'All for Love' is a collection of brief quotations by many hands, chosen and illustrated with exquisite wit by Laura Stoddart.Here the raptures of love are counter-balanced by the rueful, comic, and often rather crisply cynical observations of men and women who have been there before. Divided into sections on the nature of love, the pursuit of love, love and marriage and the love affair, the book ranges from the passionate to the severely practical. We can smile at the silliness of those blinded by love (Shakespeare), feel a pang of heartache for jilted lovers (Dorothy Parker) reflect with Byron that there is little to be said about a happy marriage, and take note of P G Wodehouse advising girls that chumps make the best husbands, while relishing snatches of great poetry about great loves, from Sappho, Marlowe, Wordsworth, John Clare and Thomas Hardy.'All for Love' is a rare treat for everyone who is in love, contemplating marriage, has a broken heart, or has put the whole business behind them, and wants to be cheered up by some brilliant insights and by Laura Stoddart's enchanting visual comments on them.

    I hope that this book makes everyone feel what I felt while writing it, and that love is a universal thing, and my story is not unique. And I hope that this makes them see that there is a beyond and that they can come out happy and clean. And, that this makes them braver than they already are, and gives them that little extra push and strength that they probably need

    The sheriff was killed and Gregorio fled immediately, realizing that in practice there was one law for Anglo-Texans, another for Texas-Mexicans. The chase, capture, and imprisonment of Cortez are high drama that cannot easily be forgotten. Even today, in the cantinas along both sides of the Rio Grande, Mexicans sing the praises of the great "sheriff-killer" in the ballad which they call "El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez."Américo Paredes tells the story of Cortez, the man and the legend, in vivid, fascinating detail in "With His Pistol in His Hand," which also presents a unique study of a ballad in the making. Deftly woven into the story are interpretations of the Border country, its history, its people, and their folkways.

    

    Calvin Trillin employs everything from a Gilbert and Sullivan style, for describing George Bush’s rescue in the South Carolina primary by the Christian Right (“I am, when all is said and done, a Robertson Republican”), to a bilingual approach, when commenting on the President’s casual acknowledgment, after months of trying to persuade the nation otherwise, that there was never any evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11: “The Web may say, or maybe Lexis-Nexis / If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas.”Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but with the people around him—Supreme Commander Karl Rove and Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Nanny Dick Cheney (“One mystery I’ve tried to disentangle: / Why Cheney’s head is always at an angle . . .”) The armchair warriors Trillin refers to as the Sissy Hawk Brigade are celebrated in such poems as “Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?” and “A Sissy Hawk Cheer” (“All-out war is still our druthers— / Fiercely fought, and fought by others.”).Trillin may never be poet laureate—certainly not while George W. Bush is in office—but his wit and his political insight produce what has been called “doggerel for the ages.”

    The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

    "The work is deeply felt...Bernstein has been there and brought it back. Bernstein is a writer." [William S. Burroughs]

    He saw the beauty of the Peruvian landscape, as well as the grimness of social conditions in the Andes, through the eyes of the Indians who are a part of it. Ernesto, the narrator of Deep Rivers, is a child with origins in two worlds. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he is brought up by Indian servants until he enters a Catholic boarding school at age 14. In this urban Spanish environment he is a misfit and a loner. The conflict of the Indian and the Spanish cultures is acted out within him as it was in the life of Arguedas. For the boy Ernesto, salvation is his world of dreams and memories. While Arguedas' poetry was published in Quechua, he invented a language for his novels in which he used native syntax with Spanish vocabulary. This makes translation into other languages extremely difficult, and Frances Horning Barraclough has done a masterful job, winning the 1978 Translation Center Award from Columbia University for her efforts.

    The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician’s trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all—death—where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight—both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role.  All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry. bird trick iv It’s all about disappearance. About a bird in a cagewith a mirror, a simple twiston the handle at the sidethat makes it come and go at the magician’s insistence. It’s all about innocence.It’s all about acceptance.It’s all about compliance.It’s all about deference.It’s all about silence. It’s all about disappearance.

    At last, just in time for his 99th birthday, a powerful overview of one of America's most beloved poets: New Directions is proud to present a swift, terrific chronological selection of Ferlinghetti's poems, spanning more than six decades of work and presenting one of modern poetry's greatest achievements.

    Here is the green and carefree world of a boy who delights in the possibilities of each day, of a child who wrings from every moment a feeling as intensely magical as it is profoundly innocent.

    Contributors include Dora Alonso, Rosario Ferré, Elena Poniatowska, Ana Lydia Vega, and Luisa Valenzuela. The resulting book is a literary tour de force, stories written by women in this hemisphere that speak to cultures throughout the world. In her Foreword, Isabel Allende states, “This anthology is so valuable; it lays open the emotions of writers who, in turn, speak for others still shrouded in silence.”

    This beautiful en face edition, superbly translated by Anna Deeny, brings to English-language readers an indispensable volume written by one of the most important living poets writing in Spanish today. Zurita was a 24-year-old student in Valparaíso when, on the morning of the coup, he was arrested, detained, and tortured. Conceived as the first text of a Dantean trilogy that includes Anteparaíso (Anteparadise) and La Vida Nueva (The New Life), Purgatory is his anguished response to Chile’s violent recent history.

    The poems in this wonderful collection touch all of the events and places that meant the most to Philip Levine. There are lyrical poems about his family and childhood, the magic of nighttime and the power of dreaming; tough poems about the heavy shift work at Detroit's auto plants, the Nazis, and bosses of all kinds; telling poems about his heroes--jazz players, artists, and working people of every description, even children. Other poems celebrate places and things he loved: the gifts of winter, dawn, a wall in Naples, an English hilltop, Andalusia. And he makes peace with Detroit: "Slow learner that I am, it took me one night/to discover that rain in New York City/is just like rain in Detroit. It gets you wet." It is a peace that comes to full fruition in a moving goodbye to his home town in the final poem in the collection, "The Last Shift."

    In addition, this beautifully conceived clothbound anthology includes 35 new poems as well as original and arresting illustrations by the author.Lang’s evocative words of love, loss, and self-empowerment have inspired millions across the globe to seek their own voice through the healing power of poetry. A definite must-have collection for all lovers of poetry and prose.   The Gift of Everything will thrill and delight fans of Lang Leav as well as those yet to discover the enchanting world of one the most celebrated poets in modern history.