Homeric Hymns


Homer
    They recount the key episodes in the lives of the gods, and dramatise the moments when they first appear before mortals. Together they offer the most vivid picture we have of the Greek view of the relationship between the divine and human worlds.

Plato: Complete Works


PlatoJ.M. Edmonds
    In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works.Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition.

The Gay Science


Friedrich Nietzsche - 1882
    And yet it is complete in itself. For it is a work of art." —Walter Kaufmann in the IntroductionNietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.

Mules and Men


Zora Neale Hurston - 1935
    AbrahamsMules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, "big old lies," and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal'and preserve'a beautiful and important part of American culture.Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist and playwright whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage are unparalleled. She is also the author of Tell My Horse, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Dust Tracks on a Road, and Mule Bone.Ruby Dee, a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, starred on Broadway in the original productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious, and was featured in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. She is also an award-winning author and the producer of numerous television dramas.

A Fortune for Your Disaster


Hanif Abdurraqib - 2019
    It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.

Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience


Shaun Usher - 2013
    Kennedy, Groucho Marx, Charles Dickens, Katharine Hepburn, Mick Jagger, Steve Martin, Clementine Churchill, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut and many more.

The Cantos


Ezra Pound - 1970
    Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered to be an intense and challenging read. The Cantos is generally considered one of the most significant works of modernist poetry in the 20th century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics, governance and culture are integral to the work's content.The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of Chinese characters as well as quotations in European languages other than English. A close reader will normally require a scholarly commentary to help understand the text. The range of allusion to historical events is broad, and abrupt changes occur with little transition.There is also wide geographical reference. Pound added to his earlier interests in the classical Mediterranean culture and East Asia selective topics from medieval and early modern Italy and Provence, the beginnings of the United States, England of the 17th century, and details from Africa he had obtained from Leo Frobenius. Many references in the text lack explanation. Pound initially believed that he possessed poetic and rhetorical techniques which would themselves generate significance, but as time passed he became more concerned with the messages he wished to convey.The section he wrote at the end of World War II, begun while he was interned in American-occupied Italy, has become known as The Pisan Cantos. It was awarded the first Bollingen Prize in 1948. There were many repercussions, since this in effect honoured a poet who was under indictment for treason. :::Delmore Schwartz said about The Cantos, "They are one of the touchstones of modern poetry." William Carlos Williams said, "[Pound] discloses history by its odor, by the feel of it—in the words; fuses it with the words, present and past, to MAKE his Cantos. Make them."Since the 1969 revised edition, the Italian Cantos LXXII and LXXIII (as well as a 1966 fragment concluding the work) have been added. Now appearing for the first time is Pound's recently found English translation of Italian Canto LXXII.

Let Us Compare Mythologies


Leonard Cohen - 1956
    Long out of print, it is now available exactly as it appeared fifty years ago as one of the four hundred copies published by the McGill Poetry Series in Canada, with its original cover and illustrations by Canadian artist Freda Guttman.

Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America


J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur - 1968
    Letters provides an invaluable view of the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary eras; Sketches details in vivid prose the physical setting in which American settlers created their history.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Golden Treasury


Francis Turner Palgrave - 1861
    Originally published in 1861, it quickly established itself as the most popular selection of English poems. Today it stands as a testament to the richness of our finest native poetic writing from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth, to Tennyson, Yeats, Eliot, and Betjeman. This edition includes a sixth book, prepared by John Press, which covers the post-war years, showing that the lyrical tradition remains strong. Over ninety poets are included, from Dylan Thomas, George Mackay Brown, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin to Carol Ann Duffy, Elizabeth Garrett and Simon Armitage.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land


Aimé Césaire - 1939
    The long poem was the beginning of Cesaire's quest for negritude, and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. With its emphasis on unusual juxtapositions of object and metaphor, manipulation of language into puns and neologisms, and rhythm, Cesaire considered his style a "beneficial madness" that could "break into the forbidden" and reach the powerful and overlooked aspects of black culture. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith achieve a laudable adaptation of Cesaire's work to English by clarifying double meanings, stretching syntax, and finding equivalent English puns, all while remaining remarkably true to the French text. Their treatment of the poetry is marked with imagination, vigor, and accuracy that will clarify difficulties for those already familiar with French, and make the work accessible to those who are not. Andre Breton's introduction, A Great Black Poet, situates the text and provides a moving tribute to C saire. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is recommended for readers in comparative literature, post-colonial literature, African American studies, poetry, modernism, and French.

Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius


Kwame Dawes - 2003
    He was a performer who held true to his religious and cultural heritage, yet he is still awarded the status of world rock star. Renowned poet and scholar Kwame Dawes analyses in detail what his actual verses and lyrics meant when matched against the social and political climate of the time and what it meant to be a black man in the modern world.

I Praise My Destroyer: Poems


Diane Ackerman - 1998
    Ackerman muses on the confines of therapy sessions, where she intersects "twice a week/in a painstaking hide-and-seek/making do with half-light, half-speak"; relishes the succulent pleasure of eating an apricot, with its "gush of taboo sweetness"; and imagines the "unupholstered voice, a life in outline" in her stunning elegy to C. S. Lewis. Whimsical, organic, and wise, the poems in I Praise My Destroyer affirm Ackerman's place as one of the most enchanting poets writing today.

A Poem for Every Night of the Year


Allie Esiri - 2016
    The poems - together with introductory paragraphs - have a link to the date on which they appear. Shakespeare celebrates midsummer night, Maya Angelou International Women's Day and Lewis Carroll April Fool's day.Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, A. A. Milne and Christina Rossetti sit alongside Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah.

The Norton Anthology Of American Literature


Nina Baym - 1979
    This modern section has been overhauled to reflect the diversity of American writing since 1945. A section on 19th-century women's writing is included.