His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfather's death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions. The first novel in Reinaldo Arenas's "secret history of Cuba," a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror--and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance.

    The poems range in tone from the spiritual longing of an isolated monk to the erotic ecstasy of a court princess—but share the extraordinary simplicity and luminosity of language that marks Kenneth Rexroth's verse style. An introduction by the poet and translator Sam Hamill, the editor of this collection, and short biographies of the poets are included. The Shambhala Library is a series of exquisitely designed and produced cloth editions of the world's spiritual and literary classics, both ancient and modern. Perfect for collecting or as gifts, each volume features a sewn binding, decorative endsheets, and a ribbon marker—a delightful-to-hold 4 ¼ x 6 ¾ trim size.

    Meeting-place of fever and the cold eye, in a passion which could hold together with his own arms the flying apart of his own time. He claimed it, its past and the moment that held it with its own arms, the present.They were lyrics he brought to me, cut as if with an adze; and I began to translate. In his early lyrics, with their speed, their transparencies, their couples lying together, all couples, all opposites, there was a chance for the reader to see what was flashing out of Mexico in this young poet. He glittered in his airs and silences, his sudden strokes:Our bones are lightningin the night of the flesh.0 world, all is night,life is the lightning.-from a foreword

    Divan of Shah represents an unconscious longing for union within. It is beautifully illustrated and a wonderful amalgamation of some of Shah’s brilliant work filled with the raw emotion of love as if he himself has spilled his heart onto a canvas and has painted love itself. Shah has tapped into the collective unexplored and perhaps his own realm of dreams.The book meticulously presents so many aspects of love in specific detail which harkens one’s appreciation for love even more than before and some examples of love we may have taken for granted. It shows the limitless power and ways love presents itself and how it can change one’s life for the better or worse.This one is a thoughtful collection of poetic lines that invites the reader into the dimension of love, which happens to be the idea of a reflective mirror having no color yet for all colors of the embodiment are reflected back.never make a lady crypearls are not meant to flowlet them reside within celestial eyesfor even paradise unveils its reflectionthrough the radiance of their glow

    Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have. Their cause for happiness, however, triggers a chain of events that impact the lives of everyone in their world. The hopes, triumphs, failures, and shortcomings of the novel’s enchanting array of characters create a graceful picture of life that is both a universal portrait and an insider’s look at life in Latin America.

    Richard Bowmaster—a 60-year-old human rights scholar—hits the car of Evelyn Ortega—a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala—in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor’s house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz—a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile—for her advice. These three very different people are brought together in a mesmerizing story that moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, sparking the beginning of a long overdue love story between Richard and Lucia.Exploring the timely issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees, the book recalls Allende’s landmark novel The House of the Spirits in the way it embraces the cause of “humanity, and it does so with passion, humor, and wisdom that transcend politics” (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). In the Midst of Winter will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

    Ashes of Izalco brings together a Salvadoran woman and an American man who struggle over issues of love, loyalty, and sociopolitical injustice.

    Inseparable since their days at Boston University almost ten years before, six friends form the Dirty Girls Social Club, a mutual support and (mostly) admiration society that no matter what happens to each of them (and a lot does), meets regularly to dish, dine and compare notes on the bumpy course of life and love.Las sucias are:--Lauren, the resident “caliente” columnist for the local paper, which advertises her work with the line “her casa is su casa, Boston”, but whose own home life has recently involved hiding in her boyfriend’s closet to catch him in the act--Sara, the perfect wife and mother who always knew exactly the life she wanted and got it, right down to the McMansion in the suburbs and two boisterious boys, but who is paying a hefty price--Amber, the most idealistic and artistic member of the club, who was raised a valley girl without a word of Spanish and whose increasing attachment to her Mexica roots coincides with a major record label’s interest in her rock ‘n’ roll--Elizabeth, the stunning black Latina whose high profile job as a morning television anchor conflicts with her intensely private personal life, which would explain why the dates the other dirty girls set her up on never work out--Rebecca, intense and highly controlled, who flawlessly runs Ella, the magazine she created for Latinas, but who can’t explain why she didn’t understand the man she married and now doesn’t even share a room with; and--Usnavys, irrepressible and larger than life, whose agenda to land the kind of man who can keep her in Manolo Blahniks and platanos almost prevents her seeing true love when it lands in her lap.There’s a lot of catching up to do.A vibrant, can’t-put-it-down novel of six friends—each one an unforgettable Latina woman in her late ‘20s—and the complications and triumphs in their lives.

    Two feuding crime families with blood on their hands need our hard-boiled hero, The Redeemer, to broker peace. Both his instincts and the vacant streets warn him to stay indoors, but The Redeemer ventures out into the city’s underbelly to arrange for the exchange of the bodies they hold hostage.Yuri Herrera’s novel is a response to the violence of contemporary Mexico. With echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Roberto Bolaño and Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy and a tribute to those bodies – loved, sanctified, lusted after, and defiled – that violent crime has touched.

    Full of memorable characters and masterfully composed narrative, these short stories constitute a wonderful addition to any personal library, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of Runyon's work. The stories contained herein include: Beach of Promise, Romance in the Roaring Forties, Dream Street Rose, The Old Doll's House, Blood Pressure, The Bloodhounds of Broadway, Tobias the Terrible, The Snatching of Bookie Bob, The Lily of St. Pierre, Earthquake, and more. Alfred Damon Runyon (1880 1946) was an American newspaperman and author, best remembered for his short stories about the world of Broadway in New York City that resulted from the Prohibition era. This volume is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author."

    Don't lose more time searching for the perfect poems or readings - I've already done all the hard work to save you the trouble. This book combines several well known anthologies and brings you well over 1000 poems since 1250. The original anthologies used as a source are: 1919 Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse, and 1917 The New Poetry - An Anthology - Edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson.

    Arguably the central genre of Japanese literature, the 31-syllable lyric made up the great majority of Japanese poetry from the ninth to the nineteenth century and was the inspiration for such poetry as haiku and renga. Tanka has begun to attract considerable attention in North America in recent years. Modern Japanese Tanka is the first comprehensive collection available in English.Tanka retains the aesthetic sensibilities that circumscribe Japanese culture, but just as Japan has changed during this tumultuous century, tanka has undergone equally radical shifts. Responding to artistic and social movements of the West, tanka has incorporated influences ranging from Marxism to Avant-Garde.Modern Japanese Tanka includes four hundred poems by twenty of Japan's most renowned poets who have made major contributions to the hisotry of tanka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With his graceful, eloquent translations, Makoto Ueda captures the distinct voices of these individual poets, providing biographical sketches of each as well as transliterating Japanese text below each poem. His introduction gives an excellent overview of the development of tanka in the last one hundred years.Tracing the contemporary tanka tradition from Yosana Tekkan in the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth-century poetry of such writers as Taware Machi, Modern Japanese Tankselegantly conveys an authentic sense of Japanese lyric to a Western audience.

    Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection.Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blur.

    Don Marquis' creations have been constantly in print since 1934.

    Malinalli's Indian tribe has been conquered by the warrior Aztecs. When her father is killed in battle, she is raised by her wisewoman grandmother who imparts to her the knowledge that their founding forefather god, Quetzalcoatl, had abandoned them after being made drunk by a trickster god and committing incest with his sister. But he was determined to return with the rising sun and save her tribe from their present captivity. When Malinalli meets Cortez she, like many, suspects that he is the returning Quetzalcoatl, and assumes her task is to welcome him and help him destroy the Aztec empire and free her people. The two fall passionately in love, but Malinalli gradually comes to realize that Cortez's thirst for conquest is all too human, and that for gold and power, he is willing to destroy anyone, even his own men, even their own love.