Whether denouncing the corporate world ("To Whom It May Concern"), or lustily joining it ("New Millennial Bad Ass"), to celebrating love in the face of smut ("Let's Make Out!"), Aptowicz dramatizes the hopes, humor and ambitions of young poet first steps into a very surreal 'real world.' This expanded version nearly triples the length of the original with previously unpublished works, including "Sass Manifesto," which was used to win the 2004 National Forsenics Championship in Poetry Interpretation.

    Pieces of Air in the Epic is the second book of a tetrology that takes the elements--earth, air, water, fire--as its subject. As Hillman's previous collection, Cascadia, explores "earth," the present collection considers "air"--the many meanings of the word and the life-giving medium we breathe--to test a reality that is both political and personal.These formally inventive poems reexamine epic and lyric, braiding fact and dream, the social with the self. Hypnotic, spare verses use air on the page as a matrix for cultural healing; some are presided over by a feminine presence and address war in human history, while others are set in streets, parks and wilderness. There are meditations on auras, dust motes, and reading in libraries as acts of restorative memory. This work fuses animist consciousness with cautionary prophecy, and belongs to the mode of H.D. and Robert Duncan. Hillman's poetry continues to explore ways in which human life might be redeemed by imagination.

    33 poems, over 70 minutes, very high quality recording on cassette or CD.

    The poet has said of himself and his work: "I am not an experimentalist or an inventor, but a derivative poet, drawing my art from the resources given by a generation of masters––Stein, Williams, Pound; back of that by the generations of poets that have likewise been dreamers of the Cosmos as Creation and Man as Creative Spirit; and by the work of contemporaries: Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley and Denise Levertov."

    Haunted by their childhoods of material and emotional poverty, Jimmy and Rita float through days in urban San Francisco.

    Best known as the lead singer and enigmatic front man, songwriter, bassist of The Church, Steve has experienced both amazing international success and all the excesses that go with it, as well as a well known heroin addiction that delivered some very dark times. The Church has been a significant and constant influence on the Australian music industry and readers will be keen to hear from one of the industry's most successful, creative and long-standing key protagonists. Kilbey is Australian rock and roll royalty and for the first time this is his story. Come inside the world of Steve Kilbey singer songwriter and bassist of one of Australia's best loved bands, The Church. From his migrant ten pound pom childhood through his adolescence growing up during the advent of The Beatles, Dylan and The Stones to his early adventures in garage bands and neighbourhood jams. His misadventures with a full time job and a 9 to 5 life and wild adventures with The Church as they conquer Australia and then the world. The tours. The records. The women. And then the heroin addiction which enslaved him for ten long years. Then the two sets of twins he fathers along the way and branching off into acting, painting and writing. From snowy Sweden to a cell in New York City, from Ipanema beach to Bondi, Kilbey stumbles through his surrrealistic life as an idiot savant that will make you smile as well as want to kick him up the arse. After coming out the other side his tale is simply too good not to be told. Narrated with unusual and often pristine clarity we and with much focus on his considerable musical talent.

    The poet who drew such unusual attention has a surprising background: for many years he has worked for Brooks Brothers, a fact that lends particular nuance to the title of his collection. The Clerk's Tale pays homage not only to Chaucer but to the clerks' brotherhood of service in the mall, where "the light is bright and artificial, / yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral." The fifty poems in The Clerk's Tale are exquisitely restrained, shot through with a longing for permanence, from the quasi-monastic life of two salesmen at Brooks Brothers to the poignant lingering light of a Miami dusk to the weight of geography on an empty Minnesota farm. Gluck describes them as having "an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft."

    His poems chart a course through his own highly original American dreamscape in language that is fresh, accessible, and remarkably precise. This debut collection has received extraordinary acclaim from readers and reviewers alike and is quickly becoming a cult classic. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny. . . . It's a book for everyone."

    Now Jaguar of Sweet Laughter presents the work of a poet with the precise and wondering eye of a gifted naturalist.Ackermans's Olympian vision records and transforms landscapes from Amazonia to Antarctica, while her imaginative empathy penetrates the otherness of hummingbirds, deer, and trilobites. But even as they draw readers into the wild heart of nature, Ackerman's poems are indelible reminders of what it is to be a human being -- the "jaguar of sweet laughter" that, according to Mayan mythology, astonished the world because it was the first animal to speak.

    Harryette Mullen is the mixer. Street, jive, down-home post-mod speech meet at the meat market. Food may be the subject of these short prose-poems, but look at us, teasing ourselves with endless adverts to buy, consume more and better - so long as its packaged right, full color box and shrink-wrapped.

    Andrew Hudgins imagines himself in the life of a now largely forgotten poet, Sidney Lanier, who served as a soldier for the Confederacy.

    This year's exceptional volume, edited by Robert Creeley, a figure revered across teh wide spectrum of American poetry, features a diverse mix of established masters, rising stars and the leading lights of a younger generation. The pleasure of the poems selected here, Creeley explains in his introduction, is "that they caught my fancy, some almost outrageously, some by their quiet, nearly diffident manner, some by unexpected turns of thought or insight, others by a confident authority and intent." With comments from the poets elucidating their work, a thought-provoking introduction from Creeley, and Lehman's always popular foreword assessing the current state of poetry, The Best American Poetry 2002 will prove as irresistible to new readers as it is indispensable for poetry fans everywhere.

    The authors, both published poets themselves, give an overview of each period of history, while notes to the poems place each one in its historical context and trace the century's poetic development. Concise biographies for each poet complete the anthology.By organizing the poems in chronological order, readers will see poets in a new light. Here A.E. Houseman, for example, rubs shoulders with T.S. Eliot, showing that traditional forms can hold their own against the modernist orthodoxy. Here are poets rescued from oblivion, such as the suffragette who wrote a compelling poem about her mistreatment in Holloway Prison in 1912 or the medical offer who went into Belsen with the British troops producing an eye-witness poem of lasting power. All the major events of the twentieth century are reflected in the choice of poems within these pages.This richly rewarding collection makes invaluable reading for poetry lovers all over the world.

    As a black child of the American South and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, Komunyakaa brings his singular vision to this outstanding volume. Included here is a diverse mix of senior masters, crowd-pleasing bards, rising stars, and the fresh voices of an emerging generation. With comments from the poets elucidating their work and series editor David Lehman's eloquent foreword assessing the state of the art, The Best American Poetry 2003 is a must-have for readers of contemporary poetry. Jonathan Aaron • Beth Anderson • Nin Andrews • Wendell Berry • Frank Bidart • Diann Blakely • Bruce Bond • Catherine Bowman • Rosemary Catacalos • Joshua Clover • Billy Collins • Michael S. Collins • Carl Dennis • Susan Dickman • Rita Dove • Stephen Dunn • Stuart Dybek • Charles Fort • James Galvin • Amy Gerstler • Louise Glück • Michael Goldman • Ray Gonzalez • Linda Gregg • Mark Halliday • Michael S. Harper • Matthea Harvey • George Higgins • Edward Hirsch • Tony Hoagland • Richard Howard • Rodney Jones • Joy Katz • Brigit Pegeen Kelly • Galway Kinnell • Carolyn Kizer • Jennifer L. Knox • Kenneth Koch • John Koethe • Ted Kooser • Philip Levine • J. D. McClatchy • W. S. Merwin • Heather Moss • Stanley Moss • Paul Muldoon • Peggy Munson • Marilyn Nelson • Daniel Nester • Naomi Shihab Nye • Ishle Yi Park • Robert Pinsky • Kevin Prufer • Ed Roberson • Vijay Seshadri • Alan Shapiro • Myra Shapiro • Bruce Smith • Charlie Smith • Maura Stanton • Ruth Stone • James Tate • William Tremblay • Natasha Trethewey • David Wagoner • Ronald Wallace • Lewis Warsh • Susan Wheeler • Richard Wilbur • C. K. Williams • Terence Winch • David Wojahn Robert Wrigley • Anna Ziegler • Ahmos Zu-Bolton II

    Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions Basho (1644-1694). Basho's On Love and Barley and The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches are available in Penguin Classics.