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Renascence and Other Poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay - 1917
Vincent Millay (1892–1950) have been long admired for the lyric beauty that is especially characteristic of her early works. "Renascence," the first of her poems to bring her public acclaim, was written when she was nineteen. Now one of the best-known American poems, it is a fervent and moving account of spiritual rebirth.In 1917, "Renascence" was incorporated into her first volume of poetry, which is reprinted here, complete and unabridged, from the original edition. The 23 works in this first volume are fired with the romantic and independent spirit of youth that Edna St. Vincent Millay came to personify. In addition to "Renascence," this volume includes 16 other early lyric poems — "Interim," "Sorrow," "Ashes of Life," "Three Songs of Shattering," "The Dream," "When the Year Grows Old," and others, including six sonnets, to which Millay brought great distinction throughout her career.
The Exquisite Pain of the Unrequited: Poems
J.R. Rogue - 2015
Rogue’s debut poetry collection tells the tale of a once-in-a-lifetime love unreturned. These heartwrenching and soul-crushing poems are confessional while also being relatable. This collection will make you feel seen in all your heartbreak.“I will write stories about how we lost each other, because that’s the part I will never get over. That’s the part I know best.”The Exquisite Pain of the Unrequited was previously published as La Douleur Exquise, which translates to the exquisite pain.
What If This Were Enough?: Essays
Heather Havrilesky - 2018
In her work for New York, The Baffler, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic, as well as in her advice column for The Cut, "Ask Polly," she dispenses a singular, cutting wisdom--an ability to inspire, provoke, and put a name to our most insidious cultural delusions.What If This Were Enough? is a mantra and a clarion call. In its chapters--many of them original to the book, others expanded from their initial publication--Havrilesky takes on those cultural forces that shape us. From the enforced cheer of American life to the celebration of survivalism, from the allure of materialism to our misunderstandings of romance and success, Havrilesky deconstructs some of the most poisonous and misleading messages we ingest today, all the while suggesting new ways we might navigate our increasingly bewildering world.Through her incisive and witty inquiries, Havrilesky emphasizes the importance of locating the miraculous within the mundane. In these timely, provocative, and often hilarious chapters, she urges readers to embrace the flawed--to connect with what already is, who we already are, what we already have. She asks us to consider: What if this were enough? Our salvation, Havrilesky asserts, can be found right here, right now, in this imperfect moment.The smile factory --The happiest place on earth --To infinity and beyond --Playing house --Delusion at the gastropub --Adults only --Stuffed --Running on empty --Lost treasure --Land of heroic villains --The popularity contest --Tag and release --Haunted --Bravado --Survival fantasies --True romance --A scourge of gurus --My mother's house --Miracle of the mundane
Mouthful of Forevers
Clementine von Radics - 2015
Titled after the poem that burned up on Tumblr and has inspired wedding vows, paintings, songs, YouTube videos, and even tattoos among its fans, Mouthful of Forevers brings the first substantial collection of this gifted young poet’s work to the public.Clementine von Radics writes of love, loss, and the uncertainties and beauties of life with a ravishing poetic voice and piercing bravura that speak directly not only to the sensibility of her generation, but to anyone who has ever been young.
Changing with the Tides
Shelby Leigh - 2019
divided into two parts, the anchor and the sail, "changing with the tides" touches on anxiety, insecurity, unhealthy relationships, loss, healing, positivity, and more. to the anchor:my head is still above water,though you wanted me to drown.even your weight around my anklescannot dragmedown.
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine - 2004
I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.
Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women
Maya Angelou - 1995
They celebrate women with a majesty that has inspired and touched the hearts of millions.These memorable poems have been reset and bound in a beautiful edition--a gift to keep and to give.
Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
Alice Walker - 2018
From poems of painful self-inquiry, to celebrating the simple beauty of baking frittatas, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she’s urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold the delicate necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker encourages us to honor the divine that lives inside all of us and brings her legendary free verse to the page once again, demonstrating that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans.
Goblin Market and Other Poems
Christina Rossetti - 1862
Like Emily Dickinson, she lived in self-imposed isolation, writing of God and lost love with a sensuality and passion that seemed to emanate from the soul.This edition of 53 works combines a number of her best-known sonnets, ballads, and shorter lyrics with her long masterpiece, the narrative fable Goblin Market. A haunting fairy tale in verse, Goblin Market was once labeled a children's poem, yet its intricate symbolism and themes of temptation, sin, and redemption mark it for an adult audience. Among other works included in this choice collection are "The Convent Threshold," "Up-hill," "Cousin Kate," "Winter: My Secret," "Maude Clare," "No, Thank You, John," and "After Death."
The Pedestrians
Rachel Zucker - 2014
Fables, written in prose form, shows the reader different settings (mountains, ocean, Paris) of Zucker's travels and meditations on place. The Pedestrians brings us back to her native New York and the daily frustrations of a woman torn by obligations.That Great DiasporaI'll never leave New York & when I doI too will be unbodied—what? youimagine I might transmogrify? I'm fromnowhere which means here & so wade outinto the briny dream of elsewheres likea released dybbyk but can't standthe soulessness now everyone who evermade sense to me has died & everyone I lovegrows from my body like limbs on a rootless treeRachel Zucker is the author of Museum of Accidents, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of The Bad Wife, The Last Clear Narrative, Eating in the Underworld, and Annunciation.
Stag's Leap: Poems
Sharon Olds - 2012
In this wise and intimate telling—which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending—Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love’s sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband’s smile to the set of his hip. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and who now loves another woman. As she writes in the remarkable “Stag’s Leap,” “When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.” Olds’s propulsive poetic line and the magic of her imagery are as lively as ever, and there is a new range to the music—sometimes headlong, sometimes contemplative and deep. Her unsparing approach to both pain and love makes this one of the finest, most powerful books of poetry Olds has yet given us.
Perennial
Kelly Forsythe - 2018
Deeply researched and even more deeply felt, Perennial inhabits landscapes of emerging adulthood and explosive cruelty―the hills of Pittsburgh and the sere grass of Colorado; the spines of books in a high school library that has become a killing ground; the tenderness of children as they grow up and grow hard, becoming acquainted with dread, grief, and loss.
Audition
Stasia Ward Kehoe - 2011
Living in a strange city with a host family, she's deeply lonely-until she falls into the arms of Remington, a choreographer in his early twenties. At first, she loves being Rem's muse, but as she discovers a surprising passion for writing, she begins to question whether she's chosen the right path. Is Rem using her, or is it the other way around? And is dancing still her dream, or does she need something more? This debut novel in verse is as intense and romantic as it is eloquent.