The Beautiful / Palace Prayers (5th in the series of poetry books from Misdaq) offers the most rhythmic, urgent and yet 'beautifully' abstract assemblage of words thus far. As the call to walk away from the material world and its enticements becomes ever more solid, so does the calling towards some sort of 'path' become ever more pronounced, and so do the words themselves seem to take on a new magic. New shifts and subtle lights produce truly fresh angles, supplying meanings that one oft-cannot be sure are intended or unintended, and yet, are nonetheless felt somewhere real, primal. To be sure, this is 'pure' poetry (with less of 'the poet'), all water, all clear mirrors reflected at the sky or the Divine. Fittingly then, we witness here a definite shift away from the more dry wit and reportage journalism-style sometimes present in the previous 4 books. Galactically serious, freshly spiritual, and yet rooted in the honesty of the everyday streets (of Washington DC) at the very same time. Cellular, biological and metaphysical worlds of sheer SEARCHING, meet with hip-hop flows so undeniably present in the rhythm of these poems that you might even find yourself bobbing your head to a beat you think you hear. The genius is that you DO hear it. This earnest, honest collection also includes (like its predecessor 'Spilling Kingdoms') a document of poems written daily during the month of Ramadan, as well as three remarkably unique and experimental short stories, and finally, illustrations of 'The Beautiful, ' in all of their forms- peppered throughout the handsome, royal text.Extracts from the foreword by Christopher Reiger: "No doubt, the author, laughing, singing, eyes wide and sparkling, would appear mad to many of his fellows. This is to their discredit. They have forgotten (or failed to learn) how to look... As Douglas Thorpe writes, " love] demands of us a new way of being in our old world." Religious mysticism is a love affair with The All. It's not always easy but religious attunement can turn each day, each hour, or each instant, into, "a new way of being." Reading Yusuf's poetry, I'm reminded that every step is a psalm, every directed gaze is a prayer."

The fifteen papers included in this volume edited by Robert W. Hamblin and Melanie Speight were presented at the Faulkner and Twain Conference hosted by Southeast Missouri State University's Center for Faulkner Studies in Cape Girardeau, October 19 21, 2006. The essays include the conference keynote address by Robert Brinkmeyer, a noted Southern Studies scholar from the University of South Carolina; essays by M. Thomas Inge, a widely published Southern literature scholar from Randolph-Macon College, and Leland Krauth, a well-known Twain scholar from the University of Colorado; and additional papers by scholars from Canada, France, Japan, and the United States. The various essays discuss Faulkner's and Twain's treatment of such topics as humor, the frontier, the Mississippi River, race relations, politics, detective fiction and death.