Kirjahaku

Bringing together four decades of her writing, "Gail Sher Poetry & Poetics, 1980-2020," is an impressive testament to Gail Sher's ongoing engagement with poetry as a practice of attention. It also emphatically reinforces her contributions to, on the one hand, a long tradition of American writing, especially from the West Coast, that is steeped in East Asian philosophy and poetic forms, and, on the other, an equally rich history of experimental writing by women.--From the Preface by James Maynard, Curator, The Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo When I found Gail Sher's books, I imagined her having stepped from a Japanese Noh play. Her poems, sharpened by rigorous Buddhist discipline, grabbed me instantly. They were tough, refreshingly hard-edged, full of the natural world--constructed of bits and pieces of mineral, insect, bark, summer grass. They could cry out from the page in several languages at once, with English functioning (I thought) like a piece of steel to strike the spark. They felt classical. Despite their wild turns of phrasing, fox barks & cricket clicks, under the surface they showed a sensibility that was refined, educated, attentive to natural detail, and enamored of the chipped, the asymmetric, the rustic. They put me in mind of the writers of Japan's Heian court, the best of whom were women. I still hear echoes of Murasaki Shikibu or Ono no Komachi when I open Gail's books.-- Andrew Schelling, Naropa University

"Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms," by Gail Sher, is a sequence of contemporary poems in the style of ancient four-line Chinese "kanshi."

The psychological and spiritual memoir of a contemporary American poet written as haibun (prose combined with haiku). A poetic invocation of life in one of America's first Zen communities (the San Francisco Zen Center) and the breakthrough (Yes Practice) that ended her formal relationship to Zen and enabled her to be herself.

A special twentieth anniversary edition of the classic baking book features one hundred recipes for corn breads, spoonbreads, biscuits, tea cakes, batter breads, gingerbread, muffins, and much more--including instructions and ingredients for preparing each. Reprint.