Janet's new print collection of poetry, Beckoned By The Reckoning, is now available courtesy of PoetWorks Press. It features 90 new poems and a professionally recorded audio CD of the author reading her work. The book is $16.95, plus shipping; the book and the CD sell together for $24.95, plus shipping; and the CD alone is $8.95, plus shipping. Topical choices include: our recent wars, small town life, death, coping with disability, and love lost and found. Critics are calling it Buck's best work yet.

PoetWorks Press makes buying easy and fast through PayPal or a printable order form, if you prefer to use regular mail. Simply click on the following link and scroll down to the bottom of the page to place your order:

PoetWorks Press

Rave Reviews:

"Janet Buck continues to remind us that wholeness is not possible lest we embrace the brokenness by which we are surrounded. She is a witness in the grandest sense of the word! I heartily recommend Beckoned By The Reckoning."

--John Amen, author of Christening the Dancer

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"Janet Buck's newest book, Beckoned By The Reckoning, is a deep, revealing look at life and its multi-faceted reflections. Prolifically crafted and completely honest, the images contained are startlingly real and passionate. Amazing work."

--Michael Paul Ladanyi, author of Spelling Crows of Winter and Palm Shadows

Bio:

Janet Buck is a six-time Pushcart Nominee. Her poetry has recently appeared in Octavo, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, CrossConnect, Poetry Magazine.com, The Montserrat Review, Offcourse, The Pedestal Magazine, PoetryBay, Red River Review, Facets Magazine, and hundreds of journals worldwide.

Janet's poetry explores a complex tapestry of grief - the loss of love and youth and health, even the horrors of war - all with the goal of underscoring what's left in the form of human compassion and growth. She believes as poets we have to finger the darkness in order to cradle the light.

Buck taught writing and literature at the college level for fifteen years and loves staying home to write. Her second collection of poetry, Tickets to a Closing Play, winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Award, was released in September, 2003. Beckoned By The Reckoning is her third print collection of poetry.

ISBN 1-930293-46-1
118 pg
Cover Art by Dee Rimbaud: http://www.thunderburst.co.uk

U.S.A. $16.95 / PoetWorks Press / 1307 Palmetto St./ New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168-7610

Listen to an Excerpt -- Courtesy of PoetWorks Press:

Chopsticks

Have we always chatted this way?
In a fury only the dying would know.
Stitching our failures and flaws
into a quilt, finding the one dry spot
under the flooding eaves.
I see our threaded skeletons
in mirrors at the water's edge.
Nothing but cobwebs for hair
under our tattered hats --
ragged beaten dandelions
bullied and dispersed by storm.
You took my punches from the wind
and I took yours -- the feeble graft
of tenderness that brings
lost fingers back to life.
You're pitchfork thin from fighting pain.
I listen for a moaning river
deep inside your courage bells.

Our thighs are grabbing for a bench,
any kindness, any stretch of level ground.
Your hip is aching on your face;
I see it scream through all the masks
we've used and shed like
postage stamps that lose their glue.
Strolls turn brittle, laden with rust,
whispers of haste akin to a circus
of squirrels after the meat of the nut.
Comparing lumpy notes of scars,
umbrellas for a walking cane,
our purses heavy with bottles of pills,
we click as chopsticks chase a pea.
You'd think this freeze would kill these roots,
but here we are -- predictable as thorny weeds
that grow through cracks on patios.
Once more around the drying lake,
raking over diaries of loves we botched.
Dirt that might have bothered us is only soil --
a moon that tripped us more than once
shines upon the coming grave.

by Janet I. Buck