Book picks similar to
The Stratospheric Canticles by Will Alexander


united-states
poetry
poetry-20th-century-and-beyond
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Lake Michigan


Daniel Borzutzky - 2018
    Thinking about the ways in which economic policy, racism, and militarized policing combine to shape the city, Lake Michigan's poems continue exploring the themes from Borzutzky's Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. But while the influences in this book (Césaire, Vallejo, Neruda) are international, the focus here is local as the book takes a hard look at neoliberal urbanism in the historic city of Chicago.  Named a 2018 Best Book of the Year by the New York Public Library.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems


Wallace Stevens - 1999
    One of America's most important twentieth-century poets, Stevens forever changed the landscape of modern poetry with his provocative, experimental style.This first-rate collection by the winner of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for poetry invites students and other readers to enjoy the richness and variety found in 82 of Stevens's finest creations. Included are such well-known compositions as "Sunday Morning," "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," "Anecdote of the Jar," "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and the title piece — the author's favorite — as well as lesser known yet equally stimulating works such as "The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches" and "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad."Invaluable to students of American literature, this volume will be an indispensable treasury for lovers of modern poetry.

Outside Passage: A Memoir of an Alaskan Childhood


Julia Scully - 1998
    An instant classic, "Outside Passage" offers the spare, vivid account of enduring a hardscrabble childhood in the '30s and '40s at the edge of America.

Zen Master Raven: Sayings and Doings of a Wise Bird


Robert Aitken - 2002
    In Zen Master Raven, Robert Aitken, one of America's best-known and most-respected Zen masters, presents an introduction to Zen Buddhist teaching through over 100 lessons told through the stories and voices of animals.

No Idea What I'm Doing But F*ck It


Ron Lim - 2021
    Throughout the process, he writes about the obstacles he had to deal with along the way in having to figure out all the answers alone, seeing how long we take to do the things we wanted all along, and realising that many things in life are actually straightforward, but yet we make it unnecessarily complicated for ourselves.This book is a compilation of thoughts and lessons learned throughout the journey of "wanting more in life" – expressed in the form of modern poetry and short quotes. Each chapter is categorised into a "phase" in life, and together, the whole book further emphasises the life motto, "no idea what I'm doing but f*ck it".

Agnes Grey & Poems


Anne Brontë - 1992
    Possessed of an unshakeable sense of entitlement and a boundless sense of self-worth, assured of the adoration of all, Matilda can break men's hearts for fun. Agnes-diffident, careworn and poor-can only gape in astonishment at the figure her pupil cuts in the world. Employed to lead and form her, she is instead buffeted about in Matilda's tumultuous wake. She loves her young student-it is impossible not to. But it is hard not to wonder if Matilda's good fortunes will ever end.

Come Love with Me and Be My Life: The Collected Romantic Poetry of Peter McWilliams


Peter McWilliams - 1967
    It tells about love desired, love lost, love enjoyed, love lost and love -- a different kind of love -- found again.

Someone Else's Wedding Vows


Bianca Stone - 2010
    The title poem confronts a human ritual of marriage from the standpoint of a wedding photographer. Within the tedium and alienation of the ceremony, the speaker grapples with a strange human hopefulness. In this vein, Stone explores our everyday patterns and customs, and in doing so, exposes them for their complexities. Drawing on the neurological, scientific, psychological, and even supernatural, this collection confronts the difficulties of love and family. Stone rankles with a desire to understand, but the questions she asks are never answered simply. These poems stroll along the abyss, pointing towards the absurdity of our choices. They recede into the imaginative in order to understand and translate the distressing nature of reality. It is a bittersweet question this book raises: Why we are like this? There is no easy answer. So while we look down at our hands, perplexed, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows raises a glass to the future.

Jail Blazers: How the Portland Trail Blazers Became the Bad Boys of Basketball


Kerry Eggers - 2018
    For almost a decade, they won 60 percent of their games while making it to the Western Conference Finals twice. However, what happened off-court was just as unforgettable as what they did on the court. When someone asked Blazers general manager Bob Whitsitt about his team’s chemistry, he replied that he’d “never studied chemistry in college.” And with that, the “Jail Blazers” were born. Built in a similar fashion to a fantasy team, the team had skills, but their issues ended up being their undoing. In fact, many consider it the darkest period in franchise history. While fans across the country were watching the skills of Damon Stoudamire, Rasheed Wallace, and Zach Randolph, those in Portland couldn’t have been more disappointed in the players’ off-court actions. This, many have mentioned, included a very racial element—which carried over to the players as well. As forward Rasheed Wallace said, “We’re not really going to worry about what the hell [the fans] think about us. They really don’t matter to us. They can boo us every day, but they’re still going to ask for our autographs if they see us on the street. That’s why they’re fans and we’re NBA players.” While people think of the Detroit Pistons of the eighties as the elite “Bad Boys,” the “Jail Blazers” were actually bad. Author Kerry Eggers, who covered the Trail Blazers during this controversial era, goes back to share the stories from the players, coaches, management, and those in Portland when the players were in the headlines as much for their play as for their legal issues.

The Poetry of Allama Iqbal


Muhammad Iqbal - 2001
    He wrote his poetry in Urdu and Farsi (1873-1938), and that bridged and encompassed the past many centuries of man's endeavours in the realms of thought and intuition. He emblazoned the high standards set by Mirza Asadullah Khan 'Ghalib', and glorified the literature in his own way. He was a scholarly personality, and wrote on various subjects, from philosophy to politics, from romance to emotions and so on. He wrote world famous poem 'sare jahan se acha Hindustan hamara' and many other such 'nazams' which are even today considered as great poetical creations. He was honoured with the title 'sir' by the British Government for his contributions to the literature.The present collection is a representative of Iqbal's Urdu poetry, which has been transliterated into English verses, with translation into Devanagari (Hindi) and Roman script. The English translation has been done by Khwaja Tariq Mahmood, who earlier translated the poems of Mirza Ghalib and Sahir Ludhianvi, and is now working on many other collections.

The Secret Meaning of Things: Poetry


Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 1967
    But it goes much further: there is a deepening of vision and a darker understanding of "our clay condition." The six long poems in The Secret Meaning of Things show a progressive continuity and clarity of perception that apprehends both the hard reality and luminous irreality in everyday phenomena. In "Assassination Raga"––on the death of Robert Kennedy––the glass through which the poet sees darkly is the television screen; the poem was first read on the night of RFK’s funeral at a mass memorial in San Francisco. "Bickford’s Buddha" is a meditation on "Observation Fever" in Harvard Square, while "All Too Clearly" finds a "touch of old surrealism/at a stoplight in La Jolla." "Through the Looking Glass" begins with an actual flight aboard a commercial airliner and moves through a psychedelic vision to a final flash of the Dance of Shiva, which in turn opens out into the worldview of "After the Cries of Birds." "Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow" comes out of Ferlinghetti’s travels to Moscow and across the steppes in the winter of 1967.

Daylight Dialogues


Charissa Ong Ty - 2018
    Pushing her boundaries with more challenging technical poetry writing, she hopes her readership would appreciate Daylight Dialogues as much as they did Midnight Monologues.Paperback is already available in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines and has reached the Best seller's list.

The Humble Administrator's Garden


Vikram Seth - 1985
    The poet Donald Davie writes: 'Vikram Seth's poems should have an impact far beyond much noisier pieces; for when did we last see a volume in which the poet's eye is on what is objectively before him, rather than on the intricacies of his own sensibility?'

Los Zapaticos De Rosa


José Martí - 1990
    This captivating book, masterfully illustrated by Lulu Delacre, is dedicated with tenderness to the young readers for whom José Martí wrote this beautiful poem.

Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep


Rosa Silva - 2017
    The struggle is real. Anyone who is a cat lover knows that the cat rules the roost, and that certainly doesn’t change at bedtime. You might be ready to sleep, but you can bet that kitty is ready for just about anything but some shut-eye. Release your frustrations with a good laugh as you read along with Rosa and her struggle to get her cat to Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep! Stop Meowing and Go the F*ck to Sleep is a funny bedtime book for all the desperate cat parents out there. If you have experienced the nightmare of having a kitty who won’t let you have a good night’s sleep, this is the book for you. It’s the perfect gift for crazy cat lovers who appreciate hilarious insights into the feline nature.