In her haunting fourth collection, National Poetry Series winner Joan Murray takes the challenge of performing poetry's original and still necessary tasks in the uncertain landscape of a new millennium. Widely praised for the exceptional humanity and technical virtuosity of her earlier collections, Murray now explores the daily struggles of life and death in the natural world, the hidden pleasures and ironies of life in small-town America, the vulnerable underside of artistic communities, and the myriad complexities that pervade our dreams and relationships in this new century. With wit, generosity, and unflinching honesty, Murray gives us poems that mourn and praise, illuminate and challenge.

The first appearance of this award-winning writer's work since the 1940s, this collection, which includes an introduction by John Ashbery, restores Joan Murray's striking poetry to its originally intended form. Though John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a key influence on his work, Murray’s sole collection, Poems, published after her death at the early age of twenty-four and selected by W. H. Auden for inclusion in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, has been almost entirely unavailable for the better part of half a century. Poems was put together by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray’s mother, and when Murray’s papers, long thought to be lost, reappeared in 2013, it became clear that Code had exercised a heavy editorial hand. This new collection, edited by Farnoosh Fathi from Murray’s original manuscripts, restores Murray’s raw lyricism and visionary lines, while also including a good deal of previously unpublished work, as well as a selection of her exuberant letters.

This novel-in-verse tells the fascinating story of Annie Taylor, who, in 1901, became the first person to plunge over the brink of Niagara Falls in a barrel. But as Joan Murray reveals, America didn't know what to do with a mature and self-possessed heroine: Annie Taylor, as an 'older woman,' was rejected and exploited and finally eclipsed by the man who repeated her stunt ten years later.

This is a true story. Harley (a beagle/lab mix) was Ms. Joan's best friend. She adopted him from a local shelter when she retired from the military. Harley was always there for Ms. Joan. While getting certified as a teacher, Ms. Joan would leave the house early and return late at night, and Harley would be there waiting for her, smiling and happy to see her. Harley developed mast cell cancer in his front left paw. To save him, the doctors amputated (cut off) half of his front paw. After that, Harley became fearful of people. Ms. Joan had trouble taking him to the vet. It was recommended that Ms. Joan keep him home altogether. But enter dog training. After working with Mr. Mike, Harley and Ms. Joan became a therapy dog team. Harley became more confident and less fearful of people. He achieved his Therapy Dog Excellent Title (200 + visits) through the American Kennel Club (AKC) for therapy dog visits to local schools, the veterans' home, and local retirement facilities. Harley's cancer came back. What happened next? Please read and find out in this true story.

An award winning poet writes with haunting honesty.

Joan Murray discusses social and political events in combination with the movements, ideas, attitudes, styles, and important groups in Canadian art of this century.

This is an intimate biography of an artist who became a legend after his death, but who in his private life stands revealed as a troubled man who was, in many ways, his own victim. Joan Murray’s new biography is part detective work, too: she investigates his beliefs, and the origins of his great masterpieces, and provides a convincing description of the possible circumstances of his death. The art of Tom Thomson represents one of the high points of Canadian modernism, which flourished in the first two decades of this century. During his brief career, lasting just five years, Thomson evolved a highly intense, naturalistic style, introducing formal innovations and challenging the idiom of the tonal landscape of painters popular in his day. Thomson’s idiosyncratic expressionist landscape art reflected the intellectual and psychological climate of pre-World War I Canada. It developed against the complex cultural background that produced the poets Bliss Carmen and Duncan Campbell Scott and, later, the painters of the Group of Seven. Despite his short creative life, and only half a decade of mature artistic activity, Thomson, a superb designer, produced an extensive body of work - more than thirty canvases and three hundred oil sketches - in a remarkably personal style, characterized by unusual colour combinations and strong patterns. Through it he conveyed the existential dimension of nature, making Algonquin Park - its trees, waters, and winds - the principal subject of his work.