Here is a volume of poetry approaching Carolyn Forche's The Angel of History as a stark meditation on Blanchot's sense of writing as the "desired, undesired torment which endures everything." Levine engages the traditional resources of lyric poetry in an exploration of historical and cultural landscapes ravaged by imponderable events. Enola Gay's "mission" can seem spiritual, imaginative, and militaristic as the speaker in these poems surveys marshes and fields and a land on the edge of disintegration. Levine sifts the psychological residue that accumulates in the wake of unspeakable acts and so negotiates that terrain between the banality of language and the need to stand witness and to speak. Levine's stunning second book, with its grave cultural implications and its surveillance of a distinctly postmodern malaise, offers multiple readings. Here are compact poems with uncanny power, rhythm, and a strange, formal beauty echoing and renewing the legacy of Wallace Stevens for a new era.

    Book and CDs work beautifully together, kindling deeper appreciation for the transmuting power of poetry, a practice of discipline, skill, and magic." - BOOKLIST ..".The prose comes to life when read aloud, especially when you hear James Joyce read it himself." NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED host Jacki Lyden "This tome is a reminder how the human spirit is capable of finding an outlet in oppressive times, how poetry can help explain why we do what we do as a thinking people...Certainly, in our struggle to make sense out of what we do not understand, Poetry Speaks Expanded helps on so many levels." Carol Hoenig, THE HUFFINGTON POST ..".[A] bountiful experience: there is the thrill of discovery and re-discovery as with any good anthology, with an added emphasis on the poets' personalities and growth" John Hammond, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS "[An] accessible, beautifully executed collection guaranteed to offer poetry fans a memorable reading and listening experience" WORDCANDY.NET ..".[A]s I savored these beautiful poems, it reminded me of French poet Charles Baudelaire who wrote, 'Any man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.'" - Norm Goldman, BOOKPLEASURES.COM "Light[s] up a reader's eyes." - Frank Wilson, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Hear And Read All Of These Poets (And More)244 Poems Included In The Book107 Poems Read By The Poets Themselves On 3 Audio CDs Robert Graves, E. E. Cummings, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, Ted Hughes, Robinson Jeffers, Philip Larkin, Wallace Stevens, Louise Bogan, Melvin B. Tolson, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Ogden Nash, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Allen Ginsberg Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Robert Frost, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Randall Jarrell, Jack Kerouac, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, Robert Browning, Robert Duncan, May Swenson, John Crowe Ransom Poetry Speaks Expanded is a fusion of the poet's words with the poet's voice, including text and recordings of nearly 50 of the greatest poets who ever lived, ranging from Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot to Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks. "This book has the potential to draw more readers to poetry than any collection in years."-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW "Readers and listeners are guaranteed to hear poems in a new way after spending time with this book and CD set."-LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW "Superb, accessible....A unique and essential purchase"-SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL Poetry--For the first time ever, James Joyce reads "Anna Livia Plurabelle" from Finnegans Wake alongside the original text from the book--T. S. Eliot reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--Sylvia Plath's anger and raw emotion as she reads "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus"--Jack Kerouac reading from "MacDougal Street Blues," accompanied by Steve Allen on piano--May Swenson rehearsing "The Watch" prior to a reading--H. D. reading a part of "Helen in Egypt" from a rare recording made shortly before her death--Ted Hughes reading "February 17" during a BBC interview--A never-before-published recording of Alfred, Lord Tennyson reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade"--W. B. Yeats explaining his reading style and why he chooses to read that way--Robert Frost reading "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" Essays Written By Today's Most Influential Poets, Including: W. S. Merwin on Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney on W. B. Yeats, Paul Muldoon on James Joyce, Robert Pinsky on William Carlos Williams, Sonia Sanchez on Gwendolyn Brooks, Galway Kinnell on Walt Whitman, Rita Dove on Melvin B. Tolson, Jorie Graham on Elizabeth Bishop and Al Young on Langston Hughes "The most ambitious, innovative poetry project to be published in years."-QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB A Book Sense Top-10 Selection

    "The Himalayas Within Him" finds Heart worrying about the sound of his own heartbeat, wondering why it doesn't "blare like a quartet of trombones" as it reflects his "ardent complexity." In "Goodbye to the Hands That Have Touched Him" Heart, after suffering many sleepless nights, decides "that love exists at the root of his problems. Without love his path would be as smooth as a plate of glass and he'd sleep like a kitten." Dividing the Heart poems is the long "Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate, " a jazzy disquisition on human isolation and inaction in the midst of a planet full of people feeling similarly. Throughout Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides Dobyns has painstakingly sculpted straight-forward language into a distinct sound, creating an unforgettable collection of poems that offers readers unexpected revelations about the complexities of the heart.

    These new poems mine the rich strain of inscrutability in ordinary life, until it is hard to know what is innocent and what ominous. There is something about his work that continues to be crystal clear and yet deeply weighted with violence and mystery. Reading it is like going undercover. The face of a girl carrying a white dress from the cleaners with her eyes half-closed. The Adam & Evie Tanning Salon at night. A sparrow on crutches. A rubber duck in a shooting gallery on a Sunday morning. And someone in a tree swing, too old to be swinging and to be wearing no clothes at all, blowing a toy trumpet at the sky.

    26 poems: Tunnel, Dark Corners, Parallel, Press Play, Mundane, Walls, Sunbathing, Broken, Space Traveler, Brilliant, Gloom, Harbor, Fallen, Words, Stargazing, That Great Night, These Eyes, What Defines Me, Screams from Outer Space, Crosshairs, Eclipse, Peace of Mind, Drowning, Corpses, Before I Go, Journey

     Written with incredible honesty and self-knowledge, Between the Lines is a stunning collection of poems from Céline Zabad. Ranging in length from a single line to full pages, her poems mimic at once the brevity and vastness of feeling. Her verse is at times as free as a cloud, other times as solid as stone. Her words are philosophies and feelings in their own rights, on love, loss, loyalty, betrayal, hope, and disappointment—on life. Zabad encapsulates the thrill of love’s first blush and the freezing burn of heartbreak. Her feelings flow freely throughout the collection, lending her poetry uncommon authenticity and power. Nature thrives between the lines of her verse, reminding the reader that tears are as natural as raindrops. Whether you’re looking for new ways to think about your own feelings or are simply passionate about poetry, you’ll find plenty to love in this collection. To better understand the complexities of emotion in yourself and others, you must read Between the Lines.

    Available individually, as well as in a boxed set, the four hardcover volumes have been specially bound with covers featuring images central to Beckett's works. Typographical errors that remained uncorrected in the various prior editions have now been corrected in consultation with Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski."Poet, novelist, short–story writer, playwright, translator, and critic, Samuel Beckett created one of the most brilliant and enduring bodies of work in twentieth–century literature. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, the four volumes of this new edition bring together nearly every word Beckett published during his lifetime. Open anywhere and begin reading. It is an experience unequaled anywhere in the universe of words." — Paul Auster, from his Series Notes

    Vincent Millay to Edward Lear's whimsical "The Owl and the Pussycat" and James Whitcomb Riley’s homespun "When the Frost Is on the Punkin." Famous poets such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, and Frost are well-represented, as are less well-known poets such as John McCrae ("In Flanders Fields") and Ernest Thayer ("Casey at the Bat"). Includes 10 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "The Owl and the Pussycat," "Casey at the Bat," "Jabberwocky," "O Captain! My Captain!," "Paul Revere's Ride," "Ozymandias," "The Raven," "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," "Mending Wall," and "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

    Enhancing their work are four seasonally-themed groups of verse, many written by Basho’s students and associates. The translation is thoroughly readable and contemporary, and the images evocative. An enlightening introduction offers biographical information on the featured poets, background on the nature of haiku and its development within the Japanese poetic tradition, and a short account of the Buddhist practice to which most of the writers were connected.

    An essential book for a full understanding of one of our major poets.Color woodcut, Night Scene, by Neil Welliver. Courtesy of the artist.

    Rogue & Kat Savage.

    0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press

    He is "singular among his peers in his ability to convey with a deceptive lightness the paradoxes of human emotion," says Publishers Weekly, and Robert Hass, in the Washington Post Book World, takes special note of Lux's "bitter wit, the kind of irony that comes with a quick, impatient intelligence."

    Since her wedding is still a few weeks away, she sets off to get an abortion. Her journey takes her through all the layers of the large city, through the wealth and poverty and the kidnappings and robberies of early 1960s Bogotá.

    Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides chapter-by-chapter analysis; explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols; and a review quiz and essay topics. Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers.