Carolyn V. Martin, BS MS State of Connecticut A writer by nature. I fell in love with writing at the age of seven. Whether that be with poetry or free writing always allowing my feelings to just flow. I'm inspired to write with a vision, seeing things for more than what they actually are. I like to take my audience on journeys of free flow and sultry landings. My style in poetry is unique and articulated by music. Music is rhythm. Poetry is rhythm. Therefore my writings have a certain beat. My God has given me a gift to share with all who are willing to listen. As a Poet and Writer, I've always shared the same feelings and valued quotes from: Maya Angelou! "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die." I, Carolyn Martin truly believe that you can let love live and let love reside. It involves acceptance, humility, and forgiveness. Bringing back morals, values, and principals. I refer to my poetry as words of wisdom because most poets are usually inspired by God, our Heavenly Father of Wisdom. Such selections of words could only be approved by him. When you are reading, read without judgment and prejudice. Many of my selections are diverse just as my memoir book will be and I am quite sure many will be able to relate. I offer many situations that allow the reader to journey into leading to a positive outcome.

A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance—while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to historical events and the irresistibility of their impact. Alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, this volume includes such writers as Anne Askew, tortured and executed for her religious beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII; Phillis Wheatley, abducted by slave traders; Samuel Bamford, present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819; William Blake, who witnessed the Gordon Riots of 1780; and Samuel Menashe, survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. Poetry of Witness argues that such poets are a perennial feature of human history, and it presents the best of that tradition, proving that their work ranks alongside the greatest in the language.

Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us bears witness to what she saw in El Salvador in the late 1970s, when she travelled around a country erupting into civil war. Documenting killings and other brutal human rights abuses, while working alongside Archbishop Oscar Romero's church group, she found in her poetry the only possible way to come to terms with what she was experiencing first-hand. By 1980, when the fighting was becoming too dangerous, Archbishop Romero urged Forché to return home, asking her to talk to the American people, tell them what is happening to us and convince them to stop the military aid. A week later Archbishop Romero was assassinated. Back in the US, Forché gave readings and talks about US-backed oppression in Central America, but found publishers and critics uncomfortable with the startlingly different poems of this second collection of poems relating to torture, murder, injustice and trauma.

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY “An undisputed literary event.” —NPR “History—with its construction and its destruction—is at the heart of In the Lateness of the World. . . . In [it] one feels the poet cresting a wave—a new wave that will crash onto new lands and unexplored territories.” —Hilton Als, The New Yorker Over four decades, Carolyn Forché’s visionary work has reinvigorated poetry’s power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, inquiries, and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to one another. Her first new collection in seventeen years, In the Lateness of the World is a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death. The world here seems to be steadily vanishing, but in the moments before the uncertain end, an illumination arrives and “there is nothing that cannot be seen.” In the Lateness of the World is a revelation from one of the finest poets writing today.

"Poet Carolyn Jennings offers her life story that reveals the process of healing from an eating disorder [and] celebrates what recovery can be."--Website: http://www.writingourwings.com/hs.html.

In these essays and reviews, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet assays the work of many contemporary poets including Hayden Carruth, Denise Levertov, James Merrill, Louise Bogan, Robert Creeley, Marge Piercy, John Berryman and others. She offers the first major American assessment of the English poet John Clare, and discusses the influence of Alexander Pope on her own poetry. She also contributes a major autobiographical essay.

The Caregiver is Caroline Johnson's first full-length publication. It includes 50 poems that were inspired by the 15 years she devoted to taking care of her aging parents. The gathering includes free verse, lyrical poems, prose poetry and some formal verse. Many of the poems won contests and have been previously published in online print journals and anthologies. The poems touch on the topic of grieving but go beyond and focus on the many difficulties a caregiver experiences—both emotional and physical—yet also recognize the spiritual gifts that come with helping a loved one. Caregiving is a significant issue for our times and will only become more important as our population ages.