And few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous verse.Countless books have discussed the subject of this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.

    A Pound of Steam presents seven poems exploring identity and alienation, a philosophical bent that can be found in her song lyrics, but here goes further to unearth truths about the human condition.

    We find her awake in the middle of the night, contemplating love and heartbreak in all their exhilarating and anguished specifics. With astonishing openness, in language both passionate and enchanting, she offers us an intimate map of a troubled and far-flung heart: “Can you believe I thought that?” she asks, “That we would always go/roaming brave and dangerous/on wild unlit roads?”At once witty and tender, with Dorothy Parker–like turns of the knife and memorable partings from lovers in New York, London, Rome and beyond, these poems capture a restless movement through loves and locales, and charm us at every turn with their forthrightness.From the Hardcover edition.

    Sin, bestselling author of the Whiskey, Words & a Shovel series, returns with a collection of poetry and prose meant to remind the wounded that they are, in fact, beautiful in a way society may never comprehend.A Beautiful Composition of Broken is inspired by some of the events expressed artistically by Samantha King in the bestseller Born to Love, Cursed to Feel. It serves as a poetic documentary of the lives of people who have been mistreated, misunderstood, and wrongfully labeled in a way that limits them in this world. The author’s most personal volume yet, A Beautiful Composition of Broken builds a conceptual bridge between r.h. Sin’s earliest work and his forthcoming series, Planting Gardens in Graves.

    Rediscover the immortal story of Lemuel Gulliver and his fantastic voyage. Join him on his journey to the land of the six-inch-high Lilliputians...and into the royal court of the sixty-foot-tall Brobdingnagians. Ascend with him to the flying island of Laputa, whose inhabitants are endowed with uncommon intelligence, but no common sense at all. And follow him into the world of the Houyhnhnms, a race of civilized horses -- lords and masters of the brutish human Yahoos. The tale of a lifetime, "Gulliver's Travels" is filled with action, romance, danger, satirical wit, timeless wisdom, and the high drama only a classic of this caliber can convey. Set sail!

    Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could.In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

    R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe is as vast as the human imagination, so an atlas is a helpful tool to get around. Consider this book your navigational guide to Middle-earth and the Undying Lands. Maps, images, and vivid descriptions in full color create an enchanting reference to all the fantastical places and creatures that sprung from Tolkien’s mind. The deluxe, heat-burnished cover makes this a charming addition to your Tolkien library.

    This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration.

    From fourth-century Li Ch'ung's "Parody of a Lover" to John Betmeman's "Late-Flowering Lust," they re-create, through the revelations of language, that experience of the erotic. Other poets include Theodore Roethke, Robert Graves, Octavio Paz, Joseph Brodsky, Sylvia Plath, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and many others.

    An omnibus edition of Margaret Atwood's poetry 1965 - 1995 including the latest collection Morning in the Burned House

    Crazily enough, it's also packed with truth.”—NPR“The voice of this third book from Bibbins is marked and numbed by the onslaught of American media and politics that saturate the Internet, television, radio, and smartphone: ‘the way things are going, children/ will have to upgrade to more amusing.’ Much like advertisements or news stories vying for viewer’s attention, the book intentionally overwhelms, eschewing sections; the author instead differentiates the poems by repetition, creating a sort of echo chamber, similar to the way viral information cycles through social media platforms.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review"[A] hilarious send-up of contemporary values and an alarm bell of sorts, directing attention to all that is so sinister in our civilization.”—American Poets"Whip-smart and wickedly funny, They Don't Kill You is Bibbins's most authoritative and self-possessed collection to date."—Boston ReviewThe poems in Mark Bibbins's breakthrough third book are formally innovative and socially alert. Roving across the weird human landscape of modern politics, media-exacerbated absurdity, and questionable social conventions, this collection counters dread with wit, chaos with clarity, and reminds us that suffering is "small//compared to what?"Mark Bibbins teaches in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia University, and edits the poetry section of The Awl. He lives in New York City.

    With his trademark sense of humor, open-hearted empathy, and perceptive vision, Charles Simic roots his poetry in the ordinary world while still taking in the wide sweep of the human experience.From poems pithy, wry, and cutting—“Time—that murderer/that no has caught yet”—to his layered reflections on everything from love to grief to the wonders of nature, from the story of St. Sebastian to that of a couple weeding side by side, Simic’s work continues to reveal to us an unmistakable voice in modern poetry. An innovator in form and a chronicler of both our interior lives and the people we are in the world, Simic remains one of our most important and lasting voices on the page.

    For this collection, James Dickey has selected from his four published books all those poems that reflect his truest interests and his growth as an artist. And thereto he has added more than a score of new poems-in effect, a new book in themselves-that have not been previously published in volume form. Specifically, Poems 1957-1967 contains 15 of the 24 poems that were included in his first book, Into the Stone (1960); 25 of the 36 that made up Drowning With Others (1962); 22 of the 24 in Helmets (1964); the entire 22 in the National Book Award winning Buckdancer's Choice (1965); and, under the titles Sermon and Falling, the exciting new poems mentioned above. Seldom can the word "great" be used of the work of a contemporary in any art. But surely it applies to the poems of James Dickey. To test that statement, read this book. "Dickey has defined the poet as an 'intensified man.' These collected poems of his 44th year are a record of a lot of valid and immediate experience-the testimony of a man intensifying himself honestly and skillfully."-William Meredith, New York Times Book Review "One of the things we should mean when we call a poet 'good' is that his work returns us to the world and not merely to the poet. Dickey gives the moment a natural energy, not the energy of the poet's insistence upon his own personality but the energy of a vast life outside the poet which moves all things through one another and through him."-Michael Goldman, The Nation

    This Penguin Classics edition of Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint is edited by John Kerrigan.'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'The language of Shakespeare's sonnets has become inseparable from the language of love in English; but the force and tenderness of these poems is undiminished by age. When this volume of Shakespeare's poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets - all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man, 'Mr W.H.', or a treacherous 'dark lady' - contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover's Complaint, originally published with the sonnets, in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer.In his illuminating introduction, John Kerrigan examines how the sonnets are intertwined, the ways in which these works have been interpreted and the themes running through them. This edition also includes further reading, commentaries on each poem, a textual history, variant and further sonnets and an index of first lines.If you enjoyed Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, you might like John Milton's Paradise Lost, also available in Penguin Classics.'Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it'John Keats

    Partita has invited her friend, Kitty to stay at her ancestral home, Borders Castle. The grandeur of Partita’s family seat is in stark contrast to Kitty’s home in London where she and her mother, Violet, struggle to maintain appearances despite Kitty’s father gambling away the family money. Kitty is introduced to the aristocracy — a world she finds fascinatingly decorative and theatrical. She is enthralled by it, and desperately wants to be part of this way of life that is so far removed from the genteel poverty in which she and her mother are forced to exist.But war breaks out, not only irrevocably changing society, but also the lives of these two beautiful young women. The headstrong Partita and down-to-earth Kitty become nurses, caring selflessly for men who have been horrifically injured in the trenches.In Distant Fields is about the mothers and daughters, sisters and wives who are left holding things together on the home front and caring for their men. But, more importantly, it’s about the nature of female friendship.