John Ashbery’s wild, deliriously inventive book-length poem, inspired by the adventures of Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls Henry Darger, the prolific American outsider artist who died in 1973, leaving behind over twenty thousand pages of manuscripts and hundreds of artworks, is famous for the elaborate alternate universe he both constructed and inhabited, a “realm of the unreal” where a plucky band of young girls, the Vivians, helps lead an epic rebellion against dark forces of chaos. Darger’s work is now renowned for its brilliant appropriation of cultural ephemera, its dense and otherworldly prose, and its utterly unique high-low juxtaposition of popular culture and the divine—some of the very same traits that decades of critics and readers have responded to in John Ashbery’s many groundbreaking works of poetry. In Girls on the Run, Ashbery’s unmatched poetic inventiveness travels to new territory, inspired by the characters and cataclysms of Darger’s imagined universe. Girls on the Run is a disquieting, gorgeous, and often hilarious mash-up that finds two radical American artists engaged in an unlikely conversation, a dialogue of reinvention and strange beauty.

During adolescence, if a girl isn’t careful, she can fall into a trap called the Girl Box—a place where the way she looks is more important than who she is, where having a boyfriend is worth giving up a piece of her identity. This is a very serious problem, one that can lead to substance abuse, eating disorders, early sexual contact, and depression. Now Molly Barker, founder of the dynamic Girls on the Run® exercise program, has created a ten-week self-esteem-building plan that will instill resiliency in young girls and enhance their emotional, social, physical, mental, and spiritual health. The activities and lessons are designed for parents and girls to do together and include

A woman hides from the spotlight—and her own broken heart—in a smart, sassy novel that’s a "heady mix of love, loss, law and celebs” (Allie Spencer). For Jane Porter, being a pop star’s girlfriend was a dream come true—until her big-time boyfriend started playing around and the paparazzi turned on her like a pack of hyenas. Now in a new city with a new look, Jane has retreated to work a quietly anonymous job in a patent law firm—at least until the furor dies down. Besides, some good old-fashioned hard work will help repair her shattered confidence. Then she meets patent lawyer Marshall Winfield—sweet, clever and dealing with the aftermath of his own romantic disaster—who might just be the cure for Jane’s broken heart. But with the press still hot on Jane’s heels and an office troublemaker hell-bent on making things difficult, do Jane and Marsh stand any chance of finding happiness together? "Fresh and fun, Rhoda Baxter's debut novel is an entertaining read about learning to trust—and love—again.”—Talli Roland, author of The Hating Game

In his debut collection, Some Trees (1956), the American poet John Ashbery poses a question that resonates across his oeuvre and much of modern art: 'How could he explain to them his prayer / that nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?' When Ashbery asks this strange question, he joins a host of transatlantic avant-gardists—from the Dadaists to the 1960s neo-avant-gardists and beyond—who have dreamed of turning art into nature, of creating art that would be 'valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid, in the way a landscape—not its picture—is aesthetically valid' (Clement Greenberg, 1939). Invisible Terrain reads Ashbery as a bold intermediary between avant-garde anti-mimeticism and the long western nature poetic tradition. In chronicling Ashbery's articulation of 'a completely new kind of realism' and his engagement with figures ranging from Wordsworth to Warhol, the book presents a broader case study of nature's dramatic transformation into a resolutely unnatural aesthetic resource in 20th-century art and literature. The story begins in the late 1940s with the Abstract Expressionist valorization of process, surface, and immediacy—summed up by Jackson Pollock's famous quip, 'I am Nature'—that so influenced the early New York School poets. It ends with 'Breezeway,' a poem about Hurricane Sandy. Along the way, the project documents Ashbery's strategies for literalizing the 'stream of consciousness' metaphor, his negotiation of pastoral and politics during the Vietnam War, and his investment in 'bad' nature poetry.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning documents what the best research has revealed about out-of-school learning: what facilitates or hampers it; where it takes place most effectively; how we can encourage it to develop talents and strengthen communities; and why it matters. Key features include: Approximately 260 articles organized A-to-Z in 2 volumes available in a choice of electronic or print formats. Signed articles, specially commissioned for this work and authored by key figures in the field, conclude with Cross References and Further Readings to guide students to the next step in a research journey. Reader’s Guide groups related articles within broad, thematic areas to make it easy for readers to spot additional relevant articles at a glance. Detailed Index, the Reader’s Guide, and Cross References combine for search-and-browse in the electronic version. Resource Guide points to classic books, journals, and web sites, including those of key associations.