"Lucille Clifton is one of the four or five most authentic and profound living American poets."--Denise Levertov

    With their brutally frank self-exposure and emotional immediacy, Plath's poems, from "Lady Lazarus" to "Daddy," have had an enduring influence on contemporary poetry.

    A new collection by the much praised poet whose second book THE DEAD AND THE LIVING, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

    Spanning more than 30 years, this collection of literary masterpieces by the venerable Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, arguably Illinois' most beloved Poet Laureate and Chicago's elder black literary stateswoman, Blacks includes all of Ms. Brooks' critically acclaimed writings. Within its covers is the groundbreaking "Annie Allen," which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. There is also the sweepingly beautiful and finely crafted "A Street in Bronzeville," a highly anticipated and lauded poetic treasure that spoke volumes for this great poet's love of black people, Chicago's Black community, and even the community of the world. Blacks includes a special treat, Maud Martha, Brooks' only novel.

    Here are verses, comic and sad, radiantly pure and plainspoken, that reveal why her stories have been praised for their precision and musicality of language.

    Montale is a love poet, whose deeply beautiful, individual work confronts the dilemmas of modern history, philosophy, and faith with courage and subtlety; he has been widely translated into English, and his work has influenced two generations of American and British poets. Jonathan Galassi's versions of Montale's major works--Ossi di seppia, Le occasioni, and La bufera e altro--are the clearest and most convincing yet, and his extensive notes discuss in depth the sources and difficulties of this dense, allusive poetry. This book offers English-language readers uniquely informed and readable access to the work of one of the greatest of all modern poets.

    Published in 1988, the year after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, this collection features pieces translated by the poet himself and others, as well as poems written originally in English.Auden once characterized Brodsky as "a traditionalist . . . interested in what lyric poets of all ages have been interested in . . . encounters with nature . . . reflections upon the human condition, death, and the meaning of existence." Reading the poems in To Urania--by turns cerebral, caustic, comic, and celebratory--we appreciate firsthand a great lyric poet's variety and achievement.

    As Octavio Paz writes in the afterword, “Eliot Weinberger’s commentary on the successive translations of Wang Wei’s little poem illustrates, with succinct clarity, not only the evolution of the art of translation in the modern period but at the same time the changes in poetic sensibility.”

    His poetry is marked by an almost limitless range of interest and extraordinary depth of feeling. Olson's themes are among the largest conceivable: empowering love, political responsibility, historical discovery and cultural reckoning, the wisdom of dreams and the transformation of consciousness—all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. Until recently, Olson's reputation as a major figure in American literature has rested primarily on his theoretical writings and his epic work, the Maximus Poems. With The Collected Poems an even more impressive Olson emerges. This volume brings together all of Olson's work and extends the poetic accomplishment that influenced a generation.Charles Olson was praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors. He was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." His indispensable essays, "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe," and his study of Melville, Call Me Ishmael, remain as fresh today as when they were written.

    Jimmy Santiago Baca "writes with unconcealed passion," Denise Levertov states in her introduction, “but he is far from being a naive realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way in which it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events."

    Often frightening and sometimes downright funny, the world of Cemetery Nights is haunted by regret, driven by desire and need, illuminated by daring make-believe -- the remarkable bridge between pure entertainment and deep psychological insight.

    An anthology of poetry that covers the widest range of children's verse from classic, haunting, humorous, epic and magical.

    English translation and Greek original in opposite pages.Modern Greeks dominate the world's merchant marine; ancient Greeks like Homer's Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean and beyond. But what do we know about shipboard life? Not much. Reading Kavadias fills this emptiness. He spent his adult life sailing world-wide and writing poems about monsoons, cats dying on shipboard, masts snapping in two, dream-girls or disgusting whores on shore, and fleas jumping off one's pubic hair. "In this fo'c'sle," he laments, "I ruined my calm self / and killed my tender childhood soul. / But I never gave up my obstinate dream, / and the sea, when it roars, tells me a lot." Scrupulously translated, these accessible poems will tell landlubbers a lot about life on the winedark sea.-Peter Bien, Translator of Nikos Kazantzakis and Stratis Myrivilis

    Millions of bereaved people over the years have drawn from it serenity, acceptance and the ability to face life after the death of a loved one, and for those wishing to convey sympathy but unable to find the right words, it says it all.A consoling book offering a balance between keeping faith while remembering the bereaved as they were in life, Death is Nothing At All is a perfect giftbook for anyone who has recently lost a loved one, whether they are religious or not.One of the world's most famous poems, and a message of comfort that has inspired millions to face life after the death of a loved one, an inspired message of hope and belief. Perfectly complemented by line drawings by Paul Saunders which enhance the serenity and acceptance of the poem.

    Written in the solitude of his hillside study over seven years of Sabbaths, these are poems of deep spirituality, meshing the metaphysical and the natural worlds.

    These are the books -- following her volumes from the previous decade (Hinge Picture, Chanting at the Crystal Sea, Cabbage Gardens, and Secret History of the Dividing Line) -- which established Howe as one of America's most interesting and important contemporary writers. "Her work, " as Geoffrey O'Brien put it, "is a voyage of reconnaissance in language, a sounding out of ancient hiding places, and it is a voyage full of risk. 'Words are the only clues we have, ' she has said. 'What if they fail us?'"

    This remarkable collection of prose poems prove that startling new insights are possible when philosophical formulations are turned on their heads.

    "Clifton mythologizes herself: that is, she illuminated her surroundings and history from within in a way that casts light on much beyond."--The Women's Review of Books

    S. Merwin's first book since the publication five years ago of his Opening the Hand.Almost no other poet of our time has been able to voice in so subtle a fashion such a profound series of comments on the passing of history over the contemporary scene. To do this, he seems to have reinvented the poem -- so that the experience of reading Merwin is unlike the reading of any other poetry. In such famous books as The Lice, The Moving Target and (most recently) Opening the Hand, he has produced a body of work of great profundity and power made from the simplest and most beautiful poetic speech.The poems in this new book are concerned with intimacy and wholeness, and are made of the relations with people, with places, past and present, and with history and how the world endures it.Merwin can now rightfully be called a master, and this book shows in every way why this is the case.

    Defined in alphabetical order, each entry is allotted 1-7 pages with examples and histories of-and ideas for using-each form.

    Testifying to Levertov's growing strength and technical mastery as a poet, Poems 1968-1972 also affirms the clarity of her vision in its resistance to the Vietnam War and its "opposition to the whole system of insane greed of which war is only the inevitable expression."The third retrospective volume of her poetry to be published to date by New Directions, Poems 1968-1972 carries forward the record of Denise Levertov's remarkable poetic development from Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960 and Poems 1960-1967.

    His most recent volumes of poetry are Rooms Are Never Finished and The Country Without a Post Office. He is also the editor of Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English.

    

    Arranged in seven parts and culminating in the superb "The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich," Breathing the Water draws the readers deep into spiritual domains––not in order to leave the world behind, but to reanimate our sometimes dormant love for it.

    Featured writers include Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Sappho, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Marge Piercy.

    A revised and expanded edition of the classic volume of Yeats' work, including the play The Death of Cuchulain.

    84 two-color halftones.

    Cover design and drawings by George Schneeman.

    He remains a wellspring to which all of us might go to refresh our belief in the value of this art.

    Linguistics. Originally appearing in 1977 and now in its 11th printing, THE NEW SENTENCE by Ron Silliman is a classic collection of essays by one of the sharpest minds in American contemporary poetic thought. It is a collection with rich insight into Silliman's own monumental poetical work and the writing of his peers, a book which both illuminates the concerns of the era in which it was written and radiates outward with a tremendous scope that continues to bear fruit for the contemporary reader. Ron Silliman is a terrific prose critic...positively bristles with intellectual and political energy of a very high order -Bruce Boone.

    This charming collection is packed with noises and rhymes children will love to listen to and repeat. Illustrated in color throughout by award-winning artist Nick Sharratt, this is an ideal book for beginning readers.

    With such worthy odes as "A Poem to Send Your Worst Enemy" and "Picking Noses", and with McNaughton's equally outrageous illustrations, this rollicking collection promises hours of silly, hilarious, completely disorderly fun.

    Poems consider women's roles in society, childhood, home, nature, language, communications, the past, and mortality.

    

    

    

    Special features of this edition include direct word-for-word translations showing the range of meaning in each Chinese character, the Chinese pronunciations, as well as biographical and historical commentary following each poem.

    Latino/Latina Studies. This volume combines the poems from Espada's critically acclaimed collection of poetry TRUMPETS FROM THE ISLANDS OF THEIR EVICTION with a selection of poems from his first book, The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, which is now out of print. Espada's work is characterized by its intensity, its sincerity, and its insight into the lives of diverse characters. Influenced by his Puerto Rican background, Espada gives a distinctive voice to his community. "Martin Espada defines political poetry for the turn of the century"--The Nation.

    As we approach sharing let us ask: "What belongs to me?"Balance sheet of a life ratified by death.Whatever exists has no existence unless shared.Possessions under seal are lost possessions.At first sight, giving, offering yourself in order to receive an equivalent gift in return, would seem to be ideal sharing.But can All be divided?Can a feeling, a book, a life be shared entirely?On the other hand, if we cannot share all, what remains and will always remain outside sharing? What has never, at the heart of our possessions, been ours?And what if we can share the vital desire to share, our only means of escape from solitude, from nothingness?

    Until now there has been no single comprehensive history of British and American poetry throughout the half century from the mid-1920s to the recent past. This David Perkins is uniquely equipped to provide; only a critic as well informed as he in the whole range of twentieth-century poetry could offer a lucid, coherent, and structured account of so diverse a body of work.Perkins devotes major discussions to the later careers of the first Modernist poets, such as Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams, and to their immediate followers in the United States, E. E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, and Hart Crane; to W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the period style of the 1930s; to the emergence of the New Criticism and of a poetry reflecting its tenets in William Empson, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell, and to the reaction against this style; to postwar Great Britain from Philip Larkin and the "Movement" in the 1950s to Ted Hughes, Charles Tomlinson, and Geoffrey Hill; to the theory and style of "open form" in Charles Olson and Robert Duncan; to Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poetry of the 1960s; to the poetry of women's experience in Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich; to the work of Black poets from Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks to Amiri Baraka; and to Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, A. R. Ammons, John Ashbery, and James Merrill.Perkins discusses some 160 poets, mentioning many others more briefly, and does not hesitate to explain, to criticize, to admire, to render judgments. He clarifies the complex interrelations of individuals, groups, and movements and the contexts in which the poets worked: not only the predecessors and contemporaries they responded to but the journals that published them, the expectations of the audience, changing premises about poetry, the writings of critics, developments in other arts, and the momentous events of political and social history. Readers seeking guidance through the maze of postwar poetry will find the second half of the book especially illuminating.

    The French is given on the left-hand page with Francis Scarfe's translations, which reflect a lifetime's passion for and intimate understanding of Baudelaire's work, on the facing page. The appeal of this beautiful book', says Francis Scarfe in his introduction, 'lies in its wide range of subjects, its variations of tone and mood, its great variety of presentation and above all in its psychological subtleties. It shows the poet at the height of his powers, totally uninhibited in his expression of wonder, tenderness and compassion'. To these prose poems Francis Scarfe has appended an early prose extravaganza, the short novel La Fanfarlo' (1847). The companion volume, The Complete Verse', contains Les Fleurs du mal' (1861), Nouvelles Fleurs du mal' (1868), Les Épaves' (1866) and all of Baudelaire's other poetry in verse. Francis Scarfe (1911-86) was a lecturer in French poetry at Glasgow University before and again after World War II. From 1959 to 1978, he was director of the British Institute. In recognition of his contribution to Anglo-French cultural relations he was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (1962), and for his work on Baudelaire he was awarded the Prix de L'Ile Saint-Louis (1966); on his retirement in 1978 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. He was the author of four collections of poetry and of the critical works Auden and After' and André Chénier, His Life and Work'.

    This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But shall I go mourn for that, my dear ? The pale moon shines by night: And when I wander here and there, I then do most go right. If tinkers may have leave to live And bear the sow-skin budget, Then my account I well may give And in the stocks avouch it. Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad, tires in a mile-a. PEDLAR'S CRIES I" AWN as white as driven snow; Cypress black as e'er was crow; Gloves as sweet as damask roses; Masks for faces and for noses; Bugle bracelet, necklace amber, Perfume for a lady's chamber; Golden quoifs and stomachers, For my lads to give their dears: Pins and poking-sticks of steel, What maids lack from head to heel: Come buy of me, come; come buy, come buy Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry: Come buv. Will you buy any tape, Or lace for your cape, My dainty duck, my dear-a ? Any silk, any thread, Any toys for your head, Of the new'st and finest, finest wear-a ? Come to the pedlar; Money's a medler That doth utter all men's ware-a. BACCHANALIAN SONG /OME, thou Monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne In thy fats our cares be drown'd, With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd: Cup us, till the world go round, Cup us, till the world go round-4 A COUNTRY FELLOW'S SONG "PO nothing but eat, and make good cheer, And praise God for the merry year; When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily. Be merry, be merry, my wife has all; For women are shrews, both short and tall: Tis merry in hall when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tide: ? Be merry, be merry A cup of wine that's brisk and fine, And drink unto the leman mine; An...

    At the centre of the book, two long works, "Letters to Josef in Jerusalem" and "Terror and Erebus," demonstrate clearly why George Woodcock has said: "There are few Canadian poets with a grasp as broad as MacEwen's of the poetic dimensions of history."

    The first English-language publication of one of the major works of the great Romanian Surrealist poet and novelist, Gellu Naum.

    16 full-color illustrations.

    Translated from the French by Lee Fahnestock. Francis Ponge's VEGETATION is a short grouping of pieces originally published in his book Le Parti Pris des Choses in 1942. Interested in the copulation of things and words, Ponge aimed to bring a materiality of language to surface. Lee Fahnestock is a critic and translator who has contributed to a new version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and completed a later work of Ponge's in translation, The Making of the Pre.

    

    Heaney peppers this short collection of poems with crafty language and natural objects: "I heard the hatchet's differentiated/Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh/And collapse of what luxuriated/Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all." The Haw Lantern won England's Whitbread Prize in 1987.

    Each poem turns out to be a metaphor of the seeking and the struggle to master and to freeze into shape what is essentially the process of becoming.”—Edith L. Tiempo

    " In this inspired collaboration all id fugitive, perishable, mortal - drawing one into the mind of pure longing as natural and imagined landscapes extend each other's tenuous fictions"-Kathleen Fraser.

    Asian American Studies. The 82 poems presented here are an elegant mixture of taut language vigorously sourced in classical Asian literature and a fresh, startling vernacular. "Wandering Japanese poet, environmentalist, friend of Snyder and Ginsberg, concerned humorist, Sakaki writes what can only be characterized as stretch haiku. Combining Buddhism's compassion for all life with Taoism's strong identification with nature, which he then brings into contact with everyday things, Sakaki strikes sparks of recognition. The poet himself translates from the original Japanese into English (and sometimes the other way round) with the help of friends, giving the poems an interesting vernacularc impact. Enjoyable"--Donald J. Pearce, Library Journal.

    She was awarded the Golden Lion for her poetry in 1985.

    This reprint was first published by David Godine in 1987.

    By echoing with his gypsy guitar the troubadour tradition of the Languedoc, the great sonnet sequences of Petrarch and Shakespeare, the redefinitions of beauty and truth of the romantics, and the distractions and fragments of the post-moderns, he has created a celebration of the beloved in which recognition, intelligence and wit illuminate each sentimental, awkward, humorous, everyday moment. The elements of romance and betrayal in these poems shine through the darkness of their passion with a lucid, conscious attentiveness seldom seen since the great renaissance poets.

    Now, in 2010, the volume is being reprinted by Pen & Anvil Press. In the four elegies of The Squanicook Eclogues, Green examines how "duty and devotion are the same when love and terror walk together." From her father, so familiar with the "iconography of trees," Green's young speaker learns how to catalogue the flora and fauna with a meticulous eye. As Joseph Brodsky noted, Green has written "wonderful eclogues ... Virgil would be proud."

    Winner of the Lannon Award for poetry.

    there's no question (Stokesbury) has done well for his poets, for his region, and for all of us who need fine poems, wherever they are made". -- American Book Review

    Written in the tradition and style of the Black Arts Movement, this collection contains lyrical poems, laced with satirical allusions and political exhortations to Black readers.

    His work was a refreshing contrast to the mainstream of tailored understatement and civilised ironies. With seeming ease, he wove all aspects of his age - love, loneliness, society, drugs - into his poetry."To be a poet in Australia" he wrote, "is the ultimate commitment." In true bardic tradition, he lived an itinerant life and his output was prolific. Four volumes of his poetry were published in three years, and three others appeared posthumously. Now for the first time all Michael Dransfield's previously published books are collected together in the one comprehensive volume. This represent the full arc of his development. The introduction by Rodney Hall provides an illuminating retrospective of the poet and his work.

    The accompanying resurgence of creative expression is splendidly reflected in this definitive anthology of contemporary Arabic poetry, which spans the modern Arab world from the turn of the century to the present, from the Arab Gulf to Morocco. The editor, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, a renowned expert on modern Arabic literature, presents a through introduction to the works of more than ninety Arab poets. To create the best possible English translation, each selection has been translated first by a bilingual expert and then by an English-language poet, who creatively renders it into idiomatic English.

    Subtitled "a play with poetic myths," it evolves around a modern-day Helen (associated with Inanna, the Sumerian Queen of Heaven and Earth) who descends to an underworld complete with a lesbian bar and a chorus of punning crow-dykes who put her through various trials designed to release her powers. The play is followed by two poems, connected thematically and imagistically, and exhaustive notes explaining the mythic allusions.

    These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    Some of the text is in Navajo. Joe Bruchac says of the author of this volume, She presents a wide cast of characters, talking, living, arguing, even dying against the background of a place and a time which are uniquely Native American, yet accessible to a wide range of readers.

    English translations accompany the original Russian texts of poems about conscience, imprisonment, exile, survival, hope, despair, betrayal, winter, and freedom.

    

    K. Williams, was awarded the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Reviewing it in The New York Times Book Review, Edward Hirsch noted that the book's compression and exactitude gave it "the feeling of a contemporary sonnet sequence." Hirsch added: "Like Berryman's Dream Songs or Lowell's Notebooks, Mr. Williams's short poems are shapely yet open-minded and self-generative, loosely improvisational though with an underlying formal necesity."

    Winner of the 1987 Brittingham Prize in Poetry.

    Poems of the absurd accompanied by the illustrator Quentin Blake.

    

    Lawrence, Hart Crane, W.H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, and Thom Gunn. Woods’s controlled and elegant study demonstrates that a critic who ignores the sexual orientation of a poet, particularly a love poet, risks overlooking the significance of the poetry itself.

    This selection of Wright's work, from the publication of his first full-length book "The Homecoming Singer" in 1971 up to the present, represents the range and power of his mythopoetic imagination and his concern for the fate of culture. *Lightning Print On Demand Title

    

    

    The songs are presented with singers and guitarists in mind, but the complete lyrics and many photographs will be of great interest to her fans.