{"product_id":"9780984953684","title":"First Light and Other Poems","description":"Born in 1960 in Newark, New Jersey, Roberts Counts grew up poor in the projects. Incarcerated at twenty, he began to read everything he could find from Shakespeare and Malcolm X to Einstein and Robert Frost. Gradually, he taught himself to write poetry. His poems, signed Ishmael Shamsid-din-as he was known for almost thirty years-deal with ghetto violence, the goodness and beauty of nature, and love as a source of redemption. With wit and lyric energy, Counts shows us what it takes to resist bitterness and nurture hope.\u003cp\u003e\"These are poems of struggle: with language, in the first instance; with the mechanisms that spin the universe; with the gods and goddesses of love; but most of all with a recalcitrant self which refuses worn and easy paths.\"\u003cbr\u003e-Paul Lauter, Editor, The Heath Anthology of American Literature\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Full Court Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47021042106608,"sku":"9780984953684","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780984953684","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}