Literary studies: poetry and poets Books
John Wiley and Sons Ltd A Companion to T. S. Eliot
Book SynopsisA Companion to T.S. Eliot introduces a new generation of readers and educators to Eliot and covers the full breadth of his literary career. Chapters explore the powerful forces that shaped Eliot as a writer and thinker, analyze his body of work, and assess his oeuvre in a variety of contexts: historical, cultural, social, and philosophical.Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors viii Preface xiv Acknowledgments xvi Abbreviations Used for Works by T. S. Eliot xvii Part I: Influences 1 1 The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: Eliot’s Life 3 Anthony Cuda 2 Eliot’s Ghosts: Tradition and its Transformations 15 Sanford Schwartz 3 T. S. Eliot and the Symbolist City 27 Barry J. Faulk 4 Not One, Not Two: Eliot and Buddhism 40 Christina Hauck 5 Yes and No: Eliot and Western Philosophy 53 Jewel Spears Brooker 6 A Vast Wasteland? Eliot and Popular Culture 66 David E. Chinitz 7 Mind, Myth, and Culture: Eliot and Anthropology 79 Marc Manganaro 8 “Where are the eagles and the trumpets?”: Imperial Decline and Eliot’s Development 91 Vincent Sherry Part II: Works 105 9 Searching for the Early Eliot: Inventions of the March Hare 107 Jayme Stayer 10 Prufrock and Other Observations: A Walking Tour 120 Frances Dickey 11 Disambivalent Quatrains 133 Jeffrey M. Perl 12 “Gerontion”: The Mind of Postwar Europe and the Mind(s) of Eliot 145 Edward Brunner 13 “Fishing, with the arid plain behind me”: Difficulty, Deferral, and Form in The Waste Land 157 Michael Coyle 14 The Enigma of “The Hollow Men” 168 Elisabeth Däumer 15 Sweeney Agonistes: A Sensational Snarl 179 Christine Buttram 16 “Having to construct”: Dissembly Lines in the “Ariel” Poems and Ash-Wednesday 191 Tony Sharpe 17 “The inexplicable mystery of sound”: Coriolan, Minor Poems, Occasional Verses 204 Gareth Reeves 18 Coming to Terms with Four Quartets 216 Lee Oser 19 “Away we go”: Poetry and Play in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats 228 Sarah Bay-Cheng 20 Eliot’s 1930s Plays: The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral, and The Family Reunion 239 Randy Malamud 21 Eliot’s “Divine” Comedies: The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk, and The Elder Statesman 251 Carol H. Smith 22 Taking Literature Seriously: Essays to 1927 263 Leonard Diepeveen 23 He Do the Critic in Different Voices: The Literary Essays after 1927 275 Richard Badenhausen 24 In Times of Emergency: Eliot’s Social Criticism 287 John Xiros Cooper Part III: Contexts 299 25 Eliot’s Poetics: Classicism and Histrionics 301 Lawrence Rainey 26 T. S. Eliot and Something Called Modernism 311 Ann Ardis 27 Conflict and Concealment: Eliot’s Approach to Women and Gender 323 Cyrena Pondrom 28 Eliot and “Race”: Jews, Irish, and Blacks 335 Bryan Cheyette 29 “The pleasures of higher vices”: Sexuality in Eliot’s Work 350 Patrick Query 30 “An occupation for the saint”: Eliot as a Religious Thinker 363 Kevin J. H. Dettmar 31 Eliot’s Politics 376 Michael Levenson 32 Keeping Critical Thought Alive: Eliot’s Editorship of the Criterion 388 Jason Harding 33 Making Modernism: Eliot as Publisher 399 John Timberman Newcomb 34 Eliot and the New Critics 411 Gail McDonald 35 “T. S. Eliot rates socko!”: Modernism, Obituary, and Celebrity 423 Aaron Jaffe 36 Eliot’s Critical Reception: “The quintessence of twenty-first-century poetry” 436 Nancy K. Gish 37 Radical Innovation and Pervasive Influence: The Waste Land 449 James Longenbach Bibliography of Works by T. S. Eliot 460 Index 463
£36.05
St Martin's Press He Held Radical Light
Book SynopsisA moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poetsWhat is it we want when we can't stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaininga sharp sequel to Wiman's earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.
£13.60
Picador/Farrar Straus and Giroux SuperInfinite
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionWinner of the 2022 Slightly Foxed Best First Biography PrizeShortlisted for the 2023 Plutarch AwardA Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of 2022 A New York Times Notable Book of the YearNamed a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Times Literary Supplement, and Literary HubFrom the standout scholar Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death.Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, a member of Parliamentand perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marry
£16.20
WW Norton & Co TwoWay Mirror
Book SynopsisFinalist for the 2022 Plutarch Award A "nuanced and insightful" (New Statesman) portrait of Britain’s most famous female poet, a woman who invented herself and defied her times.Trade Review"This superb biography rescues Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work from the dustbin of Victorian sentimentality to which her poems have been wrongly consigned for the better part of a century. Peeling back layers of myth, misogyny and critical dismissal, Fiona Sampson allows us to see anew an extraordinary woman whose crowning book-length poem, Aurora Leigh, traces, for the first time in our language, the way a woman became a writer…Sampson’s engaging, deeply intelligent book, which at last gives Barrett Browning her due, is a profound inquiry, a vindication, and a delight." -- Mark Doty, author of What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life"Fiona Sampson’s vivid new biography gives us Elizabeth Barrett Browning as busy and ambitious rather than a swooning sleeping beauty…Sampson’s biography consciously mirrors her subject’s masterpiece, but then biography, she suggests, is itself a mirror that both reveals and distorts its subject…[B]eautifully told. It is high time that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Aurora Leigh were once again household names." -- Frances Wilson - Daily Mail"[Two-Way Mirror] restores [Barrett Browning] to her proper place as one of the leading voices of the Victorian era…This book is an empathetic—and much-needed—reassessment which tells a fascinating story." -- Lucasta Miller - Telegraph"Sampson’s passionate and exacting biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a surprisingly compact volume, a bristling lyric sandwich of philosophy and action. It is also a page-turner." -- Martina Evans - Irish Times
£18.99
WW Norton & Co The Hyacinth Girl T.S. Eliots Hidden Muse
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography "The most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot." —Colm Tóibín, Irish TimesTrade Review"Vibrant.…There is a human richness to Eliot’s cerebral poetry that we can appreciate more in the context of his knotted emotional life, and Gordon’s art is in drawing this out." -- Katie Roiphe - New York Times Book Review"There is no finer guide into the mind of T. S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon.…Emily Hale, too, finally gets her due in this brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers." -- Heather Clark, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath"Like an unopened Egyptian tomb, a trove of T. S. Eliot’s letters has lurked for decades in a Princeton library. Lyndall Gordon has now cracked it open, and in The Hyacinth Girl reveals a treasure of new insights into this most emblematic modern poet. If you thought you knew Eliot, think again." -- Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work"Lyndall Gordon is the first biographer to uncover the life of T. S. Eliot’s hidden muse, the inspiration for one of his greatest works of poetry. Gordon’s fairminded and declarative approach works perfectly for a story that gives the reader a shocked understanding of the way that a literary genius was ready to banish the women he loved when they no longer served his purpose. This is a work that will change the way that Eliot is seen." -- Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys"In an engrossing study of art refracting life, Lyndall Gordon explores the conflicted emotions that Eliot translated into his ostensibly impersonal art. Making superb use of his letters to the hitherto shadowy Emily Hale that were released after a sixty-year embargo, Gordon tells the story of a lifelong love, sustained but resisted, that lay hidden beneath his marriages with the troubled Vivienne and the adoring Valerie." -- Leo Damrosch, author of Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova"The Hyacinth Girl is an elegant meditation on the women whose lives were fundamental to the life of T. S. Eliot. Lyndall Gordon has given us the fullest account yet of Eliot’s strained and distant relationship with his onetime sweetheart Emily Hale, kept dangling for decades as he grew more eminent and more remote, and one of the most detailed, vivid pictures of his nightmare marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, who was ultimately committed to a sanatorium against her will. Together with her account of Eliot’s subsequent marriage to Valerie Fletcher, who had been his secretary, these give a painfully intimate look at the poet, one that also results in significant reassessments of his most imposing poems." -- Michael North, Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles, and editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Waste Land and Other Poems"In this splendid biography, Lyndall Gordon offers a comprehensive, balanced account of T. S. Eliot’s hidden love for Emily Hale set in relation to his poetry, spiritual journey, and three other important women in his life—Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, Mary Trevelyan, and Valerie Fletcher Eliot. Drawing on an immense archive of previously embargoed Eliot-Hale correspondence, Gordon shows how each of these women played a uniquely transformative role in the maturation of Eliot’s poetry and faith. An indispensable study that will inspire new perspectives on Eliot’s life and work for generations to come." -- Anita Patterson, professor of English, Boston University"Drawing on fresh revelations, Lyndall Gordon’s superb book brims with insight into T. S. Eliot’s complex love of women and its impact on his poetry. Beautifully written, fiercely honest, The Hyacinth Girl permanently dissolves the myth of impersonality, fathoming the vexed, tormented emotional life behind Eliot’s work." -- Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry in a Global Age"The true nature of T. S. Eliot’s love for his American muse, Emily Hale, has been nearly wholly hidden until now. In The Hyacinth Girl, Lyndall Gordon paints an astute portrait of Eliot as a man trapped between desire and propriety, between a past history of emotional damage and a seemingly impossible future of romantic contentment. Gordon illuminates Eliot’s writing through the prism of his correspondence with Hale, demonstrating how central she is to a real understanding of the man and his work. A revelatory book." -- Erica Wagner, author of Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the story of Birthday Letters"Gordon’s account of the fate of these two caches is as exciting as a detective story. She catches the drama of the sealed boxes brilliantly. But it is the story behind—or rather within—the boxes that makes these revelations so important." -- Margaret Drabble - New Statesman"Exquisitely nuanced.... Careful not to judge either Eliot or his women. While the reader longs to scream at Hale and Trevelyan to just walk away, you are also left with the sneaking suspicion that being present at the making of work that shook the 20th century was probably—just—worth the humiliation and heartache." -- Kathryn Hughes - Sunday Times (UK)"Unrelenting focus on the women in the story…These books don’t undermine Eliot’s life or his achievement. Instead, they set him in a wider context, connecting him to the women who contributed so much to his success and paid a high price for doing so." -- Tom Williams - Spectator (UK)"Illuminating.... If this fine and entertaining account leaves readers shocked by instances of Eliot’s theatrical and self-serving misogyny (he ‘felt burdened by women’), it also treats the women in his life with dignity and goes a long way in reversing the erasure he attempted.... Literature lovers, take note." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review"[Gordon finds] new coherence in Eliot’s otherwise apparently fragmented interior life. Equally praiseworthy are Gordon’s sensitive assessments of the other women who shaped Eliot’s life." -- Booklist, starred review
£15.19
WW Norton & Co The Waste Land A Facsimile Transcript of the
Book SynopsisNew Yorker • Best Books of 2022 The first full-color facsimile of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the most influential poem in modern literature, in celebration of its centennial.Trade Review"First published in 1971, edited by Eliot’s widow, they revolutionized the understanding of the poem’s creation, by making apparent Ezra Pound’s outsized editorial role, including many ruthless cuts, and also the input of Eliot’s troubled first wife, Vivienne. These pages—some handwritten, some typewritten, with wordless loops and slashes scrawled across the text and brusque observations at the side—have become famous in their own right.... Few Eliot fans will be able to resist." -- New Yorker, "Best Books of 2022""The Albemarle receipts were not included by Valerie Eliot in her 1971 edition of the drafts of The Waste Land but have been added to this centenary edition, which seems aimed at the Eliot aficionado ready to pore over every scrap surviving in the archive and eager to discover new angles on a poem more exhaustively interpreted than any in the language—or rather languages, for it is the most polyglot of poems. This gala volume is the first to reproduce manuscripts and type-scripts in color and boasts of various ‘additional materials,’ namely those bills and the versos of three leaves: on one of these Eliot has jotted down a couple of cosmetic skin creams that he has been instructed to purchase for his first wife, Vivien, at a pharmacy on the Champs-Élysées, and on another a compressed account of the plot of The Duchess of Malfi. On the third, the verso of the ending of ‘A Game of Chess,’ Vivien has written, 'Make any of these alterations—or none if you prefer. Send me back this copy & let me have it." -- Mark Ford - New York Review of Books
£28.79
Johns Hopkins University Press Cut These Words into My Stone
Book SynopsisCut These Words into My Stone provides an engaging introduction to this corner of classical literature that continues to speak eloquently in our time.Trade ReviewFor something to read in normal circumstances? Today it's Michael Wolfe's wondrous set of translations of ancient Greek epitaphs, Cut These Words into My Stone. A book Keats would deeply appreciate. A book to keep handy by bed or bath. -- Bill Berkson Harriet Cut These Words into my Stone is not a long book, but its short pages have a great balance between education and emotionally touching poetry. The translator's note, introduction, and chapter introductions are all deeply researched, but still accessible to a lay reader. -- Elizabeth Franklin Portland Book Review This pleasing volume should introduce a new generation of general readers to the important poetic tradition of the ancient Greek grave epigram... No previous English study of quite this scope exist. Choice A wonderful short volume on Greek epitaphs which will appeal both to the general reader and the specialist... I highly recommend this book as a solid introduction to the reading and translating of Greek epigrams, and as a useful reference for illustrating how poetic translations of ancient Greek can be beautifully rendered for the modern audience while still remaining loyal to the ancient Greek use of language -- Philip J. Smith Bryn Mawr Classical Review As you turn the pages of this modest-seeming book you begin to succumb to magic. Each of these epitaphs is a poem that opens a window onto a life in Antiquity... If you wanted to find a single volume that gives a sense of the genius of the ancient Greeks, and reflects their influence on the cultural life of subsequent ages, you would be pushed to find anything better than this. -- Alex Martin The Anglo-Hellenic ReviewTable of ContentsTranslator's NoteForeword, by Richard P. MartinI. Anonymous Epitaphs of No Known DateII. Late Archaic and Classical Periods: 600–350 BCEIII. Hellenistic Period: Age of Alexander, c. 323–100 BCEIV. The Millennium: Pagan Roman Empire, 100 BCE–99 CEV. Late Antiquity: Christian Roman Empire, 200–599 CENotesSelected BibliographyBiographies of the Poets
£29.22
Johns Hopkins University Press The Poems of T S Eliot Collected and Uncollected
Book Synopsis"The more we know of Eliot, the better."-Ezra PoundTrade ReviewThese volumes are not merely a monument to T. S. Eliot, they are a blazing demonstration of what literary criticism, at its best, can do for literature. -- John Sutherland Financial Times Monumental... In taking apart Eliot's poems to show where the parts came from, The Poems of T. S. Eliot: The Annotated Text demonstrates that it never was the parts which mattered, but the elusive magic which made up the whole machine. Times Literary Supplement ... So comprehensive and authoritative that one can't imagine their [the editors' notes and commentaries] being superseded... Times Literary Supplement ... One of the great achievements in the literary scholarship of our time. Times Literary Supplement These volumes force a reevaluation of the highs and lows of Eliot's gifts, one that will supersede earlier, outmoded interpretations of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual inhibition and avowals of elitist or conservative slants... Essential. Choice Two all-comprehending new tomes... utterly authoritative. London Review of BooksTable of ContentsTitle PageThis EditionAcknowledgementsGlossaryAbbreviations and SymbolsCollected Poems 1909-19621. Prufrock and Other Observations2. Poems (1920)3. The Waste Land4. The Hollow Men5. Ash-Wednesday6. Ariel Poems7. Unfinished Poems8. Minor Poems9. Choruses from 'The Rock'10. Four Quartets11. Occasional Verses12. Uncollected Poems13. The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite14. CommentaryBibliographyIndex of Identifying Titles for Prose by T.S. EliotIndex to the Editorial MaterialIndex of Titles and First LinesAbout the AuthorsBy the Same AuthorCopyright
£45.60
Johns Hopkins University Press The Poems of T S Eliot Practical Cats and Further
Book Synopsis"I do not know for certain how much of my own mind he invented."-William EmpsonTrade ReviewThese volumes are not merely a monument to T. S. Eliot, they are a blazing demonstration of what literary criticism, at its best, can do for literature. -- John Sutherland Financial TimesTable of ContentsAn Autobiographical SketchTable of DatesGlossaryAbbreviations and Symbols1. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats2. Anabasis3. Other Verses4. Noctes Binanianæ5. Improper Rhymes6. Textual HistoryIndex to the Editorial Material in Volume IIIndex of Titles and First Lines
£39.90
Johns Hopkins University Press Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period
Book SynopsisWhat if the religious themes and allusions in modernist poetry are not just metaphors?Following the religious turn in other disciplines, literary critics have emphasized how modernists like Woolf and Joyce were haunted by Christianity's cultural traces despite their own lack of belief. In Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period, Anthony Domestico takes a different tack, arguing that modern poets such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and David Jones were interested not just in the aesthetic or social implications of religious experience but also in the philosophically rigorous, dogmatic vision put forward by contemporary theology. These poets took seriously the truth claims of Christian theology: for them, religion involved intellectual and emotional assent, doctrinal articulation, and ritual practice. Domestico reveals how an important strand of modern poetry actually understood itself in and through the central theological questions of the modernist era:Trade ReviewThere is certainly no easy way to replicate the environment of the interwar period, but Anthony Domestico is to be commended for implanting such a desire in his readers. Perhaps some of these readers will be stirred to action. I for one would love to hold a contemporary equivalent to the Criterion in my hands, and I believe that Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period succeeds in that it will make others want this as well.—Marginalia Review of BooksThis brief but substantial study details how contemporary theological debates were part and parcel of the wider intellectual climate of modernism, as well as a specific influence on poetry by T. S. Eliot, David Jones, and W. H. Auden. It is a welcome addition to recent work on the inescapable and continuing influence of Christianity at every stage of the modernist project.—Review of English StudiesI also recently read Anthony Domestico’s wonderful and revelatory critical book Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period, which has much to say about whether poetry and theology can nourish each other (for many of the modern poets, Domestico argues quite convincingly, they certainly did).—Christian Wiman, SubtropicsDomestico knows his theology very well . . . He can illuminate the shape of a theologian's argument, as well as what was at stake in the historical context. By training his sights on those literary authors for whom theology mattered—and for whom theology meant dogma and revelation—Domestico does invaluable work.—Jayme Stayer, John Carroll University, Modernism/ModernityPoetry and Theology in the Modernist Period is brilliantly set up to offer an introductory yet complex view of the intellectual landscape of the inter-war period . . . it presents an energetic invitation to the next generation of auditors to join [Domestico] in taking seriously the relationship between theology and poetic style.—Laura McCormick Kilbride, Critical QuarterlyPoetry and Theology in the Modernist Period is a valuable addition to a growing body of criticism that challenges the narrative that modernism was resolutely secular. As this study shows, not only did some writers take contemporary theology seriously, but theologians had a marked impact on the works of T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and David Jones . . . One of the great strengths of this illuminating and important study . . . is that its insights and approach will encourage others to continue the conversation.—Thomas Goldpaugh, Marist College, Modern Language ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments1. A Conversation between Philosophersand Artists2. The “Living Theology” of the Criterion3. T. S. Eliot, Karl Barth, and Christian Revelation4. Sacramental Theology and David Jones’s Poetics of Torsion5. Auden’s MeanwhileConclusion Notes Suggested Further Reading Index
£32.30
Quickstudy Reference Guides Poetry
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£999.99
National Geographic Kids The Poetry of Us More Than 200 Poems That
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£33.15
Heinemann Library, Div of Reed Elsevier I Can Write I Can Write Poems
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£999.99
Exile Editions Dinner With Catherine the Great
Book SynopsisProviding a rare and creative sense of authority’s various faces, this collection of poems travels from intellectual and artistic power to philosophical, military, and imperial power; and above all, personal influence. The verse introduces the persuasiveness, complexities, and intrigues of “table talk”—a European tradition of informed and enlightened conversation that has virtually disappeared from the experience of North American culture. Commanding and informed in their own sense of purpose, these pieces evince a gentle curiosity for greatness, creating an engaging portrait of simple humanity, powerful minds, and memorable ideas.Trade Review“A penetrating examination in poetry of the intellectual might, ferocity, depth, and intrigue of the various forms of authority we encounter in power structures of all kinds, and [a] grand tribute to the elegance and terrifying force of great ideas.” —Bruce Meyer, Poet Laureate and author, Dog Days
£15.26
Exile Editions Traumatology
Book SynopsisIn exploring the topic of health, this collection of poetry tackles a crucial aspect of our lives—but one that is rarely a subject of contemporary art. Playful, satirical, surreal, yet unflinchingly humane, the poems introduce men with wands to patrol their neighborhoods, past selves smuggling themselves aboard airplanes, and unhappy people trying their luck on a psychological wheel of blame.Trade Review“[Uppal]writes poems for which she most likely would have been imprisoned, burnt at the stake, or shot in many countries in the world, both in the distant past and today. Luckily for us, here she is.” —Charles Simic, United States Poet Laureate“The poems bristle with startling imagery and sardonic humour.” —Toronto Star“Both witty and serious, attacking big questions while concentrating on small details.” —Contemporary Verse 2
£16.16
Exile Editions Hermit in Arcadia
Book SynopsisIllustrating solitude, memory, and the consolations of art, this new volume of poetry explores a variety of concepts—such as the pull of the natural world, the loss of a beloved parent, an inherited family garden, and the claims of the imagination. From a Bartók piano concerto and characters in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to celebrities such as Dolly Parton, the collection delves into these subjects and more with passionate detachment and surreal wit. A wide range of verse forms is utilized, including the villanelle, the elegy, and the contemporary sonnet.Trade Review[The author's] skill at his craft ensures that all his poems convey a subtle but incisive music; exquisitely paced, cunningly cadenced, they seem at times to sing themselves. These are highly sophisticated poems . . . . an extremely impressive and accomplished new collection." —Eric Ormsby, author, Fine Incisions
£14.41
Exile Editions After Exile
Book SynopsisPresenting the most comprehensive selection of the famed Canadian writer’s verse, this anthology brings together all of Raymond Knister’s known poems—many of them in print for the first time—along with numerous letters and prose pieces. From pastoral compositions and alternate poetic versions to selected stories and essays, this collection demonstrates why the author was a truly influential personality in the modernist canon. The compilation contains works specifically chosen for their relevance to questions surrounding modernism, shedding light on a significant literary movement. A chronology, a list of anthologies featuring Knister, and an index of cited works are also included.Trade Review“What I appreciate most about this collection is its handiness . . . . It’s a great primer on Knister (and Canadian Modernism of the 1920s–1930s), produced with concision and with an eye to being readable and utilitarian.” —Stephen Cain, author, American Standard/Canada Dry“An example of the type of excellent literary history that Exile Editions has made a minor specialty of.” —George Fetherling, Vancouver Sun“[Knister’s] work is exemplified by simple straightforward stanzas about modern life and aims at the starkness of absolute truth. ” —Anne Burke, editor, Prairie Journal
£16.96
Exile Editions Hebdomeros Suite With the Bronzino Poems
Book SynopsisPresenting a culmination of surrealist exercises, this collection of poems is based on words and phrases from Hebdomeros, the only novel ever written by painter Giorgio de Chirico. Through an assortment of verse, the novel’s protagonist is transformed into an irascible mini-dictator ruling over an unruly realm—perhaps a metaphor for the Self—upon which he attempts to impose ideas of order and beauty. "The Hebdomerous Suite" is accompanied by "the Bronzino Poems," which draw from both accurate and purposefully erroneous interpretations of Deborah Parker’s book, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter and Poet. The resulting pieces celebrate not only the formation of art but creation in general, bringing a greater awareness to global cultures and traditions.
£15.26
Exile Editions Book of Bread
Book SynopsisThe banquet that is daily life is celebrated in this accessible compilation of poems that comprises the poet’s 12th collection, illustrating the loves, joys, and fears of the human race. The featured pieces explore the various things people consume—whether in the form of food or everyday experience—expressing the universal idea of “bread” in the form of poetry. Providing unique insights into what is otherwise overlooked, this series of poems delves into the simplest relationships and observations, offering sustenance for the emotions, psyche, and soul.Trade Review“Bruce Meyer is one of this country’s most prolific writers. His work explores that inherent interest in things taken for granted, and he brings to this subject the most original and absorbing point of view. This new work is immensely readable and unique.” —Marty Gervais, author, Afternoons with the Devil
£15.26
Exile Editions We Wasn't Pals: Canadian Poetry and Prose of the
Book SynopsisIgnored by critics and readers of the time, these poems were written by Canadians who witnessed the horror of World War I first-hand, forming an anthology in which the forgotten experiences of a decade are finally remembered.Trade ReviewBarry Callaghan and Bruce Meyer have done yeoman service to Canadian literature with this volume." —Rex Murphy, host, Cross-Country Check-Up, CBC Radio One
£15.26
Exile Editions Sochi Delirium: Poems
Book SynopsisAn unyielding fever of 103, the Sochi Olympics, and a state of inspirational semidelirium came together as Vladimir Azarov sat in front of his television, images swirled in his mind like a waltzing kaleidoscope. Memories from decades past were triggered as the Pussy Riot girls were being whipped by Cossacks.Marilyn Monroe of Some Like It Hot became his muse while he composed recollections: his first trip to Sochi in 1962; sitting with Henry Moore at his home in Much Haddam; discussing verisimilitudes with Pasolini, art with Frank O’Hara, film and acting with Leni Riefenstahl; shock at terrorists killing Israelis in Munich. As the 2014 Games ended, his fever abated. This remarkable book of poems arose from those two weeks.
£13.46
Exile Editions In a Time of No Song
Book SynopsisThis remarkable collection of poems lures you in, at first to stand alone in the dark, but slowly there comes a hint of light from a crack beneath a door, then a riot of sensuous intensity as you open up to the beauty that lies between the folds of words, bursts of poetic energy that casts warm light over all shadows.From the Introduction by A.F. Moritz "What is this poetry like? There are not many precedents for it or bodies of work very similar to it in English…Bien's word hoard is all his own, though, the way he animates it, constantly connecting the outer with the inner, the familiar with the distant, the limited with the vast, the realm of thought with the realm of life, non-sentient things with sentient ones… There is scarcely a stanza in Bien's work that does not contain some instance of these extendings and plunges into each other performed by things and whole modes of existence. More notable still is the mysterious ease with which the poems admit the contradictions present in perceptions, emotions and desires. In a Time of No Song will impress readers with its poetry of pure sentience and godlike laughter… The mysticism of the source is here, but most of all, I think, we will remember the great enactments and themes of this book through its omnipresent, brilliant tributes to life. We'll keep it by us for its indelible celebrations… A dove lands on my shoulder, the unbearable weight of magicwhat shelters each moment in every other, dies and lives, homelessly on,an orchard of lovely berries singing on a dying treeand so all the while, so too, I sing, that which sings me, in a time of no song.
£17.06
Exile Editions Extra Illicit Sonnets
Book SynopsisExtra Illicit Sonnets chronicles a love affair between a man and a woman of different complexions, cultures, continents, and generations, Sonia Fuentes of Andorra and Luca Xifona of Canada. She is Spanish in heritage; and he is Maltese. She is a Boomer and he is of Generation Y-Not. The poetry consists mainly of unrhymed – or blank – sonnets. It is transcendent and dangerous verse because it addresses humanity's most complex and volatile passion.Trade ReviewPowerful language fires poetry of Clarke in Traverse." —The Chronicle Herald
£13.46
Exile Editions Of Architecture: The Territories of a Mind
Book SynopsisA lively collection populated by historical icons, each poem a story about the potency of imagination, territories, border-crossings of the mind – among them: the madness of a king who wants to be a swan, Michelangelo chiselling a heart that beats into his David, Tsar Peter with his three pet dwarfs acting as generals in the army, Vera Zasulich who became the world’s first woman terrorist, Robinson Crusoe hunting for the footprints of Friday, Michael Jackson pretending he is Marcel Marceau as he woos Marlene Dietrich in Paris.
£15.26
Exile Editions Rhythm and Free Verse Across the Slavic Belt
Book SynopsisSelected by translator Dasha C. Nisula, this unique volume traces the development of modern free verse that extends from Croatia on the Adriatic to Russia in the East. Included are early pieces from the West to East Slavic belt, with the majority of the works focusing on the Russian Whitmanist Vladimir Burich, and the contemporary master of free verse in Russia, Vyacheslav Kupriyanov. A volume that captures feeling, essence, rhythm, and depth through superb translations.
£26.36
Graywolf Press,U.S. The Art Of Recklessness
Book SynopsisYoung's first book of prose on poetry is more than just another illuminating instalment of Graywolf's popular Art Of series - it's a manifesto. In it, Young makes a moving and sincere argument for the importance of what he calls recklessness' in art and poetry. 'Poetry is not a discipline,' he writes. 'It's a hunger, a revolt, a drive, a mash note, a fright, a tantrum, a grief, a hoax, a debacle, an application, an affect. We cannot make the gods come. All we can do is sweep the steps of the temple and thus we sit down to our desks.''
£13.50
Graywolf Press Application for Release from the Dream: Poems
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£13.60
Graywolf Press Four-Legged Girl: Poems
Book Synopsis
£14.45
Graywolf Press 99 Poems: New & Selected
Book Synopsis
£19.20
Graywolf Press We Begin in Gladness How Poets Progress
Book Synopsis
£14.40
University of Arkansas Press Poems of Love and Marriage
Book Synopsis
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press The Advocates of Poetry: A Reader of American
Book SynopsisIncluding those of John Crowe Ransom, Randall Jarell, Allen Tate, John Ciardi, and Robert Penn Warren, R.S. Gwynn has returned to print many of the pivotal essays written by America's most influential poet-critics in the last fifty years.
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press Autumn Rhythm: New and Selected Poems / Leon
Book SynopsisIn this selection of poems written over thirty years, Leon Stokesbury careens through the Maple Leaf Bar and the Restaurant-on-the-Corner, Oklahoma City, and Fairbanks, Alaska, consuming and offering up his sweet-and-sour vision of our lot in life. Whether he comes at us in masks as varied as his father and mother, Nick Bottom or John Keats, SeÑor Wences or Owen Glendower, it is his own Cheshire grin we spy creeping out around the edges. He readily sees the horror in the death of a New Orleans poet, in his own brother’s sufferings, in the inescapable process of mutability itself, but he finds also, often enough, the dark joke at the center of things and the chance for redemptive laughter. Whether in his own deeply personal voice or in the multitude of idioms from which he is able to draw—southern, midwestern, Shakespearean—Stokesbury creates whole landscapes in perfected, formal lines from the shards of memories and dreams.
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary
Book SynopsisThe second edition features twelve new poets as well as new work by Donald Justice, T. R. Hummer, Dave Smith, Pattiann Rogers, Andrew Hudgins, Henry Taylor, Gerald Barrax, Rodney Jones, and others. Among the new additions are Mark Jarman, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Charlie Smith. Many teachers realize that the best way to get their students to relate to poetry is to show them poems that contain landscapes and subjects they understand and can identify with. Leon Stokesbury has put together a richly varied collection used in classrooms not only in the South but all over the country as a means of studying the important influence of southern poetry on American literature. With the publication of the second edition of The Made Thing, Stokesbury has marked the end of the twentieth century and the rise to prominence of southern writers. This collection serves as a substantial sampling of poets whose works span more than five decades and who explore the rich personal and cultural history that extends beyond the boundaries of the South.
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics
Book SynopsisCompiled by three noted poets, this is an eclectic, stimulating, and informed selection of poets' remarks on poetry spanning eras, ethnicities, and aesthetics. The 102 selections from nearly as many poets reach back to the Greeks and Romans, then draw on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Milton, on to Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Poe, then Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Rilke, and Pound, concluding with many of our contemporaries, including Hall, Clifton, Mackey, Kunitz, and Rukeyser.The book is divided into three sections. "Musing" concerns issues of inspiration, "Making," issues of craft, from diction to meter to persona and voice, and "Mapping," the role of poetry and the poet. Headnotes at the beginning of each selection provide background information about the poet and commentary on the significance of the selection. There is also a useful appendix with a listing of essays arranged according to more specific topics. As the poets write in their introduction: "This book was intended to deepen readers' understanding of age-old poetic ideas while at the same time pointing out new directions for thinking about poetry, juxtaposing the familiar and the strange, reconfiguring old boundaries, and shaking up stereotypes.Trade ReviewIn my long shelf-life as a poet I have often been struck-amused, amazed, even made thoughtful-by the sharply opposing views of poets. . . . The views of the practitioners were what I was after, not those of the detached and theoretical critics. . . . Perhaps this book will invite the gestation of other texts that will fill in the blanks and expatiate further on the desire of poets to write about writing poems." -Maxine Kumin, from the Preface"Once again the brilliant Maxine Kumin and her co-editors have given us exactly what we need, this time an anthology of important works by poets on their craft. We who teach and write, edit and read will use Lofty Dogmas in full knowledge of wisdom in the gathering and delight in the words." -Hilda Raz, author of Divine Honors and TRANS, editor of Prairie Schooner"What a wonderful, valuable, and original book this is! . . . It has my highest recommendation." -Leon Stokesbury, author of Autumn Rhythm"Lofty Dogmas will introduce you to an academy of poets talking about their craft. This is a multipurpose book. It's good for teachers and students." -E. Ethelbert Miller, author of How We Sleep on the Nights We Don't Make Love
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics
Book SynopsisCompiled by three noted poets, this is an eclectic, stimulating, and informed selection of poets' remarks on poetry spanning eras, ethnicities, and aesthetics. The 102 selections from nearly as many poets reach back to the Greeks and Romans, then draw on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Milton, on to Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Poe, then Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Rilke, and Pound, concluding with many of our contemporaries, including Hall, Clifton, Mackey, Kunitz, and Rukeyser. The book is divided into three sections. "Musing" concerns issues of inspiration, "Making," issues of craft, from diction to meter to persona and voice, and "Mapping," the role of poetry and the poet. Headnotes at the beginning of each selection provide background information about the poet and commentary on the significance of the selection. There is also a useful appendix with a listing of essays arranged according to more specific topics. As the poets write in their introduction: "This book was intended to deepen readers' understanding of age-old poetic ideas while at the same time pointing out new directions for thinking about poetry, juxtaposing the familiar and the strange, reconfiguring old boundaries, and shaking up stereotypes."
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press The Celestial Twins: Poetry and Music Through the
Book SynopsisAll art constantly aspires toward the condition of music wrote Walter Pater. While recognizing many affinities between music and poetry, this work argues that poetry in western culture has repeatedly separated itself from musical contexts and that the best poetry is a purely verbal art. The author makes his case by proceeding chronologically and citing numerous examples of specific poems - from Latin, old French, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, modern French, and English. He points out that ancient Greek poetry, including the epics, was part of musical context. By contrast, almost no surviving Latin poetry was written for musical performance, but the metres of Latin poetry were borrowed from Greek musical metres. Similarly, in their own ways, Thomas Hardy, T.S. Eliot, and Langston Hughes all wrote out of musical contexts: Hardy from west-of-England songs and dances; Eliot from Wagnerian opera and late Beethoven chamber music; and Hughes from blues, jazz, and spirituals. Although poets from Horace to Shakespeare to Dickinson have instinctively recognized the separation of music and poetry, there have also been well-meaning attempts to bring these allied arts back into association with each other. But in Kirby-Smith's view, poetry of the highest order has always maintained a respectful distance from music, even while retaining some memory of musical rhythms and organization.
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press Calling from Diffusion: Hermeneutics of the
Book SynopsisBased on four Niclson Lectures delivered at Smith College, this book examines a series of ""promenade poems,"" lyrics that follow a poetic speaker moving through a landscape and responding to it. Thomas M. Greene invites the reader to consider a wide range of poets, beginning with Amy Clampitt and A. R. Ammons, continuing with Petrarch, Ronsard, Saint-Amant, Milton, Vaughan, and Marvell, and concluding with to two representative Romantics, Wordsworth and Whitman. Greene's discussions of this rich body of texts stimulate reflection at several levels. They can be read first of all simply as analyses of several memorable poems exhibiting a similar structure over a period of seven centuries. They can also be read as meditations on the workings of lyric poetry, which is always attempting to bring into sharper focus the sensibility of a speaker whose emergence depends on her naming and evoking the objects surrounding her. Thus Greene argues that the distinction of a poetic consciousness lies in its ""permeability,"" permitting a more intimate interplay between internal and external realms. His title is drawn from a line by Whitman: ""You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!"" Finally, at yet another level, Greene's book presents a way of thinking about language which, recalling the Heideggerean theory of ""ereignis,"" suggests that only through the projective act of naming can human beings assimilate things through intuitive knowledge. An afterword, ""The Morality of Literary interpretation,"" surveys critically a range of hermeneutic theories and formulates a position that accords the literary text both autonomy and mystery.Trade ReviewGreene's distinguished works have long established him as one of the most sophisticated, penetrating, and sensitive close readers of poetry in his generation. His international reputation rests on the elegance of his thinking and the eloquence of his writing.... This book is the mature work of a master, - Arthur P. Kinney, author of Humanist Poetics
£999.99
Medieval Institute Publications Guillaume de Machaut, The Complete Poetry and
Book SynopsisGuillaume de Machaut is the most important poet and composer of late medieval France. His unique and inventive output is the subject of this new, integrated edition of Machaut's complete poetry and music. Volume 1, The Debate Series, presents the two "judgment" poems, which are among his most important artistically in terms of their formal innovations and their influence on contemporaries, notably Geoffrey Chaucer, and the associated Lay de plour, presented here with its music. This volume includes the French originals and facing English translations.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Le Jugement dou Roy de Behaigne Le Jugement dou Roy de Navarre Le Lay de Plour Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Notes to the Music by Uri Smilansky Bibliography
£41.48
Medieval Institute Publications The Gawain-Poet and the Fourteenth-Century
Book SynopsisEthan Campbell argues that a central feature of the Gawain-poet's Middle English works' moral rhetoric is anticlerical critique. Written in an era when clerical corruption was a key concern for polemicists such as Richard FitzRalph and John Wyclif, as well as satirical poets such as John Gower, William Langland, and Geoffrey Chaucer, the Gawain poems feature an explicit attack on hypocritical priests in the opening lines of Cleanness as well as more subtle critiques embedded within depictions of flawed priest-like characters.Table of Contents1. Introduction: The Sullied Sacrament 2. The Textual Environment of Fourteenth-Century English Anticlericalism 3. The Anticlerical Poetics of Cleanness 4. The Reluctant Priest of Patience 5. The Late-Arriving Priest of Pearl 6. The Devilish Priest of Sir Gawain
£999.99
Medieval Institute Publications Six Scottish Courtly and Chivalric Poems,
Book SynopsisThese six poems explore some of the courtly and chivalric themes that preoccupied late medieval Scottish society. The volume includes Sir David Lyndsay's Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum, as well as his Answer to the Kingis Flyting; and three anonymous fifteenth-century poems: Balletis of the Nine Nobles, Complaint for the Death of Margaret, Princess of Scotland, and Talis of the Fyve Bestes.Table of ContentsGeneral Introduction The Balletis of the Nine Nobles Complaint for the Death of Margaret, Princess of Scotland The Talis of the Fyve Bestes Biography of Sir David Lyndsay Answer to the Kingis Flyting Introduction to the Squyer Meldrum Poems The Historie of Squyer Meldrum The Testament of Squyer Meldrum The Historie of Squyer Meldrum Notes The Testament of Squyer Meldrum Notes Appendix: Lawson and Haldane Family Trees Bibliography
£999.99
Medieval Institute Publications Gavin Douglas, The Palyce of Honour
Book SynopsisAt the end of the fifteenth century, Gavin Douglas devised his ambitious dream vision The Palyce of Honour in part to signal a new scope to Scottish literary culture. While deeply versed in Chaucer's writings, Douglas identified Ovid's Metamorphoses as a particularly timely model in the light of contemporary humanist scholarship. For all its comedy, The Palyce of Honour stands as a reminder to James IV of Scotland that poetry casts a powerful light upon the arts of rule. A new edition of David Parkinson’s 1992 book The Palis of Honoure. Medieval Institute Publications at Western Michigan University publishes the TEAMS Middle English Texts series, which is designed to make available texts that occupy an important place in the literary and cultural canon but have not been readily obtainable in student editions. The focus of Middle English Texts is on Middle English literature adjacent to such major authors as Chaucer or Malory. The editions include glosses of difficult words and short introductions on the history of the work, its merits, points of topical interest and brief bibliographies. Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Introduction The Palyce of Honour Explanatory Notes Textual Notes Index Bibliography Glossary
£21.93
Station Hill Press,U.S. In the World Enormous
Book SynopsisIn the World Enormous is a collection of poems engaged in transition, conversation and what falls between. They focus on a period that begins shortly before the death of Tomer Inbar's mother and ends after the birth of his twin daughters. In this, the poems constitute a way of thinking out of and about passing and starting again, taking things in their energy, rhythm and moment, including in words with their simultaneously infinite, immediate intimacy and enormity. They have a plangent, even restless, form, with Inbar tellingly indeterminate regarding the direction in which we read and connect and so being open to their engagement from bottom up or top down, moving this way and that, forward and back—though all in one piece. Thought as assemblage seems to sway to subtleties of moment as a momentum that defines a space and way to move through, as presence comes together to inscribe sense, experience or idea. Inbar writes, "These poems like their movement. I like how these poems move. Apart from the definitional, I find comfort in being present as things move. With sibilance. On their own volition. Taking the qualities of their construction along." More perhaps than this, these poems seem to compel us to think an impossible thought.
£10.40
Station Hill Press,U.S. The Poetics of Sensibility
£18.86
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry
Book SynopsisPoems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, the winner of the National Book Award, presents the life work of a giant of American letters, tracks a forty-year career of honest, tough artistry, and shows a man at nearly 80 years of age and still at the height of his poetic power. Dugan’s new poems continue his career-long concerns with renewed vigor: the poet’s insistence that art is a grounded practice threatened by pretension, the wry wit, the jibes at the academic and sententious, and the arresting observations on the quotidian battles of life. All the while he peppers his poems with humorous images of the grim and daunting topics of existential emptiness.
£23.75
Seven Stories Press,U.S. A History of Color: New and Selected Poems
Book Synopsis
£15.26
North Atlantic Books,U.S. A Poet's Mind: Collected Interviews with Robert
Book SynopsisRobert Duncan (1919-1988), one of the major postwar American poets, was an adulated figure among his contemporaries, including Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Denise Levertov. Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked that Duncan "had the best ear this side of Dante." His stature is increasingly recognized as comparable to that of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky. Like his poetry, Duncan''s conversation is generative and multi-directional, pushing out the boundaries of discourse. His recorded reflections are a means of discovery and exploration, and whether talking with a college student or a fellow poet, he was fully engaged and open to new thoughts as they emerged. The exchanges in this book are exciting and lively. His vast and wide-ranging knowledge offers readers an increased understanding of the interrelations of the arts, history, psychology, and science; those who would like to learn about Duncan''s own life, his bravery in being an out gay man well before Stonewall, and his friendships with fellow writers, such as Charles Olson, Jack Spicer, and Kenneth Rexroth, will find this book richly rewarding. The six volumes of Duncan''s collected writings are being issued by the University of California Press. The collected interviews are an indispensable companion to these books, providing an in-depth exposition of his poetics, which center on the belief that the poem is "a medium for the life of the spirit." In A Poet''s Mind, he describes the genesis of some of his works, including that of books, essays, and individual poems, and also discusses gay love and life, along with the many diverse influences on his work. Ducan''s fertile creative mind is also evident in these conversations: often coming back to Ezra Pound in these conversations, he gives one of the clearest expositions to be found anywhere on the scope and meaning of The Cantos. This volume also includes a number of photographs never before published.
£20.70
Ignatius Press Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot's Four
Book Synopsis
£999.99
