BOOKS

Bada$$ Business Writing

Professionals who don’t give a f&ck what a semicolon is for will enjoy five snarky chapters with humorous illustrations in this ultimate guide to writing for work. Unlike other writing guides, this book is not for writers. It’s for professionals–engineers, doctors, architects, administrators, construction managers, human resources directors, and small business owners–who use writing to get their jobs done. This book isn’t going to train you to be a writer. It’s going to show you about how to use writing more effectively at work. And it’s going to try to make you laugh while you learn. After reading this book, your work-related writing will save you time, save your colleagues time, and it will allow you to get work done and maintain positive professional relationships.

Where the Air Shifts

In 2004, author Jenny Morse left her job in publishing to travel around South America for 5 months with her cousin. These poems, written while completing her Master's in English at the University of Colorado-Boulder, document their travels in Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia. The poems engage with the landscapes, experiences, and people discovered over months spent backpacking, camping, and wandering through these amazing countries. Here's the full list of places referenced:

Chile—Santiago, Temuco, Conguillio National Park, Valdivia, Puerto Montt, Pumalin Park, Torres del Paine, Gulf of Pena, Chiloe, San Pedro de Atacama

Argentina—Ruta 40, Los Glaciares National Park, Perito Moreno Glacier.

Peru—Lima, Huanchaco, Iquitos, the Amazon, Colca Canyon, the Nasca Lines, Cuzco, Ollantaytambo, Aguas Calientes, Macchu Picchu, Ilave

Bolivia—Lake Titicaca, Isla del Sol, La Paz, Cochabomba, Uyuni

Postcards of US

Having traveled to all 50 United States, author Jenny Morse has written one poem for each. The postal code for the state is capitalized in the titles, which expand those two letters into a word that grounds the poems' content. The poems are formatted in squares, as if written on a postcard and dropped into the mail along her travels. The square format is also representative of the somewhat arbitrary and historic ways in which the states have been shaped and delineated, their boundaries a result of landscape and negotiation. The poems are best understood as lyrical odes. Traditional odes have been written to a "you" who is the adored subject. In this case, the "you" is the state itself, an experience of the place as the traveler passes through. The poems vary in their focus, reflecting the experience and memory of the author as she visited each state. They also often explore some of the landscape and natural elements. For example, the opening poem, MarinE, is set in Maine, where the author attended Bowdoin College and often visited the natural formation referred to as the Giant Steps. History is embedded in pRovIdence, set in Rhode Island, a state that was founded when Roger Williams and his followers (among them Anne Hutchinson) settled the area to escape religious persecution. TiN, for Tennessee, is a reimagining of Wallace Steven's poem "Anecdote of the Jar." And ARrangement, for Arkansas, is based on a family trip when they took the train south from Wisconsin because her little brother wanted to dig for diamonds.