Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

Book SynopsisPoet and scholar team Dora Malech and Laura T. Smith collect and foreground an impressive range of sonnets, including formal and formally subversive sonnets by established and emerging poets, highlighting connections across literary moments and movements. Poets include Phillis Wheatley, Fredrick Goddard Tuckerman, Emma Lazarus, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gertrude Stein, Fradel Shtok, Claude McKay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ruth Muskrat Bronson, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Dunstan Thompson, Rhina P. Espaillat, Lucille Clifton, Marilyn Hacker, Wanda Coleman, Patricia Smith, Jericho Brown, and Diane Seuss. The sonnets are accompanied by critical essays that likewise draw together diverse voices, methodologies, and historical and theoretical perspectives that represent the burgeoning field of American sonnet studies.Trade Review“With keen observation and rigorous inquiry, The American Sonnet documents and celebrates American poets’ vital contributions to an ancient, global verse form. The poems and essays collected here situate the ‘American sonnet’ within a centuries-long conversation about how poetry happens on the page and in the mind. By centering diverse, living American poets for whom the sonnet is a way to think deeply about social and political questions, this work offers a timely snapshot of our urgent literary moment. The American Sonnet is a feast of discovery for all readers.”—Kiki Petrosino, author, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “The American Sonnet will be embraced by all who’ve noted the lack of diverse scholarship on the sonnet, particularly regarding historically underrepresented sonneteers. Malech and Smith have deepened and expanded the range of our thinking on this form. I can’t wait to teach this book—and be taught by it.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs “I can’t imagine a group of people with whom I would be more excited to talk with about the sonnet than the essayists herein, nor talk more illuminating than their essays. And the sonnets themselves cover whatever the essays don’t (more Dunstan Thompson in anthologies, please). This is an ideal anthology.”—Shane McCrae, author, Cain Named the Animal “’We shall not always plant while others reap,’ promised Countee Cullen; the robust tradition of sonnets he represented is just one of several in this memorable, thoughtful, useful, and sometimes stellar collection’s deeply American braid, reflecting both a panoply of sonnets from U.S.-based writers (and translators!) and a splendid variety of contemporary writings on the form, a modern—but not too modern—pattern designed to make ‘the soul swing open’ (as Mona Van Duyn puts it) ‘on its hinges.’ Sonnets themselves train up to the present day and then introduce up-to-date reflections on the form, from major critics’ takes to up-and-coming poets’ thoughts: Jahan Ramazani on this ‘tightly wound global form,’ Meg Day's ‘Deaf and disabled existence,’ Timo Muller on Harlem Renaissance translation, arguments about neuroqueerness and autism in (wait for it) Robert Frost, and about where on Earth this form is going beyond the pentameter, beyond—or is it back to?—the past. ‘A sonnet is a mother,’ as the great Diane Seuss writes: here are its children.”—Stephanie Burt

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Book SynopsisToward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. In this personal and thoughtful book, award-winning author Wayde Compton explores how we might collectively develop a poetic approach that makes space for diversity by doing away with universalism in both lyric and avant-garde verse. Poignant and contemporary examples reveal how white authors often forget that their whiteness is a racial position. In the propulsive push to experiment with form, they essentially fail to see themselves as white artists. Noting that he has never felt that his subjectivity was universal, Compton advocates for the importance of understanding your own history and positionality, and for letting go of the idea of a common aesthetic. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics offers validation for poets of colour who do not work in dominant western forms, and is for all writers seeking to engage in anti-racist work.

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Book SynopsisThis book offers the first in-depth account of the relationship between English and Scottish poets and the international concrete poetry movement of the 1950s to the 1970s. Concrete poetry was a literary and artistic style which reactivated early twentieth-century modernist impulses towards the merging of artistic media, while simultaneously speaking to a gamut of contemporary contexts, from post-1945 reconstruction to cybernetics, mass media and the sixties counter-culture. The terms of its development in England and Scotland suggest new ways of mapping ongoing complexities in the relationship between the two national cultures, and of tracing broader sociological and cultural trends in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing especially on the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Dom Sylvester Houédard and Bob Cobbing, Border Blurs is based on new and extensive archival and primary research, and will fill a vital gap in contemporary understandings of an important but much misunderstood genre: concrete poetry. It will also serve as a vital document for scholars and students of twentieth-century British literature, modern intermedia art and modernism, especially those interested in understanding modernism’s wide geographical spread and late twentieth-century legacies.Trade Review‘This is an excellent, well-researched and up-to-date account of the development of concrete poetry in England and Scotland from the 1950s onwards. It will make an outstanding contribution to knowledge in the related fields of concrete poetry, late modernism, the history of the 1960s counter-culture and the British Poetry Revival.’ Dr Steve Willey, Birkbeck, University of LondonReviews 'Greg Thomas here gives us the first full treatment of English and Scottish concrete poetry. His survey is detailed and comprehensive, and he is especially acute in his treatment of both the interaction of two distinct literary cultures – nationalism and internationalism – and the reciprocity of literature and other media. He thus argues that “classical concrete” was followed by another concrete “more concerned with complicating or undermining linguistic sense, and with instating in language’s place various forms of multi-media communication and expression ...”. A genuinely inventive and valuable book for students and scholars of modernism, intermedia art, and British literature.'Dr Nancy Perloff, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute‘Border Blurs is a welcome and long overdue study of what is a key component of the general turn of British poetry towards what we might loosely describe as modernism and experiment that began in the 1960s and continues to this day. Thomas writes well and clearly… and has done anyone interested in poetry in all its variety an enormous favour. I highly recommend this book.’ Billy Mills, Elliptical MovementsTable of Contents1. Introduction2. Concrete Poetry/ Konkrete Poesie/ Poesia Concreta: The International Scene3. Order and Doubt: Ian Hamilton Finlay4. Off-Concrete: Edwin Morgan5. Apophasis: Dom Sylvester Houédard6. Abstract Concrete: Bob Cobbing7. Concrete Poetry and After: Conclusion

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Book SynopsisBringing to the fore the voices of Maya authors and what their poetry tells us about resistance, sovereignty, trauma, and regeneration In 1954, Guatemala suffered a coup d’etat, resulting in a decades-long civil war. During this period, Indigenous Mayans were subject to displacement, disappearance, and extrajudicial killing. Within the context of the armed conflict and the postwar period in Guatemala, K’iche’ Maya scholar Emil’ Keme identifies three historical phases of Indigenous Maya literary insurgency in which Maya authors use poetry to dignify their distinct cultural, political, gender, sexual, and linguistic identities.Le Maya Q’atzij / Our Maya Word employs Indigenous and decolonial theoretical frameworks to critically analyze poetic works written by ten contemporary Maya writers from five different Maya nations in Iximulew/Guatemala. Similar to other Maya authors throughout colonial history, these authors and their poetry criticize, in their own creative ways, the continuing colonial assaults to their existence by the nation-state. Throughout, Keme displays the decolonial potentialities and shortcomings proposed by each Maya writer, establishing a new and productive way of understanding Maya living realities and their emancipatory challenges in Iximulew/Guatemala.This innovative work shows how Indigenous Maya poetics carries out various processes of decolonization and, especially, how Maya literature offers diverse and heterogeneous perspectives about what it means to be Maya in the contemporary world.Trade Review "This book offers brilliantly conceptualized and well-grounded readings on the work of Maya poets in times of colonial, patriarchal, and racial violence in Guatemala. Emil’ Keme's critical journey is permeated by a powerful sense of anti-colonial resistance and an imaginary of Indigenous liberation that is both poetic and political."—Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante, founding member of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche "With Le Maya Q’atzij/Our Maya Word, Emil’ Keme has given us a brilliant analysis of how Maya literary production constitutes resistance to the ongoing imposition of settler capitalist colonization in Iximulew/Guatemala. From the perspective of a Maya scholar, Keme offers a sophisticated and insightful read of works by K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Q’eq’chi’, Q’anjob’al, and Pop’ti poets in their political context, guided throughout by a clear and decisive love of le Maya tzij, or the Maya word. This book makes a valuable contribution not only to Maya studies and literary studies, but also to Native and Indigenous studies hemispherically and globally."—Shannon Speed (Chickasaw), University of California, Los Angeles "Le Maya Q’atzij / Our Maya Word is an energetic attempt to recover and promote Mayan identity, culture, and language from over five hundred years of encroachment. The author critically analyzes poetry that delves into the challenges of the Mayan people in the land claimed as Mayan: Iximulew "—Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature "It is clear both from the studied works and from Keme's analysis that contemporary Mayan literature has a complexity that seems not only to evolve but is constantly differentiating and diversifying itself."—The Canadian Journal of Native Studies Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Iximulew’s/Guatemala’s Indigenous Poetry since 19601. Kaqchikel Maya Identity: Francisco Morales Santos and Luis de Lión2. Strategic Essentialism against State Terrorism: Humberto Ak’abal, Victor Montejo, and Gaspar Pedro González3. Xib’alba and Globalism: Rosa Chávez, Pablo García, and Sabino Esteban Francisco4. Maya Feminism and Queer Poetics: Maya Cu and Manuel TzocConclusion: The Maya Word Will Never DieAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Victorian writer George Meredith completed Modern Love, his most famous poem, in the months following his wife's death in 1861. The series of 16-line sonnets (a stanzaic form Meredith invented) depicts isolated scenes in an unhappy marriage as both partners take lovers. At the time, Meredith's long poem was savaged by critics both for its style and for its "diseased" content. In this century, however, it has received increasingly favorable attention as an extraordinarily powerful exploration of the realities of Victorian marriage. Along with the text itself and an informative introduction, the editor provides a wide range of background materials to help set the work in its historical and literary context.Trade Review“In this superbly edited Broadview edition, Modern Love is made newly available both for course assignment and for the general reader. Well-chosen ancillary materials—contemporary reviews, feminist and anti-feminist polemics, debates about what ‘modern’ poetry ‘could and, more importantly, should represent’—are included to set Meredith’s 50-poem sequence in context. Many of Meredith’s mid-Victorian contemporaries were outraged by his bleakly unillusioned exposure of the innermost precincts of married life. In our own cultural moment, these scenes from a marriage are both classic and timely, probing the misery two modern lovers inflict and suffer with utmost candor and compassion.” — Jane Hedley, Bryn Mawr College author of Modern Marriage and the Lyric Sequence “… This edition recognizes the significance of Modern Love by allowing it to stand apart. The choice to curate and comment on a just selection of poems originally published alongside the sonnet sequence … is a welcome one; it illuminates Meredith’s poetic range and Victorian literary taste while inviting a next generation of research to celebrate the powerful unorthodoxy of Modern Love. Well-chosen and beautifully contextualized reviews and contemporaneous writings on poetic form and gender ideology draw out the literary and historical dimensions of the poem in this new, soon-to-be integral edition.” — Alicia Williams, Rutgers University “This excellent and necessary edition of George Meredith’s most important poem will be a great help to scholars, teachers, and students. Elisha Cohn’s expert editing and illuminating notes make this complex sonnet sequence accessible and enjoyable both for fans of Meredith and for anyone encountering his work for the first time. The supplementary materials … make a powerful case for the literary and cultural significance of a text that remains provocative in its articulation of the vexed relationship between men and women.” — Anna Barton, University of SheffieldTable of Contents Introduction Modern Love Modern Love In Context Meredith's Poems "Juggling Jerry" (1862) "The Beggar's Soliloquy" (1862) "Ode to the Spirit of The Earth in Autumn" (1862) "Lucifer in Starlight" (1883) Contemporary Reviews from Unsigned Review, Parthenon (1862) from Unsigned Review, Athenaeum (1862) from R.H. Hutton, The Spectator (1862) from A.C. Swinburne, Letter to The Spectator (1862) R.H. Hutton, The Spectator (1862) from Unsigned Review, Westminster Review (1862) from Unsigned Review, Saturday Review (1863) from Arthur Symons, "Meredith's Poetry," Westminster Review (1887) Gender Ideology from Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character and Responsibilities (1842) from Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century (1854) from The Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) from William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829/1862) from J.S. Mill, On the Subjection of Women (1869) Poetics from J.S. Mill, "What is Poetry?" (1833) from Matthew Arnold, "Preface" to Poems (1853) from Arthur Hugh Clough, "Recent English Poetry: A Review of Several Volumes of Poems by Alexander Smith, Matthew Arnold, and Others" (1853) from Gerald Massey, "Poetry—The Spasmodists" (1858) from E.S. Dallas, The Gay Science (1866) from George Meredith, "The Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit" (1877) from William Sharp, Sonnets of this Century (1886) Images

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Book SynopsisThe subject of Toeti Heraty’s poetry ranges from human encounters in an age of conceit to the confessions of an ever-restless soul. Many of Heraty’s poems give voice to the emotional struggles and disappointments of women. They show a clear feminist influence; yet their method of confronting the patriarchy is not always direct. Instead, Heraty quietly questions the complicity of a world that represses women. A whole spectrum of emotions reveal themselves in Heraty’s poetry; but if there is a unifying theme, it is the constant need in life for discovery and encounters. In turn, her poetry is about the strong human need to analyze and speak of one’s state of mind.

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Book SynopsisDevils, witches and evil - the insubstantial but terrifying world of the supernatural as it was seen by Robert Burns and his contemporaries is examined in this new book, brought out for the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth. Several of Burns' poems dealt with the supernatural, the most famous of which, "Tam o Shanter", is examined in detail. It is from this poem that the book's title comes: 'And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!" And in an instant all was dark And scarcely had he Maggie rallied When out the hellish legion sallied.' In contrast with the 'other world' was the everyday lives of the country people and the nature of the material world in which they lived; the book also examines this and the changes that were taking place in Burns' time.Trade Review'The "hellish legion" referred to in the title of this informative and friendly book, is that body of witches, ghosts, satanic sprites and anything else devilish that might have informed the lives of Robert Burns and his fellow Ayrshire men and women, and further, his own epic poem, Tam o' Shanter. ... It's possible, then, to read Tam o' Shanter also as a nostalgic piece, a recording of a way of looking at the world that was passing by.' The Herald '... does an excellent job in introducing the man and the places in which he lived.' The Folklore SocietyTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Life of Robert Burns The People of Lowland Scotland The Deil, Death and Ghosts Witches, Spirits and otehr Curious Things Eveil Men, Bad Weather and the Awful Future Medicines The Year Tam o' Shanter Select Bibliography Further Reading and Exploring Index

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book to present the life, times and poetry of one of the greatest poets in the Arab tradition, Abu Nuwas. Author Philip Kennedy provides the narrative of Abu Nuwas's fascinating life, which was full of intrigue and debauched adventure, in parallel with the presentation of his greatest poems, across all genres, in easy and accessible translations, giving commentary where needed.Trade ReviewGeert Jan van Gelder - Laudian Professor of Arabic, Oxford University"Philip has written a very good book on the great (in my view) greatest Arabic poet, Abu Nuwas... The literary analysis is generally excellent, balanced and erudite."Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1 “Dangling Locks and Babel Eyes” – A Biographical Sketch of Abu Nuwas (c. 757–814) 2 “Love, Wine, Sodomy ... and the Lash” – The Lyric Poetry of Abu Nuwas 3 “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – On Panegyric and Satire 4 Some Hunting Poems and a Game of Polo 5 “Poetry for Mortals and the Dead” – On the Ascetic Poem and the Elegy An Afterword – “Walk the Even Path with Me ...” Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisForegrounds underrepresented agents (women, nature and the nonhuman) in and through the poetry of Theocritus.

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Book SynopsisFinalist for the 2020 PROSE Awards, Classics section Homer’s Odyssey is the first great travel narrative in Western culture. A compelling tale about the consequences of war, and about redemption, transformation, and the search for home, the Odyssey continues to be studied in universities and schools, and to be read and referred to by ordinary readers. Reading Homer’s Odyssey offers a book-by-book commentary on the epic’s themes that informs the non-specialist and engages the seasoned reader in new perspectives. Among the themes discussed are hospitality, survival, wealth, reputation and immortality, the Olympian gods, self-reliance and community, civility, behavior, etiquette and technology, ease, inactivity and stagnation, Penelope’s relationship with Odysseus, Telemachus’ journey, Odysseus’ rejection of Calypso’s offer of immortality, Odysseus’ lies, Homer’s use of the House of Atreus and other myths, the cinematic qualities of the epic’s structure, women’s role in the epic, and the Odyssey’s true ending. Footnotes clarify and elaborate upon myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Odyssey, in addition to the bibliographies that accompany each book’s commentary. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"The book is a great pleasure to read....Reading Homer’s Odyssey is a book that does exactly what it promises: it helps its reader to read (and understand) the Odyssey. It will appeal to a broad readership as well as to scholars and students of Classics and other fields, and it may also be suggested as accompanying reading in Classical Civilization classes or similar courses."— Bryn Mawr Classical Review "An eloquently erudite and insightful analysis of one of the world's most famous works of literature from Ancient Greece."— Midwest Book Review "Recommended." — Choice Kostas Myrsiades’ remarkably accessible and lively commentary comes as a great boost to readers who approach the Odyssey with great interest but little background in the world of the epic and the techniques of Homer. This book serves as a kind of museum guide through each portion of the Odyssey, giving us the benefit of the author’s wealth of erudition and knowledge in readily understandable prose. Myrsiades not only explains the peculiar features of the narrative and content but also offers many helpful interpretive approaches, including some recent controversial suggestions, that have arisen from his decades of teaching this epic. This commentary will be especially helpful in giving high school and college teachers with little formal classical training the information and tools that will make them authoritative in the classroom. A pleasure to read.— Scott Richardson, Professor of Classics, St. John’s University and the College of St. BenedictTable of ContentsPreface I. From Ithaca to Wonderland Chapter 1: Telemachus' Journey (Od.1-4) Chapter 2: Odysseus from Calypso to the Phaeacians (Od.5-8) Chapter 3: Odysseus' Wanderings (Od.9-12) II. From Wonderland to Ithaca Chapter 4: Odysseus and Telemachus at Eumaeus' Hut (Od.13-16) Chapter 5: Odysseus and Telemachus Strategize at the Palace (Od.17-20) Chapter 6: Revenge, Reunion, and Reconciliation (Od.21-24) Afterword Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Relentlessly beautiful. . . . Everything seems to be here, laying the groundwork for a major career.” * Publishers Weekly *"Reminds us that [Duncan] wrote some of the most stunningly beautiful lines in postwar American poetry." -- Micah Mattix * Books & Culture *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Against our contemporary mania for growth, Campion positions poetry's particular contribution to a human understanding of the last hundred years of history as a form of cunning motility. The last line of this book proclaims, "We'll know the sincere poem by the way it moves," and the essays within move deftly with the poems themselves, capturing both spirit and form. American poetry, in Campion's story, doesn't celebrate freedoms preserved but acknowledges reality changed. I remember some of these essays, when they first appeared in the best journals, as vitally acerbic and fiercely challenging. And they remain so--but the raw material of the necessary book that collects them, Radical as Reality, is revealed to be wonder rather than judgment. Here, poet-critic Campion celebrates the spaciousness and splendor of a found family of American poets, less fathered by the great men of Modernism and their heir, Robert Lowell, than fostered in their own diverse practices."--Katie Peterson, author of A Piece of Good News and editor of Robert Lowell's New Selected Poems "Peter Campion's Radical as Reality returns poetry reviewing to its central place in American literary culture. His muscular prose is addressed to the reader looking for the pulse of America as it beats in the passions and rhythms of our best poets."--Bonnie Costello, author of The Plural of Us: Poetry and Community in Auden and Others

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Book Synopsis''Next, I applied to work in the accounts department, a sealed room where women operated clattering machines like enormous typewriters. After I had catastrophically and erroneously applied all the wrong information to several trolley loads of documents and lumbered the staff with weeks of corrective work, I was shown the door by a tight-lipped manageress. I knew what was coming. Over the relentless, furious din of machinery, I lip-read the familiar words: Lacks the necessary aptitude.''Pam Ayres'' early childhood in Stanford in the Vale was idyllic in many ways, and typical of that experienced by a great swathe of children born in rural areas in the immediate post-war years. Though her parents'' generation was harrowed by war, better times were coming. Everything the family needed was within walking distance in the village, and life with four older brothers and a sister in their crowded council house was exceedingly lively.In her late teens, Pam grew dissatisfied witTrade ReviewAyres gives a wonderful account of what it was like to grow up poor but respectable in post-war rural England. Some of her writing in the early chapters, describing life as the youngest of six children in a council cottage in the Vale of White Horse, Berkshire, has the original freshness of classics such as Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday *I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very moving in its wistful way ... The descriptions of post-war Berkshire life in The Necessary Aptitude are wonderful ... The world Ayres evokes is Hardy's Wessex ... I do admire (and envy) this marvellous woman -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *Excellent ... Unsentimental, especially about herself, Ayres gives a surprisingly moving account of what it was like to grow up poor in rural England without any "aptitude" for making something of herself -- Kathryn Hughes * Christmas Guide to a Cracking Read, Mail on Sunday *Highly readable ... Pam's memoirs are a masterclass in effective and effervescent prose * The Lady *An evocation of long-gone village life as captivating as Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford. At the book’s height, she reaches up and touches Laurie Lee * Buckinghamshire Life *

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Book SynopsisWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CAROL ANN DUFFYAnna Akhmatova is one of the most accomplished and well loved poets Russia has ever produced. Her moving and passionate writing has won her an ardent readership all over the world. This selection, beautifully translated by poet and novelist D.M. Thomas, illustrates her broad scope and brilliant imaginative gifts. It covers both her earlier work and the poems she produced during her persecution by the Russian authorities.Trade ReviewA genius of Russian poetry * Sunday Times *Once, when young, she had written the lines which lovers quoted to one another. Later she provided words which thousands of men and women repeated under their breath, as they suffered, feared and waited. * Observer *The greatest Russian poetess of the twentieth century -- Joseph BrodskyHer fortitude and independence, the breadth of her compassion and the clarity of her realistic vision erased the line between herself and others; her intensely personal lyrics became the void of her nation's tragedy * New York Times Book Review *The extraordinary misery of her life and the extraordinary merits of her poems make Anna Akhmatova one of the great literary figures of modern times * Economist *

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Book Synopsis*SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S ELIOT PRIZE AND COSTA POETRY AWARD 2013*''A stone is lobbed in ''84, hangs like a star over Orgreave. Welcome to Sheffield. Border-land,our town of miracles...'' - ''Scab''From the clash between striking miners and police to the delicate conflicts in personal relationships, Helen Mort''s stunning debut is marked by distance and division. Named for a street in Sheffield, this is a collection that cherishes specificity: the particularity of names; the reflections the world throws back at us; the precise moment of a realisation. Distinctive and assured, these poems show us how, at the site of conflict, a moment of reconciliation can be born.Trade ReviewHelen Mort is among the brightest stars in the sparkling new constellation of young British poets -- Carol Ann DuffyOutstanding… There's a confidence and wit that's rare in a first book, but underlying it all is the bedrock of the north of England, its landscapes and stories. These are poems of passion, risk, tenderness and power -- Michael Symmons Roberts, winner of the Forward Prize 2013There’s been a buzz around Helen Mort for a while, and her debut, Division Street, doesn’t disappoint -- Suzi Feay * Independent *An excellent first poetry collection -- lucid, intelligent, politically aware, and loyal to the landscape that inspired it. -- Blake Morrison * Guardian Picks of the Year *Mort is a fast-rising star of British poetry… marked by a gritty urban lyricism and a terrific rhythmic vitality * i *A poet of exceptional talent, with a strong clear voice, a sure sense of metre and a poetic sensibility which has an unshakeable attachment to the real world. * Herald *Although Helen Mort is just 28, it's surprising that Division Street is her first full collection -- so frequently and impressively does her work appear in magazines and competitions... It's a brilliant debut. -- Bill Greenwell * Independent *A first class first full-length collection * Tribune *Gritty, witty, stylish and totally memorable. Division Street is a book which has something important to say, addressing a wide range of topics with novelty and intelligence. * John Glenday *The beauty of her debut collection is partly the sense that it has been written against the clock. Every poem is on the move... the style is satisfyingly Orwellian -- no long words where a shorter one would serve. Nor is she a poetic detective assisting with mysteries. She knows when to let be and let go. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *

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Book SynopsisCarpe diem 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!' is a prominent motif throughout ancient literature and beyond. This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study reveals its significance in ancient poetry and art, especially in creating the almost magical impression that something is happening here and now.Table of Contents1. The archaeology of Carpe Diem: Sardanapallus, monuments, epigrams, and false beginnings; 2. A moveable feast: Wine storage-places as drinkable calendars in Horace; 3. Gathering leaves: Horace, choice of words, cyclical time, and the production of presence; 4. The pleasure of images: Epigrams and objects 100 ʙᴄ – ᴀᴅ 100; 5. As is the generation of leaves, so are the generations of cows, mice, and gigolos…: Excerpe Diem! or excerpts of 'Carpe Diem'.

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most sophisticated writers of the twentieth century, suffered from sexual impotence. This emotionally overwhelming condition shaped his literary experience in ways that have not been understood. Until now Borges has largely been considered an asexual author who could not read, think, or write about desire and sex, but in this book historian Ariel de la Fuente shows that sexuality was a major preoccupation for him, both as a reader and as an author. De la Fuente has conducted an extensive literary investigation in Borges’s figurative erotic library and presents for the first time a study of the relationship between Borges’s sexual biography, his erotic readings, and the writing of desire and sex in his work. The author explores relevant literary questions while employing a historical method and the book is truly an interdisciplinary study at the intersection of history with Latin American, European, and Eastern literatures, poetry, philosophy, and sexuality. Argued with clarity, Borges, Desire, and Sex offers an unexpected perspective on the literature and figure of a world-wide influential author.Trade Review'It is remarkable that there remains under-explored an area of Borges scholarship, yet the central questions posed here are important, original, and compelling.'William Rowlandson, University of Kent'This is a work of exceptional originality. The historical rather than literary perspective has brought to the fore entirely new readings, both regarding the interplay between Borges’s life and his work, and between his reading and creative output. At the moment it stands almost alone in its approach and methodology. This work will become a mandatory tool in the development of future research.'Evelyn Fishburn, University College London, author of A Dictionary of Borges'The author offers a detailed argument…assembling strong evidence for his case, while opening new avenues of investigation of Borges’s life and works…For [its] novel investigations of key [Borges’s] works, for highlighting the erotic focus of some of Borges’s readings, for offering a timely reminder of the importance of Stoic philosophy in the Argentine writer’s thinking, as well as for its exposition of the sexual dimensions of Borges’s poetry on the arrabal, among other merits, the book is very valuable. In the end, it serves to bring to light the important role that sex and desire played in [Borges’s] life and work.' Bill Richardson (National University of Ireland), Variaciones Borges'De la Fuente makes a compelling argument not merely for the importance of sexuality in Borges’s work, but for its extent. The author marshals his evidence and presents it clearly… Borges, Desire, and Sex makes a major contribution to our better, more complete understanding of the man and his work. I recommend it highly.' Earl Fitz (Vanderbilt University), Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y El CaribeTable of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: On Borges’s SexualityChapter 2: Biography in Literature and the Reading of Desire and Sex in BorgesChapter 3: Borges’s Erotic Library: The Poetry ShelfChapter 4: Sir Richard Burton’s Orientalist Erotica: The Thousand Nights and a Night and The Perfumed GardenChapter 5: Schopenhauer and Montaigne, Philosophy and SexChapter 6: Desire and Sex in Buenos Aires: Borges’s Poetry on the ArrabalChapter 7: Stoicism and Borges’s Writing of WomenChapter 8: Emma Zunz: Sex, Virtue, and PunishmentChapter 9: La intrusa: Incest and Gay ReadingsWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisMysterious, esoteric, baffling – John Ashbery is notorious for the seeming difficulty of his work. But Ashbery is also entertaining, humorous and charming, and responsive to his shifting social and political contexts. This biography charts his emergence from a minor avant-garde figure to the most important poet of his generation. In this entertaining account, Jess Cotton provides a legible and accessible map of Ashbery’s work that draws connections between the poetry, the New York art and literary world and the political climate of the middle decades of the twentieth century. It makes the case for a more approachable, enjoyable and engaged Ashbery and will appeal to both students and the general reader, as well as anyone interested in American poetry, queer lives and twentieth-century history.

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Book SynopsisThe Middle Kingdom (c.1940-1640 BC) was a golden age of Ancient Egyptian writing. This pioneering book is the first comprehensive study of this literary legacy. The status of literature is controversial in many ancient civilizations, and Middle Kingdom poems have often been regarded as propaganda for the ruling dynasty. This study radically reassesses their cultural role, drawing on recent studies of the individual texts, some by the author, and on general developments in literary criticism, to argue that they were entertainments that voiced potentially dissident views while also being integral to elite culture. The book explores literature's status as a differentiated form of discourse, suggesting what social practices made its role possible and offering an innovative model for the reader's engagement with these subtle and complex ancient works. The book also surveys the social and ideological context of literature and proposes readings of the main tales, discourses, and teachings. The conclusion sets the readings in a broad context, while an appendix surveys the entire range of surviving texts.Trade Review'[T]he book reviewed here certainly represents a landmark. It is the first monograph devoted to an integral study and interpretation of the entire corpus of literature preserved from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom.' Joachim Friedrich Quack, Freie Universitat Berlin, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 124.2 'This is an extremely important book' Piotr Michalowski, George G. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations University of Michigan 'Dr Parkinson has produced a work which surpasses all that has been written on Egyptian literature of the classicA" period till now.' E. Hornung, Professor Emeritus, University of BaselTable of ContentsPart One: Approaches 1. The Study of Middle Kingdom "Literature" 2. General Considerations: Definitions, Genre, Interpretation Part Two: Context and Intertext 3. Texts and Intertext 4. The Social Context 5. Literature and Culture 6. Literary Form 7. Cultural Themes of Literature Part Three: Readings 8. Tales 9. Discourses and Dialogues 10. Teachings 11. Reading the Poems Appendix 1: Survey of the Middle Kingdom Literary Corpus Appendix 2: Kemit

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Book SynopsisKeats is celebrated as a writer in three forms: lyric verse, narrative verse and letters. All three are represented here in a volume which reprints all the famous odes, a selection os sonnets and other short poems, both versions of HYPERION, extentsive selections from ENDYMION, and the complete ISABELLA, LAMIA and THE EVE OF ST. AGNES. Finally, there-are letters in which Keats discusses his attitude to poetry and to other poets.

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Book SynopsisA dazzling collection of essays on how the best poems work, from the master poet and popular essayistPoetry, Jane Hirshfield has said, is language that foments revolutions of being. In ten eloquent and highly original explorations, she unfolds some of the ways this is done--by the inclusion of hiddenness, paradox, and surprise; by a perennial awareness of the place of uncertainty in our lives; by language''s own acts of discovery; by the powers of image, statement, music, and feeling to enlarge in every direction. Closely reading poems by Dickinson, Bashō, Szymborska, Cavafy, Heaney, Bishop, and Komunyakaa, among others, Hirshfield reveals how poetry''s world-making takes place: word by charged word. By expanding what is imaginable and sayable, Hirshfield proposes, poems expand what is possible. Ten Windows restores us at every turn to a more precise, sensuous, and deepened experience of our shared humanity and of the seemingly limitless means by which tha

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Book SynopsisA rich, multifaceted consideration of the poetry and other writings of Donald Revell

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

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Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.

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Book SynopsisSeven poets of diverse region, gender, sexual orientation, race, and generation. Seven poets linked by experiment and opposition. Robert Kroetsch discusses postmodernism''s history, Fred Wah talks about ethnic hybridity, and Dionne Brand muses on postcolonial struggle and community. Erin Mouré encourages excessiveness while Daphne Marlatt speaks of salvaging. On writing, poetics, and culture, Marie Annharte Baker and Jeff Derksen share their personal perspectives and experiences. Poets Talk brings new insights to the value of inspiration, imagination, and poetic re-invention.Trade Review"In a landscape that seems to favour fewer and fewer reviews of Canadian poetry, poets talk is an impressive and essential collection of critical interviews with poets conducted by Butling, Lecturer Emeritus at The Alberta College of Art and Design, and Susan Rudy, Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Published as a companion to their anthology Writing in Our Time: Canada's Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003), forthcoming in March 2005 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press, the interviews are built over long processes of what makes their work work..More and more lately, the gap has been widening in Canadian poetry between those working the innovative poetic and those in the fixed idea, so a collection of interviews with seven poets with very little overlap, yet all working opposition and the innovative poetic, makes for an interesting read. Each interview begins with a short critical introduction of each of the poets; I think everyone should own this book." rob mclennan, blog, http://robmclennan.blogspot.com, March 11, 2005"Reading interviews, I often skip the questions and skim for juicy bits in the answers. Not so with Poets Talk. For Butling and Rudy are active participants, confronting these writers with their blind spots, or prodding and cajoling them into risky and marvelous territory." Meredith Quartermain, Terminal City (Complete review at http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/quarterm/reviews.htm) April 11, 2005"The poets of Poets Talk's title.all share an interest in formal innovation and, to a lesser extent, in constructing a theory of poetics to inform their writing. They spend at least as much time, though, discussing how being part of a community, whether literary, political or both, has influenced their work. This makes a pleasant change from the emphasis on the individual writer...and also reveals, in passing, the genealogy of self-consciously innovative writing in Canada." Alex Rettie, AlbertaViews, April/May 2005"Readers of these conversational interviews will want to explore the poetry and a bibliography of "Works Cited" will be most helpful for this purpose. The papers of Robert Kroetsch and Fred Wah can be found at the University of Calgary Archives, for inveterate researchers." Prairie Journal, Fall 2005"Reading Poets Talk is like overhearing an interesting conversation in a café: you eat up the discussion, but you also want to jump in and ask your own questions. The poets would be fascinating tablemates: diverse in terms of sexuality and race, they are united by how they understand language's relation to social power structures, and how they challenge the 'rules' of language to subvert or expose other, often implicit, social rules..[T]he collection usefully counters the popular image of the poet as a figure working in romantic isolation: the work of these writers is rooted in the social and continues to both reproduce and question that space." Alison Calder, Great Plains Quarterly, Summer 2006."[T]hese interviews are most definitely conversations in which the two interviewers bring a great deal of knowledge and understanding of both innovative poetry and the theories and ideologies that ground its varieties to bear..They are also highly entertaining, and offer readers a sense of the poets as people one would enjoy talking with. Poets Talk is a necessary conversation." Douglas Barbour, Canadian Book Review Annual, 2006".Poets Talk has the courage of its convictions, and perhaps more importantly, its interviewers/editors have the curiosity to pursue the slippery matters of poetics and politics in Canadian literature. Asserting the volume 'addresses the challenges of reading "difficult" poetry,' Pauline Butling and Susan Rudy have produced a book that satisfies with its wide-ranging interest in all poetic concerns, not the least because as editors and interviewers they ask the questions that need to be asked about Canadian poetics and its future..By treating the poems as living texts and as canonical artifacts, Butling and Rudy do the poets the service of encouraging discussion about the material and cultural influences on the production of poetry in Canada." Tanis MacDonald, Canadian Literature, vol.190, Autumn 2006."Author interviews have been an important element in Canadian literary criticism, no doubt because ours is a young literature in which the contemporary plays a substantial role..If you are interested in the authors being interviewed, these conversations are all of real value..[T]he up-to-date prefaces to these interviews serve as valuable introductions to the writers and both they and the interviews feature ample selections of poetry, enough to give readers unfamiliar with these writers a sense of what's at stake. As well, Butling and Rudy have brought together highly articulate writers-theoretically informed about the problematics and poetics of their craft-so their conversations are studded with interesting observations." Russell Brown, University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 1, Winter 2007"This is a lively, thought-provoking, highly recommendable collection of interviews from the 1990s; presenting indeed 'seven of the most innovative and socially conscious poets writing today'. ... Fittingly, the book opens with Robert Kroetsch, whose great influence on (Western) Canadian writers echoes in some of the interviews. Kroetsch stresses his postcolonial 'dread of systems', the need 'to tell stories for my place or culture', the importance of comedy, postmodern and literary sub-genres for revalidating regional against official history. Six of the seven oncersations in Poets Talk were (co-)conducted by Pauline Butling, with impressive knowledge and subtlety; all interviews 'offer a forum on poetics' in contemporary Canadian poetry, focusing on, and going beyond race, gender, and other (hidden) agendas within a 'multicultural' society. An informative and inspiring read." Markus M. Muller, University of Trier, Germany, British Journal of Canadian Studies, 19.2

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Book SynopsisForms a part of the field of collaborative poetry in North American literature.Trade Review"Edmonton, Alberta poet Douglas Barbour and Phoenix, Arizona poet Sheila E. Murphy have been engaged in an email collaboration, writing alternating six line passages to make up their collaborative work Continuations. A long poem made out of twenty-five sections, the poem encompassed both daily activity, distance of years and thousands of kilometres (or miles, depending) in the form of a sustained long poem..." Thursday, June 22, 2006, www.robmclennan.blogspot.com"Barbour and Murphy...have had a long-standing collaboration. I've seen some collaborations in poetry (meaning ones where the text is jointly composed and merged) fail utterly....But Barbour and Murphy seem to walk the tightrope amazingly well, the merging of their writing seems to sharpen their work instead, as would have been possible, diffusing it..." Simon DeDeo, August 2007. (See full review at http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/2006/08/douglas-barbour-shelia-murphy-ix.html)"Continuations is one part Rorschach test, one part word association, other parts dreams, symbols, seasons, colours, mother and father. Nouns are made verbs and words are borrowed from other languages and used as springboards for new words and images..The work is quite remarkable and evokes a response in the reader much like overhearing a conversation between two people who each speak a different language but who nevertheless understand each other perfectly, I often had the sense I was eavesdropping when reading Continuations." Wendy McGrath, the Edmonton Journal, August 27, 2006."It is all the more remarkable that given the distance that separates them, [the two poets] should have connected in such a way as to create a body of work that so masterfully balances each individual poet's prowess with the creation of a third, wholly new, speaking voice. Although Continuations is written in a fixed format of six-line stanzas, that is effectively where the physical structure ends. The language in the poems is allowed to bubble over, to take on an effervescent, joyous quality of its own....It is testament, I believe, to the skill of both writers that the third voice stays strong and true throughout the entire collection. It is a wry and deeply human voice, spurred from subject to subject by Barbour and Murphy's dynamic exchange of ideas, yet touching with unerring clarity on weighty subjects such as art and memory." Jenna Butler (Entire review at: http://poetryreviews.ca/2006/11/07/continuations-by-douglas-barbour-and-sheila-e-murphy/#more-80)The jury awarded the prize to a book with a subtle, innovative cover concept that matched the intertwining texts presented within. The cover design is fresh, contemporary, clean and makes artful use of colour."Continuations is a collaboration between two accomplished poets that began in November 2000 with each poet '[c]omposing alternating six-line passages on a nearly daily basis.' Each of the book's 25 chapters contains between 18 and 23 of these six-line stanzas.. In Continuations, Barbour and Murphy have successfully forged a cohesive style with which to express their diverse interests and perspectives." Lydia Forssander-Song, Canadian Book Review Annual 2007"The fluid tropes and the riffs on fate, choice, and flux go on for several stanzas and provide a nice example of how this quasi-improvisatory collaboration works at its best.... Here, then, the poetic method actually embodies the thematic questioning of fate and choice. The poem takes up many subjects, in fact, though one of the most frequent is the collaborative project itself, its capacity to question the possibility of univocal meaning, grand narratives, its capacity to model a certain ethical stance, a way of opening the self to the other, whether that other be a human interlocutor, the natural environment, a visionary experience, or the sheer materiality of words themselves." University of Toronto Quarterly, Winter 2008

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Book SynopsisHow does the language of poetry conspire with the language of power? This title deals with Indonesia and the Philippines in the early modern and post-1945 periods. It examines the literature and politics of Indonesia and Philippines from the point of view of contemporary thinking.

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