He is considered by Octavio Paz to be instrumental to the genesis of modern Latin American poetry and “one of the best poets” of the Spanish language. Toward the end of his life, he had published for over fifty years and brought in crowds of more than 3,000 to a readings in his native country. Coined the “Sniper of Literature” by Cuban poet Roberto Fernández Retamar, Sabines brought poetry to the streets. His vernacular, authentic poems are accessible: meant not for other poets, or the established or elite, but for himself and for the people.In this translation of his fourth book, Tarumba, we find ourselves stepping into Sabines’ streets, brothels, hospitals, and cantinas; the most bittersweet details are told in a way that reaffirms: “Life bursts from you, like scarlet fever, without warning.” Eloquently co-translated by Philip Levine and the late Ernesto Trejo, this bilingual edition is a classic for Spanish- and English-speaking readers alike. Secretive, wild, and searching, these poems are rife with such intensity you’ll feel “heaven is sucking you up through the roof.” Jaime Sabines was born on March 25, 1926 in Chiapas, Mexico. In 1945, he relocated to Mexico City where he studied Medicine for three years before turning his attention to Philosophy and Literature at the University of Mexico. He wrote eight books of poetry, including Horal (1950), Tarumba (1956), and Maltiempo (1972), for which he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award. In 1959, Sabines was granted the Chiapas Prize and, in 1983, the National Literature Award. In addition to his literary career, Sabines served as a congressman for Chiapas. Jaime Sabines died in 1999; he remains one of Mexico’s most respected poets.  Philip Levine (translator) was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Breath (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). His other poetry collections include The Mercy (1999); The Simple Truth (1994), which won the Pulitzer Prize; What Work Is (1991), which won the National Book Award; New Selected Poems (1991); Ashes: Poems New and Old (1979), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American Book Award for Poetry; 7 Years From Somewhere (1979), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Names of the Lost (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize from Poetry, the Frank O'Hara Prize, and two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. Philip Levine lives in New York City and Fresno, California, and teaches at New York University.

    There was a woman.There was a cross. But in factthey have hung him too high to be touched.—from "A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus"

    His voice and sensibility are distinctive, and the places he goes are ones where not many writers are able or willing to venture. The dark world of his poems, which face many of the hardest truths we must learn to live with, is lit by humor, tenderness, compassion, and honesty. For this edition, the poet has selected from the best of his previous collections, in some cases making substantial revisions, and has added his newest poems. The resulting collection is exciting in its breadth, consistency, depth, and distinction.

    Her first book, Almanacs, was a travellers's litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. Nigh-No-Place is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world." Nigh-No-Place reflects the breadth of ground she's covered. 'Ten-minute Break Haiku' is her response to working in a fish factory. 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. 'Prenatal Polar Bear' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra.

    S. Merwin, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In work spanning 30 years (1955-1985), Parra, the pioneer of "antipoetry," remains fresh, bold, and inventive, deftly and humorously subverting convention. Editor David Unger brings together poems from Parra's groundbreaking collection Poemas y antipoemas, the witty aphorisms of Artefactos, and his original and uncompromising later work.

    Those who are familiar with Parra's work will find the humor more sharply honed and darker, the anger closer to the surface and sometimes breaking through, the language tighter, the compassion deeper and the statements more political--or anyway more social.

    Free, for the time being, from the power of the gods and the ceaseless weight of the rock, he struggles to navigate twenty-first-century America. In language by turns mordant and tender, often elegiac, Dunn illuminates the quotidian burdens of his all-too-human hero, as well as the abrasions of ambivalence and choice, finally concluding that "here / and there, though mostly here, even fate is reversible / with struggle or luck."In a second sequence of poems, nineteenth-century novelists become "local visitors" to the author's South Jersey towns. "Chekhov in Port Republic," "Jane Austen in Egg Harbor," "Dostoyevsky in Wildwood": these inventions and others give Dunn provocative new latitudes. As in his previous books, "he balances the casual and the vivid as he plumbs the ambiguity and mystery of human relations" (New York Times Book Review).

    The poetry he chose supplied qualities that were lacking from the literary culture of this country. For the first time Robert Bly’s brilliant translations, from several languages, have been brought together in one book. Here, in The Winged Energy of Delight, the poems of twenty-two poets, some renowned, others lesser known, are brought together.At a time when editors and readers knew only Eliot and Pound, Robert Bly introduced the earthy wildness of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo and the sober grief of Trakl, as well as the elegance of Jiménez and Tranströmer. He also published high-spirited versions of Kabir and Rumi, and Mirabai, which had considerable influence on the wide culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Bly’s clear translations of Rilke attracted many new readers to the poet, and his versions of Machado have become models of silence and depth. He continues to bring fresh and amazing poets into English, most recently Rolf Jacobsen, Miguel Hernandez, Francis Ponge, and the ninteenth-century Indian poet Ghalib. As Kenneth Rexroth has said, Robert Bly “is one of the leaders of a poetic revival which has returned American literature to the world community.”

    He turned his eye to the world, to the cultures and the people around him, and saw reflections of himself. In this collection, he works in both free verse and traditional forms, rendering scenes of exquisite detail that pry into the hearts of his characters and reveal the contradictions that bind father to son, lover to lover, and person to person. From the broken hills and drowsy river valleys around Paducah, Kentucky, to Houston diners and Gulf Coast shrimp boats, to the tropical cityscape of Miami, Bolton creates vivid scenes in which his characters confront the loneliness and the "little music" of their lives. With a richly musical voice and an ear for the cadences of everyday speech, Bolton gives his readers not the trappings of love and grief, but the very things themselves, rendered in lines that reverberate with the authority of sincerity and truth.

    Moved by the guilt of never having worked with his hands, Neruda opens with the despairing confession, “Why did I not make a broom? / Why was I given hands at all?” The themes of hands and work grow in significance as Neruda celebrates the carpenters, longshoremen, blacksmiths, and bakers—those laborers he admires most—and shares his exuberant adoration for the earth and the people upon it.Yes, I am guiltyof what I did not do,of what I did not sow, did not cut, did not measure,of never having rallied myself to populate lands,of having sustained myself in the desertsand of my voice speaking with the sand.Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Recognized during his life as “a people’s poet,” he is considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.William O’Daly is the best-selling translator of six of Pablo Neruda’s books, including The Book of Questions and The Sea and the Bells. His work as a translator has been featured on The Today Show.

    Widely regarded as the greatest twentieth century poet who wrote in Spanish, Machado—like his contemporary Rilke—is intensely introspective and meditative. In this collection, the unparalleled translator Willis Barnstone, returns to the poet with whom he first started his distinguished career, offering a new bilingual edition which provides a sweeping assessment of Machado’s work. In addition, Border of a Dream includes a reminiscence by Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez and a foreword by John Dos Passos. from "Proverbs and Songs" Absolute faith. We neither are nor will be. Our whole life is borrowedWe brought nothing. With nothing we leave.*You say nothing is created?Don’t worry. With clayof the earth make a cupso your brother can drink. Born near Seville, Spain, Antonio Machado turned to a career in writing and translating in order to help support his family after the death of his father in 1893. His growing reputation as a poet led to teaching posts in various cities in Spain and, eventually, he returned to finish his degree from the University of Madrid in 1918. He remained in Madrid after the outbreak of civil war, committed to the Republican cause, but the violence finally forced him to flee. He died an exile in France. Willis Barnstone is one of America’s foremost translator-poets, bringing into English an extraordinary range of work, from Mao Tse-tung to the New Testament.

    Mattie Sylvester, a widow of one of America's most celebrated painters, reveals the sordid truth of the past, and of her husband, to her secretary.

    Tate seems both awed and bemused by small town life, with its legends, flights of fancy, heightened emotions, tragedies and small ruptures in the fabric of ordinary existence.

    Her poems take us to the flip side of human consciousness, where anything can happen at any time. Tinged with surrealism, her work makes visionary leaps from the quotidian to sudden, surprising epiphanies.

    Key Features: *Study methods *Introduction to the text *Summaries with critical notes *Themes and techniques *Textual analysis of key passages *Author biography *Historical and literary background *Modern and historical critical approaches *Chronology *Glossary of literary terms