Most famously, they use natural imagery to make Zen-like observations about reality. However, as this anthology reveals, there’s much more to haiku than cherry blossoms and waning moons: the verse included here is frequently erotic, funny, rude, and mischievous. Adam Kern has travelled throughout Japan to gather the best and most important examples of the genre, and his vivid and engaging translations form the basis of the Penguin Book of Haiku.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 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.

    This book brings together his poetry, prose, and letters, including "The Drunken Boat," "The Orphans' New Year," "After the Flood," and "A Season in Hell," considered by many to be his. 'Complete Works' is divided into eight "seasons" - Childhood, The Open Road, War, The Tormented Heart, The Visionary, The Damned Soul, A Few Belated Cowardices, and The Man with the Wind at His Heels - that reflect the facets of Rimbaud's life. Insightful commentary by translator and editor Paul Schmidt reveals the courage, vision, and imagination of Rimbaud's poetry and sheds light on one of the most enigmatic figures in letters.

    Together they express a philosophy, or a moral code, by which Confucius, one of the most humane thinkers of all time, believed everyone should live. Upholding the ideals of wisdom, self-knowledge, courage and love of one’s fellow man, he argued that the pursuit of virtue should be every individual’s supreme goal. And, while following the Way, or the truth, might not result in immediate or material gain, Confucius showed that it could nevertheless bring its own powerful and lasting spiritual rewards.This edition contains a detailed introduction exploring the concepts of the original work, a bibliography and glossary and appendices on Confucius himself, The Analects and the disciples who compiled them. 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.

    A rich collection of ten poems, two essays, and two dozen of Mary Oliver's classic works on flowers, trees, and plants of all sorts, elegantly illustrated, Blue Iris is the essential companion to Owls and Other Fantasies, one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of 2003 and a Book Sense 76 selection.

    Bly's thesis is that great works of art contain leaps within themselves: 'A poet who is leaping makes a jump from an object soaked in unconscious substance to an object or idea soaked in conscious psychic substance.' The greatest works of art carry the richest associations between the conscious and unconscious, and Bly notes with pleasure the resurgence of abundant leaping in modern poetry.

    Then he started writing down his conversations. Zoom, phone, yelled heart-to-hearts from kitchen window to pavement. This book is the result. A paperback account of one man’s experience of the most peculiar moment in our recent history.

    Collects the best of Anne Sexton's memoirs and prose reflections on her development as a poet

    The exquisitely rendered poems in this, her fourth collection, reach back to an early affinity for proverbs and riddles and the proto-poetry found in those forms. Taking on epic subjects—time and memory, metamorphosis and indeterminacy, the complicated nature of beauty, wordless states of being—each poem explores a bright, crisp, singular moment of awareness or shock or revelation.  Purpura reminds us that short poems, never merely brief nor fragmentary, can transcend their size, like small dogs, espresso, a drop of mercury.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

    W. Norton in 1993, now out of print. In Walking Light, Dunn discusses the relationship between art and sport, the role of imagination in writing poetry, and the necessity for surprise and discovery when writing a poem. Humorous, intelligent and accessible, Walking Light is a book that will appeal to writers, readers, and teachers of poetry.Stephen Dunn is the author of eleven collection of poetry. He teaches writing and literature at the Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey, and lives in Port Republic, New Jersey.

    He wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets. He established his literary career by submitting poetry and prose to various newspapers and magazines. Between January 1824 and his graduation in 1825, he had published nearly 40 minor poems. About 24 of them appeared in the short-lived Boston periodical The United States Literary Gazette. After graduating in 1825, he was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. The story, possibly apocryphal, is that an influential trustee, Benjamin Orr, had been so impressed Longfellow's translation of Horace that he was hired under the condition that he travel to Europe to study French, Spanish and Italian. When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard University. He began publishing his poetry, including Voices of the Night in 1839 and Ballads and Other Poems, which included his famous poem The Village Blacksmith, in 1841. His other works include Paul Revere's Ride, A Psalm of Life, The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline and Christmas Bells.

    These poems speak of the universal experiences of the heart and are brought to life with Chris's exquisite, intricate artwork.This perfect gift features famous poems, old and new, and a few surprises. Classic verses sit alongside the modern to create the ultimate collection. Includes poems from Neil Gaiman, Nikita Gill, Carol Ann Duffy, E. E. Cummings, Shakespeare, Leonard Cohen, Derek Walcott, Hollie McNish, Kate Tempest, John Betjeman and Roger McGough and many more.

    A beautiful little book of short, simple, classic and contemporary poems to dip into, to make life feel better.From Shakespeare and Shelley to Lemn Sissay and Kate Tempest, poets have always been the best at showing us we're not alone, however sh*t things might seem.Funny, reflective, romantic and life-affirming - here is an anthology of poems to remind you to keep on looking at the stars: from that first 'what the f*ck' moment to empowering you to do something about this sh*t and ultimately realising that life is still beautiful after all.Rediscover old favourites and find some new treasures - you might be surprised just how much poetry can help.

    In this self-eulogy written in the final years of Mahmoud Darwish's life, Palestine becomes a metaphor for the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment.Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. His poetry collections include Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? and A River Dies of Thirst (Archipelago Books). In 2001 Darwish was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

    None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.