For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou's published poems-including "On the Pulse of Morning"-in a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

    Spanning five decades and comprising 868 poems (nearly 300 of which have never before appeared in book form), this magnificent volume is the definitive sampling of a writer who has been called the poet laureate of African America--and perhaps our greatest popular poet since Walt Whitman.  Here, for the first time, are all the poems that Langston Hughes published during his lifetime, arranged in the general order in which he wrote them and annotated by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel.Alongside such famous works as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Montage of a Dream Deferred, The Collected Poems includes the author's lesser-known verse for children; topical poems distributed through the Associated Negro Press; and poems such as "Goodbye Christ" that were once suppressed.  Lyrical and pungent, passionate and polemical, the result is a treasure of a book, the essential collection of a poet whose words have entered our common language.

    

    This long-awaited collection draws from Naomi Shihab Nye's three critically acclaimed books: Different Ways to Pray, Yellow Glove, and National Poetry Series winner, Hugging the Jukebox.

    Among them, there has been Jack Gilbert and his orthodoxy, a strictness that has required of this poet, now in the seventh decade of his severe life, the penalty of his having had almost no fame at all. In an era that puts before the artist so many sleek and official temptations, keeping unflinchingly to a code of "silence, exile, and cunning" could not have been managed without a show of strictness well beyond the reach of the theater of the coy. The "far, stubborn, disastrous" course of Jack Gilbert's resolute journey--not one that would promise in time to bring him home to the consolations of Penelope and the comforts of Ithaca but one that would instead take him ever outward to the impossible blankness of the desert--could never have been achieved in the society of others. What has kept this great poet brave has been the difficult company of his poems--and now we have, in Gilbert's third and most silent book, what may be, what must be, the bravest of these imperial accomplishments.

    The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the power of direct observation to the first generation of American modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and also as an example of spontaneity and Zen alertness to the new poets of the 1950s. This definitive collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest haiku masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Robert Hass has written a lively and informed introduction, provided brief examples by each poet of their work in the haibun, or poetic prose form, and included informal notes to the poems. This is a useful and inspiring addition to the Essential Poets series.

    His love poems are earthy and transcendent, and his political poems are the work of a man as incisive, impassioned, and ferociously intelligent as he was sensual. Ben Belitt has drawn the 138 selections in Five Decades from all of Neruda's major works, including the early volumes Residence on Earth, General Song, Elemental Odes, Voyages and Homecomings, Book of Vagaries, A Hundred Love Sonnets, Black Island Memorial, and the later The Hands of Day, World's End, and Skystones.

    Ever since, John has been an enthusiastic seeker of poetic experience, whether reading, reciting, or listening to great poems. The wide variety of carefully selected poems in this book provides the perfect introduction to appeal to readers new to poetry, and for poetry lovers to experience beloved verses in a fresh, vivid way. William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dylan Thomas are just a few names among Lithgow's comprehensive list of poetry masters. His essential criterion is that "each poem's light shines more brightly when read aloud." This unique package provides a multimedia poetry experience with a bonus MP3 CD of revelatory poetry readings by John and the familiar voices of such notable performers as Eileen Atkins, Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Billy Connolly, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Gary Sinise, and Sam Waterston. Every reader will enjoy reciting or listening to these poems with the entire family, appreciating how each one comes to life through the spoken word in this superlative poetry collection.

    "Poignant, sexy. . . lyrical, passionate. . . cool and delicate. . . hot as a chili pepper."--Boston Globe.

    This is the book of choice for both new and committed fans of this imaginative poet.

    Dorianne Laux's poetry is a poetry of risk; it goes to the very edge of extinction to find the hard facts that need to be sung. What We Carry includes poems of survival, poems of healing, poems of affirmation, and poems of celebration.

    "Kelly has a talent for coaxing out the world's ghosts and then fixing them in personal landscapes of fear and uncertainty.... Smoothed by nuances of sound and rhythm, her poems exude an ambiguous wisdom, an acceptance of the sad magic that returns us constantly to the lives we might have led."--Library Journal

    With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind??—??a must-have for all poetry-lovers.

    Justly celebrated as one of our strongest poets, Stephen Dunn selects from his eight collections and presents sixteen new poems marked by the haunting "Snowmass Cycle."

    Expands on the laughter and lunacy of the first, with over 80 of Brian's stories & drawings, including such favorites as Angels of Mercy & True Things.

    Copyright © 1994 by Anne Carson. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

    The result is a very well written book that can truly heal."--Clarissa Pinkola Est�s, PH.D., author of Women Who Run With the Wolves and The Gift of Story Find professional and personal fulfilment through the poetry of both classic and modern masters--now revised and updatedHas your work lost its meaning? Have you forgotten the goals you hoped to achieve when you began your career? Are you afraid of pursuing your dreams? In The Heart Aroused, David Whyte brings his unique perspective as poet and consultant to the workplace, showing readers how fulfilling work can be when they face their fears and follow their dreams. Going beneath the surface concerns about products and profits, organization and order, Whyte addresses the needs of the heart and soul, and the fears and desires that many workers keep hidden.At a time when corporations are calling on employees for more creativity, dedication, and adaptability, and workers are trying desperately to balance home and work, this revised edition of The Heart Aroused is the essential guide to reinvigorating the soul.

    . . an astonishing array of women writers from the 22nd century BC poet Enheduanna to Nelly Sachs and Anna Akhmatova."--Library Journal

    Joy Harjo, one of this country's foremost Native American voices, combines elements of storytelling, prayer, and song, informed by her interest in jazz and by her North American tribal background, in this, her fourth volume of poetry.She draws from the Native American tradition of praising the land and the spirit, the realities of American culture, and the concept of feminine individuality.

    It features some of Brian's most resonant stories including Illusion of Control & Butterflies.

    This volume brings together new poems and a generous selection of work from Dobyns's seven previously published collections.

    Why do we act this way? Johnson asks. How should we act? His best poems are examples of what the finest poetry can do: bring us closer to ourselves and at the same time put us in touch with something larger.

    Critics have compared his work to such diverse artists as Kafka, Goya, Swift, Klee, and Beckett. Allen Ginsberg called Michaux “genius,” and Jorge Luis Borges wrote that Michaux’s work “is without equal in the literature of our time.” This anthology contains substantial selections from almost all of Michaux’s major works, most never before published in English, and allows readers to explore the haunting verbal and pictorial landscape of a twentieth-century visionary.

    In this much-awaited collection of forty poems - eighteen previously unpublished - she writes of the silky bonds between every person and the natural world, of the delight of writing, of the value of silence. Says James Dickey, "Mary Oliver works . . . a true spell, unlike any other poet's, the enchantment of the true maker."

    

    Taken from the definitive edition of Owen’s work, and containing material unavailable to other editions, this selection has been edited by Professor Jon Stallworthy, who has written an illuminating and authoritative introduction.

    Beautifully illustrated in water colors and can be opened up to make a poster.

    Written in a voice that moves between elegy and prayer, The Simple Truth contains thirty-three poems whose aim is to weave a complex tapestry of myth, history (both public and private), family, memory, and invention in a search for truths so basic and universal they often escape us all.

    It has been unavailable for an ice age, and Coach House Books is proud to bring it back.'Crystallography' means the study of crystals, but also, taken literally, 'lucid writing.' The book exists in the intersection of poetry and science, exploring the relationship between language and crystals - looking at language as a crystal, a space in which the chaos of individual parts align to expose a perfect formation of structure. As Bök himself says, 'a word is a bit of crystal in formation,' suggesting there is a space in which words, like crystals, can resonate pure form.Lucid, sparkling, a diamond of a book: Crystallography is a crystal-clear approach to the science of poetry from the author of Eunoia.

    Smith's work evokes the experimentation and the desire to break boundaries of those pre-punk days. Over one-quarter of the works selected are unpublished pieces from journals, performances, and Smith's personal papers. Heavily illustrated with photographs by Judy Linn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edward Maxey, and others, Early Work brings together all sides of Patti Smith, from the thoughtful intellectual to the explosive performer.

    Compiled by poets who have been at the center of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, Aloud! showcases the work of the most innovative and accomplished word artists from around America.

    In this text, Yogananda re-interprets the spiritual message of the beloved Rubaiyat.

    Featuring poems written in Tolkien's inimitable style -- each of which add to the magic, mystery and lyricism of the epic saga The Lord of The Rings. These poems can also be enjoyed as a separate entity, apart from the main body of the text , with each stanza giving an insight into the mythology and sagas of Tolkien's parallel universe of Middle-earth. Trying to furnish England with a mythology he felt it hitherto lacked, and drawing on his own studies of epic poems of the past, including classics such as Beowulf, it could be argued that Tolkien's poetry is at the heart of the saga that was to become the Book of the Century.

    The selections are arranged by the seasons, and Sorensen's handsome watercolor illustrations capture the feel of the New England landscape without in any way trying to provide literal images for the poetry. There's an excellent biographical essay, and at the bottom of each page, Schmidt provides a brief note on some of the possible ways to read the lines....These nature poems show that poetry holds feelings and ideas that everyone can understand."--Booklist. "...superb; the poems introduced in a tone that is informative but not pedantic."--PW. "...satisfies in every way."--SLJ. "Include[s] both well-known favorites and those less often read or quoted. 'Mending Wall,' 'Birches,' 'The Road Not Taken' are essential Frost and all are here."--Quill & Quire. ". . . thoughtfully compiled and brilliantly illustrated."--Buzz Weekly. 48 pages (all in color), 8 1/2 x 10.

    These are poets -- which include political activists, revolutionaries, guerilla combatants, and ordinary working people from around the world -- whose works are united in a desire for a world where human needs are met and justice is pursued.

    Toklas had rented in the Rhone Valley, Stanzas in Meditation is one of Stein's most abstract and complex works. It is almost as if Stanzas was conceived as a mirror opposite of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, penned in the same year. The latter, written in a more direct and normative language, brought Stein international acclaim and resulted in the attention she received from 1934 on, while the former remained unavailable until its publication, after her death, in 1956. To Stein readers and admirers, however, this is one of her most important works, a poetic achievement central to her canon. From John Ashbery's groundbreaking essay-review of Stanzas in 1957 to Richard Bridgman's 1970 publication, Gertrude Stein in Pieces, poets and critics have recognized the importance of this masterpiece.

    Yet, despite their differences, each one's poetry is a celebration of their unbroken devotion, compatibility, and passion; and together their poems reflect the union of two great souls.

    Exquisite writings on love, marriage, and the spiritual union of souls add a fresh dimension to our understanding of the philosophy of love and the transformation of one's life through its all-encompassing power.

    This, her seventh book, continues to mine what she has termed "the meeting place between womanhood and history."

    Bacovia's prose and prose poems reveal his concern for the underdog and his yearning for new ideals. His descriptions of people and places are often set against a lyrical background and linked to an internal dialogue or a rhetorical question. They are sensual with powerful visual images, which also reveal Bacovia's introspective eroticism.

    He was born to a reindeer herding family, but left to become an artist. The breathtaking drawings and the dazzling jacket and endpapers are his. . . . The drawings often continue seamlessly over the edges of the pages, so that a single line across a double page turns, as the page turns, to a horizon line, following the lines of the poetry. . . . It is clearly, very clearly, lyrical, expressing an organic relation to the natural world."--The Beloit Poetry Journal"His poems rise directly from the Yoik tradition, at once intimately personal, traditional and evocative of a huge landscape."--W. S., Merwin Translation Review

    Her voice is generous; her vision true; her subjects ordinary people, and ordinary situations which, when rendered through her language, become remarkable. In this, her fourth full collection of poetry, we see with new eyes-a grandmother's scarf, an alarm clock, a man carrying his son on his shoulders.Valentine for Ernest MannYou can’t order a poem like you order a taco.Walk up to the counter and say, "I’ll take two"and expect it to handed back to youon a shiny plate.Still, I like you spirit.Anyone who says, "Here’s my address,write me a poem," deserves something in reply.So I’ll tell a secret instead:poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping. They are the shadowsdrifting across our ceilings the momentbefore we wake up. What we have to dois live in a way that lets us find them.Once I knew a man who gave his wifetwo skunks for a valentine.He couldn’t understand why she was crying."I thought they had such beautiful eyes."And he was serious. He was a serious manwho lived in a serious way. Nothing was uglyjust because the world said so. He reallyliked those skunks. So, he re-invented themas valentines and they became beautiful.At least, to him. And the poems that had been hidingin the eyes of skunks for centuriescrawled out and curled up at his feet.Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give uswe find poems. Check your garage, the odd sockin your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.And let me know.

    This collection features dozens of newly translated poems interspersed with legends and stories of their lives, presenting an intimate portrait of their communion and allowing readers to eavesdrop on their unique spiritual dialogue.

    The poet himself called his great epic poem “old wives' chatter, cottage wisdom,” but for many writers “Briggflatts” is one of the dozen great poems of the 20th century: as Cyril Connolly put it, “the finest long poem to have been published in England since T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.”As well as “Briggflatts” (long out of print in the US, and now only available in this edition), this new Complete Poems includes Bunting's other great sonatas, most notably Villon (1925) and The Spoils (1951), along with his two books of Odes, his vividly realized “Overdrafts” (as he called his free translations of Horace, Rudaki, and others), and his brilliantly condensed Japanese adaptation, Chomei at Toyama (1932). It also includes his posthumous Uncollected Poems. This centenary edition has an introduction by Richard Caddel, Director of the Basil Bunting Poetry Center at Durham University.

    writings & talks by Native activist/songwriter

    Through translations by two major contemporary poets and a scholar intimate with the Ponge canon, this volume offers selections of mostly earlier poetry —Le parti pris des choses, Pièces, Proêmes, and Nouveau nouveau recueil—as representative of the strongest work of this modern French master.

    An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,775 poems were published prior to her death. She had an immense breadth of vision and a passionate intensity and awe for life, love, nature, time and eternity. Originally branded an eccentric, Emily Dickinson is now recognised as a major poet of great depth.

    Ted Kooser’s third book in the Pitt Poetry Series is a selection of poems published in literary journals over a ten year period by a writer whose work has been praised for its clarity and accessiblity, its mastery of figurative language, and its warmth and charm.

    For Firekeeper, Rogers has assembled her best work, deleting some poems from the original edition and adding others. Here are such resonant older poems as "Suppose Your Father Was a Redbird" and "Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew," along with such masterful new poems as "The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Reciprocal Creation," "Born of a Rib," and "Generations."

    Ramanujan (who died in 1993) has rendered two services: he has introduced Indian and Western readers to an unfamiliar and fascinating literary tradition, and he has provided access to some examples of a mature classical poetry. In them, as the translator notes, passion is balanced by courtesy, transparency by ironies and nuances of design, impersonality by vivid detail, spareness by richness of implication. The poems come from one of the earliest surviving texts of Tamil poetry, the Kuruntokai, an anthology of love lyrics probably recorded during the first three centuries A.D. Seventy-six of these classical poems have here been given a modern language and form. In an effort at fidelity to the effect of the images and their placement in the original, Ramanujan has given a visual shape to the poems by typographic devices. This classic anthology of translations has long been out of print. It should interest all those who read poetry, as well as those who value Ramanujan's gift as a translator.

    In contingency detail, at hypnagogic rates, she meets you in mind of a reckoning. Here is the endlessly inclusive Bernadette, the one from whom comes. And so at last these once secret letters are addressed to everyone. Clark Coolidge

    Carrying the Homeric world into our own, Logue's language is at once musical, profoundly tender, and frighteningly graphic. With cinematic speed, disarming confidence, and lyrical care, Logue gives us a reading of classic literature that makes unquestionably clear its relevance to our own time.

    African American Studies. Caribbean Studies. "Typeset in Brathwaite's trademark Sycorax video-print style, TRENCH TOWN ROCK is a harrowing account of violence in modern-day Jamaica. TRENCH TOWN ROCK, Kamau Brathwaite's long documentarian song, affords insistent 'nansic spin a splay of clips, massed facts and faces, rare synaesthetic call and cry rolled into brash typographic distraint." Nathaniel Mackey"

    In straightforward language, the poems convey complex feelings and ideas about earth-loving and earth-keeping and will inspire all of us to savor each day and its small miracles.

    Whether writing as son of a dying father or as father of a daughter about to be wed, Berry plumbs the complexities of conflict, grief, loss, and love. He celebrates life from the domestic to the eternal, finding in the everyday that which is everlasting.

    Just as To Bless the Space Between Us was being published, he died suddenly at the age of fifty-two. His powerfully wise and lyrical voice is profoundly missed, but his many readers are now given a special opportunity to revisit John in his first book, a collection of poetry.      O'Donohue's readers know him as both a spiritual guide and a poet. In the same spirit as his bestselling works, readers will be inspired yet again by John's depth of wisdom and artistry.

    Cynthia Rylant’s poetry about the photographs offers a new voice in the telling, celebrating the beauty of life lived in extreme circumstances.

    Grounded in a series of mediations upon the life of the feeling heart in the world, Jane Hirshfield's long-awaited third collection of poetry explores the ways that radiance dwells most truly in the ordinary, the difficult, and the plain.

    Rumi's message transcends the limitation of language and the boundaries of time. Human beings were born for unlimited freedom and infinite bliss, and their birthright is within their grasp. But in order to reach it, they must surrender to love. Rumi speaks to us in modern times with his extraordinary directness and uncanny ability to employ images drawn from everyday life.

    This collection of experimental poetics contains works by poets concerned with myth and social issues, poets who focus on issues of self, poets who emphasize language and the reader, and poets of the voice and performance.

    Included are the leading Beat and New York School poets, the Projectivists, and "Deep Image" poets. Included, too, is the rich array of poetry written since 1975-language and performance poetry, the work of African American, Hispanic, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and women experimentalists. In addition, a final section of poetics-with writings by Frank O Hara, Denise Levertov, Jerome Rothenberg, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Bernstein, among others-provides valuable contexts for reading the poems.

    "Surely no one, scientist or poet," wrote former U.S. poet laureate Howard Nemerov, "has seen things . . . so clearly as she, and surely no one has made seeing and saying so nearly one."

    K. Williams has chosen from three decades of his work to represent every aspect of his marvelous career.

    Because their stories are less accessible—-finding someone like Rengetsu is a great gift. To sit with the poems of Rengetsu is to allow a teacher into the depth of one’s mind.”—Bonnie Myotai Treace, spiritual director of the Zen Center of New York At 33, Otagaki Nobu renounced a world that had visited great tragedy upon her (after losing two husbands and two infant children) and was ordained a Buddhist nun, taking the name Rengetsu (Lotus Moon). Lotus Moon is a selection of her finest poetry presented in John Stevens’ elegant translations and includes illustrations of her artwork and pottery.

    With artistry and honesty they perform an inquest into war and its corrosive after effects."

    Imperfect Thirst includes beautiful love poems and approaches elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread: recollections of childhood, snapshots of impassive cruelty, reflections on art and nature. This energetic collection will prove once again why Galway Kinnell is one of America's masters of the art.

    With compassionate wit and insight, Campbell McGrath transports us on a journey through contemporary society, transforming the commonplace into scenes of profound revelation. From late-night bars to early-morning diners, suburban malls to the Mojave Desert, McGrath's meticulously detailed vision defines singular moments of joy and melancholy.

    In the emotionally evocative style that characterizes Martz's previous collections, this book explores coming of age, sexuality, child-birth, physical power, menopause, aging, and much more. This is more than just another book about body image. Using her talent for bringing together extraordinary stories, poems, and photographs about women's lives, editor Sandra Martz explores the broader question of how the physical aspects of being female affect women's experiences. This best-selling anthology will have women reading and thinking and sharing for a long time.

    Ben Belitt, a distinguished poet in his own right, is widely regarded as the leading translator of Neruda into English. Here he has given us a Neruda as fecund and engaged as ever, ceaselessly spinning the strands of his great, seamless life's work.

    Every one of Anderson's poems tells a story--dangerous, sensuous, sometimes crazy, sometimes sacred tales that take us into the heartbreaking reality and strangeness of a little girl who grew up the woman of the house; at once drink-maker, showpiece, secret-keeper, and object of lust. The terrain of incest and violence sets itself out on the page so subtely and plainly that the poems become mere containers for these extremes, a kind of prayer. Where formal grace might seem impossible, Anderson sings. And this is why the book --with all its darkness and danger--is, in the end, an affirmative one. The poems rise out of childhood's sorrows into a womanhood filled with the past, hell-bent on the future, and ready for a fight. In haunting, elegant verse, Anderson enters into the truth of experience. Through it all, the poems come to embrace those universal illuminations that arise out of--or even because of--suffering.

    Thomas Hardy started composing poetry in the heyday of Tennyson and Browning. He was still writing with unimpaired power sixty years later, when Eliot and Yeats were the leading names in the field. His extraordinary stamina and a consistent individuality of style and vision made him a survivor, immune to literary fashion. At the start of the twenty-first century his reputation stands higher than it ever did, even in his own lifetime. He is now recognised not only as a great poet, but as one who is widely loved. He speaks with directness, humanity and humour to scholarly or ordinary readers alike.

    Born with just the right shape and wingspread, Hieronymus knows he is destined for great things. Soon his fame spreads throughout the land and he has thousands of fans who eagerly agree with him that he always is right. Then Hieronymus meets a wise and loving bird named Sabrina, who begins to teach him a valuable lesson about family and love. . .

    

    "Bolin's four-page introduction describes and explains Emily Dickinson's odd life style and creative productivity....prettily colored watercolors."--LJ. "...footnotes glossing antiquated diction are well-handled and the precis on Dickinson's church-hymnal metric is a model of its kind."--Washington Post. ". . . shot through with magical charm and graceful beauty . . ."--Buzz Weekly. 48 pages (all in color), 8 1/2 x 10.

    A sampler of May Sarton's writing, combined with Edith Royce Schade's elegant and powerful photography, Extraordinary.

    The result, for the reader, is an unusual delight... He is above all a love poet, therefore a serious one. His idea 'to do something with language / That has never been done before' (Days and Nights), expressed with an immodesty that is only apparent, is made good throughout." Frank Kermode

    Here is an argument, in subtle, quiet, and gently elegant verse, for the paradise of the human.

    She rose above shattering personal defeats to write with honesty, clarity of vision and nobility of utterance. Her poetry reflects - with naked candour - the harsh realities of her tragic inner struggle, which was eventually to lead to her suicide in 1941.

    

    It brings together the voices of the most important African-American poets of our time, beginning with the highly influential Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks, and covers an astonishing range of styles and techniques. This extraordinary body of poetry is the flowering of an artistic tradition established earlier in this century by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. The newer work comprises many different visions, ranging from the chiseled and layered modernism of Jay Wright to the plainspoken ferocity of Sonia Sanchez, from the dazzling witticisms of Ishmael Reed to the plangent lyricism of Rita Dove. Edited by the distinguished poet Michael Harper and his star student and colleague Anthony Walton, this notable collection of work will be the standard anthology in the field for years to come.

    Exhibiting Shapiro's well-known musical ability, the poems melodically change tempo to create a dark divertimento of his underlying themes of multiplicity and doubt. In miraculously weaving together the disparate strands of fatherhood, family romance, religion and politics, the title poem ingeniously challenges the very nature of poetic style, translation and interpretation. The Seasons and Broken Objects, Discarded Landscape aleatory elegies to nature itself, turn New York School Impressionism into something increasingly severe. The passionate sonnets out of Virgil, a rhymed poem that fanatically parodies Yeats's famous prayer to a daughter, collaborations with Shapiro's young son, villanelles, poems of science and other visionary poems that break the secular taboo of the epoch display Shapiro's classical pull over inherently divergent structures. By invoking a myriad of fictional characters, philosophers, histories, figures, furies and forms, David Shapiro celebrates the pluralistic poetic without abandoning the unique sense of power and perspicacity which mark his independence from all schools. The alluring images and envisioned ideas prove, as Harold Bloom wrote, Few contemporaries can temper the expression of pathos with as much elegance as Shapiro can.

    Koch, David Lehman said in The American Poetry Review, is "a masterly innovator . . . who has used his extravagant powers of wit and invention to enlarge the sphere of the poetic . . . he has stretched our ideas of what it is possible to do in poetry."

    She uses the lives and writings of the distinguished poets and critics Azad and Hali to show the disastrous consequences—culturally and politically—of British rule. The British had science, urban planning—and Wordsworth. Azad and Hali had a discredited culture and a metaphysical, sexually ambiguous poetry that differed radically from English lyric forms.Pritchett's beautiful reconstruction of the classical Urdu poetic vision allows us to understand one of the world's richest literary traditions and also highlights the damaging potential of colonialism.

    With over 5,000 copies sold of the first edition, this second edition 10 years later and 13 poems wiser adds depth and texture to the original collection; like a fine cognac, it has become richer with the passing years.Sheree Fitch's refreshingly direct lyrics explore the harsh realities of women's lives and the many kinds of shelter they create for themselves and give to each other. The title suite is peopled by battered wives, single mothers, women who are poor and perhaps homeless, and exhausted caregivers, with each woman speaking in her own voice. The new poems in "Moonsongs" express a decade's personal development, not in the form of answers, but in the form of more pointed questions.In This House Are Many Women and Other Poems demonstrates Fitch's poetic depth and versatility. But whether she writes passionately of victims and workers in a woman's shelter, finds epiphanies in family life, or examines the uncertainties of romantic love, Fitch never loses her sense of humour. Who else but the creator of Mable Murple could conjure up Diana, the domestic acrobat who transforms her home into a circus or Eve, the mother of us all, offering child-rearing tips?

    A prose poem has been added as a prologue.

    Yet much of her early work has remained out of print. The Cold of Poetry rectifies this. Bringing together Lyn Hejinian's long poems, The Cold of Poetry permits readers to investigate as never before the spectacular range and focus of Hejinian's intellect and heart.

    A highly skilled musician, Stampa produced some of the most musical poetry in the Italian language. Her sonnets of unrequited love speak in a language of honest passion and profound loss. They look forward to the women writers of the nineteenth century and are a milestone in women's literature. This dual-language edition of selected poems presents, along with the Italian original, the first English translation of Stampa's work. It includes an introduction to the poet and her work, a note on the translation, and provides the reader with notes to the poems, a bibliography, and a first-line index. DUAL-LANGUAGE POETRY Introduction, bibliography, first-line index.

    These poems are adventures diverse in direction and size - from sonnet-sized and under, to expansive mini-epics - that meld an exhilarating, sometimes loony vision to a learned sensibility and its moments of exacting observation.

    It also discusses how to integrate poetry writing into the English class and essential topics such as sound and rhythm, traditional poetic forms, inventing and adapting exercises, revision, and publishing. "The lessons are presented with clarity, common sense, and sophisticated artistic sensibilities."-Missoula Independent "Poetry Everywhere will ease any trepidation [about writing poetry]."-English Journal

    Generally deprived of the support of schools and universities, their compositions are inseparable from song. Their poetry is never declaimed; rather, their rhyme and rhythm have melodic value.These popular improvisations do not exalt mystic love. In them there is no aspiration whatsoever to an unfathomable and incommunicable heaven, nor devotion to the lord, nor praise for an absolute master, nor any Adonis. To the contrary, they are songs of the earth. They celebrate nature, mountains, rivers, dawn and night’s magnetic space. They are songs of war and honor, shame and love, beauty and death. The repression of Afghan women has caused untold suffering, particularly through moral subjugation. Infant daughters and their mothers are received with scorn and shame, and lead lives of subordination and humiliation. Their rebellion against these tribal codes comes only through suicide and song. Translated from the Pashtun into French by the eminent Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, the greatest Afghan poet of the twentieth century, his text has been rendered into English in the expert hands of Marjolijn de Jager of the Translation Department at NYU.

    Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won Mar�a Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino.In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin," a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes.Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor," the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.

    The poetic heir of Whitman and William Carlos Williams, Ignatow is characteristically concerned with human mortality and human alienation in the world: the world as it is, defined by suffering and despair, yet at crucial times redeemed by cosmic vision and shared lives. His development as a poet is chronicled in Against the Evidence, title of the poem in part quoted above and meant by Ignatow as the metaphor for the whole body of his work.Where his previous collections have been organized thematically, Ignatow here arranges his poems "according to the decade in which they were written...returning each to its chronological order." Against the Evidence charts the evolution of his themes from the earliest origin in the Thirties to their present extraordinary manifestation in a variety of poetic forms and modes.

    Through short biographical sketches, Teresa Jordan introduces us to the poets and sets the stage for our understanding the emotions of their hearts. Subjects of the poems are wide-ranging, and even though these women tell about events on the ranch, they are talking of experiences that are common to us all. They tell of loneliness and challenges, of sweet births and gut-wrenching deaths, of horses they have loved and livestock they have nurtured. They tell the stories of each other and draw from the strength of women who have gone it alone in the harsh seasons of life. Woven through the poetry is a self-determined sisterhood of voices, filled with humor, passion and faith.

    The Way of Passion, a penetrating antidote to today's spiritual crises, presents Rumi's magnificent visions of spiritual surrender and mystical union.

    But in the spring of 1989, exactly fifty years after he left, the new government of independent Lithuania welcomed him back to that magical region of his childhood. Many of the poems in Facing the River record his experiences there, where the river of the Issa Valley symbolizes the river of time as well as the river of mythology, over which one cannot step twice. This is the river Milosz faces while exploring ancient themes. He reflects upon the nature of imagination, human experience, good and evil--and celebrates the wonders of life on earth.In these later poems, the poems of older age, this Nobel laureate takes a long look back at the catastrophic upheavals of the twentieth century; yet despite the soberness of his themes, he writes with the lightness of touch found only in the great masters.

    In 38 poems that exhibit his mastery of formal and colloquial measures, de Ungria lays bare an unprecedented range of tonality and complexity as he explores the obsessions and contradictions in the discourse of desire and achieves a delicate balance between toughness and tenderness, presence and shadow, argument and sleep, will and silence.

    In The Martyrology different ways of speaking testify to a journey through different ways of being. Language is both the poet’s instructor and, through its various permutations, the dominant 'image’ of the poem. The [nine] books of The Martyrology document a poet’s quest for insight into himself and his writing through scrupulous attention to the messages hidden in the morphology of his own speech.’ – Frank Davey

    In concert with the tabla and sitar, his writing is part of a religious tradition that is believed to excite "spiritual heroism," embracing the holiness of love, lamentation, battle, and the longing for God.Rumi: Voice of Longing collects nearly 100 of Rumi's most memorable quatrains, presented here for the first time on two superbly remastered CD recordings. Includes musical accompaniment by Marcus Wise on tablas and David Whetstone on sitar, and a special appearance by renowned poet Robert Bly.Translated and performed by the Rumi scholar Coleman Barks, these works echo with a spiritual complexity that defies their outward simplicity. As Sufism acknowledges the truth of other religions, so does Rumi's poetry reflect universal themes: the search for the highest truth, the mystery of surrender, the longing to overcome ego imprisonment. Rumi: Voice of Longing captures the silence, the love, and the playfulness that make each experience with this work one of sacred wonder.

    She left him only for a moment, but when she returned Andrew had disappeared. He was found later that night, drowned in the river behind their home. From the depths of grief that followed, Wagner began to write poems—not as therapy, she says, but to see if she could express the range of her experience more fully than the published books she’d read. What emerged from Wagner’s quest is a volume of verse that has comforted and inspired thousands of parents, patients, and other determined survivors.These clear, unflinching poems wherein she evokes the life and death of her five-year-old son are moving and unforgettable. . . . You will remember Andrew as if you had known him, this delightful boy. —RUTH STONETreasureFollow my hand into this trunk.Examine for yourself its treasure.Lift and read the heavy wooden board,a scrap of lumberon which he scrawled his name—red letters, all capitals,the E backwards.In kindergarten he learnedto sign perfectly his many drawings,the jewels of his last will and testament.Try on his brilliant yellow sunglasses.See the world as he saw it—clearlyfull of hope.Slide your hand up the sleeveof his favorite red shirtas though you were to tickle him.He would laugh. You may cry.Finally, with utmost care,hold what he made in nursery school—a white plaster cast of his hand,fingers spread wide apartas though he were telling youhow old he would be when he died.

    Poems are meant to be voiced and A Poem a Day includes 366 poems old and new - one for each day of the year - worth learning by heart. Only two criteria were demanded of each poem for inclusion in this collection - it had to be short enough to learn in a day, and good enough to stand among the great poetry of the English language, from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath.A Poem a Day is a book for the bedside. It contains many of the most familiar poems in the language and others that will come as a surprise. Most are complete and most are short, easily contained in a single page. But a few are substantial works, like Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din." Some have been read by every high school student (Andrew Marvel, "To His Coy Mistress") while others will be new to most readers (Thomas Hardy, "The Voice"). But all share the compression and charged meaning which are the soul of poetry. In its British version the book went through seven printings in a year and was a bestseller. Now Karen McCosker has added a new foreword and fifty new poems for an American audience willing to make poetry a part of life.