A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall's definitive text. Louis P. Masur's introduction sets the work in its historical context. Masur also discusses America after Franklin and why the Autobiography has had such a tremendous impact on nineteenth and twentieth century society and culture. He prompts students to think critically about the text by raising fundamental issues, such as the inherent distortion that occurs in autobiography. Also included in this edition are six portraits of Franklin, questions for consideration, annotations to the text, a chronology, a bibliography, and an index.

    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.

    Contained in this volume are the following essays: Civil Disobedience, Natural History of Massachusetts, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Winter Walk, The Succession of Forest Trees, Walking, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples, Night and Moonlight, Aulus Persius Flaccus, Herald of Freedom, Life Without Principle, Paradise (to be) Regained, A Plea for John Brown, The Last Days of John Brown, After the Death of John Brown, The Service, Slavery in Massachusetts, and Wendell Phillips Before Concord Lyceum.

    While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes’s background as a visual artist, they do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Thus, one poem contemplates theprinciple of blind contour drawing while others are inspired by maps, graphs, and assorted artists. The formal and emotional versatilities that distinguish Hayes’s award-winning poetry are unified by existential focus. Simultaneously complex and transparent, urgent and composed, How to Be Drawn is a mesmerizing achievement.

    Here are "Birches," "Mending Wall," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Two Tramps at Mudtime," "Choose Something Like a Star," and "The Gift Outright," which Frost read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy." An essential addition to every home library, Robert Frost's Poems is a celebration of the New England countryside, Frost's appreciation of common folk, and his wonderful understanding of the human condition. These classic verses touch our hearts and leave behind a lasting impression.* Over 100 poems* All Frost's best known verses from throughout his life

    But some say that Helen was never in Troy, that she had been conveyed by Zeus to Egypt, and that Greeks and Trojans alike fought for an illusion. A fifty-line fragment by the poet Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 640-555 B.C.), what survives of his Pallinode, tells us almost all we know of this other Helen, and from it H. D. wove her book-length poem. Yet Helen in Egypt is not a simple retelling of the Egyptian legend but a recreation of the many myths surrounding Helen, Paris, Achilles, Theseus, and other figures of Greek tradition, fused with the mysteries of Egyptian hermeticism.

    D. Wright takes her title from a line of legal defense, peculiar to Texas courts, in which it is held that if a man kills before having had time “to cool” after receiving an injury or an insult he is not guilty of murder.Cooling Time is a new type of book, an unruly vigil that is an interconnected memoir-poem-essay about contemporary American poetry. Ever focused on possibilities, Wright demonstrates that “the search for models becomes a search for alternatives,” and thereby defines the terms by which poets can chart their own course.These are some of the things I have touched in my life that are forbidden: paintings behind velvet ropes, electric fencing, a vault in an office, gun in a drawer, my brother’s folding money, the poet’s anus, the black holes in his heart—where his life went out of him.Tell me, what is the long stretch of road for if not to sort out the reasons why we are here and why we do what we do, from why we are not in the other lane doing what others do.Poetry is like food remarked one of my first teachers, freeing me to dislike Rocky Mountain Oysters and Robert Lowell. The menu is vast, the list of things I don’t want in my mouth relatively short.C.D. Wright, author of nine books of poetry, teaches at Brown University. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with poet Forrest Gander.

    The woman who loves him is left scarred and haunted. In her fierce, one-of-a-kind debut, Rebecca Lindenberg tells the story—in verse—of her passionate relationship with Craig Arnold, a much-respected poet who disappeared in 2009 while hiking a volcano in Japan. Lindenberg’s billowing, I-contain-multitudes style lays bare the poet’s sadnesses, joys, and longings in poems that are lyric and narrative, at once plainspoken and musically elaborate.Regarding her role in Arnold’s story, Lindenberg writes with clear-eyed humility and endearing dignity: “The girl with the ink-stained teeth / knows she’s famous / in a tiny, tragic way. / She’s not / daft, after all.” And then later, playfully, of her travels in Italy with the poet, her lover: “The carabinieri / wanted to know if there were bears / in our part of America. Yes, we said, / many bears. Man-eating bears? Yes, of course, / many man-eating bears.” Every poem in this collection bursts with humor, pathos, verve—and an utterly unique, soulful voice.This widely anticipated debut, already selected as a finalist for several prominent book awards, marks the first collection in the newly minted McSweeney’s Poetry Series. MPS is an imprint which seeks to publish a broad range of excellent new poetry collections in exquisitely designed hardcovers—poetry that’s useful and meaningful to anyone in any walk of life.

    Her life by water, as she called it, could not have been further removed from the avant-garde poetry scene where she also made a home. Niedecker is one of the most important poets of her generation and an essential member of the Objectivist circle. Her work attracted high praise from her peers--Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman, Clayton Eshleman--with whom she exchanged life-sustaining letters. Niedecker was also a major woman poet who interrogated issues of gender, domesticity, work, marriage, and sexual politics long before the modern feminist movement. Her marginal status, both geographically and as a woman, translates into a major poetry.Niedecker's lyric voice is one of the most subtle and sensuous of the twentieth century. Her ear is constantly alive to sounds of nature, oddities of vernacular speech, textures of vowels and consonants. Often compared to Emily Dickinson, Niedecker writes a poetry of wit and emotion, cosmopolitan experimentation and down-home American speech.This much-anticipated volume presents all of Niedecker's surviving poetry, plays, and creative prose in the sequence of their composition. It includes many poems previously unpublished in book form plus all of Niedecker's surviving 1930s surrealist work and her 1936-46 folk poetry, bringing to light the formative experimental phases of her early career. With an introduction that offers an account of the poet's life and notes that provide detailed textual information, this book will be the definitive reader's and scholar's edition of Niedecker's work.

    Her poem My Life has garnered accolades and fans inside and outside academia. First published in 1980, and revised in 1987 and 2002, My Life is now firmly established in the postmodern canon. This Wesleyan edition includes the 45-part prose poem sequence along with a closely related ten-part work titled My Life in the Nineties. An experimental intervention into the autobiographical genre, My Life explores the many ways in which language--the things people say and the ways they say them--shapes not only their identity, but also the very world around them.

    As the child of Bangladeshi immigrants, the poet in turn explores her own losses, as well as the complexities of bearing witness to the atrocities these war heroines endured.Throughout the volume, the narrator endeavors to bridge generational and cultural gaps even as the victims recount the horror of grief and personal loss. As we read, we discover the profound yet fragile seam that unites the fields, rivers, and prisons of the 1971 war with the poet’s modern-day hotel, or the tragic death of a loved one with the holocaust of a nation.Moving from West Texas to Dubai, from Virginia to remote villages in Bangladesh and back again, the narrator calls on the legacies of Willa Cather, César Vallejo, Tomas Tranströmer, and Paul Celan to give voice to the voiceless. Fierce yet loving, devastating and magical at once, Seam is a testament to the lingering potency of memory and the bravery of a nation’s victims. Winner, Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, 2014 Winner, Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, 2015

    

    "But there is wisdom/ in the hour in which a boy/ sits in his room listening," says the first poem, and Lee's silent willingness to step outside himself imbues Rose with a rare sensitivity. The images Lee finds, such as the rose and the apple, are repeated throughout the book, crossing over from his father's China to his own America. Every word becomes transformative, as even his father's blindness and death can become beautiful. There is a strong enough technique here to make these poems of interest to an academic audience and enough originality to stun readers who demand alternative style and subject matter. — Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York

    Now, she presents a stunning collection of love poems that includes more than twenty new works.From the revolutionary "Seduction" to the tender new poem, "Just a Simple Declaration of Love," from the whimsical "I Wrote a Good Omelet" to the elegiac "All Eyez on U," written for Tupac Shakur, these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Nikki Giovanni is beloved and revered.Romantic, bold, and erotic, Love Poems expresses notions of love in ways that are delightfully unexpected. Articulating in sensuous verse what we know only instinctively, Nikki Giovanni once again confirms her place as one of our nations's most distinguished poets and powerful truth-tellers.In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, starting with her explosive early years in the Black Rights Movement, Nikki Giovanni has earned a reputation as one of America's most celebrated and controversial writers. Her mind-speaking work has made her a universal favorite and a number-one best-seller.The love poems-the revolutionary "Seduction," the whimsical "I Wrote a Good Omelet," and the tender "My House" to name just a few-are among the most beloved of all Nikki Giovanni's works. Now, Love Poems brings together these and other favorites with over twenty new poems. Romantic, bold, and erotic, Love Poems will once again confirm Nikki Giovanni's place among the country's most renowned poets and truth tellers.

    She has been called “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon) and “one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, for the first time, Davis’s short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee Varieties of Disturbance. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters.