Poetry / poems by individual poets

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Book Synopsis"Invisible is a teasing title for a collection of poetry. [Wallace] Stevens, with whose work Jacek Gutorow has a deep and sustained engagement, suggested in ‘The Creations of Sound’, that poems should ‘make the visible a little hard / To see’ […] Both Gutorow and Stevens develop a poetic medium that maintains an oscillating dialectic between the seen and the unseen. The invisible operates not as an occlusion of reality, but as an aura saturating what is described; images are gently prised from the contexts of time and place and invested with a mysterious in-between life..."- Mark Ford, from the Introduction to Invisible.

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Book SynopsisThrough storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

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Book SynopsisThis collection lifts the veil between this world and the next, asking us to consider how your dead are never quite your dead.

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Book Synopsisni de aquí, ni de allá: It starts neither here nor there, a liminal space between two states of being. A life captured within his lines, At Least This I Know guides the reader through Andrés N. Ordorica’s own story, of ancestry, nationhood, activism and queerness, through childhood photographs, across international highways, to tales of love and loss, and beyond. These poems are a means of working through the belonging in both the physical sense and emotional, be it the belonging of immigrant bodies in new countries, or that of the queer self within found families and safe spaces. Navigating his family origin and personal journey to belonging, from Mexico, the USA, to Scotland, it’s a story to be welcomed into, one that flows from the page and envelops you.Trade Review"Vivid, humane, caustic brittle and witty. A compelling take on story, state, sorrow and soul." - Jenni Fagan, LuckenboothTable of ContentsNovember 16th, 2014 Where I begin Photograph Mother in the community pool blessings For Papá At least this I know How I have grown The sun is the only constant Word association: Gay Breakdown on I-35 I am listening Things I want Bottled Blue then and now Birdsong What I have lost Things I think but never do By the seashore Si Dios Quiere These pyramids are houses for the dead Untitled [May 14th, 2010] Rosemary What I have given Amor El vaquero Faggot Four men Losing myself Newark Liberty International Airport The party 8 synonyms for vermillion fresas He that I love Mountaintop The unspeakable type Hove Neroli Kiss We are young and still have time It had been so long Where I will burn Bennachie Mother tongue Ceremony Ramesh’s magic carpet ride Endless Belonging Stout The sea is rising The one who outcounts Epilogue Mis raíces

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Book SynopsisCiara Maguire's poems explore the bright fields and dark corners of love. They are heartbreaking, sexy and addictive.

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Book SynopsisPeter Raynard’s Manland is a bold, brilliant and outspoken new collection of poems that scrutinise men and manhood, mental health, working class lives and disability. Aloud and alive with music, wit, anger and rebellion, this is an accomplished, politically-aware and vital book. Raynard is a skilled observer, and these razor-sharp poems document parenthood through the lens of a stay-at-home dad, attempt to tell the truth about men and depression, study our cultural, social and medical relationships with drugs and drug-taking, and lay bare the realities of life at the sharpest edges of society. By turns frank, painful and bleakly funny, this humane and brilliant book encompasses pride and prejudices, the bonds between lads and dads, the toxic pressures of masculinity and the way illness and poverty irrevocably shape lives.

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Book SynopsisRamona Herdman’s Glut is a lush, entertaining, and bittersweet collection of poems about how we live together and find meaning through rules and rituals around food, family, alcohol, work, nature, sex and love. These vividly-realised, nimble poems probe at the delicate balancing acts we – our bodies and our minds – perform in life: between power and trust, between convention and rebellion, and between what is enough and what is too much. All the time, Herdman’s spry poetry keeps a gimlet eye on our impulse to make sense of it all – of how we live and work together, and what strategies will help us to navigate our way through the tangled undergrowth of negotiation and misunderstanding. Glut is a lustrous, darkly funny, open-hearted book on the distance between people, on satisfying appetites, and on seeking both pleasure and consolation.

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Book SynopsisThe algorithm of my own life, faded and spidery, is written, not keyed in. From bombsites used as childhood playgrounds to lockdown FaceTime calls, Kate Foley looks back on almost nine decades of life – a life characterised by curiosity, resistance and a strong connection with the natural world. Appreciation and concern for the planet runs through this frank and moving collection, which muses on the notions of faith and belief, ultimately rejecting both Whitehall politics and traditional religion as inadequate to deal with environmental crisis. Simultaneously nostalgic and highly concerned with the future, Kate Foley’s candid reminiscence and simple use of language draw us softly into consideration of life’s big questions: What’s it all for? How will we be remembered? Will it build again, our earth?

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Book SynopsisOn the radio they said that Hans Christian Andersen wrote the Little Mermaid whilst he was avoiding the wedding of the person he loved. I thought 'that doesn't sound like a story that involves singing lobsters'. So I picked a book from my shelf, I sat down at the table, and I began to read. And as I read the stories, I remembered where I first heard them. You know how that is? You open one memory and a thousand more pour out.

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Book SynopsisPriestess of the Powder Puff Experiment has taken four years to create and compile; a distillation of deep self enquiry, bold uncensored rants, hilarious absurdism reflecting modern life’s insanity, and tender moments of beauty inspired by the natural world. Jackie also tackles subjects such as environmental destruction, mental health issues and social injustice. In turns passionate and confessional, sensitive and poignant, and peppered with her inimitable bold humour, this collection is something to be savoured again and again.

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Book SynopsisFrom the celebrated author of The Topeka School, a collection of poetry that is dazzlingly intelligent, moving and speaks directly to our complex times. The Lights is a constellation of verse and prose, voice memos and vignettes, songs and silences, that brings the personal and the collective into startling relation. These are poems at once alive to the forces that shape human society and to the rhythms of the natural world, to the power of new technologies and the wonder of our timeless planet. Sometimes the scale is intimate and quiet and sometimes the poems are sweeping, Orphic experiments in the "collectivization of feeling": "I want everybody out there to sing along, even the stones." Written over a span of fifteen years, The Lights records the pleasures, risks, and absurdities of making art and family and meaning against a backdrop of interlocking, accelerating crises. And, even while alert to the darkness, it is the light in the book that remains, in dusk, in images from space, in old poems, in power cuts, in the flickering connections between people. From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, the poems in this collection come to us as beacons, illuminating new possibilities of thought and feeling.Trade ReviewBen Lerner's poems are remarkable for their graceful, trenchant exploration of aesthetics, politics, voice, address, music, and structure -- Maggie NelsonAt long last we have the deep pleasure of reading a new book of poems by Ben Lerner. The Lights continues his boundless innovative vocal range: the lyrical, the fictive, the confessional, and the apostrophe, are seamlessly braided in this exhilarating collection. The Lights is Lerner's most personal and important book to date -- Peter GizziI look forward to Ben Lerner's poetry the way I used to anticipate a new record by my favourite band. He can be painfully funny and urgently serious in the same poem, self-excoriating and intellectually generous -- Luke KennardBen Lerner's poems are brilliant. Again and again they decode and recode the daily mysteries. The questing intelligence and ironist's wink are underpinned by a real moral force -- Nick LairdSteeped in a tradition stretching back to the origins of the poetic tradition in English, Lerner's speakers wander a perpetually twilit cityscape, contemplating the poets' complicity in the prosodies of political entropy, American empire, death-drive capitalism - these poems are haunting, gloaming, blue. -- Stephanie Sy-QuiaI was deeply moved by The Lights. Reading the poems felt like an encounter with an archive of a beloved, where fragments can affect a startling power, and within the more seemingly ordinary texts - 'glimmers of empathy', 'exuberance and flatness', a new 'experience of language' - I found exactly what I needed. -- Amy Key

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Book Synopsis'Talisman for the Soul' is an immersive and illuminating collection that expresses a powerful intensity of emotion, exploring overarching themes of human interaction, as well as the human need to transform and adapt as individuals. Written by a poet of rare descriptive power, the poems speak to a world of increasing disconnection, one that is careering towards climate breakdown and ecological destruction. The poems seek to reconnect with the mystery and sacredness of human life by exploring the foundations of human identity through themes that touch us all: love and loss, humour, beauty, joy, relationships, and the natural world.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements vii Introduction ix Quotation by Ben Okri xiv THE INNER POET 1 Aspirations of a Young Poet 2 How to Read a Poem 4 Finding the Way to Go 6 Keeping Afloat 9 Taking Flight 11 Surrender to the Muse 13 Thanks 15 Unlocking Poems 17 Writing 19 ENCOUNTERS WITH MOTHER NATURE 21 Doing Nothing 22 Pigeon 24 Loss 26 Source of Joy 28 Snapshots of Summer 30 Crenelated Tower 32 House Martins 34 Rooks 36 Viper 37 Swans 39 Bedtime Stories 40 Dawn in the Paddock 42 FAMILY AND OTHER RELATIONSHIPS 43 Touch 44 The Letter 46 Someone I may have known 50 Beyond Appearance 52 Waking up on Earth 54 Time to Go 57 The people I don’t know 58 Released 60 School Photo Shot 61 Lost Causes 62 Our Ukraine A message from Kyiv 64 Why are we here? 66 Words Within Worlds 68 Old Flame 70 God Speaks 71 Taking Stock 73 THE FURTHER REACHES 75 Touching the Void 76 What we do to God 77 Passing on 78 Being Human 79 Brahman 80 Going Back Home 82 Having Been Born 83 Holding Fast 85 Letting Go 87 Morning 90 Rapping Home (after Kate Tempest) 91 Return to the lost Planet 94 Say What You Mean 1 96 Say What You Mean 2 97 Soul Searching 99 Dialling Down 101 The Word 102 Transformation 104 View from the Window 105 What I Am 107 What I Have Come to Know 108 Freewheeling 111 HAVING FUN 113 Terminal 9 114 Mr. Verity 116 Election Fever 118 Imagine 120 Ode to the Door Key 122 Smart 123 HAIKU 125

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Book Synopsis'This is a courageous, arresting debut from a poet to watch.' Independent'A vital contribution to literature' HUCKChosen as one of Bustle's Best Debut Books of 2021Chosen as one of Glamour's 'best poetry books' _________________________________________________________An arresting debut collection about identity, ancestry and history, from a young poet selected as an inaugural winner of the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize, dedicated to discovering the best writers of a new generation.Written with profound depth and insight, the poems in Teeth in the Back of My Neck explore the joys, the confusions and the moments of sadness behind having one's history scattered around the globe ­- and the way in which your identity is always worn on your skin, whether you like it or not.Bristling with tension and beautifully realised, Monika Radojevic's impressive debut collection is an introduction to one of the most exciting and impressive poets of her generation.Trade ReviewThis is a courageous, arresting debut from a poet to watch. * Independent *This book is stunning * Catherine Mayer *Monika Radojevic's poems grapple with the intersections of race and womanhood with a bite fitting of this debut's title; her ability to weave gut-punching honesty with arresting imagery makes for a standout collection[...] Radojevic is no doubt a poet with a bright futureand Teeth in the Back of My Neck is a testament to the powerful things she has to say. An assertive and enthralling collection of poetry. * **** The Skinny *Radojevic writes with an uncompromising fierceness, provocation and dedication to the physical body which acts as her most authentic, intuitive medium of expression. She offers with this collection a vital contribution to literature at a time when women's voices urgently need to be heard. * HUCK *Radojevic's interrogation of the status quo ... is not just interesting, it is agitating. * Bad Form *

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Book SynopsisCourtney Peppernell presents a tribute to her readers in the third installment of her bestselling Pillow Thoughts series.

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Book SynopsisThe landmark, original publication of Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL & Other Poems HOWL & Other Poems, the prophetic book that launched the Beat Generation, was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books in 1956. Considered the single most influential work of post-WWII United States poetry, the City Lights edition of HOWL has remained in print for more than 60 years, with well over 1,000,000 copies in print.  A strident critique of middle-class complacency, consumerism, and capitalist militarism, HOWL also celebrates the pleasures and freedoms of the physical world, including a tribute to homosexual love. In addition to “Howl,” poems in the book include: “A Supermarket in California,” “Sunflower Sutra,” “America,” “In the Baggage Room at Greyhound,” “Transcription of Organ Music,” and “Wild Orphan,” among others. A History of HOWL: City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti first heard Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” at the Six Gallery event in San Francisco, 1955, which featured writers Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Michael McClure, introduced by poet Kenneth Rexroth. Jack Kerouac was present, but did not read, encouraging and cheering the other poets on. Ferlinghetti was so impressed by Ginsberg’s performance, he immediately telegrammed him, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s response to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?”  When the first edition of HOWL arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs, and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, together with the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao. The two were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case was sent to trial. Ferlinghetti partnered with the ACLU to launch a defense of HOWL, and a parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses appeared in court to persuade the judge of its merits. In the end, famously conservative Judge Clayton Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene, but rather, as he stated emphatically, HOWL was a work of “redeeming social significance.”  The landmark decision signaled a sea change in American culture, and the City Lights edition of HOWL became a vital cornerstone in the ongoing struggle for free expression and representation. It continues to attract generation after generation of readers.Table of Contents"Howl" for Carl Solomon - introduction by William Carlos Williams; "Howl"; footnote to "Howl"; a supermarket in California; transcription of organ music; sunflower sutra; America; in the baggage room at greyhound; an asphodel; song; wild orphan; in back of the real.

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Book SynopsisFrench-English bilingual edition. André Breton called Césaire's Cahier 'nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time'. It is a seminal text in Surrealist, French and Black literatures - published in full in English for the first time in Bloodaxe's bilingual Contemporary French Poets series. Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was born in in Basse-Pointe, a village on the north coast of Martinique, a former French colony in the Caribbean (now an overseas departement of France). His book Discourse on Colonialism (1950) is a classic of French political literature. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) is the foundation stone of francophone Black literature: it is here that the word Negritude appeared for the first time. Negritude has come to mean the cultural, philosophical and political movement co-founded in Paris in the 1930s by three Black students from French colonies: the poets Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana; Leopold Senghor, later President of Senegal; and Aimé Césaire, who became a deputy in the French National Assembly for the Revolutionary Party of Martinique and was repeatedly elected Mayor of Fort-de-France. As a poet, Cesaire believed in the revolutionary power of language, and in the Notebook he combined high literary French with Martinican colloquialisms, and archaic turns of phrase with dazzling new coinages. The result is a challenging and deeply moving poem on the theme of the future of the negro race which presents and enacts the poignant search for a Martinican identity. The Notebook opposes the ideology of colonialism by inventing a language that refuses assimilation to a dominant cultural norm, a language that teaches resistance and liberation.

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Book SynopsisThe Argonautica is the dramatic story of Jason''s quest for the Golden Fleece and his relations with the dangerous Colchian princess, Medea. The only extant Greek epic poem to bridge the gap between Homer and late antiquity, it is a major product of the brilliant world of the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, written by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC. Apollonius explores many of the fundamental aspects of life in a highly original way: love, deceit, heroism, human ignorance of the diven, the limits of science. This volume offers the first scholarly translation into English prose for many years, combining readability with accuracy and an attention to detail that will appeal to readers both with and without Greek. `Based on a deep understanding of the text, this translation, with informative notes and an excellent introduction, will bring Apollonius to the audience he deserves....'' (TLS) ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widestTrade ReviewBased on a deep understanding of the text, this translation, with informative notes and an excellent introduction, will bring Apollonius to the audience he deserves. * TLS *

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Book Synopsis “This may be the most anticipated poetry book of the last decade...expect it to haunt you.”—NPR.org In reviewing Richard Siken''s first book, Crush, the New York Times wrote that "his territory is [where] passion and eloquence collide and fuse." In this long-awaited follow-up to Crush, Siken turns toward the problems of making and representation, in an unrelenting interrogation of our world of doublings. In this restless, swerving book simple questions—such as, Why paint a bird?—are immediately complicated by concerns of morality, human capacity, and the ways we look to art for meaning and purpose while participating in its—and our own—invention. * "Slippery, magnetic riffs on the arbitrary divisions made by the human mind in light of the mathematical abstractions that delete them; poetry lovers will want to read."—Library Journal, starred review "[P]oems of passion, examining what it means to love, to be, and to create."—Vanity Fair "Siken’s stark, startling collection focuses tightly on both the futility and the importance of creating art."—Booklist “Poems primarily about painting and representation give way to images that become central characters in a sequence of fable-like pieces. Animals, landscapes, objects, and an array of characters serve as sites for big, human questions to play out in distilled form. Siken’s sense of line has become more uniform, this steadiness punctuated by moments of cinematic urgency.”—Publishers Weekly "War of the Foxes builds upon the lush and frantic magic of Richard Siken’s first book, Crush. In this second book, Siken takes breathtaking control of the rich, varied material he has chosen...Siken paints and erases—the metaphor of painting with words allows him to leave those traces that mostly go unseen. He is the Trickster. If paint/then no paint. He does this with astonishing candor and passion."—The Rumpus The Museum Two lovers went to the museum and wandered the rooms.He saw a painting and stood in front of itfor too long. It was a few minutes before sherealized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck lookingat a painting. She stood next to him, looking at hisface and then the face in the painting. What do yousee? she asked. I don''t know, he said. He didn''tknow. She was disappointed, then bored. He waslooking at a face and she was looking at her watch.This is where everything changed . . . Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His first book, Crush, won the Yale Younger Poets'' prize. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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Book SynopsisIn Sparks of Phoenix—Najwa Zebian’s third book of poetry—she takes her readers on a powerful journey of healing.   As the phoenix emerges from its ashes, Zebian emerges ablaze in these pages, not only as a survivor of abuse, but as a teacher and healer for all those who have struggled to understand, reclaim, and rise above a history of pain. The book is divided into six chapters, and six stages of healing: Falling, Burning to Ashes, Sparks of Phoenix, Rising, Soaring, and finally, A New Chapter, which demonstrates a healthy response to new love as the result of authentic healing. With her characteristic vulnerability, courage, and softness, Zebian seeks to empower those who have been made to feel ashamed, silenced, or afraid; she urges them, through gentle advice and personal revelation, to raise their voices, rise up, and soar.  

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Book SynopsisOn 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring tale of war, which was recorded in the oldest extant epic poem in French. The Song of Roland, written by an unknown poet, tells of Charlemagne’s warrior nephew, Lord of the Breton Marches, who valiantly leads his men into battle against the Saracens, but dies in the massacre, defiant to the end. In majestic verses, the battle becomes a symbolic struggle between Christianity and paganism, while Roland’s last stand is the ultimate expression of honour and feudal values of twelfth-century France.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplinTable of ContentsThe Song of Roland IntroductionA Note on the TranslationThe Song of RolandNotesGlossary of Unusual TermsBibliographyAppendix: La Chanson de RolandIndex of Proper Names

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Book SynopsisThe poetry living within these pages tells stories of love, heartbreak, freedom, oppression, sexual assault, sexism, hope, and humanity.  Our darkest times are where we grow the most, so in this book, i share mine, and together we learn how to heal.Soft Thorns is a poetry collection that takes the reader on a journey through a young woman’s life—from reckoning with her looks and sexuality to dealing with the trauma of sexual assault, and finally through the highs and lows of young love found and lost. Bridgett Devoue shares her raw, human story and the lessons learned from living a life fully.

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Book SynopsisAn anguished god surveys a world stricken by fundamentalism in these powerful poems by a writer whose cultural experience spans three countries: Pakistan, the country of her birth, and Britain and India, her countries of adoption. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books. The terrorist at my table asks crucial questions about how we live now – working, travelling, eating, listening to the news, preparing for attack. What do any of us know about the person who shares this street, this house, this table, this body? When life is in the hands of a fellow-traveller, a neighbour, a lover, son or daughter, how does the world shift and reform itself around our doubt, our belief? Imtiaz Dharker’s poems and pictures hurtle through a world that changes even as we pass. This is life seen through distorting screens – a windscreen, a TV screen, newsprint, mirror, water, breath, heat haze, smokescreen. Her book grows, layer by layer, through three sequences: The terrorist at my table, The habit of departure and Worldwide Rickshaw Ride. Each cuts a different slice through the terrain of what we think of as normal. But through all the uncertainties and concealments, her poems unveil the delicate skin of love, trust and sudden recognition. Imtiaz Dharker is an accomplished artist. Like all her collections, The terrorist at my table is illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of the book.Trade Review‘Hers is a strong, concerned, economical poetry, in which political activity, homesickness, urban violence, religious anomalies, are raised in an unobtrusive domestic setting, all the more effectively for their coolness of treatment’ – Alan Ross, London Magazine ‘Here is no glib internationalism or modish multiculturalism …Displacement here no longer spells exile; it means an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices. There is an exultant celebration of a self that strips off layers of superfluous identity with grace and abandon, only to discover that it has not diminished, but grown larger, generous, more inclusive’ – Arundhathi Subramaniam, Poetry International 'Were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate' – Carol Ann Duffy.

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Book SynopsisThis authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Sidney's poetry and prose, including The Defence of Poesy, substantial parts of both versions of the Arcadia, and the whole of the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella.

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Book Synopsis“make them rue the day they underestimated you.”amanda lovelace, the bestselling & award-winning author of the “women are some kind of magic” poetry series, presents shine your icy crown, the second installment in her new feminist poetry series, “you are your own fairy tale.” this is a story about not letting society dictate the limits of your potential. it’s time to take back your power & realize that you don’t need a king in order to be a queen.

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Book Synopsis''I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.''Louis MacNeice''s prescription is designed to look ordinary, rather than esoteric, but very little poetry can claim to meet these specifications, stringent in their very wideness. MacNeice''s work matches the world he famously described as ''incorrigibly plural.''Michael Longley, himself a distinguished Ulster poet, has written an introductory essay of meticulous advocacy. His wife, the critic Edna Longley, has supplied the apparatus for students and the general reader.

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Book SynopsisLarkin''s final collection of poems shows, as does all his best work, his ability to adapt contemporary speech rhythms and everyday vocabulary to subtle metrical patterns and poetic forms. Many of the poems in the collection, which includes some of his best-known pieces (''The Old Fools'', ''This Be the Verse'', ''The Explosion'', and the title poem) show the preoccupation with death and transience that is so typical of the poet.This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber''s publishing over the decades.

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Book SynopsisSince his debut, Nil Nil, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993, Don Paterson has lit up the poetry scene in the U.K. His dazzling, intensely lyric and luminous verse has delighted readers ever since, and won many awards along the way. God''s Gift Women took the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997, Landing Light won it again in 2003 and the Whitbread Award besides, and Rain (2009), his most recent collection, won the Queen''s Gold Medal for Poetry. This selection, drawn from twenty years of work, is made by the author himself and includes not only those poems from his four single volumes, but his thrilling and original adaptations of the poems of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke. For any readers unfamiliar with Don Paterson''s work, this Selected Poems offers the perfect introduction to this most captivating of writers; and for fans, an essential gathering from a master craftsman.

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Book SynopsisRaymond Carver, who became a master-storyteller of his generation and was hailed in Europe as 'the American Chekhov', wrote of himself: "I began as a poet. My first publication was a poem. So I suppose on my tombstone I'd be very pleased if they put 'Poet and short-story writer - and occasional essayist', in that order." This complete edition allows readers to experience the range and overwhelming power of Carver's poetry for the first time. It brings together in the order of their American publication the poems of Fires (1985), Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1986), Ultramarine (1988), A New Path to the Waterfall (1989) and No Heroics, Please (1991). For readers who know Carver's middle period only through his selected poems, In a Marine Light (1988), it includes the windfall of 51 poems not previously published in Britain. All of Us is edited by Professor William L. Stull of the University of Hartford, and introduced with an essay on Raymond Carver's methods of composition by his widow, the poet Tess Gallagher.Trade ReviewBetter known for his short stories, Raymond Carver was also an accomplished poet, as this superbly presented collection attests -- Anthony Quinn * Harpers & Queen *The cumulative effect is exhilarating: happiness, yes, but about as far as you can get from the bland, cosmic gruntlement currently being peddled by so many American poets * Times Literary Supplement *A year after the American writer's abrupt death, Salman Rushdie concluded a review of A New Path to the Waterfall, a final verse collection, by urging: 'Read everything Raymond Carver ever wrote.' It's very good advice * Irish Times *What is never lost - or lost sight of- is the primacy of experience and the most direct way of finding its expression... The urgency of the artist not to trivialise, but to find the essence; plain language in which to lay bare the terror and beauty of plain lives -- John Harvey

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Book SynopsisDonne created new forms of lyric, satire, elegiac and religious verse, and his independence of view, compact manner of expression encompassing conflicting moods, impassioned paradox, outbreaks of cynicism and wry humour make his work particularly appealing to the twentieth-century mind. His poetry reflects every stage of his development from the piratical Jack Donne who sailed with Ralegh against the Spaniards and spent riotous nights in the London streets, to the penitent John Donne who became Dean of St Paul's and the most celebrated preacher of his age. C. A. Patrides' edition of Donne's English poems is undoubtedly the most complete and scholarly available.

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Book SynopsisTrade Reviewwelcome the new additions to the finest and widest-ranging library of great writing (at accessible prices too), OUP's World's Classics series ... Goethe's Erotic Poems ... this is the first readily available version of the uncensored Elegies * Oxford Times *

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Book Synopsis''An astounding debut . . . a book that seduces the brain . . . Millner's couplets enact high-wire acts of wit and poignancy.'' New York Times''I've never read a better encapsulation of what it means to question a previously fixed idea of identity and selfhood.' Vogue''Millner's ultimate achievement is to draw open the distance . . .between the self that one takes as given and the self, no less true, that one cannot help but make.'' New YorkerMillner is brilliant at showing how early moments of lust can be existentially unmooring. . . Couplets is deft, delicate and unexpectedly fun.' GuardianMaggie Millner's Couplets absolutely blew me away. Breathing new life into that most familiar of poetic forms, she recounts the difficulties inherent in making ourselves vulnerable to another person with precision and guile.' James Conor Patterson, Poetry Society, Books of the YearMaggie Millne

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Book SynopsisSam Riviere''s debut, 81 Austerities, began as a blog responding to the spending cuts, and went on in publication to win the 2012 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A sequel of sorts, the 72 poems in Kim Kardashian''s Marriage mark out equally sharpened lines of public and private engagement. Kim Kardashian''s 2011 marriage lasted for 72 days, and was seen by some as illustrative of the performative spectacle of celebrity life. Whatever the truth of this (and Kardashian''s own statements refute it), Riviere has used the furore as a point of ignition, deploying terms from Kardashian''s make-up regimen to explore surfaces and self-consciousness, presentation and obfuscation. His approach eschews a dependence upon confessional modes of writing to explore what kind of meaning lies in impersonal methods of creation. For, as with 81 Austerities, the process of enquiry involves the composition method itself, this time in poems that have been produced by harvesting

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Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature.Emily Dickinson (1830-86) was born in Amherst, Massachussetts, where she lived most of her life as a recluse, seldom leaving the house or receiving visitors. She published just a handful of poems in her lifetime, her first collection appearing posthumously in 1890.

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Book Synopsis"A deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."—Liz Rosenberg Boston GlobeTrade Review"The love in this book is tangible and redemptive." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune"Her verse is almost unornamented though she manages some great gift of will and expression to convey the sharpest feeling in long, graceful lines that seem to breathe on the page.... Despite the fathomless pain inherent in these poems, Howe never succumbs to sentimentality or self-pity; her tone is passionate yet detached, her vocabulary and imagery evocative, appropriate, and devastating." -- Memphis Commercial Appeal"Howe is a truth-teller of the first order. Fearless in presenting unfiltered experiences, she interweaves her simple, economical language into long, subordinated sentences, loose, enjambed couplets that spill compellingly down the page with near-invisible artistry." -- Providence Sunday Journal"Marie Howe's poetry is luminous, intense, eloquent, rooted in abundant inner life." -- Stanley Kunitz"Marie Howe has reinvented the elegy as a poem for the living, a poem of instruction, how we're educated by grief. Scrupulously attentive, rigorously self-questioning, What the Living Do is an achievement of remarkable power." -- Mark Doty"The tentative transformation of agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption is Howe's signal achievement in this wrenching second collection, which uncovers new potential for the personal poem." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review`The best current translator of Latin poetry, Guy Lee, has now turned his attention to "The Poems of Catullus" ... this is yet another distinguished version from Lee's pen which deserves to become the standard version both for those with Latin and those studying Catullus in translation, and its author deserves hearty congratulations.' Greece and Rome'the work of a consummate Latinist ... with a desire to communicate something of the elegance and verbal flair of his original, a matter close to L.'s heart as the crisp introduction makes plain ... a very persuasive book' Roland Mayer, King's College, London, The Classical Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 2, 1993Table of ContentsIntroduction: The text; The collection: Catullus the Epigrammist; Catullus' life and poetry; the translation; A chronology; Latin text and English verse translation; Explanatory notes; Appendices: A. Difference from Mynors' Oxford text; B. The metres of Catullus; Select bibliography

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisIn Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise at the mountain's summit, where he meets his dead love, Beatrice, and prepares to ascend to Heaven. Depicting a realm of intense sensation and physical experience, Dante's poem transformed the traditional Christian idea of Purgatory by showing how the free will of the aspiring soul could change wordly perversions into perfection. It is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human possibility, hope and redemption.Trade Review“A masterly translation.” ―Judith Thurman, The New Yorker“Kirkpatrick brings a more nuanced sense of the Italian and a more mediated appreciation of the poem's construction than nearly all of his competitors.” —The Times (London)“We gain much from Kirkpatrick’s fidelity to syntax and nuance. . . . His introduction . . . tells you, very readable indeed, pretty much all you need for a heightened appreciation of the work.”—The Guardian“Likely to be the best modern version of Dante . . . The perfect balance of tightness and colloquialism.” —Bernard O’Donoghue“This version is the first to bring together poetry and scholarship in the very body of the translation—a deeply informed version of Dante that is also a pleasure to read.” —David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania

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