The distinguished director, Howard Hawks, discusses his techniques of filmmaking, analyzes the artistry of his movies, and portrays his experiences working in Hollywood.

    If anyone could produce a hybrid of Charlie Chaplin's playful "Little Tramp" and Charlize Theron's fierce "Imperator Furiosa," it would be Armantrout. Her language is unexpected yet exact, playing off the collective sense that the shifting ground of daily reality may be a warning of imminent systemic collapse. While there are glimmers here of what remains of "the natural world," the poet confesses the human failings, personal and societal, that have led to its devastation. No one's senses are more acutely attuned than Armantrout's, which makes her an exceptional observer and reporter of our faults. She leaves us wondering if the American Dream may be a nightmare from which we can't awaken. Sometimes funny, sometimes alarming, the poems in Wobble play peek-a-boo with doom.

    Acclaimed poet and World War II veteran Harvey Shapiro's pathbreaking gathering of work by more than sixty poets of the war years includes Randall Jarrell, Anthony Hecht, George Oppen, Richard Eberhart, William Bronk, and Woody Guthrie.

    In this poetical fantasy, Marie becomes the ultimate artist/poet, composing a codex-calligraphy, writings, paintings, collage-from materials left at the dump. She is a "culture of one." The story is told in long-lined, clear-edged poems deliberately stacked so the reader can keep plunging headlong into the events of the book. Culture of One offers further proof of how Notley "has freed herself from any single notion of what poetry should be so that she can go ahead and write what poetry can be" (The Boston Review).

    As with his debut, The Final Voicemails brushes up against the pain, fear, and isolation that accompany a long illness, but with all the creative force of an artist in full command of his craft and the teeming affection of a human utterly in love with the world.The representation of the end of life resists simplicity here. It is physical decay, but it is also tedium. It is alchemy, "the breaking apart, / the replacement of who, when, how, and where, / with what." It is an antagonist--and it is a part of the self. Ritvo's poems ring with considered reflection on the enduring final question, while suggesting--in their vibrancy and their humor--that death is not merely an end.The Final Voicemails is an ecstatic, hopeful, painful--and completely breathtaking--second collection.

    Back in six months whatever you do. Or three days, like last time.' Camilla Long on Nigel Farage'You're as ugly as a salad.' Bulgarian insult'I'm going to beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.' Muhammed AliThere's no pleasure like a perfectly-turned put-down (when it's directed at somebody else, of course) but Matthew Parris's Scorn is sharply different from the standard collections. Here are the funniest, sharpest, rudest and most devastating insults in history, from ancient Roman graffiti to the battlefields of Twitter. Drawing on bile from such masters as Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth I, Donald Trump, Groucho Marx, Princess Anne, Winston Churchill, Nigel Farage, Mae West and Alastair Campbell - which form an exchange between voices down the ages - Scorn shows that abuse can be an art form. This collection includes extended literary invective as well as short verbal shin-kicks. Encompassing literature, art, politics, showbiz, marriage, gender, nationality and religion, Matthew Parris's sublime collection is the perfect companion for the festive season, whether you're searching for the perfect elegant riposte, the rudest polite letter ever written, or a brutal verbal sledgehammer.

    Manchester, a predominantly working-class city, away from the nation’s capital, has been at the margins of English culture for centuries. The explosion of music and creativity in Manchester can be traced back from Victorian music hall and the jazz age, to Northern Soul and rock and roll, through to acid house and Oasis. But its roots are in Manchester’s history as a melting pot of popular idealism and dissent, from the industrial revolution on, via film, theatre, comedy and TV. And for Manchester, read England and the world.Dave Haslam is uniquely placed to tell this story – Manchester, England is as witty, erudite and passionate as you would expect from a man who can say, again and again, "I was there". Like Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming, this is the last word on the abiding centre of 40 years of UK pop culture.

    The book's first two parts, "Recollections" and "Interviews," provide autobiographical glimpses of the very private Larkin's childhood, his youth at Oxford, the genesis of his forty-year career as a librarian, and the influences that initially steered his poetry. The second half of the book reflects Larkin's literary standards and opinions in often witty and surprising, always beautifully wrought, essays and reviews. His subjects range from Emily Dickinson (were her first lines her best?) to the contemporary mystery novel. Required Writing concludes with a selection of pieces on jazz music."Larkin is a punctilious, honest critic. He prefers good clear writing to pretentious eyewash; he prefers tunes to discordant wailing; and he prefers home to abroad. Unlike the majority of critics, he is clear-sighted enough to say so." --A. N. Wilson, Sunday Telegraph"I read the collection with growing excitement, agreement and admiration. It is the best contemporary account of the writer's true aims I have encountered." --John Mortimer, Sunday Times (London)"Subtle, supple, craftily at ease, Required Writing is on a par with Larkin's poetry--which is just about as high as praise can go." --Clive James, Observer Philip Larkin was the author of poetry collections, including High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings, and The Less Deceived; a book of essays entitled All What Jazz: A Record Diary; and two novels, Jill, and A Girl in Winter, published early in his career. Required Reading was originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

    Along the way, he also addressed Batman with his multi-layered ARKHAM ASYLUM and his literary "Gothic" storyline. Callahan examines all five works in detail, drawing out their evolving themes and exploring Morrison's sometimes difficult texts in plain language. Rounding out the volume: an exclusive interview with Morrison, a foreword by popular comics writer Jason Aaron, and an appendix addressing Morrison's even earlier, shorter work. From Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. More info at http: //Sequart.org

    An invaluable reference source.

    Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans - everyone really, except for Indians themselves - came to imagine India. His account of the engagement between foreigners and India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, EM Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles and Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller's own 25-year-long love affair with India. The result is a spellbinding, 2500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture and society, in the company of an author who informs, educates and entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies and overturns longheld stereotypes about race, identity and migration. A tour de force that is at once scholarly and thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

    Here the reader is offered a glimpse of Mark Twain's sustained creative process, in what many critics consider the finest fiction of his later years. Begun in 1897 and revised first in 1902 and then 1908, the third version was the only manuscript titled The Mysterious Stranger. These texts offer a rare opportunity to observe Mark Twain's sustained literary struggle with a central theme.

    A great reading experience for those who like serious and innovative poetry." --Library JournalDrawing upon Navajo history and enduring tradition, Sherwin Bitsui leads us on a treacherous, otherworldly passage through the American Southwest. Fluidly shape-shifting and captured by language that functions like a moving camera, Dissolve is urban and rural, past and present in the haze of the reservation. Bitsui proves himself to be one of this century's most haunting, raw, and uncompromising voices.From "(Untitled)" . . . Jeweled with houseflies, leather rattles, foil-wrapped, ferment in beaked masks on the shores of evaporating lakes.This plot, now a hotel garden, its fountain gushing forth--the slashed wrists of the Colorado River.Sherwin Bitsui was raised in White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is the author of two other books of poetry, among them Flood Song, which won an American Book Award. He currently lives in Arizona where he has serves on the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts.

    Thinking about the ways in which economic policy, racism, and militarized policing combine to shape the city, Lake Michigan's poems continue exploring the themes from Borzutzky's Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. But while the influences in this book (Césaire, Vallejo, Neruda) are international, the focus here is local as the book takes a hard look at neoliberal urbanism in the historic city of Chicago.  Named a 2018 Best Book of the Year by the New York Public Library.

    Weschler chronicles Hockney's protean production and speculations, including his scenic designs for opera, his homemade xerographic prints, his exploration of physics in relation to Chinese landscape painting, his investigations into optical devices, his taking up of watercolor—and then his spectacular return to oil painting, around 2005, with a series of landscapes of the East Yorkshire countryside of his youth. These conversations provide an astonishing record of what has been Hockney's grand endeavor, nothing less than an exploration of "the structure of seeing" itself.