Red Stilts
Ted Kooser - 2020
S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser at the top of his imaginative and storytelling powers. Here are the richly metaphorical, imagistically masterful, clear and accessible poems for which he has become widely known. Kooser writes for an audience of everyday readers and believes poets "need to write poetry that doesn't make people feel stupid." Each poem in Red Stilts strives to reveal the complex beauties of the ordinary, of the world that's right under our noses. Right under Kooser's nose is rural America, most specifically the Great Plains, with its isolated villages, struggling economy, hard-working people and multiple beauties that surpass everything wrecked, wrong, or in error.
Enola Gay
Mark Levine - 2000
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.
Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides
Stephen Dobyns - 1999
"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.
A Heart Full of Love
Javan - 1990
0-935906-02-9$5.00 / Javan Press
The Life and Works of Vincent Van Gogh
Janice Anderson - 1994
The quick brushstrokes of the Impressionists suited his temperament, as did his heavy use of impasto. This helpful volume shows many of van Gogh's best loved works, including the famous self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear, painted after he had cut off part of his ear in a fit of madness, Sunflowers, which were to him a symbol of power and beneficence, and The Starry Night, a painting which clearly expresses intensity and mental turbulence.
Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels
Tom Devlin - 2015
In 1989, a prescient Chris Oliveros created D+Q with a simple mandate to publish the worlds best cartoonists. Thanks to his taste-making visual acumen and the support of over fifty cartoonists from the past two decades, D+Q has grown from an annual stapled anthology into one of the world's leading graphic novel publishers. With hundreds of pages of comics by Drawn & Quarterly cartoonists, D+Q: 25 features new work by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael DeForge, Tom Gauld, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, James Sturm, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi alongside rare and never-before-seen work from Guy Delisle, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, John Porcellino, Art Spiegelman, and Adrian Tomine, and a cover by Tom Gauld. Editor Tom Devlin digs into the company archives for rare photographs, correspondence, and comics; assembles biographies, personal reminiscences, and interviews with key D+Q staff; and curates essays by Margaret Atwood, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Deb Olin Unferth, Heather O'Neill, Lemony Snicket, Chris Ware, and noted comics scholars.D+Q: 25 is the rare chance to witness a literary movement in progress; how a group of dedicated artists and their publisher changed the future of a century-old medium.
What I Mean When I Say Miss You, Love You and Fuck You
Robert M. Drake - 2019
each person will hurt the only way they know how. will love... the only way they've been taught to love. not everyone will see things the way you do. feel things the way you do. and you can't force your beliefs on people either because that's not love. that's not having compassion for other people. we all have our own right to see the world with our own eyes, therefore, understanding is key. and I don't mean saying it, saying you understand someone without putting yourself in their shoes. without respecting their views. you have to really know yourself and your environment to understand why people are the way they are. you have to go through enough pain to keep your heart open. to be compassionate towards other people. understanding is key and not everyone will understand you and that's okay. but the point is, to remember how all of us are different and try to understand that not all of us are meant to be the same. and you should never believe you understand it all because believe me, there will always be something to learn. there will always be something that will take your breath away. something that will make you question everything--your own beliefs and your own way of thinking. people, things and places, like life, are always evolving and you must evolve with them... if you ever want a fair shot in accepting your flaws and the flaws of other people. and before I finish, I just want you to know... that the beauty of it all is this, the more you understand people the better you will understand yourself. from the known and to the depths of your soul... people will always shape you. all that you are is all you've experienced with them. and dont ever forget... that the people you love will always have a piece of your heart. they will always be with you... no matter what.
Granta 149: Europe: Strangers in the Land (The Magazine of New Writing)
Sigrid Rausing - 2019
It harks back to the 1989 issue of the same name, themed around the response to the fall of the Berlin wall. Through the lenses of exile and migration, we ask ourselves what it means to be European now. Featuring a photoessay by Bruno Fert who steps inside the temporary homes of refugees in camps in Greece and France.
Bad Bad
Chelsey Minnis - 2007
. . indulgent and melancholy . . . moments of extreme morbidity and anger."—Arielle Greenberg"Her poems take some getting used to."—Robert Strong"Many won't find her . . . acceptable at all...—Cole Swensen
Japanese Haiku
Matsuo Bashō - 1955
Beloved translator Peter Beilenson’s goal was twofold: to craft a book of haiku accessible to anyone, and to render his best guess at what the poets would have written in English. His translations preserve the sublime spirit of each verse, conjuring vivid visual and emotional impressions in spare words.Haiku icon Basho is represented amply here, as are imagery-virtuoso Buson and wry, warm, painfully human Issa. The verses of Shiki, Joso, Kyorai, Kikaku, Chora, Gyodai, Kakei, Izen, and others also appear, all illuminated by lovely woodblock prints. Ranging from exquisite (In the sea surf edge/Mingling with the bright small shells…/Bush-clover petals –Basho) to bittersweet (Dead my fine hopes/And dry my dreaming, but still…/Iris, blue each spring –Shushiki) to silly (Dim the grey cow comes/Mooing, mooing, and mooing/Out of the morning mist –Issa), this collection will stir your senses and your heart.
Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music
Alvin Lucier - 2012
Lucier explains in detail how each piece is made, unlocking secrets of the composers' style and technique. The book as a whole charts the progress of American experimental music from the 1950s to the present, covering such topics as indeterminacy, electronics, and minimalism, as well as radical innovations in music for the piano, string quartet, and opera. Clear, approachable and lively, Music 109 is Lucier's indispensable guide to late 20th-century composition. No previous musical knowledge is required, and all readers are welcome.
Slamming Open the Door
Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno - 2009
These poems evoke that keenly, seeking justice but transcending judgment as they grieve loss, celebrate love, and find healing.
Landscape at the End of the Century
Stephen Dunn - 1991
Dunn's landscape at the end of the century embraces the spectrum of urgencies and obsessions that we live with and for. It's a landscape that we share with citizens and spies, revelers and mourners, women who weep, men who keep secrets, and especially with the poet himself.
What the Water Gave Me (UK)
Pascale Petit - 2010
Some of the poems are close interpretations of Kahlo's work, while others are parallels or version homages where Petit draws on her experience as a visual artist to create alternative 'paintings' with words. More than just a verse biography, this collection explores how Kahlo transformed trauma into art after the artist's near-fatal bus accident. Petit, with her vivid style, her feel for nature and her understanding of pain and redemption, fully inhabits Kahlo's world. Each poem is an evocation of 'how art works on the pain spectrum', laced with splashes of ferocious colour.