You take healthy young Americans used to sunshine (aided sometimes by Xanax and Adderall), you blindfold them and lead them by the hand into a labyrinth made from bones. Then you tell them their assignment: 'Find the Grail. You have a New York minute to get it.'"--The Poetry Lesson The Poetry Lesson is a hilarious account of the first day of a creative writing course taught by a "typical fin-de-si�cle salaried beatnik"--one with an antic imagination, an outsized personality and libido, and an endless store of entertaining literary anecdotes, reliable or otherwise. Neither a novel nor a memoir but mimicking aspects of each, The Poetry Lesson is pure Andrei Codrescu: irreverent, unconventional, brilliant, and always funny. Codrescu takes readers into the strange classroom and even stranger mind of a poet and English professor on the eve of retirement as he begins to teach his final semester of Intro to Poetry Writing. As he introduces his students to THE TOOLS OF POETRY (a list that includes a goatskin dream notebook, hypnosis, and cable TV) and THE TEN MUSES OF POETRY (mishearing, misunderstanding, mistranslating . . . ), and assigns each of them a tutelary "Ghost-Companion" poet, the teacher recalls wild tales from his coming of age as a poet in the 1960s and 1970s, even as he speculates about the lives and poetic and sexual potential of his twenty-first-century students. From arguing that Allen Ginsberg wasn't actually gay to telling about the time William Burroughs's funeral procession stopped at McDonald's, The Poetry Lesson is a thoroughly entertaining portrait of an inimitable poet, teacher, and storyteller.

    How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience. In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Samuel Beckett and J. K. Rowling.

    It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

    Four Thousand Dogs.An incredible true story of rescue and redemption. When Keith Benning accepted the job as a deputy in a small North Dakota county, he had no idea he was about to face the biggest challenge of his life. Four years and four thousand dogs later, he lost his marriage, a fellow officer and nearly his own life. By rescuing seventy starving and unwanted animals out of his garage each month, Keith and a small team of volunteers have changed the world for thousands of dogs, and tens of thousands more to come. Woven with riveting and inspiring real-life rescue stories, Rescue Matters tells a larger tale of tragedy-meets-redemption. A gripping account of how a garage rescue grew into a mighty force that inspired a nation.C.J. English shares her personal experience inside the emotional and bittersweet world of dog rescue, delivering a heart-wrenching and deeply moving story that has much to teach us about responsibility and compassion. Rescue Matters is alive with meaning and purpose, proving that that it doesn’t take a law or government to change the world, all it takes is a few people trying to make a difference to start a revolution. Not just for dog lovers, but for anyone inspired by the compassion of humans and the resilience of the animals who forgive them. 50% of the profits from the sale of this book will go directly back to Keith Benning and his team at Turtle Mountain Animal Rescue.

    Everything you need to be fully prepared to take the PRINCE2Foundation and Practitioner examAs an internationally recognized certification which focuses onthe Foundation and Practitioner levels along with being recommendedby the Project Management Institute, the PRINCE2 accreditationgives a bolster to any resume.The author, David Hinde, has trained hundreds of individualsfrom many different backgrounds to prepare for the PRINCE2 exams.The book provides explanations of all parts of the PRINCE2approach, lots of practical examples, and a whole range of mockexamination questions to test your knowledge.Explains all the PRINCE2 themes, processes, principles, rolesand management products for the very latest version of PRINCE2(PRINCE2 2009 Edition)Features full coverage of all Foundation and Practitioner levelexam objectivesPresents real-world scenarios, showing how the method isused in business and the public sectorIncludes challenging review questions and electronic flashcardsto sharpen your knowledgeCovers tips and techniques for tackling the PRINCE2accreditation examinations and shows you how and where to take theexamsIncorporates over 300 sample Foundation-level and over 100sample Practitioner-level questions, with answers and fullexplanationsContains a glossary of all PRINCE2 terminology and a quickreference to all the PRINCE2 management productsGives a web link to a set of on-line tools with more bonusexamsPRINCE2 Study Guide covers all the necessary topics youneed to know in order to confidently take the PRINCE2 Foundationand Practitioner exams.

    One of punk rock's foundational documents, the archetype for indie obsession and all but disowned by its author, The Modern Lovers was an album doomed by its own coolness from day one. Powered by the two-chord wonder “Roadrunner” and its proclamation that “I'm in love with rock 'n' roll,”The Modern Lovers is the essential document of American alienation, an escape route from the cultural wasteland of postwar suburbia. The Modern Lovers is the bridge connecting the Velvet Underground and the Sex Pistols; they were peers of the New York Dolls and friends with Gram Parsons and they would splinter into Talking Heads, The Cars, and The Real Kids.But The Modern Lovers was never meant to be an album. A collection of demos, recorded in fits and starts as Jonathan Richman and his band negotiate modernity and the music industry. It is a collection of songs about a city and a society in flux, grappling with ancient corruptions and bright-eyed idealism. Richman observes a city all but abandoned by adults, ravaged by white flight and urban renewal, veering towards anarchy as old world social moors collide with new attitudes. It is a city stands in stark contrast to the the ranchstyle bedroom community where he was raised. All of these conflicts are churned through Richman's intellectual acuity and emotional unrest to create one of the 20th century's most enduring documents of post-adolescent malaise.

    The first of the great South African novels chronicles the adventures of three childhood friends who defy societal repression. The novel's unorthodox views on religion and marriage aroused widespread controversy upon its 1883 publication, and the work retains in power more than a century later. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

    Wright's short lyrics, in Charles Simic's words, "achieve a level of eloquence where the reader says to himself, if this is not wisdom, I don't know what is" (The New York Review of Books). The poems in Buffalo Yoga are pristine examples of the Tennessee poet's deft, painterly touch-"crows in a caterwaul" are "scored like black notes in the bare oak"-and his oblique, expansive, and profound interrogation of mortality, as in the title sequence, where the soul is "a rhythmical knot. / That form unties. Or reties."

    Provides glimpses into the origins of Charles Simic's poetry

    In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, the text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date.The sixth edition, published in 2000, was extensively revised, expanded, and updated. Almost 600 new entries covered new writers, genres, and issues, and existing entries were reworked to incorporate the latest scholarship. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism. The Companion remains an unrivaled work that places English literature in its widest context: no other book offers such extensive exploration of the classical roots of English literature, and the European and non-European works and writers that have influenced its development.The sixth edition has now been revised to ensure that it remains absolutely up to date: the invaluable appendices - the chronology, and lists of winners of major literary awards - have been updated, as have many of the entries. Informed by the latest scholarly thinking, and comprehensively cross-referenced to guide the reader to topics of related interest, the Companion retains its position as the best guide to English literature available.

    That is where Garmaine Pitchon was when Hitler ascended to power and unleashed a diabolical scheme to annihilate the Jewish race. Follow along as Eli Gonzalez tells Garmaine story in a vibrant, chilling, and compelling narrative. Always a rambunctious, curious girl, Garmaine found a way to not wear the yellow Star of David and got to experience more than most before Garmaine experienced loss at an epic proportion. Her entire family was murdered, beginning with her grandmother, killed in her own grocery store by a Nazi officer who forced her to make him a sandwich as she walked over her just-murdered beloved grandmother’s warm, flowing blood. Experience the horror of the 9-Day train ride to Auschwitz and become a first hand witness to when it was only Nazi’s and Jews and the veil was pulled off and absolute evil abounded. Yet, there is something about Garmaine’s story, something divine that happened. What was meant to destroy her strengthened her. What was meant to stop her lineage became a force to help desperate mothers years after. When there is a divine purpose for your life and that of your family, no one and nothing can stop it.

    It has been translated into every major language on Earth and dozens of minor ones; it has spawned entire genres of animation, and had more books written about it than all but a handful of American Presidents. Even its minor characters have become iconic, and the titular family is recognizable in almost every corner of the planet. It is a definitive and truly global cultural phenomenon, perhaps the biggest of the television age. As of this writing, if you flip on FOX at 8pm on Sundays, you will see a program that bills itself as "The Simpsons". It is not "The Simpsons". That show, the landmark piece of American culture that debuted on 17 December 1989, went off the air more than a decade ago. The replacement is a hopelessly mediocre imitation that bears only a superficial resemblance to the original. It is the unwanted sequel, the stale spinoff, the creative dry hole that is kept pumping in the endless search for more money. It is Zombie Simpsons.

    With the sort of smart, persuasive voice associated with Simon Armitage and Michael Donaghy, these poems worry at the world in search of consolation, or else meet life's absurdity and strangeness half-way; whether sitting proudly atop an unexploded bomb, or injecting blood under the skin of a banana, playfulness and imagination are vehicles for confronting 'the fearful and forgotten things I've lied to myself about'. Here are poems which address anxiety about fatherhood, remorse for lost lovers and friends, or mourn for a miscarried sibling. Happiness is a collection preoccupied with the ephemerality of happiness itself, at the ever-present possibility of its departure, and the ways we try to grasp and keep hold of it. 'Every single thought I'm having is about LOVE', here meaning both the pleasure and panic of love, its peculiarity; love as a feeling of risk, love for one's own body, familiar yet estranged, of 'cack-handed LOVE at his console', love like 'pausing to move a snail somewhere safer in the rain'.

    Harry Blamires helps readers to negotiate their way through this formidable, remarkable novel and gain an understanding of it which, without help, it might have take several readings to achieve. The New Bloomsday Book is a crystal clear, page-by-page, line-by-line running commentary on the plot of Ulysses which illuminates symbolic themes and structures along the way. It is a highly accessible, indispensible guide for anyone reading Joyce's masterpiece for the first time.

    His first collection, set in the Midwest, alternately features a childhood Wisconsin farm, the record-breaking storm that destroyed it, and the turbulent marriage that recalls it. Love and wonder mingle in these lines.