He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened. Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.

    And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by Keillor for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m." Good Poems includes verse about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendance. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. It's a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry whether they know it or not.

    Delightfully nonsensical, they in fact make the best of sense, accomplishing what only real poetry can -- allowing the reader to discover what he didn't know he already knew or felt.

    The farmer and his land, marriage and the family, form the central images. The long title poem, perhaps the finest single work in the book, is a grave, moving, and beauti- fully wrought love poem. The shorter lyrics have an equal beauty and perfection of phrase. And there is humor, too, notably in several new poems about 'Mad Farmer, ' who first made his appearance in Farming: A Hand Book, and who advises us here to 'every day do something that won't compute.'

    Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

    For decades it drew enough poets, students, and general readers to keep Jeffers—in spite of the almost total academic neglect that followed his fame in the 1920s and 1930s—a force in American poetry.Now scholars are at last beginning to recognize that he created a significant alternative to the High Modernism of Pound, Eliot, and Stevens. Similarly, contemporary poets who have returned to the narrative poem acknowledge Jeffers to be a major poet, while those exploring California and the American West as literary regions have found in him a foundational figure. Moreover, Jeffers stands as a crucial precursor to contemporary attempts to rethink our practical, ethical, and spiritual obligations to the natural world and the environment.These developments underscore the need for a new selected edition that would, like the 1938 volume, include the long narratives that were to Jeffers his major work, along with the more easily anthologized shorter poems. This new selected edition differs from its predecessor in several ways. When Jeffers shaped the 1938 Selected Poetry, he drew from his most productive period (1917-37), but his career was not over yet. In the quarter century that followed, four more volumes of his poetry were published. This new selected edition draws from these later volumes, and it includes a sampling of the poems Jeffers left unpublished, along with several prose pieces in which he reflects on his poetry and poetics.This edition also adopts the texts of the recently completed The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (five volumes, Stanford, 1988-2000). When the poems were originally published, copy editors and typesetters adjusted Jeffers's punctuation, often obscuring the rhythm and pacing of what he actually wrote, and at points even obscuring meaning and nuance. This new selected edition, then, is a much broader, more accurate representation of Jeffers's career than the previous Selected Poetry.Reviews of volumes inThe Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers"A masterful job of contemporary scholarly editing, this book begins an edition intended to clarify a 'Jeffers canon,' establishing for times to come the verse legacy of a poet who looked on all things with the eyes of eternity."—San Francisco Chronicle"This edition will be standard . . . a tribute and justice to a poet whose independent strength has survived to challenge personal and public canons."—Virginia Quarterly Review"Jeffers is the last of the major poets of his generation—Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Moore, Eliot—to get his collected poems. Now that the job is at hand, it is done very well. . . . Tim Hunt has been painstaking in his editorial preparation and judicious in his presentation. . . . A great poet is ready for his due."—Philadelphia Inquirer"Few American poets are treated as well by publishers as Jeffers is by Stanford University Press. . . . These poems represent a distinctive voice in the American canon, and it is good to have them so wonderfully set forth."—Christian Century

    Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

    No Art is an exhilarating argument both with America and with poetry itself, in which online slang is juxtaposed with academic idiom, philosophy collides with advertising, and the language of medicine and the military is overlaid with echoes of Whitman and Keats. Here, clichés are cracked open and made new, made strange, and formal experiments disclose new possibilities of thought and feeling. No Art confirms Ben Lerner as one of the most searching and ambitious poets working today.

    Metaphoric and dreamy, this tale of transformation arises from Smith's knowledge of Mapplethorpe as a young man and as a mature artist, his close relationship with his patron and friend, Sam Wagstaff, and his years surviving AIDS and his ascent into death. Rich in detail, it is filled with references to Mapplethorpe's work and shows the man beneath the persona. Set against photographs by Mapplethorpe, the work emerges as a hymn, a prayer, a fable wishing him Godspeed on his latest journey."She was once our savage Rimbaud, but suffering has turned her into our St. John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion."--Edmund White

    He is proof that poetry will find its writer."—Mary-Louise Parker, actress"Ryan Adams, one of America's most consistently interesting singer/songwriters, has written a passionate, arresting, and entertaining book of verse. Fans are going to love it, and newcomers will be pleased and startled by his intensity and originality."—Stephen King, on Infinity BluesRyan Adams may be acclaimed primarily for albums such as Cardinology, Heartbreaker, Gold (which includes the popular hit songs "When the Stars Go Blue" and "New York, New York"), and Easy Tiger, but the world-renowned singer/songwriter has always been a poet and fiction writer at heart.With the release of Hello Sunshine, Ryan continues to break literary ground beyond what he established with his wildly popular first book, Infinity Blues. Ryan's new work provides perhaps an even deeper insight into the man than is revealed through the songs that have resonated with his hundreds of thousands of fans.Where his debut was characterized by the bitterness of heartbreak, Hello Sunshine is a graceful, sensual assertion of the other side of the emotional coin. This is a 2009 fever dream—inside Ryan's heart and mind—replete with unforgettable verse that will shock and delight those expecting a mere continuation of where Infinity Blues left off.Ryan Adams is known for his prolific nature, which in the last ten years has resulted in various international hit albums. Ryan has also produced Willie Nelson's album Songbird and contributed to records by Toots and the Maytals, Beth Orton, the Wallflowers, Counting Crows, and Cowboy Junkies; additionally, he has appeared on CMT's Crossroads with Elton John.

    The book was awarded the Eminescu Gold Medal' in 2000, when Eminescu was declared 'UNESCO-Year-2000-Poet-Of-The-Year'. The volume includes some the 'national' poet's time-honored gems like Luceafarul/The Evening Star, Glossa, Scrisoarea I / First Epistle Satire, Stelele-n Cer/Stars in the Sky, La Steaua/Onto the Star, among others.

    For this collection, James Dickey has selected from his four published books all those poems that reflect his truest interests and his growth as an artist. And thereto he has added more than a score of new poems-in effect, a new book in themselves-that have not been previously published in volume form. Specifically, Poems 1957-1967 contains 15 of the 24 poems that were included in his first book, Into the Stone (1960); 25 of the 36 that made up Drowning With Others (1962); 22 of the 24 in Helmets (1964); the entire 22 in the National Book Award winning Buckdancer's Choice (1965); and, under the titles Sermon and Falling, the exciting new poems mentioned above. Seldom can the word "great" be used of the work of a contemporary in any art. But surely it applies to the poems of James Dickey. To test that statement, read this book. "Dickey has defined the poet as an 'intensified man.' These collected poems of his 44th year are a record of a lot of valid and immediate experience-the testimony of a man intensifying himself honestly and skillfully."-William Meredith, New York Times Book Review "One of the things we should mean when we call a poet 'good' is that his work returns us to the world and not merely to the poet. Dickey gives the moment a natural energy, not the energy of the poet's insistence upon his own personality but the energy of a vast life outside the poet which moves all things through one another and through him."-Michael Goldman, The Nation

    Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.

    Bigotry, poverty, social injustice, and sexual squalor in the Deep South—hallmarks of one of the most daring and phenomenally popular bestselling novelists of the twentieth-century. Here, in one volume, are three of his best-known works. “None of [his] characters would be caught dead in a novel by John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, or Eudora Welty” (The Daily Beast).  Tobacco Road: The Great Depression compromises the morals of a poor farming family in Georgia. This classic, a Modern Library 100 Best Novels selection, was adapted for the stage in 1933 and made into a 1941 film directed by John Ford.  God’s Little Acre: Desperation takes its toll on a deluded Southern farmer obsessed with sex, violence, and the promise of gold. Banned in Boston, censored in Georgia, and prosecuted by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, this international bestseller was adapted into a film in 1958.  A Place Called Estherville: In the pre-civil-rights-era South, a biracial brother and sister move to a small segregated town to care for their aunt, only to be subjected to systematic racism, sexual violence, and prejudice.   “What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records,” said the Chicago Tribune of the author who earned his reputation by writing about sex, racism, and religious hypocrisy when no one else was. Caldwell remains one of the most widely translated American authors of all time.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

    From his Deep Image-inspired lyrics to his Whtimanesque renderings of Neruda, Vallejo, and other Latin American poets, and from his heartfelt reflections on life, love, and loss in his native Ohio to the celebrated prose poems (set frequently in Italy) that marked the end of his important career, Above the River gathers the complete work of a modern master. It also features a moving and insightful introduction by Donald Hall, Wright's longtime friend and colleague.