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Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch
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Buckdancer's Choice
James Dickey - 1965
But those who seek instead a true widening of the horizons of meaning, coupled with a sure-handed mastery of the craft of poetry, will find this latest collection satisfying indeed.Here is a man who matches superb gifts with a truly subtle imagination, into whose depths he is courageously traveling--pioneering--in exploratory penetrations into areas of life that are too often evaded or denied. "The Firebombing," "Slave Quarters," "The Fiend"--these poems, with the others that comprise the present volume, show a mature and original poet at his finest.
Collected Love Poems
Brian Patten - 2007
Truthful and tender, profoundly aware of the possibility of magic and the miraculous, these poems are beautiful, informed, and, even at their darkest moments, filled with courage and hope. Alongside old favorites, this edition will contain a selection of new, unpublished poems. This is a must for poetry lovers.
The Changing Light at Sandover
James Merrill - 1982
Individual parts won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the entire poem, when it was collected into one volume in 1982, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is now an American classic, here in a definitive new hardcover edition that includes Voices from Sandover, Merrill’s recasting of the poem for the stage. The book carries us to the scene of Merrill’s Ouija board sessions with his partner, David Jackson—the candlelit Stonington dining room with its flame-colored walls and the famous Willowware cup they used as a pointer in their occult travels. In a shimmering interplay of verse forms, Merrill set down their extended conversations with their familiar and guide, Ephraim (a first-century Greek Jew), W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, Plato, a brilliant peacock named Mirabell, and other old friends who had passed to the other side. JM (whom the spirits call “scribe”) and DJ (“hand”) are also introduced to the lonely eminence God B (“God Biology”), his sister Mother Nature, and a host of angels and lesser residents of the empyrean who are variously involved in the ways of this world.The laughter, the missteps, and the schoolroom frustrations of the earthly pair’s gradual enlightenment make this otherworldly journey, finally, an utterly human one. A unique exploration of the writer’s role in a postatomic, postreligious age, Sandover has been compared to the work of Yeats, Proust, Milton, and Blake. Merrill’s tale of the joys and tragedies of man’s powers, and his message about the importance of our endangered efforts to make a good life on earth, will stand as one of the most profound experiences available to readers of poetry.
The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People
Oscar Handlin - 1951
It elucidates the hopes and the yearnings of the immigrants that propelled them out of their native environments to chance the hazards of the New World. It traces the profound imprint they made upon this world and how they, in turn, were changed by it.When first published, The Uprooted won the Pulitzer Prize for history. This second edition is enlarged by a supplemental chapter, in which the author examines the meaning of the immigrant experience in light of more recent decades, and by a brilliant bibliographic essay.
The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir
Richard Hugo - 1973
. . . Each poem adds its incisive particulars to the general stoic wreck; but what startles, then reassures in all this canon of the inconsolable, the unsanctified, the dispossessed, is Hugo’s poetics, the analogy of language to experience. . . . Richard Hugo is such an important poet because the difficulties inherent in his art provide him a means of saying what he has to say. It is no accident that he must develop a negative in order to produce a true image.”
Collected Poems
Primo Levi - 1981
Throughout his writing life, Levi also produced poetry and this volume collects together all his poems, including eighteen that have not previously appeared in book form. Short and spare, the poems employ the same courageous and steady gaze at the worst that can happen that illuminates his prose.
The Daily Mirror
David Lehman - 2000
During that time, some of these poems appeared in various journals and on Web sites, including The Poetry Daily site, which ran thirty of Lehman's poems in as many days throughout the month of April 1998. For The Daily Mirror, Lehman has selected the best of these "daily poems" -- each tied to a specific occasion or situation -- and telescoped two years into one. Spontaneous and immediate, but always finely crafted and spiced with Lehman's signature irony and wit, the poems are akin to journal entries charting the passing of time, the deaths of great men and women, the news of the day. Jazz, Sinatra, the weather, love, poetry and poets, movies, and New York City are among their recurring themes. A departure from Lehman's previous work, this unique volume provides the intimacy of a diary, full of passion, sound, and fury, but with all the aesthetic pleasure of poetry. More a party of poems than a standard collection, The Daily Mirror presents an exciting new way to think about poetry.
The Widening Spell of the Leaves
Larry Levis - 1991
He seems to be writing the poems we all need to read right now." --Antioch Review Larry Levis was born in Fresno, California, in 1946. His first book of poems, Wrecking Crew, won the United States Award from the International Poetry Forum, and was published in the Pitt Poetry Series in 1972. His second book, The Afterlife, won the Lamont Award from the American Academy of Poets in 1976. In 1981, The Dollmaker's Ghost was a winner of the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. Among his other awards were three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Larry Levis died in 1996.
Banana Palace
Dana Levin - 2016
Observing the crisis of human appetite through the lenses of psychology and science fiction, she's disquieted at a world "ruled by a bi-polar father-god, unconscious, suicidal."The personal meets the collective in these poems: insane rants transform into contemporary oracular speech; a child who once hoarded candy grows into an adult who consumes a planet. Mutation, social media, eco-collapse, a dream of a survivable End Times: no less than the future of the body is at stake, bodies corporeal and political, ecological and spiritual. Was that the soul, wishingwe would invent the bodyout of existence,so many of us nowenthralled by doom...Dana Levin has published three books of poetry, Wedding Day (Copper Canyon), Sky Burial (Copper Canyon), and her first book, In the Surgical Theatre, won the APR/Honickman Award. A teacher of poetry for over twenty years, Levin splits her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Maryville University in St. Louis, where she serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence.
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower & Other Love Poems
William Carlos Williams - 1994
'Asphodel' celebrates unforgettably Williams' love for his wife Floss, (going) so far as to say, 'Death is not the end of it'...'Asphodel' strands impressively as the poet's personal credo, a late, long poem central to his entire work.' -- World Literature Today
Drunk by Noon
Jennifer L. Knox - 2007
(It was John Findura in Verse Magazine.) She's also been compared to comedian Sarah Silverman, artist Jeff Koons, a 10-year-old who can't keep her mouth shut, and cartoonist R. Crumb. None of these equations is quite right, however. Jennifer L. Knox's work is unmistakably her own: darkly hilarious, surprisingly empathetic, utterly original. DRUNK BY NOON is the eagerly awaited sequel to Knox's first book, A GRINGO LIKE ME, which is also available from Bloof in a new edition. Jennifer L. Knox is a three-time contributor to the Best American Poetry Series and her poems have also appeared in Great American Prose Poems and Great American Erotic Poems. For more information, see www.jenniferlknox.com.
Collected Sonnets
Edna St. Vincent Millay - 1917
An introduction by Norma Millay, written expressly for this volume, focuses on examples of the poet's variations in sonnet structure. Here is the voice of Millay, whose prophetic vision, devotion to freedom, and intellectual daring combine with her mastery of the sonnet form to speak eloquently for the human spirit.
Like a Beggar
Ellen Bass - 2014
Those who turn to poetry to become confidants for another's stories and secrets will not be disappointed.”—Publishers Weekly“In her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturn’s rings and Newton’s law of gravitation to wasps and Pablo Neruda. Her words are nostalgic, vivid, and visceral. Bass arrives at the truth of human carnality rooted in the extraordinary need and promise of the individual. Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. By the collection’s end—following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition—it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller.”—BooklistEllen Bass brings a deft touch as she continues her ongoing interrogations of crucial moral issues of our times, while simultaneously delighting in endearing human absurdities. From the start of Like a Beggar, Bass asks her readers to relax, even though "bad things are going to happen," because the "bad" gets mined for all manner of goodness.From "Another Story":After dinner, we're drinking scotch at the kitchen table.Janet and I just watched a NOVA specialand we're explaining to her motherthe age and size of the universe—the hundred billion stars in the hundred billion galaxies.Dotty lives at Dominican Oaks, making her way down the long hall.How about the sun? she asks, a little farmshit in the endlessness.I gather up a cantaloupe, a lime, a cherry,and start revolving this salad around the chicken carcass.This is the best scotch I ever tasted, Dotty says,even though we gave her the Maker's Markwhile we're drinking Glendronach...Ellen Bass's poetry includes Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has frequently been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun and many other journals. She is co-author of several non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.
The Mercy Seat: Collected and New Poems 1967-2001
Norman Dubie - 2001
Whether illuminating a common laborer or a legendary thinker, Dubie meets his subjects with utter compassion for their humanity and the dignity behind their creative work. In pursuit of the well-told story, his love of history is ever-present—though often he recreates his own.“With its restoration of so many out-of-print poems and its addition of new works, The Mercy Seat was one of last year’s most significant publications.” —American Book Review“The voices of Dubie’s monologues are full of astonishing intimacy.” —The Washington Post Book World