This collection suggests that a person is like a world, full of mysteries and wonders–and equally in need of an encyclopedia, a compendium of everything known. The long title sequence offers entries such as “The Sun” (“There is one mind in all of us, one soul, / who parches the soil in some nations / but in others hides perpetually behind a veil”), “The Elephant” (“How to explain my heroic courtesy?”), “The Pigeon” (“Once startled, you shall feel hours of weird sadness / afterwards”), and “Randall Jarrell” (“If language hurts you, make the damage real”). The mysteriously emotional individual poems coalesce as a group to suggest that our natural world is populated not just by fascinating creatures–who, in any case, are metaphors for the human as Chiasson considers them– but also by literature, by the ghosts of past poetries, by our personal ghosts. Toward the end of the sequence, one poem asks simply, “Which Species on Earth Is Saddest?” a question this book seems poised to answer. But Chiasson is not finally defeated by the sorrows and disappointments that maturity brings. Combining a classic, often heartbreaking musical line with a playful, fresh attack on the standard materials of poetry, he makes even our sadness beguiling and beautiful.

    He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria."

    frequently anthologized poem

    It is considered to be his last book, first published in 1977 after his death.

    These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism -- years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. Their painful, unsettling eloquence testify to the humane and the comic in this absurdist writer's work. The translator Neil Cornwall gives a biographical introduction to his subject, enlarged upon by the poet Hugh Maxton in a contextual assessment of the writing of Flann O'Brien, Le Fanu and Doyle, and of their shared concerns with detective fiction, terror and death. Daniil Kharms 91905-42) died under Stalin. Along with fellow poets and prose-writers of the era -- Khlebnikov, Biely, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky and Pasternak -- he is one of the emerging experimentalists of Russian modernism.

    Allied with his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, Cody joins new friends, new neighbors, and A DOG in an enthralling battle against bureaucracy, rampant skepticism, the Croatian language, and an impossible, physics-defying apartment.Croatia Strikes Back confronts the challenges of living in Croatia with laughter, community, and some much needed perseverance.

    Stallings, recipient of the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award, uniquely juxtaposes poetic meditations on mythological themes with poems about the everyday occurances of contemporary life -- such as losing an umbrella or fishing with one's father. In doing so, Archaic Smile continually bridges the gap between these two distant but interrelated worlds with striking insights. James Dickey, having praised the author's accomplished critical skills, also points out that she has "the most indispensable quality that a poet must have: an original way of looking at things." A.R. Ammons aptly characterizes the power of her mythological poems in his comments on "Apollo Takes Charge of His Muses" which he chose for The Best American Poetry: "It delivers the ancient past into our present with such astonishing justness that I'm silenced with appreciation." Archaic Smile is a powerful debut collection by a provacative poet who has found strikingly original ways to personalize our myths and conjure the deep significances of our everyday life.

    These colorful, illustrated presentations use the latest features of the free Adobe Acrobat format to make compelling presentations easy to use on any computer. Each presentation contains dozens of slides detailing all of the background material that makes reading literature such a rich experience.

    But Popovic's characters have no patience with the lies of this world. They have no patience because they have neither homes nor a homeland: they have lost all their illusions. Popovic is simply the epitome of the urban writer. . . . The best narrator of his generation has achieved literary maturity and that is great news.'-Slobodan Novak "Zagreb, Exit South" masterfully illuminates the lives of diverse, colorful characters adrift in postwar Croatia. Through bleary, middle-aged eyes, stymied writer Baba takes readers on an amusing, thought-provoking ride as he circles the streets of Zagreb bemoaning the dying out of domestic beer, Kancheli's ridiculous musical lighter, and the fear of going home. His wife Vera, facing wrinkles and an alcoholic spouse, discovers that e-mail is cheaper than therapy as she reshapes her life. Reflective insight, biting humor, and life-changing experiences combine to revive hope in the shadows of Zagreb's city buildings.

    Throughout, poetry is discovered to be among our most effective tools to examine the delirium of making contact."Hot":The sexiest thing a woman has ever doneto or with or for me—while wearing the loose breezeof a dress or standing inside its red zero on the floor—while bending over and pulling her shorts downon a racquetball court or to reach the watershutoff valve behind the fridge—as Satiewhispers against our thighs or hummingher brain's native tune as we touchthe smudged glass protecting extinct beetlesin a museum—with her lips swaddling my tongueor finger up my ass—is tell the truth—which makes my wife the hottest womanI've ever known—her mouth erotic every timeshe speaks—she is an animal when it comes to sexand love—comes to us—in that she doesn't primpin front of the mirror of what she thinks I wanther to say or be—the only real flesh—only nakedthat matters––how she looks at meBob Hicok's poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, and the American Poetry Review. His books have been awarded the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress and named a "Notable Book of the Year" by Booklist. Hicok has worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator. He is currently teaching at Purdue University.

    26,000 words I thought I might die from the pleasure. A year ago, Lucy Montgomery walked into the classroom of sexy, quietly domineering literature professor Ryan Sherwood, and her whole world changed. He opened her eyes to the darker side of her desires. Together, they’ve continued to explore not only Lucy’s intimate secrets, but the depth of their emotional connection. Everything felt so good it had almost become painful. More than painful. Exquisitely, agonizingly pleasurable. Lucy’s relationship with Ryan is stronger than ever. The Dean of the English Department herself wants to help her get her degree. And she’s got an offer for a dream job after graduation. Now, she’s taking Professor Sherwood’s advanced course, both in literature and lust. But after a few stumbling steps into the fetish community, including fainting on her first visit to an exclusive sex club, and weathering a visit from her parents, Lucy begins to question her choices. Are her feelings for Ryan strong enough to withstand her doubts? Can she handle embracing her deepest desires without shame? Or will their relationship wither beneath the weight of uncertainty and scorn? Group Session contains elements of BDSM including spanking, anal sex and voyeurism.

    Volume 1 (this book) is a reprint of the original 1910 edition (published by Luzac & Co., London) of Sun Tzu on the Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World by Lionel Giles. The Chinese text, Giles' English translation, as well as his extensive notes are all faithfully reproduced. A Wade-Giles to Pinyin conversion table has been added to make the original classic more useful for the modern student. Volume 2, available separately, includes each chapter in Chinese traditional characters, the pinyin transcription, as well as the English translation.

    Whether tender or hard-hitting, McGriff juxtaposes natural images of deep forests, creeks, coyotes, and crows against the harsher oil-grease realities of blue-collar life, creating poems that read like folk tales about the people working in grain mills, forests, and factories."New Civilian"The new law says you can abandon your childin an emergency room,no questions asked. The young fathercarries the sleeping boythrough the hospital doors.Later, alone, parked at the boat basin,he takes a knife from his pocket,cuts an unfiltered cigarette in two,lights the longer half in his mouth.He was a medic in the war.In his basement are five bronze eaglesthat once adorned the wallsof a dictator's palace.Michael McGriff attended the University of Oregon; the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in creative writing; and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow. He is the co-founding editor and publisher of Tavern Books and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

    K. Williams by turns ruminative, stalked by "the conscience-beast, who harries me," and "riven by idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was for whom everything was going too slowly, too slowly." Poems about animals and rural life are set hard by poems about shrapnel in Iraq and sudden desire on the Paris Métro; grateful invocations of Herbert and Hopkins give way to fierce negotiations with the shades of Coleridge, Dostoevsky, and Celan. What the poems share is their setting in the cool, spacious, spotlit, book-lined place that is Williams's consciousness, a place whose workings he has rendered for fifty years with inimitable candor and style.