The White Silence


Jack London - 1899
    It was subsequently included in The Son of the Wolf, a story collection published in 1900.The White Silence is set in the unforgiving winter landscape of Yukon Territory, Canada. The story chronicles the travels of three people across the Northland Trail on the Yukon, as they try to reach civilization before spring. The story deals with the fragile relationship between man and nature, and also between man and animal. Its title is a phrase that London used frequently in his descriptions of the frozen northern landscapes in his stories.

The Maples Stories


John Updike - 1980
    Over the next two decades, he returned to these characters again and again, tracing their years together raising children, finding moments of intermittent happiness, and facing the heartbreak of infidelity and estrangement. Seventeen Maples stories were collected in 1979 in a paperback edition titled Too Far to Go, prompted by a television adaptation. Now those stories appear in hardcover for the first time, with the addition of a later story, “Grandparenting,” which returns us to the Maples’s lives long after their wrenching divorce.

Slow Learner: Early Stories


Thomas Pynchon - 1984
    The collection consists of five short stories: 'The Small Rain', 'Lowlands', 'Entropy', 'Under the Rose', and 'The Secret Integration', as well as an introduction written by Pynchon himself for the 1984 publication. The five stories were originally published individually in various literary magazines but in 1984, after Pynchon had achieved greater recognition, Slow Learner was published to collect and copyright the stories into one volume. The introduction also offers a rare insight into Pynchon's own views on his work and influences.

Selected Poems


Gwendolyn Brooks - 1963
    This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more—including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage—including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The Dream Songs


John Berryman - 1969
    Of The Dream Songs, A. Alvarez wrote in The Observer, "A major achievement. He has written an elegy on his brilliant generation and, in the process, he has also written an elegy on himself."The Dream Songs are eighteen-line poems in three stanzas. Each individual poem is lyric and organized around an emotion provoked by an everyday event. The tone of the poems is less surreal than associational or intoxicated. The principal character of the song cycle is Henry, who is both the narrator of the poems and referred to by the narrator in the poems.

The Great Modern Poets: An Anthology of the Best Poets and Poetry Since 1900


Michael Schmidt - 2006
    Over 100 complete and unabridged poems are accompanied by a concise text that provides insight, observations, and a historical context for each poet and their work.

C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems


Constantinos P. Cavafy - 1972
    P. Cavafy (1863 - 1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and a collected edition of his poems was not published until after his death. Now, however, he is regarded as the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in modern European literature.Here is an extensively revised edition of the acclaimed translations of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, which capture Cavafy's mixture of formal and idiomatic use of language and preserve the immediacy of his frank treatment of homosexual themes, his brilliant re-creation of history, and his astute political ironies. The resetting of the entire edition has permitted the translators to review each poem and to make alterations where appropriate. George Savidis has revised the notes according to his latest edition of the Greek text.About the first edition: The best [English version] we are likely to see for some time.--James Merrill, The New York Review of Books [Keeley and Sherrard] have managed the miracle of capturing this elusive, inimitable, unforgettable voice. It is the most haunting voice I know in modern poetry.--Walter Kaiser, The New Republic ?

Strong is Your Hold


Galway Kinnell - 2006
    Included also is "When the Towers Fell," his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation": "Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love."

Selected Poetry


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1954
    This is to be the first verse translation of Goethe's poetry in penguin classics and replaces Luke's own 1964 prose translation which has been in print continously since then (life sales 43,000).

The Unaccompanied


Simon Armitage - 2017
    The pieces in this multi-textured and moving volume are set against a backdrop of economic recession and social division, where mass media, the mass market and globalisation have made alienation a commonplace experience and where the solitary imagination drifts and conjures.The Unaccompanied documents a world on the brink, a world of unreliable seasons and unstable coordinates, where Odysseus stalks the aisles of cut-price supermarkets in search of direction, where the star of Bethlehem rises over industrial Yorkshire, and where alarm bells for ailing communities go unheeded or unheard. Looking for certainty the mind gravitates to recollections of upbringing and family, only to encounter more unrecoverable worlds, shaped as ever through Armitage's gifts for clarity and detail as well as his characteristic dead-pan wit. Insightful, relevant and empathetic, these poems confirm The Unaccompanied as a bold new statement of intent by one of our most respected and recognised living poets.'A writer who has had a game-changing influence on his contemporaries.' Guardian'Armitage is that rare beast: a poet whose work is ambitious, accomplished and complex as well as popular.' Sunday Telegraph'The best poet of his generation.' Craig Raine, Observer

The Rediscovery of Man


Cordwainer Smith - 1975
    This brilliant collection, often cited as the first of its kind, explores fundamental questions about ourselves and our treatment of the universe (and other beings) around us and ultimately what it means to be human.Contents: * Cordwainer Smith: The Shaper of Myths (1975) • essay by John J. Pierce [as by J. J. Pierce] * The Instrumentality of Mankind (timeline) (1975) • essay by John J. Pierce * Scanners Live in Vain [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1950) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: meet Martel, a human altered to be part machine-a scanner-to be able withstand the trauma space travel has on the body. Despite the stigma placed on him and his kind, he is able to regrasp his humanity to save another; Fantasy Book #6 ’50 * The Lady Who Sailed The Soul [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1960) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith, Genevieve Linebarger; Galaxy Apr ’60 * The Game of Rat and Dragon [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1955) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Oct ’55 * The Burning of the Brain [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1958) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; If Oct ’58 * Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1959) / short story by Cordwainer Smith, Genevieve Linebarger; Amazing Apr ’59 * The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1964) / short story by Cordwainer Smith; Amazing May ’64 * The Dead Lady of Clown Town [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1964) / novella by Cordwainer Smith: get to know the underpeople-animals genetically altered to exist in human form, to better serve their human owners-and meet D'Joan, a dog-woman who will make readers question who is more human: the animals who simply want to be recognized as having the same right to life, or the people who created them to be inferior; Galaxy Aug ’64 * Under Old Earth [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1966) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Feb ’66 * Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Jun ’61 * Alpha Ralpha Boulevard [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith; Galaxy Jun ’61 * The Ballad of Lost C'mell [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1962) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: the notion of love being the most important equalizer there is, is put into action when an underperson, C'mell, falls in love with Lord Jestocost. Who is to say her love for him is not as valid as any true-born human? She might be of cat descent, but she is all woman!; Galaxy Oct ’62 * A Planet Named Shayol [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (1961) / novelette by Cordwainer Smith: it is an underperson of bull descent, and beings so mutilated and deformed from their original human condition to be now considered demons of a hellish land, who retain and display the most humanity when Mankind commits the most inhumane action of all; Galaxy Oct ’61aka: Paul M. A. Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Paul Linebarger, Felix C. Forrest, Carmichael Smith, Kordvejner Smit..

Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow


Ted Hughes - 1970
    In it, he found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new power and coherence. A. Alvarez wrote in the Observer, 'Each fresh encounter with despair becomes the occasion for a separate, almost funny, story in which natural forces and creatures, mythic figures, even parts of the body, act out their special roles, each endowed with its own irrepressible life. With Crow, Hughes joins the select band of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructive reality we inhabit.'

Best of the Best American Poetry


Robert Pinsky - 2008
    The Best American Poetry is the most prestigious poetry publication in the United States and has been so almost from its inception in 1988. Hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced), and obsessively scrutinized, every volume in the series consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet—from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Jorie Graham, Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Glück, James Tate, Adrienne Rich, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1,875 poems that have appeared in The Best American Poetry, here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition. Each volume in the series is represented, and the result is a pleasure-giving book of twice-honored poems that readers will find indispensable. The Best of the Best American Poetry is proof positive that the art form is flourishing. The volume is a reminder, too, of the role this anthology series has played in the resurgence of interest in American poetry in the last quarter century. With dazzling introductory essays by guest editor Robert Pinsky and series editor David Lehman, The Best of the Best American Poetry includes up-to-date biographies of the poets, along with the comments they made when the poems were originally selected. This is an invaluable addition to the cherished series.

Delights and Shadows


Ted Kooser - 2004
    Critics call him a "haiku-like imagist" and his poems have been compared to Chekov's short stories. In Delights and Shadows, Kooser draws inspiration from the overlooked details of daily life. Quotidian objects like a pegboard, creamed corn and a forgotten salesman's trophy help reveal the remarkable in what before was a merely ordinary world."Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance."-PoetryTed Kooser is the author of eight collections of poems and a prose memoir. He lives on a small farm in rural Nebraska.

Lyrical Ballads


William Wordsworth - 1798
    They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure - William Wordsworth, from the Advertisment prefacing the original 1798 edition. When it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to what had been voiced before. For Wordsworth, as he so clearly stated in his celebrated preface to the 1800 edition (also reproduced here), the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, and not the poem itself. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.