It was nominated for all three major American book awards: the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the American Book Award.

    Howe's theme is the exile of the spirit in this world and the painfully exciting, tiny margin in which movement out of exile is imaginable and perhaps possible. Her best poems are simultaneously investigations of that possibility and protests against the difficulty of salvation. Boston is the setting of some of the early poems, and Ireland, the birthplace of Howe's mother, is the home of O'Clock, a spiritually piquant series of short poems included in Selected Poems. The metaphysics and the physics of this world play off each other in these poems, and there is a toughness to Howe's unique, fertile nervousness of spirit. Her spare style makes a nest for the soul: Zero built a nest in my navel. Incurable Longing. Blood too— From violent actions It's a nest belonging to one But zero uses it And its pleasure is its own—from The Quietist

    How her family and friends would react; that Mr Whippy would be off the menu; how quickly ice can melt on a stomach. These were on top of the many other things she didn't know about babies: how to stand while holding one; how to do a poetry gig with your baby as a member of the audience; how drum'n'bass can make a great lullaby. And that's before you even start on toddlers: how to answer a question like 'is the world a jigsaw?'; dealing with a ten-hour train ride together; and how children can be caregivers too.But Hollie learned.And she's still learning, slowly. Nobody Told Me is a collection of poems and stories taken from Hollie's diaries, one person's thoughts on raising a child in modern Britain, of trying to become a parent in modern Britain, of sex, commercialism, feeding, gender and of finding secret places to scream once in a while.

    This edition contains 778 poems, 100 of them previously unpublished, and has, in addition, a context piece, author's words and CD of readings. It is a definitive (though not complete) collection.

    The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

    Housman's verse as it was established in 1939, three years after his death. In contains A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, the Additional Poems, and the three translations from A.W. Pollard's anthology, Odes from the Greek Dramatists.

    "They make us pay attention in new ways." In his second new and selected collection, Dunn subtly enlarges our sense of possibility. His new poems, suffused with affection and rue for our world, occasionally address the metaphysical, as in these lines—from “Talk to God”Ease into your misgivingsAsk him if in his weaknesshe was ever responsiblefor a pettiness—some weather, say,brought in to show who’s bosswhen no one seemed sufficiently movedby a sunset or the shape of an egg.Ask him if when he gave us desirehe had underestimated its power.

    H. Auden endowed poetry in the English language with a new face. Or rather, with several faces, since his work ranged from the political to the religious, from the urbane to the pastoral, from the mandarin to the invigoratingly plain-spoken.This collection presents all the poems Auden wished to preserve, in the texts that received his final approval. It includes the full contents of his previous collected editions along with all the later volumes of his shorter poems. Together, these works display the astonishing range of Auden's voice and the breadth of his concerns, his deep knowledge of the traditions he inherited, and his ability to recast those traditions in modern times.

    With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.

    Poems in English and Spanish that discuss what it means to be Puerto Rican in the United States today.

    But how will they respond when love seems to blossom between local man Gavin Hamilton and the beautiful pearl-fisher Effie? The Pearl-fishers is a classic love story and the master storyteller’s last novel.

    A neglected child, she's still looking for love as an adult; and so she finds herself married to Daniel. How could she know that he would misbehave?Cora O'Brien is the total opposite; outrageous and outspoken, she inspires the children she teaches with her enthusiasm. The city can't soften her Highland lilt but her lifestyle would raise a few eyebrows back home. But her vividness is a fa�ade: most of her secrets she's still keeping to herself.Fast friends from the start, Ellen and Cora may have plenty to learn about life, but they always have vodka and each other to talk to when the unexpected happens...

    Whether writing about his responsibility for a brother’s death during a hunting accident, drug addiction, or being jailed during the Civil Rights struggle, lyricism erupts in the midst of desolation and violence. Orr’s spare, succinct poems distill myth from the domestic and display a richness of action and visual detail.This long-awaited collection is soulful work from a remarkable poet, whose poems have been described as "mystical, carnal, reflective, and wry." (San Francisco Review)"Love Poem"A black biplane crashes through the window of the luncheonette. The pilot climbs down, removing his leather hood. He hands me my grandmother’s jade ring. No, it is two robin’s eggs and a telephone number: yours.from "Gathering the Bones Together"A father and his four sons run down a slope toward a deer they just killed. the father and two sons carry rifles. They laugh, jostle, and chatter together. A gun goes off and the youngest brother falls to the ground. A boy with a rifle stands beside him, screaming…"Orr’s is an immaculate style of latent violence and inhibited tenderness, charged with a desperate intensity whose source is often obscure."—The New York Times Book ReviewGregory Orr is the author of seven volumes of poetry and three books of criticism. He is the editor at Virginia Quarterly Review, teaches at the University of Virginia, and lives with his wife and daughters in Charlottesville. In 2002, along with his selected poems The Caged Owl, he will also publish a memoir and a book about poetry writing: Three Strange Angels: Trauma and Transformation in Lyric Poetry.Also Available by Gregory Orr:Orpheus & Eurydice: A Lyric Sequence TP $12.00, 1-55659-151-9 • CUSA