Collected Stories


Raymond Carver - 1985
    In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations. Beneath his pared-down surfaces run disturbing, violent undercurrents. Suggestive rather than explicit, and seeming all the more powerful for what is left unsaid, Carver’s stories were held up as exemplars of a new school in American fiction known as minimalism or “dirty realism,” a movement whose wide influence continues to this day. Carver’s stories were brilliant in their detachment and use of the oblique, ambiguous gesture, yet there were signs of a different sort of sensibility at work. In books such as Cathedral and the later tales included in the collected stories volume Where I’m Calling From, Carver revealed himself to be a more expansive writer than in the earlier published books, displaying Chekhovian sympathies toward his characters and relying less on elliptical effects.In gathering all of Carver’s stories, including early sketches and posthumously discovered works, The Library of America’s Collected Stories provides a comprehensive overview of Carver’s career as we have come to know it: the promise of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and the breakthrough of What We Talk About, on through the departures taken in Cathedral and the pathos of the late stories. But it also prompts a fresh consideration of Carver by presenting Beginners, an edition of the manuscript of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that Carver submitted to Gordon Lish, his editor and a crucial influence on his development. Lish’s editing was so extensive that at one point Carver wrote him an anguished letter asking him not to publish the book; now, for the first time, readers can read both the manuscript and published versions of the collection that established Carver as a major American writer. Offering a fascinating window into the complex, fraught relationship between writer and editor, Beginners expands our sense of Carver and is essential reading for anyone who cares about his achievement.Contents--What We Talk About When We Talk About LoveWhy Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderMr. Coffee and Mr. FixitGazeboI Could See the Smallest ThingsSacksThe BathTell the Women We’re GoingAfter the DenimSo Much Water So Close to HomeThe Third Thing That Killed My Father OffA Serious TalkThe CalmPopular MechanicsEverything Stuck to HimWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LoveOne More ThingStories from FiresThe LieThe CabinHarry’s DeathThe PheasantCathedralFeathersChef’s HousePreservationThe CompartmentA Small, Good ThingVitaminsCarefulWhere I’m Calling FromThe TrainFeverThe BridleCathedralFrom Where I’m Calling FromBoxesWhoever Was Using This BedIntimacyMenudoElephantBlackbird PieErrandOther FictionThe HairThe AficionadosPoseidon and CompanyBright Red ApplesFrom The Augustine NotebooksKindlingWhat Would You Like to See?DreamsVandalsCall If You Need MeSelected EssaysMy Father’s LifeOn WritingFiresAuthor’s Note to Where I’m Calling FromBeginners (The Manuscript Version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)Why Don’t You Dance?ViewfinderWhere Is Everyone?GazeboWant to See Something?The FlingA Small, Good ThingTell the Women We’re GoingIf It Please YouSo Much Water So Close to HomeDummyPieThe CalmMineDistanceBeginnersOne More Thing--loa.org

A Heap O' Livin'


Edgar A. Guest - 1916
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Best American Essays 2008


Adam Gopnik - 2008
    In his introduction to this year’s edition, Adam Gopnik finds that great essays have “text and inner text, personal story and larger point, the thing you’re supposed to be paying attention to and some other thing you’re really interested in.” David Sedaris’s quirky, hilarious account of a childhood spent yearning for a home where history was properly respected is also a poignant rumination on surviving the passage of time. In “The Ecstasy of Influence,” Jonathan Lethem ponders the intriguing phenomenon of cryptomnesia: a person believes herself to be creating something new but is really recalling similar, previously encountered work. Ariel Levy writes in “The Lesbian Bride’s Handbook” of her efforts to plan a party that accurately reflects her lifestyle (which she notes is “not black-tie!”) as she confronts head-on what it means to be married. And Lauren Slater is off to “Tripp Lake,” recounting the one summer she spent at camp—a summer of color wars, horseback riding, and the “wild sadness” that settled in her when she was away from home. In the end, Gopnik believes that the only real ambition of an essayist is to be a master of our common life. This latest installment of The Best American Essays is full of writing that reveals, in Gopnik’s words, “the breath of things as they are.”

Why We Need Love


Simon Van Booy - 2010
    In Why We Need Love, Simon Van Booy curates an enlightening collection of excerpts, passages, and paintings, presenting works by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Blake, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, O. Henry, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, E. E. Cummings, Anaïs Nin, Marc Chagall, J. Krishnamurti, and others.Provocative and eye-opening, Why We Need Love is one of three slim selections of philosophical texts and excerpts—along with Why We Fight and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter—introduced and contextualized by acclaimed author Simon Van Booy (Love Begins in Winter, The Secret Lives of People in Love).

Surrealist Love Poems


Mary Ann Caws - 2001
    And images of a fantastic idyll complete with falling stars, the sound of the sea, and beautiful countryside. In the hands of Surrealists, though, love poetry also includes gravediggers and murderers, dice and garbage, snakeskin purses and "the drunken kisses of cyclones." Surrealism, the movement founded in the 1920s on the ashes of Dada's nihilism, embraced absurdity, contradiction, and, to a supreme extent, passion and desire. From André Breton's battle cry of "Mad Love" to the quiet lyricism of Robert Desnos, Surrealist writers and artists obsessively expressed the permutations of that fundamental human state, love, and they did so with the vocabulary of natural and unnatural worlds, the explicit language of sex, and a great deal of humor.Surrealist Love Poems brings together sixty poems by Surrealists who charged their work with all forms of eroticism. Expertly and energetically edited by Mary Ann Caws, this collection seeks to demonstrate the truth of Breton's words, that "the embrace of poetry like that of bodies / As long as it lasts / Shuts out all the woes of the world.""Erotic, impassioned and necrophilic, the sixty works gathered in Surrealist Love Poems celebrate the idea of obsessive and transformative love. 'I want to sleep with you side by side. . . . Stretched out on your shadow / Hammered by your tongue / To die in a rabbit's rotting teeth / Happy' writes Joyce Mansour. . . . Caws places poems by major surrealist writers like André Breton and Paul Eluard, along with the poetry of Picasso, Dalí, and Frida Kahlo, side by side with fourteen lushly printed and alluring black-and-white photos by the likes of Man Ray, Lee Miller, and Claude Cahun."—Publishers Weekly

Curses and Wishes: Poems


Carl Adamshick - 2011
    The poet has faith in economy and trusts in images to transfer knowledge that speech cannot. In Curses and Wishes the short, simple lines add up to a thoughtful book possessed with lyrical melancholy, a harmony of sadness and joy that sings: May happiness be a wheel, a lit throne, spinning / in the vast pinprick of darkness. By the close of this ambitious work the poet has inspired readers to see the multifaceted effects of our human connections.

Anterooms


Richard Wilbur - 2010
    A yellow-striped, green measuring worm opens Anterooms, a collection filled with poems that are classic Wilbur, that play with myth and form and examine the human condition through reflections on nature and love. Anterooms also features masterly translations from Mallarmé’s “The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe,” a previously unpublished Verlaine poem, two poems by Joseph Brodsky, and thirty-seven of Symphosius’s clever Latin riddles. Whether he is considering a snow shovel and domestic life or playfully considering that “Inside homeowner is the word meow,” Wilbur’s new collection is sure to delight everyone from longtime devotees to casual poetry readers. Exploring the interplay between the everyday and the mythic, the sobering and the lighthearted, Anterooms is nothing less than an event in poetic history and a remarkable addition to a master’s oeuvre.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003


Laura Furman - 2003
    Henry Prize stories collection has offered an exciting selection of the best stories published in hundreds of literary magazines every year. Such classic works of American literature as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1927); William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939); Carson McCuller’s A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (1943); Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (1949); J.D. Salinger’s For Esme with Love and Squalor (1963); John Cheever’s The Country Husband (1956) ; and Flannery O’Conner’s Everything that Rises Must Converge (1963) all were O. Henry Prize stories. An accomplished new series editor--novelist and short story writer Laura Furman--has read more than a thousand stories to identify the 20 winners, each one a pleasure to read today, each one a potential classic. The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 also contains brief essays from each of the three distinguished judges on their favorite story, and comments from the prize-winning writers on what inspired their stories. There is nothing like the ever rich, surprising, and original O. Henry collection for enjoying the contemporary short story.The Thing in the Forest A. S. Byatt The Shell Collector Anthony Doerr Burn Your Maps Robyn Jay Leff Lush Bradford Morrow God’s Goodness Marjorie Kemper Bleed Blue in Indonesia Adam Desnoyers The Story Edith Pearlman Swept Away T. Coraghessan Boyle Meanwhile Ann Harleman Three Days. A Month. More. Douglas Light The High Road Joan Silber Election Eve Evan S. Connell Irish Girl Tim Johnston What Went Wrong Tim O’Brien The American Embassy Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Kissing William Kittredge Sacred Statues William Trevor Two Words Molly Giles Fathers Alice Munro Train Dreams Denis Johnson

The Norton Anthology of American Literature: American Literature 1865-1914 (Volume C)


Nina Baym - 1979
    This volume—Volume C, the third out of five—covers American literature from 1820 to 1865.

Contemporary American Poetry


A. Poulin Jr. - 1975
    The alphabetically arranged collection provides a generous sampling of each poet with a photo, biographical sketches, and bibliographies.

Seven Notebooks: Poems


Campbell McGrath - 2008
    Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incanta­tory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art—to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.

The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories


Fritz Leiber - 2016
    There's a greater emphasis than usual on Golden Age writers (just the way it came together) -- but we have one original story as well, a posthumous collaboration with H.B. Fyfe, finishing a really terrific but not-quite-done tale he had been working on before his death. It's a bit reminiscent of James Tiptree, Jr.'s best work -- but predates Tiptree by a couple of decades. And we have novels by Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth, Murray Leinster, E. Everett Evans, and Donald Wollheim...not to mention part 2 of our serialization of Tony Rothman's mammoth 2013 novel, Firebird. And a ton of great short stories. 36 works in all, more than 1900 pages of great reading!ANGELS IN THE JETS, by Jerome BixbyA CODE FOR SAM, by Lester del ReySTAR SHIP, by Poul AndersonTHE WELL-OILED MACHINE, by H.B. FyfeJACK OF NO TRADES, by Evelyn E. SmithTHE GRAVITY BUSINESS, by James E. GunnDOOMSDAY EVE, by Robert Moore WilliamsMASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, by Robert SilverbergFALCONS OF NARABEDLA, by Marion Zimmer BradleyNEW LAMPS, by Robert Moore WilliamsTHE PIRATES OF ZAN, by Murray LeinsterOUT OF THE IRON WOMB!, by Poul AndersonLATER THAN YOU THINK, by Fritz LeiberTHE PLANET MAPPERS, by E. Everett EvansAFTERGLOW, by H.B. Fyfe and John Gregory BetancourtSHIPPING CLERK, by William MorrisonCONTAGION, by Katherine MacLeanTHE LIGHT ON PRECIPICE PEAK, by Stephen TallTHE LUCKIEST MAN IN DENV, by Simon EisnerON THE FOURTH PLANET, by J.F. BoneBIMMIE SAYS, by Sydney Van ScyocSWEET TOOTH, by Robert F. YoungSEARCH THE SKY, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. KornbluthSTAR, BRIGHT, by Mark CliftonHOT PLANET, by Hal ClementTWO WEEKS IN AUGUST, by Frank M. RobinsonTHE ALIEN, by Raymond F. JonesBODYGUARD, by Christopher GrimmJAYWALKER, by Ross RocklynneSECOND CHILDHOOD, by Clifford D. SimakOF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS, by William TennPOLLONY UNDIVERTED, by Sydney Van ScyocDELAY IN TRANSIT, by F. L. WallaceA GIFT FROM EARTH, by Manly BanisterONE AGAINST THE MOON, by Donald A. WollheimSpecial Feature: FIREBIRD, by Tony Rothman [Part 2 of 3]If you enjoy this volume of classic stories, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the 270+ other entries in this series, including science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, adventure, horror, westerns -- and much, much more!

101 Great American Poems


The American Poetry and Literacy ProjectCarl Sandburg - 1998
    S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.

Aim For The Head: The Zombie Hunters Guide To Poetry


Rob Sturma - 2011
    TV nerds have "The Walking Dead." Fiction fans have World War Z. Now, a cross-section of some of the best contemporary poets from the stage and the page rise up and shamble their way through an anthology of post-apocalyptic zombie poetry edited by Write Bloody author and GeekWeek.com personality Rob "Ratpack Slim" Sturma. Funny, creepy, shocking, and even poignant, this collection challenges award winning authors like Scott Woods, Laura Yes Yes, and Khary Jackson to shake the dust off of old conventions, pull the triggers on their imaginations, and...Aim For The Head.

Yellow: The verses of hurting and healing


Urja Joshi - 2020
    Mohi symbolises ""the hurting"" and Kabir is all about ""the healing"" that comes after it. A book written and illustrated by author,which is for everyone. for those who believe in love and compassion and for those who don't. Those who have healed and those who are still in process. Those who aren't able to move on and those who have successfully done it. It is for feminists, the activists, the believers, the gender norm shatterers.It is a gift, a book on its journey to make difference in it's reader's life.