates that, contrary to the views of his opponents and many historians, Addington was an astute and effective Prime Minister. His fall after three years in office was the result of a complex train of circumstances in which questions of personality, both within and outside the government, played a major part. Addington, who had no ambition for higher office, agreed to become Prime Minister only because his predecessor, William Pitt the Younger, and King George III insisted. He immediately faced the serious and difficult challenge of leading a relatively inexperienced Cabinet to deal with a series of military, diplomatic, economic, and social crises caused by war and famine.

  Fedorak demonstrates that Addington dealt with these crises as successfully as the circumstances would allow and left a lasting mark on British politics. He negotiated peace with Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and France. He repaired the government finances, delivered the first modern budget speech, and ameliorated social unrest. After boldly declaring war on France in 1803, he doubled the productivity of the Income Tax, and raised more than 600,000 men at arms to fight the French.

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  I Have My Own Song for It Modern Poems of Ohio

  Elton Glaser and William Greenway

  I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio gathers together 117 poems by 85 poets for a fresh perspective on the Buckeye State. Not since 1911 has there been a comprehensive collection of poems written about Ohio.

  These poems, writing by such celebrated Ohio natives as James Wright and Mary Oliver, and by accomplished if less well known poets like Ruth L. Schwartz and Rachel Langille, offer a virtual tour of people and places in the state, traveling around Ohio's lakes and rivers, farms and open country, small towns and larges cities. In resonant language and compelling imagery, in shapely verse and lines responsive to the moment's impulse, the poems bring Ohio to its citizens and, beyond the border of the state, to lovers of poetry everywhere. The perspective may be personal or historical, close-up or wide-ranging, celebratory or otherwise, but each poem becomes part of the state's legacy passed on to future generations, a collective record of how Ohio appears to itself and to others at the beginning of the 21st century.

  Ohio can take pride in its rich literary heritage, both as the cradle for writers like Hart Crane and Rita Dove and as the inspiration for works like the poems in this anthology. I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio fills in the map outline of Ohio with its people and topography, in vivid colors that paint a diverse portrait of the state, and in poems strong enough that they will not fade when the celebrations end.

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  Private Hunger

  Melody Lacina

  Private Hunger, Melody Lacina's first collection of poetry, begins as a book of snapshots from a family album, becomes a carousel of colorslides from travels in Europe, and concludes as a gallery of poems celebrating the vitality of the body and its enormous appetite for life. Lacina is also a poet who can say, in the credo that opens the book, "I believe in the underside ... the rhythm and off-rhyme of the ordinary." If this is a book about passion and "private hunger" ("Food and sex. / What else matters? Words."), it is also familiar with unsatisfied longings, losses, grief, and death, understanding how our desires sustain and torment us from childhood to the end.

  Lacina's succinct poems lift anecdote to revelation, in spare lines, taut rhythms, and a voice that can register anything from anxiety to ecstasy. It may not be rare, in these times, to find a woman writing evocatively about sensual pleasures, but it is surely unusual to discover a poet who also has this much sense of balance and control, and such lively command of the common tongue.

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  The Good Kiss

  George Bilgere

  The Good Kiss is a collection of poems dealing loosely with the subjects of divorce, sexuality, and American culture from the 1950's to today.The poems vary in tone from the fairly serious to the reflective and meditative, to the wryly comic. Perhaps it is fair to say that this range of tones exists within many of the individual poems, and is their defining characteristic. Poems like "What I Want," and "The Good Kiss" are good examples of these quirky, rather unexpected tonal shifts and blendings. "The Good Kiss is full of delights and surprises-connections that will widen your eyes and sudden turns from the humorous into the serious that will throw you against the door. Such effects are the product of a poet who knows how to blend ingeniously the sentimental and the sarcastic, the smart and the innocent, the trivial and the desperately serious. In the house of contemporary poetry, this book is a welcome breath of fresh American air." -Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate

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  The Holden Arboretum

  Ian Adams and Steve Love

  The Holden Arboretum is a living museum of forests and woodlands, meadows and display gardens, mountains and ravines, rock ledges and lakes, rivers and streams, wetlands and bogs, with an abundance of wildlife. It is a place of year-round beauty with tremendous scientific and ecological importance. The Holden Arboretum was established on 100 acres in 1931 by people of vision and great generosity who understood the importance of protecting precious green spaces for future generations.

  Today, Holden spans 3,400 acres and is nationally known for its plant collections, education programs, research efforts, and its commitment to conservation. Albert Fairchild Holden, the founding father of the Holden Arboretum, was born in 1866, the third of nine children born to Liberty and Delia Bulkey Holden. His mother was instrumental in the founding of the Cleveland School of Art, which became the Cleveland Institute of Art; his father was involved in the mining business and was, at one time, the owner of Cleveland's major newspaper, The Plain Dealer. Though he had at one time considered bequeathing his estate to Harvard, his alma mater, the untimely death of his 12-year old daughter, Elizabeth, inspired him to instead endow the arboretum in her memory. A trust agreement in his will designated that funds be set aside for development of an arboretum following a life interest for his two remaining daughters, who were teenagers at the time of his death in 1913.

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  The Once and Future Union:The Rise and Fall of the United Rubber Workers, 1935-1995

  Bruce Meyer

  While never one of the biggest unions in the United States, the Akron, Ohio-based labor organization, the United Rubber Workers (URW), wielded power for decades that seemed far disproportionate to the union's size. To tell the story of the URW is to tell a saga of conflict-internal and external. If the Rubber Workers were not battling a tire or rubber company at the bargaining table or on the picket line, then they were fighting within their ranks. Throughout the URW's history, its members operated a democratic union where the rank and file always made sure their leaders knew who really was in charge. The membership expected a lot from their officers, and if they were less than satisfied, then the leader would hear about it (and sometimes lose his job because of it). When the URW merged with the larger United Steelworkers of America (USWA) union in 1995, it was clear the URW's history needed to be chronicled soon.

  Once and Future Union traces the history of the URW from its controversial beginning to the present incarnation of the union, if not the United Rubber Workers in name, then at least as the United Rubber Workers in spirit. This is the story of the members who lived through the battles and the conventions, the strikes and the organizational campaigns. It is these memories that give the URW's history the life and dimension it so deserved. Just as the union was theirs for nearly six decades, so too this story belongs to them.

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  Behind the Diplomatic Curtain: Adolphe de Bourqueney and French Foreign Policy, 1816-1869

  John M. Knapp

  Because of his role in significant negotiations, his residence in French embassies in major European capitals, and his friendship with important diplomatic figures, Bourqueney is a worthy subject of an extended study. Historians of France as well as those interested in foreign affairs of several European countries might usefully consult this book. —Sylvia Neely, Penn State University

  This work describes Bourqueney's career with persuasive examples because it draws on an unusually rich collection of family letters and diplomatic reports.The author uses this material to convey the complexities of Bourqueney's work. —Lloyd Kramer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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  British India and British Scotland, 1780-1830: Career-Building, Empire-Building, and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance

  Martha McLaren

  “This [book] holds significance for scholars of intellectual history in the fields of both Britain and British colonial India. It shows well how the Scottish educational system, based on the Scottish Enlightenment, shaped the thinking and promotion rate of three important officials in the East India Company throughout their influential careers.” —Michael Fisher, Oberlin College

  “This is a valuable contribution to the field of British imperialism in South Asia. Scholars interested in the English-Scottish relations during this period, especially as they pertain to the empire, will also likely read this with profit.” —Lynn Zastoupil, Rhodes College

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  Circle Routes

  John Minczeski

  In Circle Routes, a navigational term, John Minczeski transports the reader to a series of places that often interconnect, whether they are as close as the poet's back yard or as distant, in history and geography, as a Japanese concentration camp and the pungent streets of Rome. What links the poems, however diverse in subject and situation, is the poet's sense of empathy, his intimate understanding of anyone who has had to make a moral decision and live with the consequences. And yet these poems neither preach nor swell with self-satisfaction. Their treatment of even the darkest theme is lyrical, affirming that no evil can eclipse a world in which one can still hear the smallest hum of life, as at the end of "Great Circle Routes": "it's the sound of bees mired / in quadratic equations of lilies, / sucking light from the blossoms."

  "Circle Routes contains a recurring joyfulness that invites us into those brightest of spaces: memory and meditation. The poet's feelings are sometimes sharp with deliberate and thoughtful sarcasm; they can also soar with lyrical sweetness. John Minczeski has a penchant for winged things, not only planes but mayflies, bats, as well as the engagements of the human heart. Even the simple iris that 'starts life/as boxing gloves' and 'ends with the smell / of bridesmaids' becomes, in his attentive poem, an object of weightlessness and wonder. Minczeski takes on many concerns: the personal past, history and its unsettlements, natural history, some poems that read like travel pieces though certainly they are about inner space as much as outer space. Circle Routes is a fine, sweet-spirited, ambitious, beautifully accomplished book." —Mary Oliver

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  Frozen Falls

  Barry Seiler

  Frozen Falls, Barry Seiler's fourth full-length collection of poems, extends the range of his themes and poetic strategies. Readers of his earlier work will recognize Seiler's concern with family loss, popular music and film, Jewish experience, and the intensities and disappointments inherent in the act of writing. But they will also find a series of brief, inventive poems on the inner life of domestic objects such as armchairs and vases, the best poems of this kind since Francis Ponge, and two long poems that anchor the book: "American Misfortune" and "Turns." "American Misfortune," a narrative sequence, meditates on the fragility of the lives we construct, the stories we tell to explain ourselves to ourselves. "Turns," a journal of the seasons, uses lyrical fragments to chart the mind's daily negotiations between the inner and the outer world, seeking the peace offered by the quiet rituals of rural life during the changing course of the year. Sustaining the collection are motifs of falls and falling, from autumn to waterfalls, from stumbles to Eden. By turns hopeful and skeptical, the book considers the consolations of art and its limits - the wish that a life of writing will justify that life, and the fear that it may not. And holding everything together is a distinctive voice that brings to each new topic an attitude and manner of speaking that is Seiler's alone. We hear a wised-up wit softened by a sympathetic understanding of failure, a balance between the struggle to live meaningfully and the grace to accept the simple pleasures of living in the moment. In these poems, Barry Seiler has perfect pitch, and he sounds like nobody else.

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  Fun, Cheap, & Easy: My Life in Ohio Politics, 1949-1964

  Frances McGovern

  Frances McGovern gives an entertaining account of her life and the colorful people she knew in local, state, and national politics, from her start as a young lawyer in 1949 through 1964 when she quit politics after an unsuccessful run for Congress. An insightful memoir from an era when the industrial Midwest still dominated American politics and men dominated the industrial Midwest, McGovern illustrates just how fun, cheap, and easy local politics could be. Go with her to covered dish suppers, picnics, and church basements, to the Ohio House of Representatives where she served three terms, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, and two of the century's most exciting Democratic National Conventions. Join her as she takes the Kennedy women through Ohio in 1960. Share her rides with Hubert Humphrey in Barberton and President Johnson in Akron, and her tea party for Lady Bird at the old Mayflower Hotel. Best of all, enjoy her stories of political figures of both parties?a refreshing behind the scenes look at politics on a local and state level.

  "Fun, Cheap, and Easy is a wonderful account of Midwestern grass roots politics when the New Deal party system was in full flower. Part pioneer and part exemplar of her era, Frances McGovern’s memoir tells us much about what American democracy was—and ought to be. Wise, generous and well-written, this gem of a book deserves wide readership." -John C. Green, Director, Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics