Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

Book SynopsisThis book, by one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking-nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.Table of ContentsContents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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Book SynopsisThe book also includes an extended section of criticism by and about women writers.Trade Review“Well organized and thorough, it fills an enormous gap in Western literature on women’s literature in China.”—Stephen H. West, University of California, BerkeleyTable of ContentsEditorial conventions; Abbreviations; Maps; Introduction: genealogy and titles of the female poet; Part I. Poetry: 1. From ancient times to the six dynasties (222-589); 2. Tang (618-907) and five dynasties (907-60); 3. Song dynasty (960-1279; 4. Yuan dynasty (1264-1368); 5. Ming dynasty (1368-1644; 6. Qing dynasty (1644-1911); Part II. Criticism: 7. Female critics and poets; 8. Male critics and poets; Appendixes; Notes; Bibliography; Index of names.

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Book SynopsisThis analysis of the historical position of Paul Celan's poetry addresses the question of a lyric language that would not be the expression of subjectivity.Table of ContentsContents PART I CELAN PAUL PART II 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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Book SynopsisThe title of a poem is often seen as no more than a convenient means of reference. But in shorter lyric poems the title can often be as long as a line of verse, and as allusive. This is a theoretical, critical, and historical exploration of the traditions for titling shorter English poems.Trade Review"This is a powerful, elegant, and most original study that moves across and through the range of English and American verse. . . . What is so impressive, too, about this book is that the author's thought about the nature and structure and function of titles is rooted in, and leads to, wonderfully illuminating readings of the poems in question."—John Hollander, Yale University"There hasn't been an adequate history of the business of poetic titling until this new book by Ferry, and it is stimulating and welcome. . . .This is an indispensable hornbook. Anne Ferry has written the last word on the first words on any poem."—Partisan ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. Ownership and Self-Presentation; 1. Who gives the title; 2. Who has the title; Part II. Interpretive Fictions: 3. Who 'says' the poem' 4. Who 'hears' the poem; Part III. Authoritative Hierarchies: 5. What kind the poem belongs to; 6. What the poem is 'about'; Part IV. Undermining Titles: 7. Quotations in the title space; 8. Evasions of the title space; Afterward; Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisSing, Stranger is a comprehensive historical anthology of a century of American poetry written in Yiddish and now translated into English for the first time. This anthology reveals both an amazing achievement of Jewish creative work and an important body of American poetry.Trade Review"This latest work of Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, truly the doyens of the field of Yiddish poetry in translation, is an important achievement. Many anthologies have tended to give relatively furtive glimpses of a poet's creation, or suggestive hints of the flavours of his or her poetry. Both the impressive, but not cumbersome, size of this anthology and its historical and geographic focus allow for making more than such fleeting acquaintances. The strength of the work, the thing that makes it of such moment, is the heterogeneous and fluid notion of Americanness which is at the heart of the project."—Modern Language Review"This anthology consists of excellent English translations of the Yiddish poetry of major American Yiddish writers... highly recommended reading for all."—Association of Jewish Libraries NewsletterTable of Contents@fmct:Contents @toc4:A Note on Transcriptions iii Preface iii @toc1:Prelude 000 @toc1:Part One: Proletarian Poets 000 @toc2: Morris Rosenfeld(18621923) 000 Dovid Edelshtat(18661892) 000 Yoysef Bovshover(18731915) 000 @toc1:Part Two: The Lyrical Turn 000 @toc2: Yehoash (18721927) 000 Mani Leyb (18831953) 000 Y. Rolnik (18791955) 000 Ruven Ayzland (18841955) 000 B. Vladek (18861938) 000 Zisho Landoy (18891937) 000 Avrom Reyzen (18761953) 000 @toc1:Part Three: Symbolism and Expressionism 000 @toc2: H. Leyvik (18881962) 000 Moyshe-Layb Halpern (18861932) 000 Berish Vaynshteyn (19051967) 000 @toc1:Part Four: Introspectivism 000 @toc2:A. L'yeles (18891966) 000 Jacob Glatshteyn (18961971) 000 J. L. Teller (19121972) 000 Ruven Ludvig (18951926) 000 B. Alquit (n.d.) 000 @toc1:Part Five: On the Left 000 @toc2:Moyshe Nadir (18851943) 000 Menke Katz (19061991) 000 @toc1:Part Six: Narrative Poetry 000 @toc2: I. Y. Shvarts (18851971) 000 @toc1:Part Seven: Women Poets 000 @toc2:Anna Margolin (18871952) 000 Tsilya Drapkin (18881956) 000 Malka Heifetz-Tussman (18961987) 000 @toc1:Songs by Yiddish Poets 000 @toc4:Glossary 000

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Book SynopsisThis book is a collection of seminal essays on major aspects of Jewish culture: Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Europe, America and Israel, transformations of Jewish history, the Holocaust, and the formal traditions of Hebrew verse.Trade Review"By the evidence of this volume, Harshav's recent intellectual energies have been harnessed to the project of making the achievements of high Yiddish culture present to the contemporary Jewish mind and, by so doing, allowing us to hear something of the polyphonic music that has accompanied his life from his earliest childhood until now." -- Alan Mintz * Studies in Contemporary Jewry *"This book is an illuminating companion to Harshav's Explorations in Poetics." -- CHOICE"Using 'polyphony' as its unifying thematic thread, this book addresses the dynamic cultural systems which form the kaleidoscopic core of the modern Jewish experience. In this collection of articles, introductory essays, and memoirs culled from a body of work spanning over forty years, we are given a rich diversity of access points to what Benjamin Harshav calls the 'Modern Jewish Revolution'." -- Jordan Finkin, The Oriental Institute * Oxford *Table of ContentsCONTENTS Preface xxx Culture and History 1 1. Theses on the Historical Context of the Modern Jewish Revolution 00 2. Multilingualism 00 3. The Crisis of Jewish Identity: S.Y. Agnon's Only Yesterday 00 4. American Poetry in Yiddish and its Background 00 5. The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania 00 Art and Poetry 00 6. On the Beginnings of Israeli Poetry and Yehuda Amichai's Quatrains: A Memoir 00 7. The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself: Nathan Alterman, Abba Kovner 00 8. The Role of Language in Chagall's Early Paintings 00 9. A. Sutzkever: Life and Poetry 00 10. Note on the Systems of Hebrew Versification: Bible to Present 00 Sources of the Chapters 00

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking study of contemporary American poetry, Race and the Avant-Garde changes the way we think about race and literature. Examining two of the most exciting developments in recent American writing, Timothy Yu juxtaposes the works of experimental language poets and Asian American poetsconcerned primarily with issues of social identity centered around discourses of race. Yu delves into the 1960s social upheaval to trace how Language and Asian American writing emerged as parallel poetics of the avant-garde, each with its own distinctive form, style, and political meaning. From its provocative reevaluation of Allen Ginsberg to fresh readings of Ron Silliman, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and John Yau, along with its analysis of a new archive of Asian American writers from the 1970s, this book is indispensable for readers interested in race, Asian American studies, contemporary poetry, and the avant-garde.Trade Review"Timothy Yu expands and further delineates the complicated relationship between ethnic minorities and self-proclaimed avant-grade communities." -- J. Michael Martinez and Jordan Windholz * Puerto del Sol *"Yu's Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965 is ... provocative text that scholars of contemporary poetry and Asian American literature will be citing, discussing, and arguing over for many years to come." -- Kimberly Lamm * Contemporary Literature. *"Though this book at first appears narrowly focused, it manages to illuminate large areas of contemporary American poetry. The book is perhaps most compelling when it links poetry to late-20th-century social and political developments, for instance, the volatile situation during the late 1960s when the New Left fragmented into the competing, identity-conscious factions of the 1970s." -- CHOICE"With Race and the Avant-Garde, Timothy Yu goes an extraordinarily long way toward overcoming the historical divorce between the "aesthetic" and the "ethnic." And excitingly, for teachers and students of Asian American literature, he has made Asian American poetry a central part of the case. Treating the rise of Asian American poetry and Language poetry in light of each other, Yu illustrates the indelible presence of race in experimental writing and the constitutive role of form in ethnic writing." -- Colleen Lye * Author of America's Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 *"Race and the Avant-Garde marks a major turning point in genre and culture studies: it treats what is known as Asian American poetry not as a separate entity, but as a community in constant dialogue with that other community known as the avant-garde. In the latter part of the 20th century, Yu argues, the social groupings of American poetry come to cross-fertilize one another in intriguing ways, so that a 'minority' poetry like Asian American can best be understood as itself an avant-garde. Yu's sociology is both sophisticated and revelatory. Allen Ginsberg, Ron Silliman, John Yau, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: these poets will never look the same after reading Yu's outstanding book." * Marjorie Perloff,Author of Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media and Differentials *"Explores how conflicts, anxieties, and confusions fuse with aesthetics, ideologies, and social formations in the unsettling project of a syncretic Asian American poetics. In order to fully engage such poetics, Yu looks at roots but also rootlessness, lineages as well as misalignments. Yu takes risks; the welcome result is a provocatively informative excursion into the productive synergy of race and aesthetic innovation." * Charles Bernstein *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments xxx Introduction: Toward a Sociology of the Contemporary Avant-Garde 1 1. Auto Poesy: Allen Ginsberg and the Politics of Poetry 000 2. Ron Silliman and the Ethnicization of the Avant-Garde 000 3. Inventing a Culture: Asian American Poetry in the 1970s 000 4. Audience Distant Relative: Reading Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 000 5. Mr. Moto's Monologue: John Yau and Experimental Asian American Writing 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000

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Book SynopsisFredman makes the original argument that some of the most innovative works of poetry and art in the postwar period (1945–1970) engaged in a "contextual practice," a term that refers both to a way of making art characterized by assemblage and to a new relationship between art and life, an "erotic poetics."Trade Review"Fredman has written a clear, well-informed study of a specific facet of mid-20th-century poetry: how 'contextual practice' informed much of the work of avant-garde poets, painters, and filmmakers . . . Recommended." -- B. Wallenstein * CHOICE *"Contextual Practice takes a wide-angle, interdisciplinary look at some of the most important if overlooked works, figures, and social scenes specic to the American avant-garde from around 1945 to 1970 . . . Fredman recovers the provocatively contingent and charmingly social structures that informed some of the most dynamic art made after the Second World War. Those of us interested not only in the postwar American poetry scene, but in the humanities and counterculture history broadly speaking, will find in Fredman's evocative juxtapositions a Grand Collage indeed." -- Daniel Kane * Review of English Studies *"Stephen Fredman's Contextual Practice provides an in-depth exploration of cultural and aesthetic contexts shared by poets Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov, filmmaker Harry Smith, philosopher Norman O. Brown, and artist Wallace Berman and the circle around his seminal Semina magazine. Fredman has written a brilliant treatise on the poetics of collage in the New American poetry. And he puts his theories into practice with his exemplary use of contingent juxtapositions of a precisely ordered constellation of examples." -- Charles Bernstein * University of Pennsylvania *

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Book SynopsisAs the first book-length study of the Yongming poets, this book focuses on unraveling the complexity and hybridity of the poetic voices beneath their seemingly "technical" pursuit of prosodic innovation.Trade Review"[A] highly readable study if Yongming poetry that explores its new modes, devices, and themes in a compelling way." -- Nicholas Morrow Williams * China Review International *"Sound and Sight helps us to understand a pivotal period in Chinese poetry and its characteristic style. The formal innovations of the Yongming era, bearing particularly on sound patterns, are a forest of fearsomely technical issues ordinarily left to specialists. As this book demonstrates, "sound" is not just a physical phenomenon, but a mode of perception. Perception in all its modes was a matter of intense interest for the Yongming poets, an area in which their receptivity to Buddhist teaching met their attention to verbal craft; and it is through her attention to the modes of perception made active in the poetry that Meow Hui Goh links literary style with intellectual history." -- Haun Saussy * Yale University *"Goh's solidly researched effort to understand the Yongming era through its own aesthetic ideals not only takes a comprehensive approach to the much debated euphonic guidelines, but examines a change in the poet's sense of self-worth and situates major themes in the context of the court's environment and culture." -- Cynthia L. Chennault * Editor, Early Medieval China *"It is to the author's credit that in the short pages of the main body of the book, she presents a precise and clear picture of how the Yongming poets distinguished themselves and their poetry . . The author serves as a perceptive, reliable, and oftentimes inspiring guide leading us through the multifarious and emotionally charged landscape as it unfolds visually and acoustically before her poet protagonists . . . [H]eroic and laudable . . . [A] fresh and important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of this pivotal period in Chinese literary and cultural history. This carefully researched and finely written book provides a solid basis for further studies in the future." -- Yugen Wang * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *"The author's persuasively argued case—that the new poetics of Yongming-era court poetry was founded on, and in practice subtly guided by, Buddhist principles—takes up roughly the first three chapters of Sound and Sight. In the remaining three chapters, she extends her study into the world outside the court, as her poets encountered it in their poetic excursions . . . We have therefore all the more reason to wish to learn from these remarkable poets, and—in the same way that they helped their contemporaries to see and hear the world anew—perhaps we can, with the help of Meow Hui Goh's interpretations, see and hear them again as if for the first time." -- Alice W. Cheang * Journal of Chinese Studies *

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Book SynopsisThis book makes an argument for paying serious attention to the full complexity, formal and social, of Asian American poetry—and of minority poetry—and for rethinking how we read American poetry in general.Trade Review"Dorothy Wang provides an extraordinarily rich reading of minority discourse among experimental Asian American writers. In this theoretically sophisticated study, Wang reads identity as a function of specific linguistic, rhetorical practices that force us to re-think normative attitudes towards racial formations. Rather than discover 'Asianness' through thematic content, Wang studies ethnic identity in linguistic deformations, rhetorical figures, and idioms, which bear the weight of historical marginalization and silencing. It is a brilliant effort, theoretically sophisticated yet grounded in focused readings of individual works." -- Michael Davidson * University of California, San Diego *"Can race sit at the poetry table? Wang's passionate meditation on the inseparability of aesthetics and politics in poetry and poetics will fundamentally transform the ways in which we think racial difference and form in the literary. We will never approach metaphor, irony, parody, or contingency in the same way again. This is a fearless defense of poetry, race, and reading." -- David L. Eng * University of Pennsylvania *"The tendency not to address the formal properties of Asian American poetry—not to take it seriouslyas poetry, in Dorothy Wang's trenchant words—is rigorously corrected in her readings of John Yau, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and others. This corrective is augmented by a theoretical assertion that demands that mainstream poetry be taken seriously as a record of the complexities of racial formation, and the racialized formation of personal and poetic identity, in the United States. Wang forcefully demands that we become better readers while carefully and generously showing us how to do just that." -- Fred Moten * Duke University *"[A] powerful challenge to conventional ways of thinking (or not thinking) about race and poetry." -- Ben Lerner The Books We Loved In 2016 * The New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisThis book makes an argument for paying serious attention to the full complexity, formal and social, of Asian American poetry—and of minority poetry—and for rethinking how we read American poetry in general.Trade Review"Dorothy Wang provides an extraordinarily rich reading of minority discourse among experimental Asian American writers. In this theoretically sophisticated study, Wang reads identity as a function of specific linguistic, rhetorical practices that force us to re-think normative attitudes towards racial formations. Rather than discover 'Asianness' through thematic content, Wang studies ethnic identity in linguistic deformations, rhetorical figures, and idioms, which bear the weight of historical marginalization and silencing. It is a brilliant effort, theoretically sophisticated yet grounded in focused readings of individual works." -- Michael Davidson * University of California, San Diego *"Can race sit at the poetry table? Wang's passionate meditation on the inseparability of aesthetics and politics in poetry and poetics will fundamentally transform the ways in which we think racial difference and form in the literary. We will never approach metaphor, irony, parody, or contingency in the same way again. This is a fearless defense of poetry, race, and reading." -- David L. Eng * University of Pennsylvania *"The tendency not to address the formal properties of Asian American poetry—not to take it seriouslyas poetry, in Dorothy Wang's trenchant words—is rigorously corrected in her readings of John Yau, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and others. This corrective is augmented by a theoretical assertion that demands that mainstream poetry be taken seriously as a record of the complexities of racial formation, and the racialized formation of personal and poetic identity, in the United States. Wang forcefully demands that we become better readers while carefully and generously showing us how to do just that." -- Fred Moten * Duke University *"[A] powerful challenge to conventional ways of thinking (or not thinking) about race and poetry." -- Ben Lerner The Books We Loved In 2016 * The New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisIn the most extensive work to date on major poets from the mountain South, John Lang takes as his point of departure an oft-quoted remark by Jim Wayne Miller: “Appalachian literature is - and has always been - as decidedly worldly, secular, and profane in its outlook as the [region's] traditional religion appears to be spiritual and otherworldly.”

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Book SynopsisA poem is an act of faith because the poet believes in it, contends John Wall Barger in The Elephant of Silence, a collection of essays exploring forms of knowing (and not knowing) that awaken a poetic mind.Trade ReviewWhat a pleasure to follow poet John Wall Barger's singular, brilliant, unpretentious, generous mind, as he writes in an utterly natural and precise way about subjects notoriously difficult to discuss: poetry, film, writing, marriage, even silence." - Matthew Zapruder, author of Story of a Poem"If you can't go to the movies with Barger, do the next best thing and enjoy these sensitive, playful essays on what he's watched, read, and observed, with a poet's blend of thought and feeling." - Adrienne Su, author of Peach State"Barger's essays are all, in some way, about the creative process itself and the audience's role as a vital participant in that process. An author has defined a set of parameters, yet it is up to us, the viewer, to bring our own lived experience to bear it out. Barger navigates this terrain with the ease and imagination of an expert tour guide, a 'Stalker'—in the spirit of Tarkovsky—who understands our own pivotal involvement in helping to create this world we inhabit." - Bill Morrison, director of Dawson City: Frozen Time

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Book SynopsisShows how Plath's remarkable lyric dramas define a private ritual process. This book deals with the emotional material from which Plath's poetry arises and the specific ritual transformations she dramatizes. It covers all phases of Plath's poetry, closely following the development of image and idea from the apprentice work through the last lyrics of Ariel.

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Book SynopsisUNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.Trade ReviewWell-written, original, and intelligent.--Greece & Rome|""What makes the modest book refreshing is its rejection of well-worn approaches in poetics (rhetoric, themes of inspiration, distinctions of genre) and the inclusion of excellent critical passages.""--Choice

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Book SynopsisThis important collection presents Gertrude Stein for the first time in her brilliant modernity. Ulla E. Dydo's textual scholarship demonstrates Stein's constant questioning of convention, and A Stein Reader changes the balance of work in print, concentrating on Stein's experimental work and including many key works that are virtually unknown or unavailable.

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Book SynopsisAnalyses how the dramatist and poet Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) responded to a change in the conception of sex and gender that occurred between 1790 and 1810. Specifically, Katrin Pahl shows that Kleist resisted the shift from a one-sex to the two-sex and complementary gender system that is still prevalent today.

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Book SynopsisAnalyses the work of seven Russian poets who translated their own poems into English, French, German, or Italian. Investigating the parallel versions of self-translated poetic texts, Adrian Wanner considers how verbal creativity functions in different languages, the conundrum of translation, and the vagaries of bilingual identities.Trade Review“The Bilingual Muse confirms Adrian Wanner as the leading scholar of Russian literary translingualism. His scintillating study of self-translation by seven disparate poets is attentive to the nuances of prosody as well as issues of cultural and personal identity. Especially luminescent are Wanner’s discussion of the short-lived polyglot prodigy Elizaveta Kul’man, his recuperation of the painter Wassily Kandinsky as a formidable trilingual poet, and his account of why Vladimir Nabokov regarded autotranslation as ‘self-torture.” - Steven G. Kellman, author of The Translingual Imagination “The Bilingual Muse is illuminating and useful. It is rare and unusual to see the kind of thorough treatment of all levels of language and prosody that Wanner provides.” - Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour, author of Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First” EmigrationTable of Contents Introduction: “The Trick of Doubling Oneself” 1. Elizaveta Kul’man: The Most Polyglot of Russian Poets 2. Wassily Kandinsky’s Trilingual Poetry 3. Marina Tsvetaeva’s Self-Translation into French 4. Vladimir Nabokov’s Dilemma of Self-Translation 5. Joseph Brodsky in English 6. Self-Translation among Contemporary Russian-American Poets Conclusion Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2018 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, Tsitsi Ella Jaji's second full-length collection of poems, Mother Tongues, is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore.Table of Contents Mother Tongues Table of Contents (i) Dedication: Our lingering embrace iii mother tongue (1) 1 On the Isle of Lesbos Our Mother of Stone Daughtering And They Didn't Die In Praise of the Great Cat * lingua: corral Five Bagatelles Fingerings flare Symphony Dinner with Piano Soloist Blue Note Bandwagon Cooking with Miles Relaxing with Miles * lingua: tongue-tied Tell me something good A Song at Dawn Auxiliary Prelude to a Kiss First Guardian of Flight: The Angel of Time Second Guardian of Flight: The Angel of Refinement After Tonsure * lingua: ladyfingers Ethiopia Stretches Forth Her Hands Manual for Initiation into the Zebra Sisterhood Electioneered Old News After the Coup (or Not) The Crystal River Profile How I Write * lingua: good tast Real Simple Way Out West Autumn Leaves Marvin in Stereo/Right Ear Marvin in Stereo/Left Ear morning, 11.9.16 Burying Willie, Our Lion Malick Sidibé's Camera Calls * lingua: gorgon Benin Bronze Unaccompanied Minor Children's Swings Pond in Museum Garden Ritual Object The Body Counts at war Wildcat * lingua: a quick tongue The Graves Suite Ballade: Thyroid Goes Rogue 3 Intermezzi for Unaccompanied Thyroid Misterioso: Iodine 131 Meets the Royal Thyroid Cadenza: Thyroid Rides Again Koan of the Great Cat * lingua: babble We are the darker sister Boy Lotus Three Lessons on a Friday Stumbling Block Facing El Greco When Thomas Finally Rolled Up, I Said Infinitive

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Book SynopsisOffers a twenty-first-century paean to the sterling love songs humming throughout four hundred years of black American life. National Book Award winner Nikky Finney's fifth collection contains lighthouse poems, narrative hotbeds, and treasured artifacts - copper coins struck from a new matrix for poetry.Trade Review“A paean to the culture of African Americans and their history and culture of survival through creativity—in your face, loud, emotional, outrageous truth.” —Ed Roberson, author of To See the Earth Before the End of the World

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Book SynopsisJacqueline Jones LaMon delivers a stunning third collection that shows the elements of life that both unite us and create our greatest distances. What Water Knows transports the reader from drought to drowning, from the transatlantic Middle Passage to the breaking of water, from water wielded as a weapon to used as a reward.Trade Review“Such a vibrant and beautiful book. I truly read it with my heart in my throat. LaMon speaks a language at once as familiar and foreign as love itself—with so much love. There is such a deep quietude to this book. She takes us beneath the covers of what it means to be a woman, to be a mother, to be Black, to be trapped—and finally, what it means to be free. I cannot wait for this book to be in the world. Everything I needed right now.” — Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award winner and the author of Red at the Bone: A Novel“With intimacy and clarity, What Water Knows offers us transcendent, lyric language that explores womanhood, race, history, justice, love, and the politics of our identities contained by the memory of water, released by it, or both. Fluid in her craft, LaMon’s powers are fully claimed here. In a poem about womanhood, she writes ‘We were our own fine line, / never crossed.’ Elsewhere LaMon asks a timeless question for us all: ‘What is it you need when you’re fleeing your home?’ The poet’s intuition and intelligence rise and crest without ending, and in remarkable turns of self-knowledge, strength, and grace, the intimations of water are as elusive and marvelous as the poet’s desire. Indispensable and elemental, What Water Knows achieves a truth that does not spare our most primal needs. Aware of the ordinary and celestial energy of language itself, and what it may mean to choose to speak at all in any form, the poet writes, ‘Some would say there are no oceans between us, only / land. I would say it all depends on the direction we choose to face.’” — Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body: PoemsTable of Contents I: This Fragile, Resilient Life No One Eats Icicles Anymore Her Silk Scarf Was Blood-Soaked by I-495 Travelogue What Happens When a Brother Flees Up the River “Governor Snyder Drinks Flint Water” Pipeline Lemonade Mob Six Niagara Ownership What Is Human, or Culture, or Left Hanging in the Air All That We Need to Be Happy On Watch for the Spontaneous The Garonne River Shifts Her Direction Classification Is the Beginning of Our Greatest Understanding Nine to the Limit Prodigal The Browning II: The Open, Empty Mouth We Could Walk into the Waters, or Leave Life as It Seems Thermostat This Wholeness, Beyond Everything We Know With a View of the Water from Stable, Cleared Ground Disregarding the Alarm The Night Before Euthanasia What We Wear to Meet the Water Cleansing My Mother’s Cold Body The Merchant Seaman’s Wife Rockaway And All the Rest Will Have Washed Away Quiet on the Set Still Life Polar Vortex My Body Speaks of Hatred Water, Water Everywhere, But How Am I to Drink? Martini III: The Promise of Relief The Latitude, The Longitude, and a Third Axis Called Time Socratic We Put So Much Faith in the Power of Doors Cruise to Nowhere Bathwater Breaking & Entering Ornithology Aftermath Holding Boarding the Six Train at Brooklyn Bridge No Matter What the Incline, The River Around Us Still Flows Primate The Death and the Dying, A Million Times Over It Is Happy Hour, Somewhere There Are Some Things We Can’t Create in Life There are Sixty-Five Steps Between There and Here The Only Time We Think of It Is When It’s No Longer There Bay One Currency What To Do When Everything Gets Tossed from the Vessel And Tomorrow, We Learn to Name the Air Skully In the Beginning Commitment That Which We Reach for When Given the Chance Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisThe author of at least two noteworthy romances of the early thirteenth century, Le Roman de la Rose or Guillaume de Dole and L''Escoufle (The Kite), as well as Le Lai de l''Ombre, Jean Renart is today recognized as the most accomplished practitioner of the realistic romance in Old French literature.

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Book SynopsisDrawing on recent insights in linguistics, this study formulates a theory of rhythm in English poetry. The author maintains that the meter of Middle English alliterative poetry holds the key to a reinterpretation of both Old English meter and iambic pentameter.Trade Review"This is a fine piece of work that contains very clear technical writing on problems of meter previously accessible only to specialists, and should interest anyone concerned with English verse form. Cable's debunking of the 'accentual' theory of alliterative verse, in particular, makes the book important for students of modern meters. . . . After Cable's book is published, no one will be able to say that Chaucer introduced syllable-counting to English poetry or that experimental verse with a rough equivalence in number of stresses per line draws on a long native tradition. Cable convinces me that there never was any such tradition. Accessible. . . . Sophisticated. . . . Striking. . . . Original." * Geoffrey Russom *

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Book SynopsisIn 1492, the Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija proclaimed that language has always been the companion of empire. Taking as his touchstone a suggestive sonnet that Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in 1535, this work examines how the companionship of language and empire played itself out more generally in the new poetry of 16th-century Europe.Trade Review"A tour de force in the practice of reading." * Hispanic Review *"A masterful reading of poetry in context. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisOur Emily Dickinsons situates Dickinson's life and work within larger debates about gender, sexuality, and literary authority in America. Examining Dickinson's influence on Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and others, Vivian R. Pollak complicates the connection between authorial biography and poetry that endures.Trade Review"Persistently witty and insightful, the book feeds and satisfies one's curiosity. Much like the poetic texts it plays against, it invites the reader to slow down, to reread, to enjoy a subtlety, to share an intimacy. This is not simply a scholarly study but a work of art about prior works of art and about the creative personalities that engendered them . . . Scholarly books come and go, and it is generally good that they do so. This book, however, may be around for a long time-as an inspiration for subsequent scholarship; an influential account of the afterlife of Dickinson; and a stimulating study of the works and lives of Jackson, Todd, Moore, Plath, and Bishop. It is a book to read and absorb, one that beautifully evokes the dramas of creativity unfolding in some of Dickinson's most notable inheritors." * Modern Language Quarterly *"Pollak beautifully analyses the changing attitude of women poets whose psychological connections to and disconnections from Dickinson take place through the practices of reading . . . Our Emily Dickinsons marks the historical and cultural place that Dickinson has occupied in the American consciousness through a skilful weaving: of biography with poetry; diary and journal entries with literary reviews; and newspaper advertisements with personal letters." * Modern Language Review *"Vivian R. Pollak provides an entirely original, subtle, and insightful reading of the gender anxieties of women poets as revealed through their responses to reading Dickinson and each other, or sometimes through their sense of Dickinson as the inevitable point of comparison. Pollak contributes a plethora of information previously unknown or not widely known about the relationships between the later poets she studies and between those women and Dickinson, and she offers astute readings of their often nuanced comments on Dickinson (and each other) in reviews, letters, diaries, or published prose. There is no other book like it!" * Cristanne Miller, University of Buffalo *"Vivian Pollak's ingenious look at Emily Dickinson's hold on the imagination of three late modernist poets (Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath) is stunning in its revelations and riveting in its analysis of how the ever-mysterious Queen of Calvary works her magic differently on each poet and on each new generation of readers. This book is brilliant. I finished it and, captivated, turned back to page one and began again." * Mary Jo Bang, Washington University in St. Louis *"Elegantly written, witty, and consistently illuminating in its readings, Vivian Pollak's book represents feminist literary criticism at its best. In luminous detail, the book reveals the ways American women poets have engaged their own gendered anxieties and fears through their intimate encounters with Emily Dickinson." * Betsy Erkkilä, Northwestern University *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Introduction. Dickinson and the Demands of Intimacy Chapter 1. Helen Hunt Jackson and Dickinson's Personal Publics Chapter 2. Mabel Loomis Todd and Dickinson's Art of Sincerity Chapter 3. "The Wholesomeness of the Life": Marianne Moore's Unartificial Dickinson Chapter 4. Moore, Plath, Hughes, and "The Literary Life" Chapter 5. Plath's Dickinson: On Not Stopping for Death Chapter 6. Elizabeth Bishop and the U.S.A. Schools of Writing Conclusion. Dickinson and the Demands of Difference Notes Works Cited Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThe later poetry of William Wordsworth, popular in his lifetime and influential on the Victorians, has, with a few exceptions, received little attention from contemporary literary critics. In Wordsworth''s Poetry, 1815-1845, Tim Fulford argues that the later work reveals a mature poet far more varied and surprising than is often acknowledged. Examining the most characteristic poems in their historical contexts, he shows Wordsworth probing the experiences and perspectives of later life and innovating formally and stylistically. He demonstrates how Wordsworth modified his writing in light of conversations with younger poets and learned to acknowledge his debt to women in ways he could not as a young man. The older Wordsworth emerges in Fulford''s depiction as a love poet of companionate tenderness rather than passionate lament. He also appears as a political poet—bitter at capitalist exploitation and at a society in which vanity is rewarded while poverty is blamed. Most notaTrade Review"The idea that we might be able to blow the dust of thirty years' worth of neglected Wordsworth poems and find them wonderful is deeply appealing, and Fulford's encouragement, along with his diligent readings of several little-known poems ('The Brownie' might be an example), is impressive in its endeavor." * The Times Literary Supplement *"Wordsworth's Poetry, 1815-1845 should be read as an important corrective to our ingrained prejudice against the later poetry. Through its deft combination of historicist critique and laser-sharp formal analysis, the book displays the richness of Wordsworth's oeuvre while highlighting the meagreness of thought that, all too often, has prevented readers from experiencing the full range of the poet's accomplishments.." * The Review of English Studies *"[R]evelatory . . . This is certainly the best book yet published on the late Wordsworth. It will be turned to gratefully by future students of Wordsworth's later work; it will also, I hope, attract a new generation of readers to this extraordinarily rich body of work." * European Romantic Review *"Fulford's sensitive attention helps us to see the verse of the late Wordsworth with fresh eyes . . . Wordsworth's Poetry, 1815-1845 is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the long arc of Wordsworth's career." * Modern Language Review *"Tim Fulford offers a richly textured account of thirty years of verse that fell out of favor with the elevation of the "Great Decade" in the 1960s and 1970s . . . the entire book, makes a convincing case for reading Wordsworth's poetry to the very end." * Modern Philology *"The best and most complete work on the later poetry of William Wordsworth. Tim Fulford's readings are thoughtful, frequently brilliant, and at times border on the luxurious in their willingness to unpack the pleasures of the verse." * Michael Gamer, University of Pennsylvania *"It is exciting to watch Tim Fulford's Wordsworth enter into dialogue with other poets, from the classics to his younger contemporaries, refiguring his own works from his evolving later perspectives, vital as opposed to fossilized, and so reshaping the conventional literary history of nineteenth-century British poetry. This is a field-altering book." * Peter J. Manning, Stony Brook University *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Introduction PART I. PRODUCING A POET FOR THE PUBLIC Chapter 1. Learning to Be a Poet of Imagination: Wordsworth and the Ghost of Cowper Chapter 2. The Politics of Landscape and the Poetics of Patronage: Collecting Coleorton PART II. SPOTS OF SPACE: MATERIALIZING MEMORY Chapter 3. Memoirs of Scott-land, 1814-33 Chapter 4. Textual Strata and Geological Form: The Scriptorium and the Cave PART III. THE POLITICS OF DICTION Chapter 5. The Erotics of Influence: Wordsworth as Byron and Keats Chapter 6. Wordsworth and Ebenezer Elliott: Radicalism Renewed PART IV. LATE GENRES Chapter 7. Narrow Cells and Stone Circles: Sonnet Form and Spiritual History Chapter 8. Evanescence and After-Effect: The Evening Voluntaries Coda. Elegiac Musing and Generic Mixing Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In Making the Miscellany, Megan Heffernan makes a significant contribution to the study of the poetic design of early modern printed books, how volumes of compiled poems responded to changes in media, the material organization of printed poetry, the contribution of conventions and innovations of arrangement to vernacular poetic craft, and the consolidation of individual authorship...Heffernan has untangled the tangled tale of book matter, design, printing, culture, and history in relation to the making and reading of poetry then and now." * Renaissance and Reformation *"Upon first notice,Making the Miscellany appears as another well-stated and strong scholarly contribution to literary studies, but that would be deceiving; it is much more. The author has thrown new light upon previously understood conventions and scholarship focused on poetry and compilations and miscellanies of poetry...Beyond the in-depth scholarly apparatus utilized inMaking the Miscellany, the author has provided a very engaging and highly readable style. Rich in technical asides in text and notes, this book opens up new scholarly ground and serves as a requisite and indispensable measure of scholarship that traverses different scholarship fields as well as opportunities for further exploration." * Publishing Research Quarterly *"By decentering the author as the imagined source and originator of the poetry collection, Megan Heffernan is able to attend to the agency of stationers and compilers, as well as the agency of poetry itself. In one of her most exciting claims, Heffernan argues that the poetry shapes the material form of the printed book in these early poetry collections. Indeed, she shows, these innovative arrangements shaped the development of vernacular poetic craft and notions of authorship in the seventeenth century and after." * Jenny C. Mann, author of The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A]n idiosyncratic and fun collection of short essays on modern and contemporary poems....If you like poems, and like reading smart people writing about poems in bite-sized essays, then The Difference Is Spreading is the kind of book you might like to leave on your nightstand and dip into here and there. It is, as Gertrude Stein might tell us, both 'a spectacle and nothing strange' to encounter all of these wonderful poems through the eyes of our contemporary poets." * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Putzi’sstudy is a remarkable intervention in the study of nineteenth-century US women writers—known and unknown, recovered and yet unrecovered—because it challenges the very concept of a nineteenth-century woman writer...Putzi’s model ofrelational poetics opens up compelling possibilities for the recovery of nineteenth-centurywomenwriters,aswellasnewwaysofunderstandinghow nineteenth-century US literature was read and created." -- Elissa Zellinger * American Literary History *"Putzi gives us an inspiring book, designed to persuade scholars of both traditional and critical literary analysis to join her in reading with respect and pleasure this body of antebellum American women’s poetry...Putzi’s work adds to helpful analyses of women’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry, especially studies of poetry’s contemporary rhetoric by Jane Donawerth, Winifred Bryan Horner, and Lynee Lewis Gaillet." * Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature *"Fair Copy expertly engages the composition, publication, and circulation of women’s printed poetry to produce a far-reaching theory and methodology of relational poetics as radical recovery. Moving with graceful nimbleness between this overarching framework and a precision born of copious archival work, Putzi offers a compelling narrative of women’s engagement with print and its various networks and relations—a story unknown in part because studies of nineteenth-century women’s authorship have primarily focused on prose and in part because of a scholarly emphasis on originality and individuality." * Early American Literature *"Jennifer Putzi offers five case studies of women poets' 'relational poetics' under conditions of authorship that depend on intersecting categories of race, class, and gender. She maps the significance of unremarkable or indistinguishable practices by unknown and in some way irrecoverable women poets in order to show that the very lack of distinction or originality, the impossibility of identifying a signature style, marks the poems as accomplishments that depend on the contexts of production, circulation, and reception." * Eliza Richards, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The American Hemans: Lydia Sigourney's Relational Poetics Chapter 2. "The Songs Which All Can Sing": Imitation and Working Women's Poetry in the Lowell Offering Chapter 3. "My Country": Communal Authorship and Citizenship in Sarah Louisa Forten's Liberator Poems Chapter 4. "What Is Poetry?": Class, Collaboration, and the Making of Wales, and Other Poems Chapter 5. "Some Queer Freak of Taste": Relational Poetics and Literary Proprietorship in the "Rock Me to Sleep" Controversy Conclusion. Recovering the Unremarkable Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[T]his stimulating book...aim[s] to rebuild the study of Middle English lyric from the ground up. The thirteen chapters proceed from foundation to rooftop...The book is a passionate invitation to plunge into Middle English lyric. It raises countless questions. It is certain to spur continuing, vigorous cultivation of its field." * Modern Philology *"What Kind of Thing Is a Middle English Lyric? asks scholars and poets to rethink not only the Middle English lyric (especially between the late twelfth and late fourteenth centuries) from the ground up, but the generic and historiographic contours of Medieval Studies, lyric studies, and poetry altogether...In addition to serving as a worthy reference source for the Middle English lyric, indexed as it is, the book’s stronger impulse of troubling the lyric forces deeper, more flexible engagements with poetry in theory and practice, past and present...Altogether, this company of scholars and artists exemplifies collaboration at its finest." * Early Middle English *"This outstanding collection of essays boldly reconceptualizes Middle English lyric, brilliantly illuminating its formal intricacies, historical contexts, and power. Among other subjects, the essays explore lyric multilingualism, wonder, sonic richness, material inscription, narrativity, dialogism, performativity, figuration, and intersubjectivity. Destined to hold a distinguished place in studies of poetry and poetics, this book deserves to be widely read and relished by anyone interested in new angles of approach to poetry." * Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry in a Global Age *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A]n idiosyncratic and fun collection of short essays on modern and contemporary poems....If you like poems, and like reading smart people writing about poems in bite-sized essays, then The Difference Is Spreading is the kind of book you might like to leave on your nightstand and dip into here and there. It is, as Gertrude Stein might tell us, both 'a spectacle and nothing strange' to encounter all of these wonderful poems through the eyes of our contemporary poets." * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisImmerses readers in a debate tradition that flourished in France during the late Middle Ages, focusing on two works that were both popular and controversial: Le Roman de la Rose by thirteenth-century poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and La Belle Dame sans Mercy by fifteenth-century royal secretary and poet Alain Chartier.

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Book SynopsisThe biblical book of Genesis stands nearly without parallel in the shared history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The essays in this book study an array of Jewish and Christian responses to Genesis as they took shape in specific literary forms - the unique genres of late antique poetry.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice magazine 'outstanding title,' featuring over 1800 poems, along with introductions and notes, this three-volume set offers the most compelling and wide-ranging selection from the nation’s beginnings to the present day; also available in individual volumes." * LitHub *"A Choice magazine 'outstanding title,' featuring over 1800 poems, along with introductions and notes, this three-volume set offers the most compelling and wide-ranging selection from the nation’s beginnings to the present day; also available in individual volumes." * LitHub *Table of Contents*DOES NOT INCLUDE POEM TITLES*PrefaceAcknowledgementsPART ONE: MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY IntroductionGEORGE OPPEN (1908-1984)THEODORE ROETHKE (1908-1963)CHARLES OLSON (1910-1970)ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)CARLOS BULOSAN (1911?-1956)MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980)JOHN BERRYMAN (1914-1972)JULIA BE BURGOS (1914-1953)RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965)GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000)ROBERT LOWELL (1917-1977)ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988)JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997)DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997)MITSUYE YAMADA (b. 1923)ROBERT CREELY (1926-2005)ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995)FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966)JOHN ASHBERY (b. 1927)ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974)JOSEPH AWAD (1929-2009)ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929)GARY SNYDER (b. 1930)DEREK WALCOTT (b. 1930)SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)AMIRI BARAKA [LEROI JONES] (b. 1934)DIANE DI PRIMA (b. 1934)PART TWO: LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY/EARLY-TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY POETRY IntroductionSUSAN HOWE (b. 1937)LUIS OMAR SALINAS (1937-2008)MICHAEL S. HARPER (b. 1938)KATHLEEN SPIVACK (b. 1938)FRANK BIDART (b. 1939)ROBERT PINKSY (b. 1940)BOB DYLAN (b. 1941)LYN HEJINIAN (b. 1941)ALEX KUO (b. 1941)WANDA COLEMAN (b. 1946)RAE ARMANTROUT (b. 1947)LINDA HOGAN (b. 1947)YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA (b. 1947)NATHANIEL MACKEY (b. 1947)GERALD MCCARTHY (b. 1947)W. D. EHRHART (b. 1948)CAROL FROST (b. 1948)VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ (b. 1949)CHARLES BERNSTEIN (b. 1950)CAROLYN FORCHÉ (b. 1950)MAURYA SIMON (b. 1950)JOHN YAU (b. 1950)RAY A. YOUNG BEAR (b. 1950)THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA (1951-1982)JOY HARJO (b. 1951)RITA DOVE (b. 1952)CHERRÍE MORAGA (b. 1952)NAOMI SHIHAB NYE (b. 1952)ALBERTO RÍOS (b. 1952)GARY SOTO (b. 1952)MARK DOTY (b. 1953)HARRYETTE MULLEN (b. 1953)GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG (b. 1953)ELMAZ ABINADER (b, 1954)LORNA DEE CERVANTES (b. 1954)MARILYN CHIN (b. 1955)CATHY SONG (b. 1955)AMY GERSTLER (b. 1956)LI-YOUNG LEE (b. 1957)JUAN DELGADO (b. 1960)BAO-LONG CHU (b. 1965)SHERMAN ALEXIE (b. 1966)QUEEN LATIFAH [DANA OWENS] (b. 1970)About the EditorsCopyrights and PermissionsIndex

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Book SynopsisThe complete poems of Leopold Sedar Senghor, possibly Africa's most famous poet, are offered in translation in this bilingual French/English edition. The book, representing the culmination of a lifetime's work, includes ""Lost Poems"", a collection of Senghor's earliest work.

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Book SynopsisThe letters in this volume show the woman Rossetti was at this time in her life. By 1874 she was an established poet with a literary reputation among her contemporaries. But her personal life was overshadowed by the deaths and illness of close friends, and her own affliction with Graves' disease. In the VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE series.

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Book SynopsisLeopold Sedar Senghor was President of the Republic of Senegal from 1960 to 1981, but he is also considered one of Africa's foremost poets. This bilingual volume collects his complete poetic works.

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings together Melvin B. Tolson's three book of poetry - ""Rendezvouz with America"", ""Libretto for the Republic of Liberia"", and ""Harlem Gallery"" - as well as fugitive poems after 1944.

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Book SynopsisThe third volume of ""Letters..."" covers years in which Christina Rossetti lost several important family members, including her mother, her brother Dante, and a young nephew, Michael. In the face of her loss, she turned increasingly to religion and wrote works of devotional prose.

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Book SynopsisOffers a groundbreaking critical biography of the German-born British poet Mathilde Blind (1841-1896) - a freethinking radical feminist. As the first full-length biography of this trailblazing woman of letters, Mathilde Blind underscores the importance of her poetry and her critical writings.Trade Review“Mathilde Blind is a groundbreaking critical biography of the Germanborn British aesthete. An important, must-read book.” —Ana Parejo Vadillo, Birkbeck University of London"Diedrick's account builds a picture of an intelligent and passionate advocate of women's rights, a thoughtful writer who engaged deeply with the society in which she worked. Blind would likely have approved of this way of portraying her." - The TLS

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Book SynopsisAnalyses work written since the year 2000 by thirteen North American poets, all of whom push the bounds of literary convention as they seek forms and language adequate to complex environmental problems. These poets respond to environments transformed by people and take “nature” to be a far more inclusive and culturally imbricated category than conventional nature poetry does.Trade Review"This boundary-pushing text brings to the fore dynamic ecopoetic work reconstituting the lyric–nature–wilderness assemblage that has dominated the study of North American ecopoetry. As such, the monograph makes a distinct contribution to ecopoetics through its thoroughgoing exploration of experimental, radical, urban, less accessible, and non-lyric modes [...] an eminently valuable addition to anglophone ecopoetic criticism." — Modern Language Review

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