A shockingly assured first collection from young poet Jesse Ball, its elegant lines and penetrating voice present a poetic symphony instead of a simple succession of individual, barely-linked poems. Craftsmanship defines this collection; it is full of perfect line-breaks, tenderly selected words, and inventive pairings. Just as impressive is the breadth and ingenuity of its recurring themes, which crescendo as Ball leads us through his fantastic world, quietly opening doors.In five separate sections we meet beekeepers and parsons, a young woman named Anna in a thin, linen dress and an old scribe transferring the eponymous March Book. We witness a Willy Loman-esque worker who "ran out in the noon street / shirt sleeves rolled, and hurried after / that which might have passed" only to be told that there's nothing between him and "the suddenness of age." While these images achingly inform us of our delicate place in the physical world, others remind us why we still yearn to awake in it every day and "make pillows with the down / of stolen geese," "build / rooms in terms of the hours of the day." Like a patient Virgil, insistent and confident, Ball escorts us through his mind, and we're lucky to follow.

    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.

    The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman ("I, too, sing America," Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steeped in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then in the 1930s came Dear Lovely Death (1931) and the radical A New Song (1938). Poems such as "Good Morning Revolution" and "Let America Be America Again" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.

    Between 1926 and 1933 she collected most of these pieces in three volumes of poetry: Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes. The remaining poems and verses from America's most renowned cynic make up this collection. Eclectic and exuberant, these 122 once-forgotten gems display Parker's distinctive wit, irony, and precision, as she dissects early-twentieth-century American urban life and gleefully skewers a rich array of targets that range from personal foible to popular culture. With an authoritative, immensely entertaining, and critically acclaimed introduction by Stuart Y. Silverstein, Not Much Fun is an essential addition to the Dorothy Parker library and a welcome gift to her many admirers and devoted fans.

    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

    Set in an apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic world that is disturbing because it is uncannily familiar, National Anthem chronicles the aftermath of the failure of imperial vision. Allowing Rome and America to bleed into one another, Prufer masterfully weaves the threads of history into an anthem that is as intimate as it is far-reaching.

    Included are "The Dark Chateau," "The Witch," "The Ghost," and more.

    Rexroth’s poems of nature and protest are remarkable for their erudition and biting social and political commentary; his love poems justly celebrated for their eroticism and depth of feeling.The cloth edition was one of the most widely reviewed poetry titles in 2003:“Scholars and critics who endeavor to discuss mid-20th century American poetry responsibly ignore Rexroth at their peril.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review, cover feature and selected as a Book of the Year“Rexroth is probably best known as the ‘Father of the Beat Generation.’ These poems reveal that great beauty lies beyond that cliché.”—NPR’s All Things Considered“Rexroth’s prodigious breadth of learning, his hungry attention to the natural world, his contempt for warmongering and his profound, occasionally overlapping love of women are all on flourishing display.”—The San Francisco Chronicle“Rexroth never mistook his poetry for a product, and he could present ideas and images in an urgent, memorable and eloquent way.”—The Nation“Rexroth is one of the most readable and rewarding 20th-century American poets.”—BooklistKenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) was one of the world’s great literary minds. In addition to being a poet, translator, essayist and teacher, he helped found the San Francisco Poetry Center and influenced generations of readers with his Classics Revisited series.

    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 in paperback, "Complete Short Poetry" gathers all of Zukofsky's poetry outside his 800-page magnum opus entitled" "A""--including work that appeared in "All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923-1964," the experimental transliteration (with Celia Zukofsky) of Catullus, the limited edition "80 Flowers," as well as several fugitive pieces never before collected."Zukofsky is the American Mallarm," writes Hugh Kenner, "and given the peculiar intentness of the American preoccupation with language--obsessive, despite what you may read in the newspapers--his work is more disorienting by far than his exemplar's ever was. Mallarm had a long poetic tradition from which to deviate into philology. Zukofsky received a philological tradition, which he raised to a higher power."

    

    Kenyon's fourth collection is built around two perfectly orchestrated poem sequences. In the first, the speaker contrasts memories of her baby carriage with other images from her childhood, such as her parents' toiling away at low-paying jobs. She also recalls the present-day life of her aging, increasingly dependent mother. Melancholia, the subject of the second sequence and several poems surrounding it, has been played to death in modern poetry, but still Kenyon offers new insights and gives even the most depressing poems an uplifting lilt in their final lines. In her hands a list of the latest medications becomes fit material for poetry: "The coated ones smell sweet or have / no smell; the powdery ones smell / like the chemistry lab at school / that made me hold my breath." She writes, in addition to illness, of sleep, insomnia and death. She interacts with the insects, birds and flowers in her New Hampshire landscape, relying on their fragility to teach her of her own. Kenyon describes afterlife, or "the Other Side," with the same precise, hard-edged imagery that fills her other poems." from Publisher's Weekly

    Suffused with hope yet unafraid to mock his own credulity, Simic's searing metaphors unite the solemn with the absurd. His raindrops listen to each other fall and collect memories; his wildflowers are drunk with kissing the red-hot breezes; and his God is a Mr. Know-it-all, a wheeler-dealer, a wire-puller. In this latest lyrical gathering, Simic continues to startle his fans with the powerful and surprising images that are his trademark-slangy images of the ethereal, fantastic visions of the everyday, foreign scenes of the all-American-and moments full of humor and full of heartache.

    . . focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time.”—The Virginia Quarterly Review, “Editor’s Choice”"Mary Oliver calls him '...a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman's bunting or oratory.' In these pages, he is more nearly a modern-day Rumi. This is not primarily a poetry of image, but of ideas, perfectly distilled. Orr brings together the monumental themes of love and loss in small, spare, and exquisite koan-like poems."—ForeWord"...magnetic poems that open the world of lyrical verse to the larger questions of what is true and timeless." —The Bloomsbury ReviewGregory Orr continues his acclaimed project on the “beloved” with a lyrical sequence about the joys and hungers of being fully engaged in life. Through concise, perfectly formed poems, he wakes us to the ecstatic possibilities of recognizing and risking love. Mary Oliver has called this project “gorgeous,” and said that he "speaks of the events that have no larger or more important rival in our lives—of our love and our loving."If to say it onceAnd once only, then stillTo say: Yes.And say it complete,Say it as if the wordFilled the whole momentWith its absolute saying.Later for “but,” Later for “if.”NowOnly the single syllableThat is the beloved.That is the world.Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.

    The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician’s trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all—death—where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight—both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role.  All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry. bird trick iv It’s all about disappearance. About a bird in a cagewith a mirror, a simple twiston the handle at the sidethat makes it come and go at the magician’s insistence. It’s all about innocence.It’s all about acceptance.It’s all about compliance.It’s all about deference.It’s all about silence. It’s all about disappearance.