Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers. Shmoop's award-winning Poetry Guides are now available on your Nook. Shmoop eBooks are like having a trusted, fun, chatty, expert poetry-tour-guide always by your side, no matter where you are (or how late it is at night).This Shmoop Poetry Guide offers fresh analysis, a line-by-line close reading of the poem, examination of the poet's technique, form, meter, rhyme, symbolism, jaw-dropping trivia, a glossary of poetry terms, and more. Best of all, Shmoop's analysis aims to look at a topic from multiple points of view to give you the fullest understanding. Experts and educators from top universities, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Harvard, have written Shmoop guides designed to engage you and to get your brain bubbling. Shmoop is here to make you a better lover (of poetry) and to help you make connections to other poems, works of literature, current events, and pop culture. For more information, check out shmoop.com/poetry"Smart and consistently humorous." - The Academy of American Poets

    Dr. Winter looks anew at the culture of commemoration and the ways in which communities endeavored to find collective solace after 1918. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning is a profound and moving book of great importance for the attempt to understand the course of European history during the first half of the twentieth century.

    Auden might well have penned a poem entitled "Tell me the Truth About Publishing", for the publication of this special, short collection was directly inspired by the runaway success of the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral in which one of Auden's poems was recited. Stretching from October 1932 to June 1948, the poems may have been more revelatory had they been arranged chronologically but commercial demands have placed "Funeral Blues", forevermore known as the poem in the movie, at the end, while "Lullaby", arguably a better poem, is tucked away inside. The period partly coincides with Auden going to America in January 1939 and "Calypso" pulses with the rhythm of a train taking him to his New York rendez-vous at Grand Central. "For there in the middle of that waiting-hall, / Should be standing the one that I love best of all." Many of the poems have the same jolly air and belting rhythm and indeed were written as cabaret songs. "At Last the Secret is Out" must have been tongue-in-cheek considering Auden's sexuality, yet the cover of this slim tome is resolutely heterosexual. But for dipping into Auden's work, this volume serves its purpose. "Funeral Blues" captures the sense of disbelief that the world has the audacity to continue after one has been bereaved. The Cole Porter tone of flippancy and humour--"Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves", makes the understated grief all the more poignant. He declares the emblems of romance redundant. "The stars are not wanted now; put out every one." He swings from the grandiose to the mundane and in doing so, sweeps the reader up in the aura of all-emcompassing love. "He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest.""Lullaby" retains immense mystery and power. Here he evokes the preciousness of one night spent with someone who isn't his. "Let the living creature lie, / Mortal, guilty, but to me, / The entirely beautiful." It leaves much unexplained, yet quite particular, so that it draws one back again and again: "Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm..." What an astonishing opener. --Cherry Smyth

    

    She has survived British and American bombs and witnessed the destruction of Aachen, her ancient and beautiful city. How will a German woman cope in austere post-war Britain, where she is still regarded as the enemy?Illustrated with almost 100 images and original documents, The Bride’s Trunk describes the adventures of an unremarkable piece of luggage and three generations of its owners, whose journeys across Europe are determined by the turbulent events of twentieth century history.

    The narrator recalls a girl he once knew. He and Evangeline, both shy, never find the courage to speak to each other in high school. Every evening, however, Evangeline meets him at the Osage orange tree on the edge of her property. He delivers a newspaper to her, and they talk—and as the year progresses a secret friendship blossoms. This magical coming-of-age tale is brought to life through linocut illustrations by Oregon artist Dennis Cunningham, with an afterword by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a personal friend of Stafford’s.In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O’Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.

    More than six million died there. In Eye-Deep in Hell, the author explores this unique and terrifying world—the rituals of battle, the habits of daily life, and the constant struggle of men to find meaning amid excruciating boredom and the specter of impending death.

    Awarded the Wilfred Owen Prize in 2004 for his poetry condemning U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Mr. Pinter has succeeded as no other of his generation in combining his artistry with his political activism. Death etc. brings together Pinter’s most poignant and especially relevant writings in this time of war. From chilling psychological portraits of those who commit atrocities in the name of a higher power, to essays on the state-sponsored terrorism of present-day regimes, to solemn hymns commemorating the faceless masses that perish unrecognized, Mr. Pinter’s writings are as essential to the preservation of open debate as to our awareness of personal involvement in the fate of our global community.