And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: It tolls for thee'Perhaps no one wrote better about the human condition – heart, body and soul – than John Donne (1572–1631). Known in his youth as a ‘great Visitor of Ladies, a great Frequenter of lays, a great writer of conceited Verses’, the dashing ‘Jack’ Donne became in later years the revered Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.Lovers of Donne will relish his prose, which is as witty and passionate as his poetry. This collection, compiled especially for The Folio Society by the literary editor Rivers Scott in 1997, begins with Donne’s early Paradoxes and Problems, described by their author as ‘swaggerers’. Here Donne enjoys himself addressing worldly considerations. He argues that women ‘ought to paint themselves’, that ‘a wise man is known by much laughing’ and even, playing devil’s advocate in his ‘Defence of Women’s Inconstancy’, that women should change their lovers along with their underwear.Despite the ribald vein of some of his work, Donne was also much concerned with spirituality. His study of suicide, Biathanatos, is the first work in English on the subject; his Devotions, including a moving account of his near-fatal illness, attempt to reconcile the earthly with the divine; while his thundering sermons, as impressive on the page as they must have been from the pulpit, remind us that the great questions of life have not changed in four centuries.This reissued edition contains a series of carefully chosen contemporary engravings. Among them are original frontispieces and title pages from several of his works, and scenes that illustrate his themes, including London landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral. These black-and-white images contrast beautifully with the book’s rich purple endpapers and slipcase.

    Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

    Poem

    Collects the best of Anne Sexton's memoirs and prose reflections on her development as a poet

    Professor, poetry award winner, performer, and former member of the National Council on the Arts, Harjo’s prose speaks of women's despair, of their imprisonment and ruin at the hands of men and society, but also of their awakenings, power, and love.

    Expanding the palette of contemporary surrealism while harkening back to the stories and prayers at the origin of poetry, DESTRUCTION MYTH is a series of absurdist myths of creation and destruction that are at times both inventively silly and surprisingly emotionally direct. This book attempts the world again and again, only to find that even the most ridiculous of creations contains the seeds of its own destruction.

    Includes many poems used in Arseny's son's films (Andrei Tarkovsky). With a bibliography of both Arseny and Andrei Tarkovsky, and illustrations from Tarkovsky's movies.FROM THE INTRODUCTION:Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky was was born in June 1907 in Elizavetgrad, later named Kirovograd. He studied at the Academy of Literature in Moscow from 1925 to 1929, and also worked in the editorial office of the journal Gudok. He was well respected as a translator, especially of the Oriental classics, but was little known as a poet for most of his life, being unable to get any of his own work published during the Stalinist era. His poems did not begin to appear in book form until he was over fifty. His son, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, made extensive use of his father's in some of his films, and certain of his diary entries indicate the esteem in which the poet was held in the Soviet Union towards the end of his life. An entry written after Andrei had given a talk at the Moscow Physical Institute in 1980, for instance, reproduces the following note from a member of the audience: 'An enormous number of people in this hall admire Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky as a great Russian poet. Please convey our respects to him.' One of the few recorded public appearances of Arseny Tarkovsky was at the funeral of Anna Akhmatova; he was one of three writers deputed to accompany her coffin from Domodedovo to Leningrad, and he read both at her funeral in Komarovo and at the first evening held in her memory in Moscow. He died in 1989 and is now beginning to be recognised as one of the many significant Russian poets of the twentieth century.From Ignatyevo Forest'The last leaves' embers in total immolationRise into the sky; this whole forestSeethes with irritation, just as we didThat last year we lived together.

    The author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, he is also a frequent contributor to the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog.

    It includes Emily's verse from Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, as well as 200 works collected from various manuscript sources after her death in 1848.

    

    Staring with the Classical Period (645-1604 A.D.), characterized by the wanka and tanka styles,followed by haiku poets of the Tokugawa period (to 1867), the subsequent modern tanka and haiku poets,and including the contemporary school of free verse—Women Poets of Japan records twelve hundred years of poetic accomplishment. Included are biographical notes on the individual poets, an essay on Japanese women and literature, and a table of historical periods.

    In addition to being America's first poet, she was also, in great likelihood, the first professional woman poet in the English language.This collection of poetry, selected from a number of her works, discloses the thoughts of a remarkably sensitive and well-educated woman. Exhibiting great range and beauty, the poems encompass everything from lyric verses addressed to her husband and children and a formal elegy in honor of Queen Elizabeth I to loving epitaphs honoring her deceased mother, father, and grandchildren. Grouped according to category (love, home life, religious meditations, dialogues, and lamentations), the poems not only exhibit Anne Bradstreet’s wide learning but also reveal the influence of Montaigne, Homer, Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, and other poets. Sure to be welcomed by students and teachers, this collection is also important for the light it sheds on the cares, concerns, and roles of colonial women.

    The result easily demonstrated, then as now, the massive achievement of the writer whom Carolyn Kizer called "one of the most passionate, energetic, and honest poets living."

    Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."

    Complete, actual love letters of great men like Lord Byron, John Keats and Voltaire. Leaders like Henry VIII, George Washington, and Napoleon, who wrote to his beloved Josephine, "I awake consumed with thoughts of you..." Artists like van Gogh, Mozart, and Beethoven, who famously penned, "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved..." Dozens of intimate letters, coupled with over a score of period illustrations. Plus fascinating biographies, and insights into the couples' relationships-how they got there, the obstacles they faced, and what happened next. Poet warriors, from the first through the twentieth century, including: Ovid, Sir Walter Raleigh, Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Shelley, Robert Browning, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Pierre Curie, George Bernard Shaw, Jack London, Admiral Peary, Woodrow Wilson, and many more.