The most comprehensive bilingual collection of the Nobel Prize-winner Neruda, "the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language"

    Previously published in the following books: Poems (1935), Out of the Picture (1937), Letters from Iceland (1937), The Earth Compels (1938), Autumn Journal (1939), Plant and Phantom (1941), Springboard (1944), Holes in the Sky (1948) and Blind Fireworks (1929). Compiled by the author.

    This book is his most experimental work, but a work no less tradition-saturated than Eliot's. As poet, private individual, and "good European", Montale's way of dealing with his difficulties was to seize the occasions offered him by writing poetry in which the lover's passions for his beloved country would convey the truth of both his public and his private situations.

    Despite his renown, however, there are few comprehensive collections of his verse available and even fewer translated editions.Translators E. H. and A. M. Blackmore have collected Victor Hugo's essential verse into a single, bilingual volume that showcases all the facets of Hugo's oeuvre, including intimate love poems, satires against the political establishment, serene meditations, religious verse, and narrative poems illustrating his mastery of the art of storytelling and his abiding concern for the social issues of his time. More than half of this volume's eight thousand lines of verse appear here for the first time in English, providing readers with a new perspective on each of the fascinating periods of Hugo's career and aspects of his style. Introductions to each section guide the reader through the stages of Hugo's writing, while notes on individual poems provide information not found in even the most detailed French-language editions.Illustrated with Hugo's own paintings and drawings, this lucid translation—available on the eve of Hugo's bicentenary—pays homage to this towering figure of nineteenth-century literature by capturing the energy of his poetry, the drama and satirical force of his language, and the visionary beauty of his writing as a whole.

    Imprisoned for some weeks in a wire cage open to the elements, Pound suffered a nervous collapse from the physical and emotional strain. Out of the agony of his own inferno came the eleven cantos that became the sixth book of his modernist epic, The Cantos, themselves conceived as a Divine Comedy for our time. The Pisan Cantos were published in 1948 by New Directions and in the following year were awarded the Bollingen Prize for poetry by the Library of Congress. The honor came amid violent controversy, for the dark cloud of treason still hung over Pound, incarcerated in St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Yet there is no doubt that The Pisan Cantos displays some of his finest and most affecting writing, marking an elegaic turn to the personal while synthesizing the philosophical and economic political themes of his previous cantos. They are now being published for the first time as a separate paperback, in a fully annotated edition prepared by Richard Sieburth, who also contributes a thoroughgoing introduction, making Pound's master-work fully accessible to students and general readers.

    Each volume contains a preface and haiku. The four volumes are set to the seasons. All poems appear in both in Japanese and in English. Commentary often occurs, sometimes the editor relating a haiku to a passage from Western poets or philosophers. I've had these books for over thirty years. With the passage of time, I seem to appreciate them more and more. During a tea ceremony that begins before the sun rises, the first guest uttered: "Oh, look, the candle is sputtering; the first light is on the shoji" (the sliding paper door). We had all been called to the moment, which many of us would have slumbered through. I'll never forget that experience. Organized by the seasons, Mr. Blyth brings these gems to the reader year after year.