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Dark Harbor by Mark Strand
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Fully Empowered
Pablo Neruda - 1962
These thirty-six poems vary from short, intense lyrics to characteristic Neruda odes to magnificent meditations on the office of poet, including poems that would undoubtedly claim a place in any selection of Neruda's greatest work. "The People" ("El Pueblo"), about the state of the working man in Chile's past and present, and the most celebrated of Neruda's later poems, completes this reflective, graceful collection.
Largo Desolato
Václav Havel - 1985
Vaclav Havel gives us the comically absurd and seemingly autobiographical account of Professor Leopold Nettes, a revered but reluctant revolutionary whose most recent book has irked the totalitarian government in power. The authorities demand a retraction; his friends and fans clamor for heroic defiance. Besieged by onslaught of internal demons, whining lovers, suffocating followers, and ineffectual government thugs, the professor sinks nearer and nearer to crisis, unable to confront the conflicting demands that rule his life and leave him tormented by neurotic inertia. One of Havel's best-known plays, Largo Desolato vividly dramatizes the multiple contradictions of the intellectual trapped in a totalitarian nightmare.
Selected Poems
Giuseppe Ungaretti - 1971
His verse is renowned and loved for its powerful insight and emotion, and its exquisite music. Yet, unlike many of his peers, Ungaretti has never been adequately presented to English readers. This large bilingual selection, translated with great sensitivity and fidelity by Andrew Frisardi, captures Ungaretti in all of his phases: from his early poems, written in the trenches of northern Italy during World War I, to the finely crafted erotic and religious poetry of his second period, to the visceral, elegiac poetry of the years following the death of his son and the occupation of Rome during World War II, to the love poems of the poet's old age. Frisardi's in-depth introduction details the world in which Ungaretti's work took shape and exerted its influence. In addition to the poet's own annotations, an autobiographical afterword, "Ungaretti on Ungaretti," further illuminates the poet's life and art. Here is a compelling, rewarding, and comprehensive version of the work of one of the greatest modern European poets.
Orphic Songs
Dino Campana - 1914
Charles Wright’s translation, Jonathan Galassi’s introduction, and, as afterword, Montale’s thoughtful essay on Campana, identify the heart of this poet’s achievement.
Anabasis
Saint-John Perse - 1924
S. Eliot. In this definitive edition, French and English texts appear on facing pages. Preface by T. S. Eliot.
Death in the Woods and Other Stories
Sherwood Anderson - 1924
In Death in the Woods, we travel deep into the heart of America as Anderson saw it, to find an introspective man, in a desolate landscape, questioning the very meaning of his world."Death in the Woods is a signal junction in Anderson's career and is to my mind one of the finest stories in our language."Jim Harrison
Playmaker
Thomas Keneally - 1987
Advertising in New York Review of Books and Village Voice Literary Supplement.
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound - 1954
Eliot, contains essays from five earlier volumes: Pavannes and Divisions (1918), Instigations(1920), How to Read(1931), Make it New(1934), and Polite Essays(1937). The thirty-three essays contained in this collection are separated into three categories: The Art of Poetry, The Tradition, and Contemporaries. These essays showcase the range of Pound's interests, with topics ranging from modernist poetry to Japanese iconography, troubadour songs, and much more. Pound's influence on the modernist movement and literature as a whole makes this collection an important piece of literary history. With an introduction by T.S. Eliot.
Vein of Iron
Ellen Glasgow - 1935
A novel that takes place in the Valley of Virginia, tracing the experience of a family with four generations of strong women.
1934: A Novel
Alberto Moravia - 1982
Stephen Spender for The New York Review of Books commented: "One of the most brilliant strokes in this novel about relations in the Thirties between Italians and Germans is that Moravia never reveals whether his Italian narrator and hero is serious or not, and doubt about the seriousness lies in his being Italian. ... This is the truth of the book: that within the external situation of the Italian Fascist--German Nazi relationship it is impossible to accept as authentic virtually anything people do."Moravia is not simply painting the portrait of an age but also coming to grips through his art with the great questions of all ages - the erotic, love, death, and the purpose of life. 1934 recapitulates the major themes of his art and at the same time takes us beyond them.
The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert - 1984
The poetry is surprising in its simplicity, sensual, thoughtful, moving, comic in turns. Author Milan Kundera has called this collection “the tangible expression of the nation’s genius.”