Boundaries
Maya Ying Lin
  - Simon & Schuster
  - $40.00

I was starting high school when she was born. She designed and built the Vietnam Memorial at 21 and I haven't done shit.

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An Autobiographical Novel
By Kenneth Rexroth and Linda Hamalian
  - New Directions Paperback
  - $14.95

The portrait of an autodidact who has equally the prowess and lust for politics, poetry, nature and lovemaking. For all his genius, he inspires a [Beat] generation of mediocrity in berets. And he's known as an old curmudgeon--who can blame him?

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20 Love Poems and A Song of Despair
By Pablo Neruda
  - Penguin Books
  - $9.95

Stirs to tears when you read it aloud in bed… makes you wish there was a special someone in your bed sharing this pathetic, I mean ecstatic, moment.

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Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn
By Stephen Mitchell and Seung
  - Grove Books
  - $13.00

With a slight-of-hand candor, Zen Master Seung Sahn responds to his students with clarity and humor, transforming every grieving into inspiration and each daunting meaning-of-life question into a head-scratching riddle. From front cover to back, you begin to realize that being a modern day Buddha is possible - just not for you.

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Haruko/Love Poems
June Jordan
  - Serpent's Tail
  - $13.99

Jordan's words buoys the reader in the currents of love's undulating tide, lapping at all your senses in a rhythmic gyration, satiating your pangs of love. These are the words expressing the indescribable, you know, analogous to you grinding your groin?

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Seize the Time
Bobby Seale
  - Black Classic Press
  - $14.95

It got me so fired up that I use to read it before working out, then I hurt a pectoral doing push up's too furiously. Bobby, Huey and The Black Panther Party were a challenge to the American system and I'm holding my chest, whimpering.

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Forces in Motion: The Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton
Graham Locke
  - Da Capo Press
  - $15.95

The guy writes music to be played on several planets simultaneously and I got a C- in Basic Musicianship.

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In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Alice Walker
  - Harvest Books
  - $16.00

The essays that inspired an aspiring writer… so much so as to pre-empt writing altogether in favor of distanced admiration and paralysis of the pen.

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Autobiography of Malcolm X
By Alex Haley and Malcolm X
  - Random House
  - $7.50

From a hoodlum to the leader of his people, Malcolm X is the model of self-transformation and self-determination… it inspires and empowers you to "go for broke" and then you revive yourself to get the spirit up to frump about in the banality of your days.

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The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Box Set
John Coltrane
  - Impulse Records
  - $ n/a

John Coltrane declares, "I want to be a force for good." His music harnesses in its listener the spirit of 100 gods and the strength of a million. My music, on the other hand, is depressing. I should stop claiming him as an influence. Anyway, we don't sell this in the store.

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