Modern and contemporary poetry
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse 110 Poets on
Book SynopsisAn inspiring new selection of poems exploring faith and the divine, featuring poets from across the world, from antiquity to the present, compiled by renowned poet and author of Martyr!, Kaveh AkbarA Penguin ClassicPoets have always looked to the skies for inspiration, and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is a holistic and global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia.Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BC Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this selection presents a number of canonical voices like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized diverse voices going up to the presentTrade ReviewIf poetry is prayer, here are scriptures. Kaveh Akbar's brave, encompassing map of spiritual hunger shows us that longing belongs to all of us, whatever the languages we speak or the geographies we inhabit -- Jeet ThayilAn amazing collection of spiritual verse from many cultures and periods, from ancient Sumer in the third millennium BCE up to the present. There cannot be any other anthology that ranges so widely, and anyone concerned with either poetry or spirituality will want to own a copy -- John Barton * author of A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths *Wonderfully rich, this beautiful anthology of verse uniquely displays how humans over centuries and across continents have wrestled with the concept of the divine and, in turn, humanity's relationship with that divinity. From exaltation to lament, from reflections on beauty to explorations of science, these words draw the reader's eyes towards the wonder of the numinous. A delightful celebration of human creativity, with new insights from a trusted guide: Kaveh Akbar -- Chine McDonald * director of Theos and author of God Is Not a White Man: And Other Revelations *What an amazing compilation: beautifully edited, translated, introduced, this book is far more than a typical poetry anthology. What is it, then? It is our chance to overhear the splendid poet Kaveh Akbar whisper to himself words which he lives by, as he embarks on his own journey of spirit, loss, astonishment, bewilderment, and, perhaps, understanding. The chorus of voices gathered offer a balm, a consolation, a tune, in our desolate world -- Ilya Kaminsky * author of Deaf Republic *How can language approach the spiritual - that which remains unlanguaged - and trace the limen between the self and what it falls silent before? In The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse, Kaveh Akbar takes up this timeless inquiry with expansive curatorial shaping and heady joy, threading together Li Po and Adelia Prado, Hafez with Jabès, reverent with ludic, divine with corporeal, and everything that gets charged through, and between, them. Vibrating across this thick bundle of verse is the animation of the spirit enmeshed with the body, astounding in its ever-shifting forms, its irrepressible music. These poems "thin the partition between a person and a divine," and they do so sublimely: making porous the border between the self and all that beckons beyond understanding -- Jenny XieThe choices Kaveh Akbar has made for this anthology of spiritual verse are spectacularly excellent. They are from regions of poetry at once accessible and exalted, representing the most intense of human experiences, the experiences of the divine, the yearning for the holy. Multiple cultures are represented: texts of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Arabic speaking world, the Farsi speaking world, poets of Hindi and Urdu, poets from everywhere in Asia, Africa, Europe, as well as England and the USA. Here is a page of Lucretius, there a page of Dante (splendidly translated by Mary Jo Bang), and over there, Nazim Hikmet. There are several astonishing women, including Enheduanna, Mirabai, Gabriela Mistral. The book holds an embarrassment of riches, yet is light on its feet. You can easily carry it with you in an outside pocket of your knapsack. You too will be smitten by the yearning that animates and drives these poems. Akbar's Introduction, and his notes on individual poems, are extra added value: the words of a poet -- Alicia Ostriker * New York State Poet Laureate 2018-2021, author of the volcano and after:Selected and New Poems, 2002-2019 *Table of ContentsIntroductionEnheduanna, from ‘Hymn to Inanna’ Unknown, ‘Death of Enkidu’, from The Epic of Gilgamesh Unknown, from The Book of the Dead Unknown, Song of Songs, chapters 1 and 2 King David, Psalm 23 Homer, from The Odyssey Sappho, Fragments 22 and 118 Patacara, ‘When they plow their fields’ Lao Tzu, ‘Easy by Nature’, from Tao Te Ching Chandaka, Two Cosmologies Vyasa, from the Bhagavad Gita Lucretius, from The Nature of Things Virgil, from The Aeneid Shenoute, ‘Homily’ Sengcan, ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’ From the Quran Kakinomoto Hitomaro, ‘In praise of Empress Jitō’ Li Po, ‘Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon’ Rabi’a al-Basri, ‘O my lord’ Ono No Komachi, ‘This inn’ Hanshan, ‘Hanshan’s Poem’ Al-Husayn ibn Ahmad ibn Khalawayh, ‘Names of the Lion’ Unknown, Anglo-Saxon charm Izumi Shikibu, ‘Things I Want Decided’ Li Qingzhao, ‘Late Spring’ Hildegard of Bingen, ‘Song to the Creator’ Mahadeviyakka, ‘I do not call it his sign’ Attar of Nishapur, ‘Parable of the Dead Dervishes in the Desert’ St Francis of Assisi, ‘Canticle of the Sun’ Wumen Huikai, from The Gateless Gate Rūmī, ‘Lift Now the Lid of the Jar of Heaven’ Mechthild of Magdeburg, ‘Of all that God has shown me’ Saadi Shirazi, ‘The Grass Cried Out’ Thomas Aquinas, ‘Lost, All in Wonder’ Moses de León, from The Sepher Zohar Dante Alighieri, from Inferno, Canto III from the Sundiata Hafez, Ghazal 17 Yaqui people, ‘Deer Song’ Nezahualcoyotl, ‘The Painted Book’ Kabir, ‘Brother, I’ve seen some’ Mirabai, ‘O friend, understand’ Yoruba people, from A Recitation of Ifa Teresa of Ávila, ‘Laughter Came from Every Brick’ Gaspara Stampa, ‘Deeply repentant of my sinful ways’ St John of the Cross, ‘O Love’s living flame’ Mayan people, from the Popol Vuh Christopher Marlowe, from Faustus William Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 John Donne, ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God’ Nahuatl people, ‘The Midwife Addresses the Woman’ George Herbert, ‘Easter Wings’ Walatta Petros/Gälawdewos, from The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros John Milton, from Paradise Lost, Book 4 Bashō, ‘Death Song’ and ‘In Kyoto’ Juana Inés de la Cruz, ‘Suspend, singer swan, the sweet strain’ Yosa Buson, ‘A solitude’ Olaudah Equiano, ‘Miscellaneous Verses’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Wanderer’s Nightsong II’ Phillis Wheatley, ‘On Virtue’ William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’ Kobayashi Issa, ‘All the time I pray to Buddha’ John Clare, ‘I Am!’ John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ Mirza Ghalib, ‘For the Raindrop’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘Grief’ Frederick Douglass, ‘A Parody’ Emily Dickinson, ‘I prayed, at first, a little Girl’ Uvavnuk, ‘The Great Sea’ Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur’ Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Temple of Gold’ Constantine Cavafy, ‘Body, Remember’ W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’ Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘The Second Duino Elegy’ Muhammad Iqbal, ‘These are the days of lightning’ Yosano Akiko, ‘To punish’ Sarojini Naidu, ‘In the Bazaars of Hyderabad’ Delmira Agustini, ‘Inextinguishables’ Gabriela Mistral, ‘The Return’ Anna Akhmatova, from ‘Requiem’ Osip Mandelstam, ‘O Lord, help me to live through this night’ Edith Södergran, ‘A Life’ Marina Tsvetaeva, from Poems to Czechia María Sabina, from ‘The Midnight Velada’ Xu Zhimo, ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’ Federico García Lorca, ‘Farewell’ Nâzim Hikmet, ‘Things I Didn’t Know I Loved’ Léopold Sédar Senghor, ‘Totem’ Faiz Ahmed Faiz, ‘Before You Came’ Czesław Miłosz, ‘Dedication’ Edmond Jabès, ‘At the Threshold of the Book’ Aimé Césaire, from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land Octavio Paz, ‘Brotherhood: Homage to Claudius Ptolemy’ Oodgeroo Noonuccal, ‘God’s One Mistake’ Paul Celan, ‘There was Earth in Them’ Paul Laraque, ‘Rainbow’ Nazik Al-Malaika, ‘Love Song for Words’ Wisława Szymborska, ‘Astonishment’ Zbigniew Herbert, ‘The Envoy of Mr Cogito’ Yehuda Amichai, ‘A Man in His Life’ Ingeborg Bachmann, ‘Every Day’ Kim Nam-Jo, ‘Foreign Flags’ Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Bread’ Adonis, ‘The New Noah’ Christopher Okigbo, ‘Come Thunder’ Ingrid Jonker, ‘There Is Just One Forever’ Jean Valentine, ‘The River at Wolf’ Kofi Awoonor, ‘At the Gates’ Adélia Prado, ‘Dysrhythmia’ Lucille Clifton, ‘my dream about God’ Vénus Khoury-Ghata, from She Says Mahmoud Darwish, ‘I Didn’t Apologize to the Well’ M. NourbeSe Philip, from Zong! Inrasara, from Allegory of the Land Sources Acknowledgements Index of First Lines Index of Titles
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd The Wild Party
Book SynopsisArt Spiegelman has been a staff artist and contributing editor at the New Yorker, as well as the cofounder/coeditor of RAW, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. In addition to Maus - which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award - he is the author of Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers. In January 2011, Art Spiegelman was awarded Le Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. From 2012 through 2014 a museum retrospective of his work, called Co-Mix, travelled to the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. His most recent book is Si Lewen's Parade: An Artist's Oddyssey (2016). He lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly, and a cat named Voodoo.
£13.50
Penguin Books Ltd Safety in Numbers
Book SynopsisThis is not the time for adultery.Your lover will fail to be impressed,not so much by the face maskand stale musk of sanitizing gel,but your flouting of the rules.At once funny and moving, Safety in Numbers is the new collection from the nation''s favourite poet. Traversing new yet timeless terrain with his signature wit and intimacy, Roger McGough brings to life the very strangeness of our timesFrom lost tongues and violins to rising oceans, from adulterers in lockdown to ghosts in line, we may live in dark times and yet find ourselves laughing. From surprising angles and with unexpected voices, McGough, ''a trickster you can trust'', reveals the telling moments of our lives._______________PRAISE FOR ROGER MCGOUGH''A witty and ingenious chronicler of British life with a deftness and agility that is hard to beat'' Poetry Society''The patron saint of poetry'' Trade ReviewSparky, thoughtful, inventive, and fun, it's also the mix of these qualities that makes this a fantastic collection * Buzz Magazine *This slim volume is a joy, packed with wry observation, vim and wit that deftly captures the spirit of these strange times we inhabit. Journeying through topical subjects, from rising oceans and adultery in lockdown to seaside staycations and an ode to Laura Kuenssberg, poet Roger McGough has a keen eye for the magical moments within the mundanities of modern life * Herald *Probably the best-known contemporary poet in the country, Roger McGough still tours his brand of zany takes on British culture . . . Safety in Numbers runs with several themes, including the pandemic, how to write poems and even being a narrator and voice-over artist. . . . [with] a lot of characteristically clever imagery and wordplay, such as in Warning Signs, a list of aphorisms, "Time to hit the road? You stumble, hit the road". * Expert Reviews, Best Poetry Books for 2022 *McGough is a true original and more than one generation would be much the poorer without him * The Times *McGough has done for poetry what champagne does for weddings * Time Out *Memorable and enduring and fresh. Age has not withered [his lines] nor diminished their potency. Of how much modern poetry can you say that? * Sunday Herald, on ‘joinedupwriting’ *McGough's trademarks: the craft worn as lightly as the crown, the jokes that are something more, the underlying heartache, the acute sense of the way time slips away * Poetry Review, on ‘joinedupwriting’ *The patron saint of poetry * Carol Ann Duffy *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Prophet
Book SynopsisIntroducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world''s greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.In this inspirational, allegorical guide, Al Mustafa the prophet delivers spiritual yet practical homilies on the work of living: beauty, truth, possessions, sorrow, joy, death and more. Translated into more than fifty languages and among the best-selling books of all time, The Prophet remains a wise and revitalising handbook for the soul.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Poetry Pharmacy Forever
Book SynopsisThe world has reopened and so has the Poetry Pharmacy: the powerful final instalment in the hugely beloved seriesAfter the tumult of the last years, William Sieghart is back to prescribe the perfect poem for a variety of life''s ailments, offering hope and comfort to readers in need. Here, he draws on the emails he received from the public during multiple lockdowns, as well as tried-and-true classics from his in-person pharmacies, to create an essential anthology of poetry for our times. Through his expert curation and insightful commentary, he reminds us of the power of words to help us heal, to reconnect us with the world and to recover what has been lost.From weathering sorrow and sudden loss, to dealing with environmental despair and burnout, this new selection speaks directly to a society in urgent need of comfort and compassion. Whether you''re searching for guidance, hope, or simply a moment of beauty, The Poetry Pharmacy Forever is here to provide solace, joy and inspiration, one verse at a time.
£13.49
Penguin Books Ltd Letters to a Young Poet
Book Synopsis
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd As Far as I Know
Book SynopsisRoger McGough was a member of the group Scaffold in the 1960s when he contributed poems to the Penguin title The Mersey Sound, which has since sold over a million copies and is now available as a Penguin Classic. He has published many books of poems for children and adults, and both his Collected Poems (2004) and Selected Poems (2006) are also available in Penguin. He presents Poetry Please on Radio 4 and is President of the Poetry Society. He was honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2001 and with a CBE in 2005 for services to literature.Trade ReviewThe same blend of mischievous wordplay, subversion of cliche and distinctive sense of humour that makes him one of Britain's most popular poets * Spectator *As Far As I Know is self-effacing, unshowy, frequently funny, but with a quiet frankness * Scotsman *Moving poems on memory, love, aging, death and youth ... with his characteristic mix of wordplay and punning, wit, melancholy and self-deprecation * Independent *
£8.54
Penguin Books Ltd The Emperors Babe From the Booker prizewinning
Book SynopsisFROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER''Wildly entertaining, deeply affecting'' Ali SmithLondinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. She''s a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and she''s just been married off a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts...Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and verse, a joyful mash-up of today and yesterday. Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor''s Babe asks what it means to be a woman and to survive in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.
£8.54
Indiana University Press God Had a Body
Book SynopsisIn this debut collection from Jennie Malboeuf, we observe undercurrents of violence and power, the dynamics of memory, gender, marriage, and miscarriage. At times, God is brutal. At times, delicate. Through true stories of animal savagery, God Had a Body unravels human behavior and undoes the opaque and cryptic mysteries of faith.Trade Review"Salient and provoking, sensuous and cerebral, Jennie Malboeuf's poems locate holiness in the living, dead, partial and whole creations of this planet: among them a "cow's eye . . . so pretty I squinched hard/and wished it back to the socket"; a "redback spider [that] throws himself/into the hollow fangs of his beloved" ; a dead whale whose "mouth hung open/like a friendly doorway," until "that certain scent of ending" makes the human fantasy of welcome clear. Yes, we are like the animals—whether tiny or enormous—but make no mistake: they are themselves, worthy of our attention and our reverence, rarely reflecting us. As Malboeuf puts it, "the birds we kept/in cages fought any mirror." The poet laces her observant news of these encounters with a biblical re-envisioning, as well as with her own peculiar wit: for example, in "The Cow's Eye," Malboeuf notes that "Daddy picked it up from the stockyards . . . He said it'd help with my science project." In another encounter, the speaker's father has a run-in with a mosquito: "at the height of an anecdote, a mosquito, a female, / flew inside his head." The humor there is spiky and profound. At the doctor's office, the daughter gets to see "the mold of hot wax they poured to pull her—preserved in flight—right out." In "The Hydra," that organism is described as "a penis-shaped creature with a spider/topping its head." This poet thrives amid and among other bodies, observing, feeling, and listening, trying very hard not to cut life short or diminish its sacredness with fallible descriptions, while acknowledging with her striking wit our human-centric eye. I relish these poems and will return to them for their stories, their humor, and the ways they intertwine language and life."—Lisa Williams, author of Woman Reading to the Sea"There is a fierce spirituality and mordant wit in God had a body, Jennie Malboeuf's first book of poems. Here is a poet with a transformative vision of divine and earthly enterprise as well as a sharp eye for the repercussions of physical detail. Malboeuf's use of enactments and embodiments—actions and images—startle and awaken the reader to a powerful new voice in American poetry. What a glorious debut collection."—Stuart Dischell, author of Children with EnemiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsThe GodheadPart IFirst Death Ever FilmedChrist is a Great Blue HeronThe Cow's EyeAnimals in the BibleFrog Gig, 1983Some Things Have Been Heard EnoughGracklesWildingRuthSacred HeartAnimalsThe Meaning of GodA Figure for the Holy GhostPart IIThe CountryOrreryThe LeonidsEarly Signs of the ApocalypseZoonosisSong of the CockMen in My Bed as Dead Animal in Dog Mouthal MealLandscape Where I Forget My FatherBlindfoldAnimals in CaptivityThe Nightjarphylum<\GRAY>::class::order::family::genus<\GRAY>The Giving AwayRepletionSnakehandlingFearWhat the Eclipse Does to AnimalsThe Miracle of the PigsLandscape Where I Miss My MotherPhobia, 1985lullabyGrandmothersThe MenIn the MythsKingdomHubrisThe WomenFirst MirrorThe ScrewwormMnemonicsOde to the CannibalMan, Beast, Lion, BirdGod-manInscapeThought Inventory with Rorschach and CaesuraLetting GoTopography of a BirdPart IIINewfound Star SystemDouble Star—OrbsThe GodwitTo Begin WithHeavy Animals, or Frustrated Attempts to See GodImmolationThe HydraEschatologyThe GospelsThe Lesser Water BoatmanOrgasm as LapwingErectionValentineThe QuickeningWedding NightElflandNestingflying changeStrawberry MoonHonest SignalsReasons We Should Be TogetherThe Night We Decided Was a Day
£8.99
University of Notre Dame Press Buland AlHaidari and Modern Iraqi Poetry
Book SynopsisIn this brilliant book, ?Abdulwa?id Lu'lu'a translates and introduces eighty poems from one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry, Buland Al-?aidari.Buland Al-?aidari might fairly be considered the fourth pillar holding up the dome of modern Arabic poetry. Alongside his famous contemporaries Nazik al-Mala''ika, Badre Shakir Al-Sayyab, and Abdulwahhab Al-Bayyati, Al-?aidari likewise made significant contributions to the development of twentieth-century Arabic poetry, including the departure from the traditional use of two-hemistich verses in favor of what has been called the Arabic free verse form.A few of Al-?aidari's poems have been translated into English separately, but no book-length translation of his poetry has been published until now. In Buland Al-?aidari and Modern Iraqi Poetry, ?Abdulwa?id Lu'lu'a translates eighty of Al-?aidari's most important poems, giving English-speaking readers access to this rich corpus. Lu'lu'a's perceptive introductioTrade Review“Long overdue, this highly competent translation fills a major gap in our understanding of Arab literary history. No Middle East studies collection will be complete without it.” —Hussein N. Kadhim, author of The Poetics of Anti-Colonialism in the Arabic QaṣīdahTable of ContentsFrom Clay Throb (1947) 1. Semiramis 2. Autumn Echo 3. Whimper 4. Dreaming Silence 5. Boredom 6. Clay Throb 7. Shades 8. Closed Lips From Songs of the Dead City (1951) 9. Barrenness 10. Depths 11. Postman 12. Image 13. Three Signs 14. The Hypocritical Wound 15. At Night 16. Here You Are 17. Roads 18. Old Age 19. Dream 20. An Old Love 21. Slavery 22. O My Friend 23. Deceit 24. Lost Step 25. Loss 26. Where To From Steps in Exile (1965) 27. Secret 28. Old Image 29. Judahs’ Repentance 30. You Came with the Dawn 31. Bitter Land 32. I Want To 33. Tomorrow Here 34. And Tomorrow I Return 35. He Said Something to Us 36. Return to Hiroshima 37. In a Few Hours 38. A Talk for Next Saturday 39. The Eighth Journey 40. At Forty 41. To My Town 42. Steps in Exile From The Journey of Yellow Letters (1968) 43. To a Negro from Alabama 44. Disappointment of the Man of the Past 45. Desolation 46. Genesis 47. Dreaming of Return 48. Two Faces 49. Message of the Small Man 50. The Paling Salt 51. Age of Rubber Stamps 52. I Wish If 53. Short Laugh 54. The Waiting Sails 55. Suffocation 56. Call of a Nation 57. Dream of the Snow 58. At the Crossroads 59. A Child of the First War 60. Night, Cold and Wardens 61. Journey of the Yellow Letters From Songs of the Tired Guard 62. Sleeping Pills 63. Indicted, Though Innocent 64. A Call for Stupor 65. A Dream in Four Scenes 66. Expulsion 67. The Killed Witness 68. Apology 69. Between Two Points 70. Dialogue in the Bend 71. Confessions from 1961 72. Hey… You are Indicted 73. Dialogue in Three Dimensions 74. Procession of the Seven Sins 75. Call of the Seven Sins 76. Stolen Frontiers 77. Sindbad’s Eighth Journey 78. On the Verge of the Fallen World 79. Two Voices Late at Night 80. I’ll Stay Here
£70.55
University of Notre Dame Press Buland Alaidari and Modern Iraqi Poetry
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Long overdue, this highly competent translation fills a major gap in our understanding of Arab literary history. No Middle East studies collection will be complete without it.” —Hussein N. Kadhim, author of The Poetics of Anti-Colonialism in the Arabic QaṣīdahTable of ContentsFrom Clay Throb (1947) 1. Semiramis 2. Autumn Echo 3. Whimper 4. Dreaming Silence 5. Boredom 6. Clay Throb 7. Shades 8. Closed Lips From Songs of the Dead City (1951) 9. Barrenness 10. Depths 11. Postman 12. Image 13. Three Signs 14. The Hypocritical Wound 15. At Night 16. Here You Are 17. Roads 18. Old Age 19. Dream 20. An Old Love 21. Slavery 22. O My Friend 23. Deceit 24. Lost Step 25. Loss 26. Where To From Steps in Exile (1965) 27. Secret 28. Old Image 29. Judahs’ Repentance 30. You Came with the Dawn 31. Bitter Land 32. I Want To 33. Tomorrow Here 34. And Tomorrow I Return 35. He Said Something to Us 36. Return to Hiroshima 37. In a Few Hours 38. A Talk for Next Saturday 39. The Eighth Journey 40. At Forty 41. To My Town 42. Steps in Exile From The Journey of Yellow Letters (1968) 43. To a Negro from Alabama 44. Disappointment of the Man of the Past 45. Desolation 46. Genesis 47. Dreaming of Return 48. Two Faces 49. Message of the Small Man 50. The Paling Salt 51. Age of Rubber Stamps 52. I Wish If 53. Short Laugh 54. The Waiting Sails 55. Suffocation 56. Call of a Nation 57. Dream of the Snow 58. At the Crossroads 59. A Child of the First War 60. Night, Cold and Wardens 61. Journey of the Yellow Letters From Songs of the Tired Guard 62. Sleeping Pills 63. Indicted, Though Innocent 64. A Call for Stupor 65. A Dream in Four Scenes 66. Expulsion 67. The Killed Witness 68. Apology 69. Between Two Points 70. Dialogue in the Bend 71. Confessions from 1961 72. Hey… You are Indicted 73. Dialogue in Three Dimensions 74. Procession of the Seven Sins 75. Call of the Seven Sins 76. Stolen Frontiers 77. Sindbad’s Eighth Journey 78. On the Verge of the Fallen World 79. Two Voices Late at Night 80. I’ll Stay Here
£31.50
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£55.80
University of Notre Dame Press The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes
Book SynopsisThe Rivers Are Inside Our Homes handles themes of loss and exile, aging generations, fable and fairy tale, marriage and hurt, with the island of Cuba at its heart.These incandescent poems by Cuban American poet Victoria María Castells explore how we can salvage our notion of paradise in an overspent Eden. In thwarted homes located in Havana and Miami, Rapunzel and her prince, persecuted nymphs, Morgause, and Bluebeard's wife speak to us directly, all in need of returning to safety. Confronting machismo, illness, heartbreak, and isolation, the poems depict how women are at the mercy of men, either husband or oligarch. Yet all generations of Cubans are bombarded with this need to return or to leave, to have both, to have neither.Meanwhile, hurricane seasons add further instability to shelter and family, growing fiercer every year. Exile and displacement are accepted as permanent conditions. Latin America will mirror Cuba's violent struggles as conquered lanTrade Review“These poems capture the quandary of being Cuban-American, a liminal space of being where one is haunted by the exile condition beyond the possibility of resolution or even the anodyne of forgetting. Castells confronts the agonies of exile, the relentless gravity of memory, and the deterioration of Cuba under communism with disquieting surrealism and stark emotion.” —Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds"Ghosts flow through the gulf stream waters of Victoria María Castell’s gorgeous poems. Caught in the storms of geopolitics, the natural world, and intergenerational memory, this lyric narrative of a Cuban-American family contemplates the complexity of exile and home. Readers of this book will be long haunted by its beauty." —Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic"These are mature and mesmeric poems. Hurricanes, exiled family, the devastating migrations to a new country and landscape, it's all here and so visceral and so well orchestrated. Each poem works an indelible impact on the reader. This book is a necessary catharsis for all of us who've lived and survived this history. A brilliant addition to our literary canon." —Virgil Suárez, author of The Painted Bunting's Last Molt and Amerikan Chernobyl“This debut collection by a Cuban American poet from Miami centers on questions of exile, immigration and memory, evoking Cuba as ‘this pearl/erupted from Earth, island/of dew and Communist tide.’” —New York Times Book Review * New York Times Book Review *"The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes is a poetry collection you can read in small sips or down in one large gulp. For a double reward, try it both ways. It’s an amazing collection." —Tweetspeak * Tweetspeak *"Castells’ ability to vividly portray different experiences makes the circumstances of the speakers relatable. Her collection of work could serve as a guide and possibly a comfort for the individual who becomes displaced or uprooted. The author uses her writing to hone in on how many Cuban women have no choice but to participate and yearn to migrate to a better place even when the journey is debilitating. Despite these obstacles, Castells celebrates these women for their resilience and tenacity. They truly take on a mythical energy under her literary guise."—Southern Review * Southern Review *"Victoria María Castells forges fierce, fresh mythology with The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes, a portrait of Cuban exile that is also an excoriation of power." —Poetry Foundation * Poetry Foundation *"Told in three parts, this compelling debut from Castells examines Cuba, family, hurricanes, and migration. Bursting with fairy tales and interrogating 'paradise,' images and lines continue to haunt me long after reaching the last page... When you hopefully revel in this, some standouts I highly recommend include 'Rupture, Alternating,' 'A Liking, Somewhat,' and 'Hot Season.'" —Book Riot * Book Riot *Table of ContentsI. Trilocation February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII Necropolis To Make a Balsa Because You Have To Hurricane Advice from Your Sister Guardian Andrew Wishing Game Migration A Short Journey CSS Stonewall Stationed in Havana Harbor On Both Sides, Water Che in Technicolor Cuba, Boasted Rival of Swiss Chocolate Go to the Smallest Room Right Now Mothers’ Warnings II. Rupture, Alternating Las Princesas Bailarinas María Antonia Homemaking Tintagel Caretaker A Liking, Somewhat On a Husband’s Next Family Hot Season Emergency If the Water is Hot and Does Not Warm You Maiden Without Hands in the Exile III. Key to the Indies Camelot Cajas de Muerto Superpowered A Ruler is Poseidon The Pirate How Can You Make a Communist Flower? Diagnosis in Exile Metamorphism And for the Head, a Crown Antilles Formation The Rivers Are Inside Our Home Shelter in Place Havana Syndrome Trump Meeting Kim Jong-Un Abuelas
£13.29
University of Washington Press Post Romantic
Book SynopsisExpansive poems connect personal, national, and global historiesIn her wide-ranging third book, poet Kathleen Flenniken undertakes the difficult task of re-seeing what is before us. Post Romantic fuses personal memory with national and ecological upheaval, interweaving narratives of family, nuclear history, love of country, and a dangerous age moving too fast. Flenniken takes these challenging momentsbits and pieces of childhood, marriage, cultural touchstonesand holds them up to the light, seeking comfort in a complicated world that is at once heartbreaking, confounding, and dear.Trade Review"Concerned with nostalgia, masculinity, and the state of America, the 2014 Washington State Poet Laureate’s latest collection holds a magnifying glass to the personal and political past to understand how it shapes our present." * Ampersand Magazine *"Post Romantic explores and weaves together the politics of country and self... clear, straightforward yet nuanced poems." * Poetry Northwest *
£15.19
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Why Cant It Be Tenderness
Book SynopsisCharting a journey through schoolyards and laundromats, suburban gardens and rice paddies, yoga studios and rural highways, Michelle Brittan Rosado crafts poems that blend elegy and praise. In settings from California to Malaysian Borneo, she explores themes of coming-of-age, mixed-race identity, diaspora, and cultural inheritance.Trade ReviewStrikes just the right, clear note to place in the register of memorable debuts. Rosado's terrific new poems are salve and honey, even when the subjects of breaking and coming apart are at their beautiful core. Listen to the brilliant music of these pages."" - Aimee Nezhukumatathil, contest judge""Exhilarating, tactile poems- embodied, rich and full. Michelle Brittan Rosado is a visionary architect building and following interior maps within intricate landscapes, creating luminous revelation and deep calm. A book like this gives you your life back."" - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Voices in the Air""The sense of a divided homeland- California and Malaysia- first splits then doubles the impassioned focus of these precisely crafted, complexly braided meditations on the self and family inheritance. Psychologically searing and yet always resonant with the world's pleasures, these poems unfold as an album of belated and tender homecomings."" - David St. John, author of The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems""An intimate book that draws the world inside its discoveries, both ordinary and extraordinary. Each poem offers us miracles by which we persist beyond the surface of language itself. Luminous in craft and intelligence, here is an original voice that questions, and ultimately celebrates, the profound wonder of our survival."" - Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Lighting the ShadowTable of Contents Acknowledgments Ode to the Double “L” I Western History Pastoral with Restless Searchlight How to Use Microsoft Paint to Alter a Birth Certificate Only Child Ambivalence Dementia Across the Street from Foxboro Elementary School, an Inmate Escapes California State Prison Solano Vanishing Ship The Elements Have Learned to Speak Theory on Falling into a Reef Customs Between Poem for My Twin Our Bodies Were Once the Color of Our Masks The Hotel Eden Asking about My First Name Debt Poem for My Mother Rootless My Father’s Work The Sky Will Look White Pantun Poem for My Maternal Grandfather Ritual Photograph Taken by My Paternal Grandmother on Her Honeymoon, 1944 Elegy without Translation My Dead Live in Two Rooms II The Dissolution Paperwork Asks if I Need to Restore My Name Late Summer Sea Shanty for the Divorced The Numerology of Us Old Knives The Tower District This Poem Wants to Be a House Fresno Laundromat without Air-Conditioning in Late July Contemporary Artifacts Portrait of His Ex-Lover at a Yoga Studio, Downtown Fresno Incident between Two Exits Why Can’t It Be Tenderness The Sweetest Exile Is the One You Choose A Name Made of Asterisks Mistaken Ode Love after Dentistry On Waking When You’re Already Leaving While You Are Gone An anchor in the shape of an ampersand Visitations with Unmarried Self Glaucoma Test in the Post-Racial Era Breaking a Sugar Bowl the Morning after a Lunar Eclipse Lullaby in Which It Becomes Impossible Not to Talk about Race Notes
£12.76
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Shopping or The End of Time
Book SynopsisThese tour-de-force poems simultaneously capture an impression of emptiness and pleasure, of existing in a liminal space filled with both hollowness and potential.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Ravine Part 1. Women Who begat the earth? 80 to 90 percent of my awareness When I was 13 there was a girl I knew My gravestone The mother should be as stunning With pleasure the young men Initially I was a beautiful woman A naked woman is perched in the window The doves were moaning crying cooing calling A map is a picture that shows where things are Part 2. Money My husband fidgets with the inner mechanism of the country The culture oriented itself toward shopping In my childhood The economy is synchronized and delicate In this house we loved My darkest thoughts In the middle of the disaster nothing bad had happened to me My new blue kitchen cabinets painted blue Is the wind so dirty? Our house (among all the homes in the city) Part 3. Children A ghost is what you call a woman The new mothers The unbearable can actually be borne My pregnancy was a long and happy nightmare Nothing could be sweeter than JoaquÍn is my favorite child Statues or knotted ropes or scored stone I ask JoaquÍn if he likes the music AndrÉs said Woe was the sentiment Part 4. Ghosts Sitting at the lip of the tunnel to the past It is sad What is your ideal life I am going to make a poem We each of us carry Neptune is a place we’ll never go All the time art is falling It is turbulent to be a person Hypothetical Painting
£16.10
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Grace Engine
Book Synopsis‘Words carry the dead like henchmen,’ in Joshua Burton’s extraordinary debut volume, Grace Engine. These spare and powerful poems are like pallbearers, like eulogists, like survivors, like battered souls hoping and dreaming for a future that may never be.Trade Review“No poet I’ve worked with in forty years’ teaching has wowed me more with his talent & smarts & heart than young Joshua Burton. His first collection, Grace Engine, is destined to be this year’s star debut.”—Mary Karr “One of the most compelling books I have read this year. But what does that mean? It means that we are invited to enter the landscape where the speaker's ‘been having / a different relationship / with ghosts.’ It means that history is a catastrophe but a grandmother can turn ‘looking into a language, a season / whittled down to degrees.’ It means that the empire corrodes but there is still music which these pages unearth and offer, as a consolation, perhaps, no as evidence: evidence that the soul lives despite the terror of this time. Because Burton knows that ‘wind from a mouth can coax the flame into living,’ Grace Engine is inconsolable and yet consoling. A very beautiful book.”—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in OdessaTable of ContentsI The Hearing We Inherit 7 Grace & Pity 10 Death/Machine/Ruin 12 Grace Division 13 To those who count suicide as a spiritual warfare addendum 15 Royal 16 Man in a Hole 17 Death/Machine/Ruin 20 Elegy for Threats with Grace 21 Death/Machine/Ruin 24 Bayou City Season 25 Grace & Separation 28 A Consequence (Passing) 30 Ten Stories 34 We The Mirror Myth 37 To those who think I won’t set this country afire with me still in it 42 A Constant Conjunction 43 ( ) Giving Jim Grace 47 Prophet Royal Robertson 49 Giving Mary Grace 50 To those who know how to unthreat oneself 52 The Worst Houston 53 Grace Engine 55 Giving Laura Grace 57 Grace as Kin as Sin as Skin 59 A Confession 60 As I Grace Myself into a Rephrasing Freedom 62 Notes 63 Acknowledgments 65
£13.46
University of Wisconsin Press At Wrist
Book SynopsisPoets have been writing about love for centuries, so it is thrilling when a new voice comes along capable of breathing new life into old structures. In (At) Wrist, Tacey Atsitty melds inherited forms such as the sonnet with her Dine (Navajo) and religious experiences to boldly and beautifully seek a love that can last for eternity.Trade ReviewAs formally seductive as it is subversive, Tacey Atsitty’s (At) Wrist is a poetry of deep longing and praise, of loss and the courage of resilience. Anchored in an intimate vision of connectedness, her syntax works its way beyond thought’s limit, setting its hook in the terrain of memory and dream. This is a book I will return to for what no other poet I know delivers with such daring and vulnerability, a poetry wherein time, body, and the natural world are presented as a singularity otherwise known as love." - James KimbrellTable of Contents A February Snow Sonnet for My Wrist Bird Dance Round Our Wrists Out of Star Sang Over Chafe Apricot Lament Hole through the Rock Querido Apu Lace Sonnet Still Life Morrow River Silt The Night My Wrist Broke Last Night, Bleeding A Blood Letting On Innocence When It Was Time Scaling the Black It’s Hard to Write a Love Poem When Candy Dish Sonnet Into Rain Of Ribbon The Warbler Night Portrait with Cannon Fire Pollenback Portrait of a Gray Room ) ( Lacing Acknowledgments
£16.16
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin The Roof of the Whale Poems
Book SynopsisVenezuelan poet Juan Calzadilla (b. 1931) is considered one of the most influential poets of the Spanish language. But while his books have appeared in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spain, his work has not been widely available in English until now.Trade Review“Calzadilla addressed his poems to a specific audience during a momentous time; and yet his poems feel as though they were written last week precisely for us. Unvarnished, unimproved, shamanistic, his poems exude a raw, tumultuous energy that legendary translator Katherine Hedeen and her savvy co-translator Olivia Lott catch every drop of. But be careful, reader. Don’t start this book at night; you not only won’t sleep a wink, but you may find yourself far from home—as far as the Caracas of your imagination—rushing through ill-lit streets in a frenzy.”—Forrest GanderTable of Contents Foreword by VÍctor RodrÍguez NÚÑez Introduction by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott Dictado por la jaurÍa / Dictated by the Pack (1962) DICTADO POR LA JAURÍA / DICTATED BY THE PACK vivo a diario / i live day by day funcionario que celebra un ritual / a civil servant celebrates a ritual escorpiÓn / scorpion vecindad del buitre / vulture neighborhood esperando salvaciÓn / waiting for salvation gracias al barniz / thanks to the varnish mingitorio / urinal una sala de juego / a cardroom me reconozco / i see me los mÉtodos necesarios / the necessary methods he sido otro / i have been another golpeando el abismo / hitting the abyss CON MALOS MODALES / WITH BAD MANNERS con malos modales / with bad manners cuarzo / quartz el magma debe retornar / the magma must return en memoria del Ángel / in memory of the angel los horizontes son nuestros brazos / the horizons are our arms EL INVISIBLE SALE DE LA CASA / THE INVISIBLE MAN LEAVES THE HOUSE “una vez que se toma el sombrero. . .” / “once a hat’s been picked up. . .” DESCENDIENTE DE AHAB / DESCENDENT OF AHAB “para un pÚblico enfermo. . .” / “for a sick public. . .” fin del acto / end of the act el doble hace su entrada / the double enters the scene mi vocaciÓn de actor / my vocation as an actor la venganza / revenge poste / post escalÓn / step cadena sola / single chain cuento / story un hilo sobre el abismo / a thread above the abyss sÓlo comer es una empresa / only eating is a business me levanto / i get up jonÁs siempre / always jonah Malos modales / Bad Manners (1965) “Ciudadano libre a un palmo por encima. . .” / “Free citizen just an inch above. . .” CONTANDO HASTA CERO / COUNTING TO ZERO Contando hasta cero / Counting to Zero “Mis decisiones se encuentran demasiado cerca. . .” / “My decisions are too close. . .” “Despierto Sigo vivo por ese solo instante. . .” / “Awake I am still alive for that one moment. . .” “Todas mis preocupaciones son el hilo de donde cuelgo. . .” / “All my worries are the thread I hang from. . .” Las armas invisibles / The Invisible Arms Hago un alto / I Take a Break S u b s i s t o / I S u b s i s t Requisitoria de los trajes vacÍos / Interrogation of the Empty Suits RELEVO DE GUARDIA / CHANGING OF THE GUARD Relevo de guardia / Changing of the Guard Paisajes subterrÁneos / Subterranean Landscapes Bajo nuevo aviso / Under New Notice Ciudad sola / Lonely City Una coincidencia / A coincidence “Los espectÁculos banales. . .” / “Banal spectacles. . .” CACERÍA / HUNT “Me llevan como una bestia domÉstica. . .” / “Like a tamed beast. . .” El prisionero de su conciencia / The Prisoner of His Conscience Órbitas separadas / Separate Orbits “Si he avanzado hacia adelante. . .” / “If I have made any progress. . .” Debo decir / I Should Say De transformaciones / On Transformations “Demandas clemencia. . .” / “You demand clemency. . .” Las contradicciones sobrenaturales / The Supernatural Contradictions (1967) RELEVO DE GUARDIA / CHANGING OF THE GUARD Decisiones / Decisions Corona de reyes / Crown of Kings Ases / Aces LegÍtima defensa / Legitimate Defense Tomas el pavimiento por la forma exacta de tu piel / You Take Pavement as the Precise Shape of Your Skin Las apuestas / The Wagers Arco de silex / Arc of Silex SISTEMA DE CONDUCTA / BEHAVIOR SYSTEM Por partida doble / Double Entry Jaula para occisos / Cage for the Slain Bestia I Bestia II Bestia III / Beast I Beast II Beast III “Suelo tomar extraÑas determinaciones. . .” / “I tend to make strange determinations. . .” Otra direcciÓn / A Different Direction Órdenes / Orders Imagen humeante / Smoking Image CARNET DE ENUMERACIONES / ENUMERATIONS CARD MÁscara de papel / Paper Mask Cubrir la duda con un mantel de fiesta / To Cover Doubt with a Fancy Tablecloth Cuidado frÁgil / Warning Fragile “La mirada quiere claraboyas. . .” / “The glance wants skylights. . .” Fuerza bruta / Brute Force “Salud. . .” / “To your health. . .” “La contrariedad nacida. . .” / “The opposition born. . .” ABISMO PÚBLICO / PUBLIC ABYSS HÁbitos / Habit Dentro de la roca vacÍa / Inside the Empty Rock De los reos / On Prisoners Setencia / Sentence Mandamiento / Commandment C14 / C14 UN OJO DE CONTRAPESO / AN EYE AS COUNTERWEIGHT Piedra sobre piedra / Stone upon Stone “Sumiso” / “Submissive” “De una caja de asfÓdelos empujada contra la corriente. . .” / “From a box of asphodels pushed against the current. . .” “Pon atenciÓn Date cuenta ConcÉntrate. . .” / “Pay attention Realize Focus. . .” La quinta parte del espÍritu es el deseo de huir / The Fifth Part of the Spirit Is the Desire to Flee “Entre jaulas de occisos. . .” / “Among cages of the slain. . .” Appendix: An Interview with Juan Calzadilla by VÍctor RodrÍguez NÚÑez, translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott Acknowledgments
£14.36
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Afterlife
Book SynopsisGrief fractures and scars. In Afterlife Michael Dhyne picks up the shattered remains, examining each shard in the light, attempting to find meaning - or at least understanding - in the death of his father.Trade ReviewHeartbreaking and brilliant in its delicacy and its depths, and in the many ways it reaches from interior drama to range far out into the wider world. The spell cast by this book ties our adult ways of moving through our lives to the primitive child-need for magic and reassurance: the longing we all know for order amid the terrors of random events, and the search, in the welter of our days, for the place or person or state of mind in which self can feel held." - Debra NystromTable of Contents To My Father, the Light Kara Insomnia Afterlife Living Room In Love with a Girl Eating Strawberries God’s Eye Self-Portrait with Sky Left Over Memorial Arizona The Window New Mexico 4 a.m. Texas A Beginning Louisiana Without End Tennessee Last Words to My Husband Virginia Like a Gift Passed Between Us Nothing Blackout Self-Portrait on the Beloved’s Body On Silence 95 South Sonogram Portrait of My Father as a Young Man Tell Me a Story Father’s Day Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor), Cy Twombly, 1994 Heaven Is Empty and We’re All in It Notes Acknowledgments
£16.16
Yale University Press What Noise Against the Cane 115 Yale Series of
Book SynopsisThe 115th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets is a lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourselfTrade ReviewFinalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry, sponsored by The National Book FoundationLonglisted for the 2022 OCM Bocas PrizeFinalist for the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, sponsored by the Claremont Graduate SchoolNamed One of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public LibraryLonglisted for the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize, sponsored by Swansea University“Bailey invites us to see what twenty-first-century life is like for a young woman of the Black diaspora in the long wake of a history of slavery, brutality, and struggling for freedoms bodily and psychological.”—Carl Phillips, from the Foreword“Desiree C. Bailey sings true in her debut What Noise Against the Cane. Wherever this voice goes a Caribbean sun travels with it transfiguring what a maroon might overhear—a call awaiting response.”—Yusef Komunyakaa
£16.99
Pan Macmillan The Brink
Book SynopsisThough still in his mid-twenties Jacob Polley is already in possession of a remarkably mature talent. Formally graceful, but unself-conscious, his poems come at the reader from all angles, wholly alive to the unique possibilities of their subjects - the sea, the land, the home, the very brink of things. This debut collection gives us the first opportunity to see his transforming imagination in action, where a jar of honey becomes '... the sun, all flesh and no bones / but for the floating knuckle / of the honeycomb / attesting to the nature of the struggle'.
£9.49
Pan Macmillan Downriver
Book SynopsisWhile Downriver contains the English urban pastoral and hymns to the Northern deities for which Sean O’Brien is justly celebrated, the poet has always been more a singer than even his many admirers have sometimes conceded: here, that lyric note is sounded more openly than ever before. With Downriver, his fifth collection, O’Brien has produced his most various and mature work yet. This is a poetry of both delicacy and gravity, assuagement as well as agitation, rivers that start in hell but later fall as rain - and will only strengthen his reputation as one of the most gifted English poets at work today.
£8.54
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc Zero at the Bone
Book SynopsisChristian Wiman braids poetry, memoir, and criticism to create an inspired, career-defining work.
£21.24
WW Norton & Co 430 Movie
Book SynopsisIn highly charged, dazzling language, 4:30 Movie explores a sister's death and the ways movies shape our imaginations.
£12.34
Orion Publishing Co R S Thomas
Book SynopsisR. S. Thomas was a major figure in the landscape of contemporary poetry - attested by his Nobel Prize for Literature nomination. His poetry, coloured by personal experience of rural Wales, is stark but passionate.Trade ReviewOne of the best half-dozen poets now writing in English -- Kingsley Amis
£7.56
Orion Publishing Co Edward Thomas EVERYMAN POETRY
Book SynopsisEdward Thomas wrote most of his poems during active service in World War I - poems which search for the true self, and affirm the oneness of all experience.
£7.56
LUP - University of Michigan Press The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdallas
Book SynopsisThe extraordinary Swahili poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki, in English Voice of Agony, is a collection of prison poems composed by Abdilatif Abdalla between 1969 and 1972. Imaginative Vision is the first complete literary translation into English of one of the most esteemed and influential collections of Swahili poetry of the twentieth century.Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction by Annmarie Drury Preface to the Translationby Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Translator’s Introduction by Ken Walibora Waliaula Voice of Agony Sauti ya Dhiki Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula I Won’t Compromise N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Go and Console Him Kamliwaze Worry Not Tuza Moyo The Boil Jipu I’ll Never Let Go Siwati Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Human Perfection Ukamilifu wa Mja What Has Offended You? Lilokuudhi ni Lipi? Coconut Palm: A Tug-of-War Mnazi: Vuta N’kuvute This Speaking Out Kuno Kunena Slipperiness Telezi Speak Out, You Who Dare Semani Wenye Kusema Even a Clever Guy Can’t Shave His Own Head Muwerevu Hajinyowi It Will End Yatakoma Alas, My Friend! Ah! Mwenzangu Be Gone, Anxiety Wasiwasi Enda Zako What a Bad Fellow! Mja Si Mwema What Will Happen? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Our Mother Africa Mamaetu Afrika Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow Jana na Leo na Kesho A Precious Thing Can’t Last Chema Hakudumu Be Patient, My Heart Moyo Iwa Na Subira Don’t Kill Me! Usiniuwe! Things Have Their Own Ways Mambo Yana Mambo Yake Don’t Listen to Them Watiliye Pamba Pampering Tendekezo I Wouldn’t Be Here Today Leo N’singekuwako Cockadoodle-do! Kokoiko! Don’t Cling to Silence ’Sikakawane na Kimya Travelers, Let’s Wake Up Wasafiri Tuamkeni Come to Your Senses Zindukani Goodbye Kwa Heri The Town Cockerel and the Country One La Mjini na La Shamba Wash Him Muosheni I’m Coming Naja Crossroads Ndiya Panda A Thing Can’t Be Human Kichu Hakiwi Ni Uchu Tit for Tat Kutendana I’m Back N’sharudi Critical PerspectivesSauti ya Dhiki: Its Place in Swahili Literature and East African Literature by Ann Biersteker Abdilatif and I: Reflections on Comparative Experiencesby Alamin Mazrui Rhymed, Metrical Translations of Four Poemsby Meg Arenberg This is What I Hold Fast N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Which Will It Be? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Textual Backgrounds: Voice of Agony in Its Historical MomentKenya: Twendapi? Kenya: Where Are We Heading? by Abdilatif Abdalla, Translated by Kai Kresse Introduction to the 1973 edition by Shihabuddin Chiraghdin, Translated by Ann Biersteker Author’s Preface to the 1973 editionbyAbdilatif Abdalla,Translated by Ann Biersteker Bibliography Notes on Contributors
£31.30
The University of Michigan Press The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdallas
Book SynopsisThe extraordinary Swahili poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki, in English Voice of Agony, is a collection of prison poems composed by Abdilatif Abdalla between 1969 and 1972. Imaginative Vision is the first complete literary translation into English of one of the most esteemed and influential collections of Swahili poetry of the twentieth century.Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction by Annmarie Drury Preface to the Translationby Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Translator’s Introduction by Ken Walibora Waliaula Voice of Agony Sauti ya Dhiki Translated by Ken Walibora Waliaula I Won’t Compromise N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Go and Console Him Kamliwaze Worry Not Tuza Moyo The Boil Jipu I’ll Never Let Go Siwati Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Human Perfection Ukamilifu wa Mja What Has Offended You? Lilokuudhi ni Lipi? Coconut Palm: A Tug-of-War Mnazi: Vuta N’kuvute This Speaking Out Kuno Kunena Slipperiness Telezi Speak Out, You Who Dare Semani Wenye Kusema Even a Clever Guy Can’t Shave His Own Head Muwerevu Hajinyowi It Will End Yatakoma Alas, My Friend! Ah! Mwenzangu Be Gone, Anxiety Wasiwasi Enda Zako What a Bad Fellow! Mja Si Mwema What Will Happen? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Our Mother Africa Mamaetu Afrika Yesterday and Today and Tomorrow Jana na Leo na Kesho A Precious Thing Can’t Last Chema Hakudumu Be Patient, My Heart Moyo Iwa Na Subira Don’t Kill Me! Usiniuwe! Things Have Their Own Ways Mambo Yana Mambo Yake Don’t Listen to Them Watiliye Pamba Pampering Tendekezo I Wouldn’t Be Here Today Leo N’singekuwako Cockadoodle-do! Kokoiko! Don’t Cling to Silence ’Sikakawane na Kimya Travelers, Let’s Wake Up Wasafiri Tuamkeni Come to Your Senses Zindukani Goodbye Kwa Heri The Town Cockerel and the Country One La Mjini na La Shamba Wash Him Muosheni I’m Coming Naja Crossroads Ndiya Panda A Thing Can’t Be Human Kichu Hakiwi Ni Uchu Tit for Tat Kutendana I’m Back N’sharudi Critical PerspectivesSauti ya Dhiki: Its Place in Swahili Literature and East African Literature by Ann Biersteker Abdilatif and I: Reflections on Comparative Experiencesby Alamin Mazrui Rhymed, Metrical Translations of Four Poemsby Meg Arenberg This is What I Hold Fast N’shishiyelo ni Lilo Crocodile Mamba I Remember You Nakukumbuka Which Will It Be? Lipi Litakalokuwa? Textual Backgrounds: Voice of Agony in Its Historical MomentKenya: Twendapi? Kenya: Where Are We Heading? by Abdilatif Abdalla, Translated by Kai Kresse Introduction to the 1973 edition by Shihabuddin Chiraghdin, Translated by Ann Biersteker Author’s Preface to the 1973 editionbyAbdilatif Abdalla,Translated by Ann Biersteker Bibliography Notes on Contributors
£57.90
Cold Hub Press A Field Officers Notebook Selected Poems
Book Synopsis
£14.25
Random House USA Inc If They Come For Us Poems
Book Synopsis“A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice.”—Booklist“Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic ones.”—Elle“[Fatimah] Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible.”—The New YorkerNAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDan aunt teaches me how to tellan edible flowerfrom a poisonous one.just in case, I hear her say, just in case.From a co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls comes an imaginative, soulful debut poetry that collection captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a
£11.39
Random House USA Inc Yesterday I was the Moon
Book Synopsis
£11.69
Faber & Faber T S Eliot and Prejudice
Book SynopsisThis is a study of the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The author sets out to discover just how his poetry, charged with coldness, antisemitism, misogyny, elitism and prissiness invites or incites prejudice.
£9.89
Faber & Faber Gods Gift to Women Faber Poetry
Book SynopsisAfter the huge success of Nil Nil (a Poetry Book Society Choice and winner of the Forward Prize best first collection), Don Paterson''s second collection was impatiently awaited. His readers were not disappointed. In God''s Gift to Women, straight autobiography mixes with invention, exaggeration, technical dazzle and sheer cheek to produce a book quite unlike any other.Trade Review"'A terrific, intelligent, lyrical, delicate, lovely piece of work.' A. L. Kennedy 'It is the very height of his standards that set him apart. He remains one of the best young poets around.' John Redmond; 'Lyrical yet austere, straight-talking but at ease with eloquence... some of the most outstanding poems published this year.' Helen Dunmore"
£10.56
Faber & Faber Prufrock and Other Observations Poet to Poet An
Book SynopsisIncluded in Prufrock and Other Observations are the following poems:The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockPortrait of a LadyPreludesRhapsody on a Windy NightMorning at the WindowThe Boston Evening TranscriptAunt HelenCousin NancyMr. ApollinaxHysteriaConversation GalanteLa Figlia Che Piange
£8.99
Faber & Faber Sweeney Astray Faber Poetry
Book SynopsisSweeney Astray is Seamus Heaney''s version of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne - the first complete translation since 1913. Its hero, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira. The poetry spoken by the mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature.Sweeney Astray not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.
£10.44
Faber & Faber The Universal Home Doctor
Book SynopsisThe Universal Home Doctor is Simon Armitage's most personal collection of poems yet. The poems journey across the globe but are ultimately set against the most intimate of landscapes - the human body.
£8.54
Faber & Faber The Universal Home Doctor
Book SynopsisAs the title implies, Simon Armitage''s flesh-and-blood account of numerous personal journeys reads like a private encyclopaedia of emotion and health. Vivid and engaged, the poems range from the rainforests of South America to the deserts of Western Australia, but are set against the ultimate and most intimate of all landscapes, the human body. Equally, the body politic comes into question, through subtle enquiries into Englishness and the idea of home.
£6.64
Faber & Faber Landing Light
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2003Landing Light is Don Paterson''s most accomplished and spiritual collection to date. In these poems, he guides us down the labyrinths of our deepest and most private concerns, pursuing the intimacy that the spoken - as well as the printed - word brings. Ceaselessly inquiring, deftly tuned into the emotional crackle of the world, Paterson explores the swings of light and dark that mark our most troubling feelings: utterance and silence, disclosure and concealment, and ultimately the need to both renew and to face finality.''I couldn''t get Don Paterson''s brilliant Landing Light out of my head.'' Spectator''The most animated and animating volume of new poems I have read for years.'' Times Literary Supplement
£9.49
Faber & Faber Sylvia Plath
Book SynopsisThe response of one writer to the work of another can be doubly illuminating. In this series, a poet selects and introduces another poet whom they have particularly admired. Ted Hughes''s classic selection of Sylvia Plath''s poetry provides the perfect introduction to a major body of work in twentieth-century poetry. Hughes draws upon the collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and from Sylvia Plath''s Pulitzer Prize-winning Collected Poems.
£8.99
Faber & Faber Emergency Kit Poems for Strange Times
Book SynopsisEmergency Kit is an anthology with many differences. It is, to begin with, a book which gives prominence to poems rather than to the poets who wrote them. It is truly international, bringing together poems not just from these islands but from many parts of the English-speaking world. It is the first book to identify a strain in the poetry of the last half-century which is characteristic of the ''strange times'' we live in - an age when, as the editors note, scientific discovery itself has encouraged us to ''make free with the boundaries of realism''. It values imagination, surprise, vivid expression, the outlandish and the playful above ideology and sententiousness. It is, in short, living proof that poetry in the English language continues to thrive and to matter.
£11.69
Faber & Faber Selected Poems of Derek Walcott
Book SynopsisThis new Selected Poems offers an ordered retrospective of the fertile career of Derek Walcott, spanning six decades and drawing on twelve collections. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, Walcott has, in the words of Seamus Heaney, ''moved with gradually deepening confidence to found his own poetic domain, independent of the tradition he inherited yet not altogether orphaned from it.''
£15.29
Faber & Faber Ariel Faber Poetry
Book SynopsisThe poems in Sylvia Plath''s Ariel, including many of her best-known such as ''Lady Lazarus'', ''Daddy'', ''Edge'' and ''Paralytic'', were all written between the publication in 1960 of Plath''s first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963. ''If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded . . . They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity . . . the book is a major literary event.'' A. Alvarez in the Observer This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series with five other cherished poets, including Wendy Cope, Don Paterson, Philip Larkin, Simon Armitage and Alice Oswald.
£11.69
Faber & Faber Jubilee Lines
Book SynopsisTo mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II''s accession to the throne, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy brings together a dazzling array of contemporary poets (sixty in fact) to write about each of the sixty years of Her Majesty''s reign. An all star line up - which includes such celebrated writers as Simon Armitage, Gillian Clarke, Wendy Cope, Geoffrey Hill, Jackie Kay, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Don Paterson and Jo Shapcott, alongside some of the newest young talent around - address a moment or event from their chosen year, be it of personal or political significance or both. Through a series of specially commissioned poems, Jubilee Lines offers a unique portrayal of the country and times in which we have lived since 1953, culminating in an essential portrait of today: the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, the way we honour and remember. Brilliantly introduced by Carol Ann Duffy, Jubilee Lines is an unforgettable commem
£11.69
Faber & Faber The Customs House
Book SynopsisAndrew Motion''s new book opens with a sequence of war poems (first published as the pamphlet Laurels and Donkeys, on Armstice Day 2010), drawing on soldiers'' experiences of war from 1914 until today - beginning with a story about Siegfried Sassoon and moving via World War Two and Korea to the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the poems are in the voices of combatants, others are based on memories of the poet''s father, who landed at D-day and fought in France and Germany. The poems combine understatement with a clear-eyed and unswerving candour.The Customs House has other rooms: a group of topographies, mapping moments in a marriage against the contingencies of place and family history; and several ''found poems'', in which the poet collaborates with his source, mixing what is there already with what is about to be there: whether a remarkable sonnet sequence on the last days of the Baroque genius Francesco Borromini, or in other p
£9.49
Faber & Faber Nice Weather
Book SynopsisSomething is wrong.' - 'Night'Frederick Seidel - the 'ghoul' (Chicago Review), the 'triumphant outsider' (Contemporary Poetry Review) - returns with a dangerous new collection of poems. Nice Weather presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel - and thrilled and offended his readers.
£13.49
Faber & Faber The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Book SynopsisThe Journals of Sylvia Plath offers an intimate portrait of the author of the extraordinary poems for which Plath is so widely loved, but it is also characterized by a prose of vigorous immediacy which places it alongside The Bell Jar as a work of literature. These exact and complete transcriptions of the journals kept by Plath for the last twelve years of her life - covering her marriage to Ted Hughes and her struggle with depression - are a key source for the poems which make up her collections Ariel and The Colossus.''Everything that passes before her eyes travels down from brain to pen with shattering clarity - 1950s New England, pre-co-ed Cambridge, pre-mass tourism Benidorm, where she and Hughes honeymooned, the birth of her son Nicholas in Devon in 1962. These and other passages are so graphic that you look up from the page surprised to find yourself back in the here and now . . . The struggle of self with self makes the Journals compelling and unique.'' John Carey, Sunday Times
£18.00
Faber & Faber The Hotel Oneira
Book SynopsisKleinzahler''s poetry is, as ever, concerned with permeability: voices, places, the real and the dreamed, the present and the past, colliding and intersecting and spilling over into each other. Whether the voice embodied is that of ''an adult male of late middle age, // about to weep among the avocados and citrus fruits / in a vast, overlit room next to a bosomy Cuban grandma'' as in ''Whitney Houston'' or that of the title character in ''Hootie Bill Do Polonius'' who is bidding ''adios compadre // To a most galuptious scene Kid'', Kleinzahler locates and exhibits in his poetry the human heart at the core of lived experience. This is a poet searching for - and finding - a cadence capable of describing life as it is lived today. Kleinzahler''s poetry is, as noted in the judges'' citation for the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize (which he won for his collection The Strange Hours Travelers Keep), ''ferociously on the move, between locations, between forms, between regist
£11.69