War and Peace and Poetry was inspired by the everyday lives of American soldiers. Their stories and the lives they live while deployed to Iraq are chronicled in these verses, as well as some of author Lonnie D. Ellis's childhood memories of growing up in the Deep South. Many of the poems in this collection address war and its effects on families. They reflect the emotions of the soldiers, their spouses, and their children, who have to deal with the realities of war. Ellis touches on a facet of life that reflects each individual family member. "Daddy, Don't Go" was inspired by his personal experience with his children and the children of his fellow soldiers as they prepared to deploy from Fort Stewart. It was, by far, the most difficult poem he has written. He wrote the poem "The Journey" after speaking with many of his friends and hearing about the loneliness of their spouses and loved ones. The poem say to them, "I am there with you in spirit always, even if I cannot be with you physically." War and Peace and Poetry offers a soldier's perspective on the sacrifices made during war and tells the stories of soldiers and their families with heartfelt emotion.

Five practical workshops, for groups or individuals, to explore the use of words and poetry in everyday life. The readings and activities in this book aim to lead us to a deeper understanding of how we use language.

"The poems gathered here span the last three decades of Levertov's life, their subjects ranging from Vietnam to the death-squads of El Salvador to the first Gulf War." -- Back cover. -- Provided by publisher.

If you stop and look around you, you'll start to see. Tall marigolds darkening. A spring wind blowing. The woods awake with sound. On the wooden porch, your love smiling. Dew-wet red berries in a cup. On the hills, the beginnings of green, clover and grass to be pasture. The fowls singing and then settling for the night. Bright, silent, thousands of stars. You come into the peace of simple things. From the author of the 'compelling' and 'luminous' essays of The World-Ending Fire comes a slim volume of poems. Tender and intimate, these are consoling songs of hope and of healing; short, simple meditations on love, death, friendship, memory and belonging. They celebrate and elevate what is sensuous about life, and invite us to pause and appreciate what is good in life, to stop and savour our fleeting moments of earthly enjoyment. And, when fear for the future keeps us awake at night, to come into the peace of wild things.

The Armistice of 1918 brought ceasefire to the war on the Western Front, but 'the Great War' would not as hoped be 'the war to end all wars'. In this affecting selection, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, guides us deep into the act and root of 'armistice': its stoppage or 'stand' of arms, its search for truce and ceasefire. In 100 poems, our most cherished poets of the Great War speak alongside those from other conflicts and cultures, so that we hear some of the lesser-heard voices of war, including wives, families, those left behind. These poems of war and peace memorialise the horror and the tragedy of conflict. At the same time, in armistice, they become a record of renewal and a testimony to hope.

A masterful new collection of poetry from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize The poems in Carl Dennis’s thirteenth collection, Night School, are informed by an engagement with a world not fully accessible to the light of day, a world that can only be known with help from the imagination, whether we focus on ourselves, on people close at hand, or on the larger society. Only if we imagine alternatives to our present selves, Dennis suggests, can we begin to grasp who we are. Only if we imagine what is hidden from us about the lives of others can those lives begin to seem whole. Only if we can conceive of a social world different from the one we seem to inhabit can we begin to make sense of the country we call our own. To read these poems is to find ourselves invited into a dialogue between what is present and what is absent that proves surprising and enlarging.

Timely poetry collection about peace and war by acclaimed children's poet and author Tony Johnston, stunningly illustrated by Susan Guevara.The poems in this collection present haunting images of war and peace. Set all over the world, from Belfast to Africa to the Middle East, these lyric snapshots show the effects of war on ordinary people, as well as the hope and cautious joy that mark each person's journey to survive. The poems startle with a quiet power: a sister makes up a sweet story for her brother about their house flying away from gunfire; a lentil is wryly asked to fling itself into boiling water so that a desperate family can be fed; a stubborn rosebush blooms, because no matter what it must endure. Full of sweeping, vivid color and emotion, Susan Guevara's accompanying acrylic paintings astonish, move, and provide a fascinating interpretation of and tribute to Tony Johnston's call for peace.