Best of
Poetry

1955

The Sweet Flypaper of Life


Langston Hughes - 1955
    Photos by DeCarava, poetry by Hughes, set in a Harlem neighborhood, told from a woman’s point of view as she looks through her apartment window.

100 Poems from the Japanese


Kenneth Rexroth - 1955
    The sound of the Japanese texts i reproduced in Romaji script and the names of the poets in the calligraphy of Ukai Uchiyama. The translator's introduction gives us basic background on the history and nature of Japanese poetry, which is supplemented by notes on the individual poets and an extensive bibliography.

Pictures of the Gone World


Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 1955
    The original edition contained the first twenty-seven poems to which the author has now added eighteen new verses.Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Books, author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World, among numerous other books, has been drawing from life since his student days in Paris where he frequented the Academie Julien and where he did his first oil painting.

War Primer


Bertolt Brecht - 1955
    It contains 85 black-and-white press photographs from World War II which Brecht himself cut out of newspapers and magazines. They date from his exile in Sweden and Finland in 1940 and 1941, but were mainly collected during his exile in the USA, from July 1941 till the end of the war. To each picture, Brecht added a four-line poem - poignant, angry, personal or political, or a combination of these. This book therefore constitutes an intriguing record of World War II from the viewpoint of one of the 20th-century's greatest and most politically-engaged poets.

Flowers of Evil: A Selection


Charles Baudelaire - 1955
    in their opinion, have been most successfully rendered into English. The French texts as established by Yves Gérard Le Dantec for the Pléiade edition are printed en face. Included are Baudelaire's "Three Drafts of a Preface" and brief notes on the nineteen translators whose work is represented.

A Treasury of Great Poems


Louis Untermeyer - 1955
    Beginning with the earliest English ballads and selections from the King James Version of the Bible, the book continues with the immortal works of Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Pope, Whittier, Poe, Tennyson, and many others, concluding with an outstanding array of 20th-century poetry by such luminaries as Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, and Marianne Moore. Louis Untermeyer--the renowned critic, biographer, and teacher who edited this remarkable work--is said to have introduced more poets to readers and more readers to poetry than any other American. Treasury of Great Poems is indexed by poet, poem and first lines.

The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell


Amy Lowell - 1955
    

Poems


Elizabeth Bishop - 1955
    Her first book, North & South, won the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award and seldom has a new collection of poems been greeted with such critical enthusiasm.

The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse


Oscar Williams - 1955
    

Japanese Haiku


Matsuo Bashō - 1955
    Beloved translator Peter Beilenson’s goal was twofold: to craft a book of haiku accessible to anyone, and to render his best guess at what the poets would have written in English. His translations preserve the sublime spirit of each verse, conjuring vivid visual and emotional impressions in spare words.Haiku icon Basho is represented amply here, as are imagery-virtuoso Buson and wry, warm, painfully human Issa. The verses of Shiki, Joso, Kyorai, Kikaku, Chora, Gyodai, Kakei, Izen, and others also appear, all illuminated by lovely woodblock prints. Ranging from exquisite (In the sea surf edge/Mingling with the bright small shells…/Bush-clover petals –Basho) to bittersweet (Dead my fine hopes/And dry my dreaming, but still…/Iris, blue each spring –Shushiki) to silly (Dim the grey cow comes/Mooing, mooing, and mooing/Out of the morning mist –Issa), this collection will stir your senses and your heart.

Armes Prydein: The Prophecy of Britain from the Book of Taliesin


Taliesin - 1955
    

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties


Countee Cullen - 1955
    His stated purpose at the time was to bring together a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse. Beginning with the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who, though there were black poets before him, is generally credited as the first black poet to make a deep impression on the literary world, the book includes the writings of James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Faucet, Sterling A. Brown, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen himself, to name only a few.Each poem includes poignant biographical notes written by the poets themselves, with the exception of the notes on Dunbar (written by his wife), Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. (written by his father), and Lula Weeden (written by her mother).Most of the poets became well known and widely published in the years that followed. These poems remain powerful statements of what it means to be human, whatever the race.Long out of print, "Caroling Dusk" is a valuable addition to the body of black literature. This is the first time the anthology has appeared in a paperback edition.

The Season of Flesh


Byron Herbert Reece - 1955
    A fine hardcover copy with bright gilt lettering to the spine. Tight binding. Solid boards. Clean, unmarked pages. Fine jacket in removable mylar; some chipping to spine head. NOT ex-library. 96pgs. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Poetry; ISBN: 0877971048. ISBN/EAN: 9780877971047. Inventory No: 015731.