Best of
Poetry

1975

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf


Ntozake ShangeNtozake Shange - 1975
    Brown.From its inception in California in 1974 to its Broadway revival in 2022, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country for nearly fifty years. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be a woman of color in the 20th century. First published in 1975, when it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing…every feeling and experience a woman has ever had,” for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Now with new introductions by Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown, and one poem not included in the original, here is the complete text of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.

Complete Poems and Selected Letters


John Keats - 1975
    Today he endures as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses but suffered a tragic early death. Edmund Wilson counted him as 'one of the half dozen greatest English writers,' and T. S. Eliot has paid tribute to the Shakespearean quality of Keats's greatness. Indeed, his work has survived better than that of any of his contemporaries the devaluation of Romantic poetry that began early in this century. This Modern Library edition contains all of Keats's magnificent verse: 'Lamia,' 'Isabella,' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'; his sonnets and odes; the allegorical romance Endymion; and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho the Great. Presented as well are the famous posthumous and fugitive poems, including the fragmentary 'The Eve of Saint Mark' and the great 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' perhaps the most distinguished literary ballad in the language. 'No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perception of loveliness,' said Matthew Arnold. 'In the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare.'

The Collected Books


Jack Spicer - 1975
    The Collected Books includes all the poems written from After Lorca (1957) up to the poet's early death, including Admonitions (1958), A Book of Music (1958), Billy the Kid (1958), and The Holy Grail (1962).

Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations


Rainer Maria Rilke - 1975
    John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke's strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke's profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses.Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.

Arabian Love Poems


Nizar Qabbani - 1975
    It portrays Kabbani's style - direct, spontaneous, musical, using the language of everyday life. He was a campaigner for women's rights, and his verses praise the beauty of the female body, and of love.

Desiderata of Happiness


Max Ehrmann - 1975
    

The Awful Rowing Toward God


Anne Sexton - 1975
    The title came from her meeting with a Roman Catholic priest who, although unwilling to administer last rites, told her "God is in your typewriter." This gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing. The Awful Rowing Toward God and The Death Notebooks are among her final works and both centre on the theme of dying.

The Singer


Calvin Miller - 1975
    Calvin Miller retells the story of Christ in this heartwarming allegorical poem.

My Song for Him Who Never Sang to Me


Merrit Malloy - 1975
    Her poems are intimate and real. They speak of lovers, friends, family, and self, with a powerful emotional honesty that makes you smile in self-recognition. My Song for Him Who Never Sang to Me is Merrit's first book.

Holocaust


Charles Reznikoff - 1975
    His source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Except for the twelve part titles, none of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection, arrangement, and the rhythms of the testimony set as verse on the page, a poem of witness by the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust. He lets the terrible history unfold--in history's own words.

Selected Poems 1934-1952


Dylan Thomas - 1975
    This book was then and remained, for all practical purposes, Thomas's "collected" poems and in that sense complete. However, with the 1971 publication of the 192 poems in The Poems of Dylan Thomas (also now available in a revised edition), Thomas's Collected Poems has naturally evolved to become Thomas's Selected Poems.Thomas wrote his last poem, "Prologue," especially to begin this collection, and addressed it to "my readers, the strangers." Two unfinished poems are included in this edition: "Elegy," prepared by Vernon Watkins, and "In Country Heaven," prepared by Daniel Jones—both Welsh poets were life-long friends of Dylan Thomas. Textual corrections discovered over the course of forty years have now been incorporated, and a complete index of titles and first lines, as well as a brief chronology of the author's life, have been added.As it has for half a century, this book includes the best of Dylan Thomas's poetry—"Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines," "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," "Poem in October," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," "The Hunchback in the Park," "In My Craft or Sullen Art," "In Country Sleep," and Thomas's poignant reflection on his youth, "Fern Hill."

The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (Revised Edition)


Weldon Kees - 1975
    During Weldon Kees’s life, his poems appeared in all the most prestigious magazines of the day—Poetry (Chicago), the New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, and the Nation.

Chanson Dada: Selected Poems


Tristan Tzara - 1975
    Translated as a labor of love over a ten year period the poems encompass the full range of Tzara's works, the results of which have brought Tzara's poetry to life for English language readers for over 25 years. Completely revised, updated edition of this classic survey.

Collected Poems


Stevie Smith - 1975
    "On gray days when most modern poetry seems one dull colorless voice speaking through a hundred rival styles, one turns to Stevie Smith and enjoys her unique and cheerfully gruesome voice. She is a charming and original poet," commented Robert Lowell about the book that introduced Stevie to American readers, her Selected Poems (New Directions, 1964). The Selected won her many enthusiasts, but it was not until the release of Hugh Whitemore’s film Stevie in 1981 that her poetry found a wider audience and sent that little book repeatedly back to press. The title of Miss Smith’s first published collection (London, 1937) was A Good Time Was Had By All, and indeed that is what her poetry, embroidered by her delightful, apposite doodles, provides. It brings us too into the company of wit, irony, and, as Brendan Gill remarked, "images of joy and terror." A Newsweek reviewer wrote, "Even in the lightest of her verse, the briefest epigram, there is a resonance, the reverberation of a triangle, if not a gong."

The Women and the Men


Nikki Giovanni - 1975
    First appearing between 1970 and 1975, the poems in this gemlike volume reflect the drastic change that took place--in both the consciousness of the nation and in the sould of the poet. From "Ego Tripping" to "Poem for Flora" and "Africa," The Women and the Men is replete with the greatest hits of Nikki Giovanni's incredible oeuvre. With reverence to the ordinary and in search of the extraordinary, Nikki Giovanni, above all, displays here her caring for the people, things, and places she has observed and touched and captured.As a witness to three generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960's, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic lanscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni's poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.

Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry


Wu-chi Liu - 1975
    to the present."This magnificent collection has the effect of a complete library rather than of an anthology of poetry.... A lyric quality comes through into our own language... Every page is alive with striking and wonderful things, immediately accessible." --Publishers Weekly"Sunflower Splendor is the largest and, on the whole, best anthology of translated Chinese poems to have appeared in a Western language."--The New York Times Book Review"This remarkably fine anthology should remain standard for a long time." --Library Journal..". excellent translations by divers hands. Open to any page and listen to the still, sad music... " --Washington Post Bookworld

Contemporary American Poetry


A. Poulin Jr. - 1975
    The alphabetically arranged collection provides a generous sampling of each poet with a photo, biographical sketches, and bibliographies.

The Norton Anthology of Poetry


Alexander W. Allison - 1975
    "A wide and deep sampling of the best poetry written in the English language, from medieval times to the present day." (from the Preface of the third edition containing over 1,400 poems by more than 200 poets.)

The Book of Margins


Edmond Jabès - 1975
    Jabès's importance as a thinker, philosopher, and Jewish theologian cannot be overestimated, and his enigmatic style—combining aphorism, fictional dialogue, prose meditation, poetry, and other forms—holds special appeal for postmodern sensibilities. In The Book of Margins, his most critical as well as most accessible book, Jabès is again concerned with the questions that inform all of his work: the nature of writing, of silence, of God and the Book. Jabès considers the work of several of his contemporaries, including Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Roger Caillois, Paul Celan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Leiris, Emmanuel Lévinas, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and his translator, Rosmarie Waldrop. This book will be important reading for students of Jewish literature, French literature, and literature of the modern and postmodern ages. Born in Cairo in 1912, Edmond Jabès lived in France from 1956 until his death in 1991. His extensively translated and widely honored works include The Book of Questions and The Book of Shares. Both of these were translated into English by Rosmarie Waldrop, who is also a poet. Religion and Postmodernism series

Diaries of Exile


Yiannis Ritsos - 1975
    Lyrical and idyllic, these re-creations of Greek mythology justify Yannis Ritsos' reputation as one of the most honored in modern Greece.Plagued by tuberculosis, family misfortunes, and persecution for his Communist views, Yannis Ritsos (1909–1990) spent many years in sanatoriums, prisons, and in political exile while producing over one hundred volumes of poems, dramas, and translations.

Gathering the Bones Together


Gregory Orr - 1975
    

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror


John Ashbery - 1975
    Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.

Beginnings And Beyond


Carol Lynn Pearson - 1975
    Our divine journey -- 2. God and eternity -- 3. Prayer -- 4. Growth and self-development -- 5. Life's little lessons -- 6. Friends and relationships -- 7. Women -- 8. Men and women -- 9. Motherhood, pregnancy and birth -- 10. Adoption -- 11. Parenthood and childraising -- 12. Adversity -- 13. Service -- 14. Healing and comfort -- 15. Old age -- 16. Death and beyond -- Indexes.

The Storm & Other Poems


Eugenio Montale - 1975
    Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale considered La Bufera e Altro (The Storm and Other Poems) his best book.

Studying Hunger (Poetic Works By One Author)


Bernadette Mayer - 1975
    

All This Every Day


Joanne Kyger - 1975
    Published in an edition of 1500 copies in 1975 by Big Sky in Bolina, California, ALL THIS EVERY DAY includes one of Kyger's most familiar poems, "September."

I Wouldn't Have Missed It: Selected Poems


Ogden Nash - 1975
    It fills the needs for a single, up-to-date selection from all of Ogden Nash's previous collections, covering more than four decades of his unique observation of the human condition and his enormously satisfying poetic achievement.

Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations


Robert Bly - 1975
    Bly's thesis is that great works of art contain leaps within themselves: 'A poet who is leaping makes a jump from an object soaked in unconscious substance to an object or idea soaked in conscious psychic substance.' The greatest works of art carry the richest associations between the conscious and unconscious, and Bly notes with pleasure the resurgence of abundant leaping in modern poetry.

Scottish Love Poems: A Personal Anthology


Antonia Fraser - 1975
    Ballads, sonnets and modern verse are all present in a variety of Scots and English forms. The poems range in tone from scathing satire to evocative romanticism. Fraser has made a wide-ranging selection of poems from the 15th century to the present day. Included are well-known masters - Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson - and contemporary poets such as Kathleen Jamie, John Burnside and Carol Ann Duffy.

North


Seamus Heaney - 1975
    Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.

Gunslinger


Ed Dorn - 1975
    Dorn is one of the few political poets in America; this fantasy about a demigod cowboy, a saloon madam, and a talking horse named Claude Levi-Strauss, who travel the Southwest in search of Howard Hughes, has become a minor classic.

Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike


John Wieners - 1975
    

An Ordinary Woman


Lucille Clifton - 1975
    

Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster: Three Abbasid Poets


George B.H. Wightman - 1975
    

The Collected Poems, 1956-1974


Ed Dorn - 1975
    Includes complete versions of 4 books, plus addition poems previously uncollected in book format.

Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems


Robert Hayden - 1975
    He is involved with his Black Americanness, without being confined by it. The famous story elements can be found here but above all a renewed delight in the revelatory possibilities of the languages. In addition to the new poems, all the best of Hayden’s earlier work is here, including much that has for too long been unavailable.

What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American


Richard Hugo - 1975
    In the present volume, people, places, dreams, and memories are explored again--always in search of the poet's self.

how i got ovah: New and Selected Poems


Carolyn M. Rodgers - 1975
    

The Basketball Article


Bernadette Mayer - 1975
    Poetry. Part of a series of Shark Books reprints of long out-of-print books, THE BASKETBALL ARTICLE features the experimental collaborative essay on basketball by Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman. Conceived in 1974 and written the following year, the piece met with an interesting response before ultimately being published in Oui magazine. As the poets write in their original 1975 authors note, "We tried not to make [it] too technical so it was rejected by a group of editors a few of whom thought it 'was a minor masterpiece,' the others 'couldn't tell what the hell was going on' in it." Thirty years later, it seems like the former is more on point; the authors write: "We begin to dress in red, white and blue, we do not stand up for the national anthem. We always sit next to the opposing team. We distract them. We enter their consciousness. We carry a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets with us. We wear lipstick. We cheer for both teams." A very fun read.

Tropicalism


Kenward Elmslie - 1975
    "One is reminded, not unflatteringly, of Frank O'Hara. His poems find their strength in their uncanny directness, as the poet applies subtle force to allow his opinions full impact. A mellow and yet strong 'voice'." -Stephen Bett, College Review Service.

Poems of Black Africa


Wole Soyinka - 1975
    

Later


Robert Creeley - 1975
    Where his 1978 verse journal Hello chronicled an actual journey (to New Zealand, Australia, and the Far East), Later deals with an interior exploration rooted in everyday sights and sounds––the play of light and shadow through a window, the lap of waves on a beach. Past occurrences and expectations are reconciled with an acceptance of inevitable change, and in the poignant title sequence Creeley marvels, "but now the wonder of life is/ that it is at all."

Crater


János Pilinszky - 1975
    

The Gist of Origin, 1951-1971: An Anthology


Cid Corman - 1975
    

The Whatever Is, Is Best


Ella Wheeler Wilcox - 1975
    

Shadow Lands: Selected Poems


Johannes Bobrowski - 1975
    A collection of poems focusing on Sarmatia, an ancient name for a part of Eastern Europe near Russia, dealing with the guilty spirits of this place that the author loved as a child, and helped destroy as part of the Nazi army.

Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays


Anne Waldman - 1975
    Archaic beliefs in magic and ecstasy meet current notions of the power of the spoken word. Waldman writes, "The poem is a textured energy field or modal structure. The poems for performance seem to manifest as psychological states of mind. They come together in a mental, verbal, physical, and emotional form, making their particular demands on my voice and body. I am the ‘energumen.’ The poem is the experience." Also included in this book are three essays on the oral tradition in poetry. One essay discusses the history and occasion of the title poem. The others treat such topics as performance art and poetic tradition, ethnopoetics, intoxication and transformation, Tibetan Buddhism, and the renewed ascendency of feminine energy in writing. Anne Waldman, world renowned for her high-energy poetry performances, is the author of over thirty books and chapbooks of poetry. She is the co-founder and director of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado."Anne Waldman is one of the fastest, wisest women to run with the wolves in some time." — The New York Times Book ReviewAnne Waldman, world renowned for her high-energy poetry performances, is the co-founder and director of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of over thirty books and chapbooks of poetry including The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment, Voice's Daughter of a Heart Yet to be Born, and Manatee/Humanity (Penguin Poets).

The Loom


Robert Kelly - 1975
    

Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelly: 1814-1817 (Oxford English Texts)


Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1975
    

Bloodlines


Charles Wright - 1975
    The whole is an elegant and intensely imaginative recapturing of a life.

A 22 and 23


Louis Zukofsky - 1975
    

The Peacock Poems


Sherley Anne Williams - 1975
    A former senior Fulbright lecturer at the University of Ghana and visiting professor at the University of Southern California and Cornell University, Williams is professor of literature at the University of California at San Diego. She had received an Emmy Award for a television performance of her poetry. She is advisory editor of Callaloo and Langston Hughes Review. Williams was graduated from California State University (B.A. 1966) and Brown University (M.A. 1972). Her home is in San Diego.

New Cowboy Poetry: A Contemporary Gathering


Hal Cannon - 1975
    Included Here Are Some of The Best-Known Poets, Such As Waddie Mitchell, Wally McRae and More, Who Breathe Reality Into The Myth of The Ranching Life. Cowboy Poetry Is A Cultural Phenomenon That Continues To Spread Like Wildfire Across The Country. BR>

A primer for the gradual understanding of Gertrude Stein


Gertrude Stein - 1975
    

Loving Promises


Helen Steiner Rice - 1975
    Enhanced by four-color watercolors.

Charles Olson and Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeths


Charles Olson - 1975