by Don Badgley

The poems in What Is Not a Miracle are centered on the spiritual realm or on the natural world—and for the author, these are often indistinguishable. The themes are deeply influenced by his life as a Friend, “Quaker.” Don Badgley offers these poems as a glimpse of one man’s corporeal and spiritual journey. It is his hope that “these small poetic offerings may kindle recognition of the Light within each of us and so affirm the infinite, eternal and unchangeable Ground of Being that is our universal Source.”

Enjoy a video of Don reading from the book:

Don Badgley — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (August 2021)

About the Author

Don Badgley is a lifetime resident of the Hudson Valley in New York State. Raised in a rural setting in a Quaker family Don is married and the father of two grown daughters. He remains active with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and is the presiding clerk of his local Quaker meeting in Poughkeepsie, NY. He continues his now 35-year career as an insurance agent.

Don was encouraged to write poetry by his father and has been writing since his youth.  This is his first published collection.

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by Joan Colby

A Poetry Box SELECT Title

Joan Colby, a masterful poet and avid bird lover, takes us on a lyrical exploration inside the bird kingdom. Through her careful observances and vivid imagination, we often see ourselves—our human interactions, our social conditions, our philosophies, our celebrations, our grief. And sometimes, of course, a poem is simply about the bird.

                          There’s always one
Who is preoccupied—a dreamer
Contemplating the poetry of a cornfield,
Gleaning the easy pickings of
The left behind.

About the Author

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Gargoyle, Pinyon, Little Patuxent Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic and others. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature.

She has published 22 books including Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press) which received the 2013 FutureCycle Book Prize and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Three of her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and another is among the winners of the 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. Her poems are included in numerous anthologies, the latest being Poets to Come which was published in accordance with the Walt Whitman Bicentennial Convention, May 31-June 2, 2019. Her newest books are Her Heartsongs from Presa Press (2017), Joyriding to Nightfall (2019) from FutureCycle Press, Elements (2019) Presa Press and Bony Old Folks (2019) Cyberwit Press. Colby is a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Good Works Review.

Learn more about the poet on her website: www.joancolby.com, on Facebook (Joan Colby), or Twitter: @poetjm.

Early Praise for The Kingdom of Birds:

Written by a poet at the top of her conjoined powers of observation, understanding, imagination, and craftsmanship, these poems are as clear-eyed and precise as a hawk in descent, and often as fierce. Like Audubon in her poem “The Artists of Exactitude” (though unlike him because her subjects are not dead), Colby is an Obermeister[ ] of observation/ Threading the needle of particulars. These poems capture how the experience of watching birds impinges on our minds and stirs our emotions. The hinges of [crows’] wings seem to groan/ Like the rheumatic branches. Even my eyes/ Ache with the freight/ Of their passing. Gulls who ride the swells are Snugged to our planet/ like fleas/ In a heaving vastness. All night the owl is silent as a ghost/ On glider wings. A seized bird is lifted skyward/ into the rapture of a redtail’s/ Book of revelations. A Cooper’s Hawk stoops from clouds,/ A lightning bolt thrown by a fierce/ Old god. Colby’s metaphors, exact and original, continually delight.

—Judy Kronenfeld, PhD, lecturer emerita, UC Riverside
author, Bird Flying Through the Banquet

I wake to wings crashing into my window, Joan Colby informs us in this congregation of bird poems, as casually as if we’d just sat down with her morning coffee and toast. There is, however, nothing casual about her poetry, nor is the subject birds alone. Colby knows and employs the language of ornithology to riveting effect, but always with a human implication circling and circling. We’re not supposed to anthropomorphize, Colby admits, but the more we learn, the more we ponder. And doesn’t the power of strong poetry lie in its ability to make us ponder? In these poems, see how Colby selects the delectable morsel, knowing exactly what [we] want. Try just one poem. You’ll follow like a soar of larks.

—Dana Wildsmith, author, One Light

Ever a sharp observer of people Joan Colby has an eye and much affection for nature as well. In these poems her viewing of birds reflects back to the human world with the attention for detail that has long given her poetry a vigorous edge. She never shirks from harsh facts, though she can still leave us with the observation that we roost in each other.

—David Chorlton

Enjoy Joan’s Daughter Wendy on Her Mother’s Behalf:

The Poetry Box LIVE — October 2020

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by Ahrend Torrey

In Small Blue Harbor, Ahrend Torrey exalts the ordinary, everydayness of life spinning his keen observation into lyrical poems and proems. This collection celebrates our human connection with nature, influenced by a New Orleans backdrop, and gives us a glimpse of the struggles of being gay while raised in the Deep South. Torrey’s authentic, inspirational voice will have you returning to these poems again and again, finding refuge from a world that is not always kind.

About the Author

Ahrend Torrey, a poet and painter, attended college in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, earning both his MA and MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University. He is the 2014 recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press, and many of his poems have appeared in numerous journals online and in print.

When he is not writing, he enjoys the simpler things in life, like walking around City Park with his partner, Jonathan, and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. He makes his home in New Orleans, and is currently working on a new collection of poems titled Bird City.

What They’re Saying…

In Ahrend Torrey’s reverent praiseworthy debut, the universe is in the details. Here, a man finds another side of himself near a flock of ducks, in the dream of a tree, as the world turns to light and faces decay. Nothing is left unexamined, nothing shunned. In every observation, the poet seems to ask: why waste time on fear of each other or any living thing? All is sacred: moths, pups, elderberries, even the corners of a violent city can be reborn. Transformation is a gift in this collection reminding us to shun the world’s quickening grind. Shouldn’t we pause for beauty? Shouldn’t we note the unseen everything trailing in our wake? Love is being carried—remembered and held in a soft space—by another. And isn’t this what “all of us gathered, in this small blue harbor” long to be?

~ Remica Bingham-Risher, author of Starlight & Error and What We Ask of Flesh

Like a scientist at the microscope, Torrey invites us to discover worlds inside the smallest moments. Stay a while, he says, and we are better for having lingered.

~ Barbara Taylor, author of All Waiting is Long and Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night

As its title suggest, Small Blue Harbor calls readers to see the power of the everyday beauty around them. Emphasizing intersections between the natural and the built worlds, Ahrend Torrey focuses on their impact on one another. With a voice that is sometimes worshipful, reverent even, and sometimes poignant, Torrey urges readers to look at the world anew and appreciate the power of the ordinary moments of life.

~ Lorie Watkins, editor of  A Literary History of Mississippi

Small Blue Harbor is large and kaleidoscopic as an ocean. Ahrend Torrey’s generous voice quests through the small things of this world to engage everything: the miracle of meals, the cabling together of the simple and difficulty, the way that daily life with its small pleasures confronts the prospect of attacks against the transgendered and legislation that could kill millions. These are poems of delicate inclusion and fierce insight.

~ Phil Brady, co-founder/Executive Director of Etruscan Press, author of Fathom and Weal

Small Blue Harbor demonstrates Torrey’s skill of combining classical and contemporary poetic styles to create a voice of wonder and astonishment that is uniquely his. Torrey’s poems and proems invite the reader on a walk with the poet through the Louisiana bayou and New Orleans to witness the ordinary… and see just how extraordinary it truly is.

~ Francisco Tutella, English-to-Italian translator of Jan Quackenbush’s play The Sparrow of Ulm (Il passero di Ulma)

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Poems from the Garden

For our 5th issue of The Poeming Pigeon (vol 3.2), Homer takes us back to our roots – literally and metaphorically. Enjoy this collection of over 80 poems that celebrates dirt under our fingernails, seed catalog dreams, sharing zucchini with our neighbors, and this labor-of-love we call gardening.

Contributing Poets from Around the Globe:

Pamela Ahlen • Heather Angier • Diane Averill • Dianne Avey • Michael Baldwin • Irene Bloom • Katy Brown • Lanette Cadle • Cathy Cain • Margaret Chula • Brittney Corrigan • Linda M. Crate • Neil Creighton • Gareth Culshaw • C. Hunter Davis • John Davis • Robert Eastwood • Johanna Ely • Matt Farr • Linda Ferguson • Brad G. Garber • Suzy Harris • Ruth Hill • Ann Howells • Georgette Howington • Marilyn Johnston • Tim Kahl • Kelila A Knight • Tricia Knoll • Laurie Kolp • Jennifer Lagier • Eric le Fatte • Shari Jo LeKane-Yentumi • Annie Lighthart • Stephen Linsteadt • Rosemary Douglas Lombard • Alwyn Marriage • Carolyn Martin • Catherine McGuire • Carter McKenzie • Barbara A. Meier • Karla Linn Merrifield • Amy Miller • Kay Morgan • Liz Nakazawa • Claudine Nash • Emily Pittman Newberry • Terri Niccum • James B. Nicola • W.P. Osborn • Pattie Palmer-Baker • Rachelle M. Parker • Laurinda Lind • Kenneth Pobo • Janet M Powers • Cindy Rinne • Jeannie E. Roberts • Susan Rogers • Scott A. Russell • Ada Jill Schneider • Larry Schug • Suzanne Sigafoos • Judith Skillman • Alec Solomita • Elizabeth Stoessl • Beth Suter • G. Murray Thomas • Allison Thorpe • Brigit Truex • Cheryl A. Van Beek • Phyllis Wax • Lillo Way • Viola Weinberg • Sherry Wellborn • Kate Wells • Susan Whitney • Daniel Williams • Steve Williams • Sara Wilson • M. Wright • Paul Yager • Stan Zumbiel

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Poems about Birds

Poeming Pigeons is a curated collection of poetry from around the world — over 100 poems expressing our fascination, fear, frustration and undeniable connection to our fine, feathered friends. Between the pages of this anthology, you will discover stories that make you wonder, cry, laugh, cringe and inspire — all through poems about birds.

Contributing Poets representing 5 Continents, 11 Countries and 22 States:

Alexa Mergen, Alisa Golden, Allegra Silberstein, Annie Lighthart, Ariana Kramer, Arturo Desimone, Beth MacFarlane, Bobbi Sinha-Morey, Brenda Taulbee, Brigit Truex, Carolyn Martin, Catherine Ayres, Chris Jarmick, Christa Kaainoa, Christopher Leibow, Claire Feild, Connie Post, Cynthia Gallaher, Darren Donohue, David Butler, David M. Harris, Davnet Heery, Deborah Meltvedt, Dianne Avey, Donna Mclaughlin Schwender, Doug Draime, Douglas Spangle, Eileen McGurn, Elizabeth Reninger, Elizabeth Schultz, Fern G.Z. Carr, Fred Zirm, G. Murray Thomas, Gary Beck, Genea Brice, Georgette Howington, Gerald Yelle, Irene Bloom, Jack Little, James B. Nicola, Jane Yolen, Jennifer Kemnitz, Joan Colby, Joan Leotta, John Grey, John Saunders, Judy Darley, Karen S. Córdova, Karla Linn Merrifield, Kate Wells, Katy Brown, Kimberly White, Larry Schug, Laurie Kolp, Lillo Way, Linda M. Crate, Linda Strever, Lois P. Jones, Lori Loranger, Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen, Lylanne Musselman, Lynn Knapp, Lytton Bell, M, M.F. McAuliffe, M.J. Iuppa, Madeline Levy, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Maria Elena B. Mahler, Mariano Zaro, Marie Lecrivain, Martie Odell-Ingebretsen, Mary Jo Balistreri, Mary Kay Rummel, Mary Slocum, Marybeth Rua-Larsen, Matt Amott, Maureen O’Brien, Melinda Palacio, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Michael Shay, Moya Roddy, Parker Bauman, Pattie Palmer Baker, Pete Mullineaux, Rachael Ikins, Ram Krishna Singh, Richard King Perkins II, Serkan Engin, Sharon Alexander, Sharon Chmielarz, Hannah Kate Elliott Heltsley, Sharon Lask Munson, Stephen Linsteadt, Steve Williams, Stuart A. Paterson, Susan G. Duncan, Sylvia Ashby, Taylor Graham, Tim Kahl, Todd Cirillo, Tricia Knoll, Vivien Jones

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