Poetry / poems by individual poets

Book SynopsisSiegfried Sassoon is one of the First World War poets whose poetry has defined a generation. He published most of his war poetry in The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918). Chronologically ordered, the poems in this collection act as a timeline for the war, bringing to life the extraordinary experiences of soldiers in that conflict.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSince the publication of Walter de la Mare''s first edition of his poems in 1920, Edward Thomas has gradually come to be recognised as one of the great English poets of the 20th century.Though sometimes classified with Owen, Rosenberg and Sassoon as a ''war poet'', he was rather a poet who died tragically in the war, and whose main subjects were the English countryside and its people, and the solitude of the observing self. The present edition offers the complete poems together with detailed editorial apparatus in what has become acknowledged as the standard edition by R. George Thomas. It also includes Thomas''s remarkable prose War Diary of 1917.Trade Review'One of the most distinctive voices of the twentieth century.' P.J. Kavanagh

Read more less

Book SynopsisJane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer whose poems ask nothing less than what it is to be human. Both sensual meditations and passionate investigations of our shared and borrowed lives, they reveal complex truths in language luminous and precise. The Asking supersedes her earlier retrospective Each Happiness Ringed by Lions (2005).

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe debut English-language collection from a Ukrainian poet reflecting on her experiences of the invasion of her homeland.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith its rich selection from each of Sarah Holland-Batt's books of poetry up to her Stella prize-winning collection The Jaguar (2022), this volume will introduce one of Australia's best-known and widely read poets to many readers for the first time.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those??First published in 1896, A.E. Housman?s best-loved collection of poetry is a poignant exploration of love, loss, the inevitable passage of time and the fragility of life. Using elegant melodic simplicity, Housman?s poems arouse profound emotional resonance through their portrayal of an idyllic rural England, evoking a sense of nostalgia and longing for times gone by.A Shropshire Lad became popular with young British soldiers during the First World War and is now widely considered a classic work of English poetry. With lyrical beauty and universal themes, these 63 poems have inspired generations of readers across the world.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAUTHOR OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER, JAMES AUTHOR OF ERASURE, now adapted for the screen as the OSCAR-WINNING FILM, AMERICAN FICTION Percival Everett is diving back into poetry with his spellbinding new collection, SONNETS FOR A MISSING KEY “Few writers pay more rapt attention to the fact that history is, fundamentally, storytelling. … A pebble in every shoe. It’s the Everett way.”—New York Times Inspired by the Preludes of Chopin and the piano solos of Art Tatum, these sonnets leap and turn through philosophical musings accrued across a life well lived, with inventive language, crystalline imagery, and turns of phrase that lift off the page and glimmer. Everett’s sonnets soar through the musical scale, from A Minor to A Major, exploring relationships, spirituality, compassion, despair, and how the stories we tell ourselves shape our realities. Everett continuously defies convention with every creative expression and brings his literary audacity back to his poetic roots with this, his sixth collection with Red Hen Press. Sonnets for a Missing Key is a mesmerizing feat of language that reinforces Percival Everett as one of the great wordsmiths of the century.

Read more less

Book Synopsis''I spring from the pages into your arms''Walt Whitman''s Leaves of Grass stands as one of the most influential and innovative literary works of the last two hundred years. Widely credited as the originator of free verse in English, Whitman put forward a radical new language of the body, the nation, and same-sex love. After the book''s initial publication in June 1855, Whitman revised and expanded the project a further seven times, with subsequent editions appearing at regular intervals until his death in 1892. His revisions to particular poems were often substantial, and the addition of new poems to each edition so extensive, that the books dimensions altered dramatically.This edition introduces Whitmans ongoing labour of revision and renewal his successive responses to the shattering years that encompassed the American Civil War and its aftermath. Beginning with the first edition of 1855, it moves chronologically, selecting and including the most substantial poems and clusters as Whitman first included them. In most cases, this means reprinting the often more politically and sexually daring beginning, rather than the revised end, of a particular poem''s journey. The present edition thereby provides a portrait of a poet who attempted to reshape his project in tandem with some of the most tumultuous decades in American history, and who in the process altered forever the parameters and possibilities of poetry itself.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMy all-time favorite collection of poems . . . [Gibran's] poetry always roots me in my humanity. --Rupi Kaur, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Home BodyA stunning new hardcover edition--with a full linen case, copper stamping, turquoise gilded edges, and colored endpapers--of one of the world's most beloved and popular spiritual classics, featuring a new foreword by Rupi KaurA Penguin Classics HardcoverThe most famous work of spiritual fiction of the twentieth century, The Prophet is rooted in Kahlil Gibran's own experience as an immigrant and provides inspiration to anyone feeling adrift in a world in flux. As a prophet named Almustafa is about to board a ship to travel back to his homeland after twelve years in exile, he is stopped by a group of people who ask him to share his wisdom before he leaves. In twenty-eight poetic essays, he does so, offering profound and timeless Trade Review“This book cracked my heart wide open. And I think it’s going to do the same to yours. . . . I’ve read The Prophet more times than I can count. I’ve owned and given away dozens of copies. I have one packed permanently in my travel bag. . . . The Prophet, and the man behind it, freed the poet in me. . . . Almost a hundred years later, it still feels as fresh and as relevant as ever. Why have I read it dozens of times? Because it doesn’t feel like reading. It feels like listening to my favorite song. . . . [Kahlil Gibran] is the conductor, the words are his orchestra, and he makes them dance off the page and land softly in your belly. . . . This book is not just for poetry lovers. It is for anyone wondering what this thing we call life is about. [It is] an anchor, a lifeline, and a friend.” —Rupi Kaur, from the Foreword “Cadenced and vibrant with feeling, the words of Kahlil Gibran bring to one’s ears the majestic rhythm of Ecclesiastes. . . . If there is a man or woman who can read this book without a quiet acceptance of a great man’s philosophy and a singing in the heart as of music born within, that man or woman is indeed dead to life and truth.” —Chicago Post “Exquisite . . . simply a masterpiece.” —The Independent (London) “Like most wisdom, most of what [Kahlil Gibran] has to tell is ancient, the possession of all men who have thought much and hard about fundamental things. . . . But on it all there is also the imprint of a rich and unusual personality. . . . Gibran offers no short-cuts to happiness, no easily mastered formulae for successful living. Essentially, he bids you look closely into your own heart and mind.” —The New York Times

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the Hollow of the Wave, the second collection by Nina Mingya Powles examines orientalism, art and artmaking in a time of ecological crisis. Engaging with the work of artists such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Yayoi Kusama, Etel Adnan and the fashion designer Guo Pei, these poems rework the notion of ekphrasis into something elemental and tactile, shaped by memory and landscapes of the body.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2020.Poetry Book Society Choice, Summer 2020.Bhanu Kapil’s extraordinary and original work has been published in the US over the last two decades. During that time Kapil has established herself as one of our most important and ethical writers. Her books often defy categorisation as she fearlessly engages with colonialism and its ongoing and devastating aftermath, creating what she calls in Ban en Banlieue (2015) a ‘Literature that is not made from literature’. Always at the centre of her books and performances are the experiences of the body, and, whether she is exploring racism, violence, the experiences of diaspora communities in India, England or America, what emerges is a heart-stopping, life-affirming way of telling the near impossible-to-be-told. How To Wash A Heart, Kapil's first full-length collection published in the UK, depicts the complex relations that emerge between an immigrant guest and a citizen host. Drawn from a first performance at the ICA in London in 2019, and using poetry as a mode of interrogation that is both rigorous, compassionate, surreal, comic, painful and tender, by turn, Kapil begins to ask difficult and urgent questions about the limits of inclusion, hospitality and care.Trade ReviewReviews'Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart catches the thinning smile of that ancient human ritual: hospitality. In a time of increasing hostility against migrants, Kapil demonstrates how survival tunes the guest to its host with devastating intimacy: ‘It’s exhausting to be a guest / In somebody else’s house / Forever.’ In these lines an ancestral trauma pours from the heart of the unwelcome across a warzone, a threshold, into a spare bedroom edging its occupant out. Ultimately what Kapil teaches us is that although the heart might be where desire, gratitude, even love exist, it is an organ to which, like a country, we may never fully belong.'Sandeep Parmar'This joyous, occasionally furious, collection explores the limits of hospitality… Kapil establishes an astonishing presence, emphasising process over product, welcoming the reader to participate in the ritual of her poems’ making.' Sammi Gale, i'Brilliantly relentless… Kapil’s words sit brilliantly between the intellectual and the bodily. The eponymous phrase of this book returns again and again, to be held up to the light in different ways. Violence, exile, love and the world of literature drip out in the answers to the opening question.' Andrew McMillan, Poetry Book Society'Responds with brilliant acuity to the prolonged stress of the immigrant experience... In this series of precise, destabilising poems, Kapil skilfully amplifies the pressured immigrant heart, showing how precarious it is to exist in colour in a white space.' Joanna Lee, The Guardian'How to Wash a Heart addresses the world of lockdown with uncanny prescience, capturing its fragmented texture and vectors of distraction, and the constant intersection it reveals between personal and political precarity.' Dai George, Wales Arts Review'Lots of the books are forgettable. This one isn’t. It sounds like nothing else I’ve read. Initially disorientating, it soon clarifies into a novelistic tale about charity and hypocrisy, the story of an immigrant welcomed as a “guest” into the home of a woman who grows resentful of this new arrival’s friendship with her adopted daughter.' Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph'Bhanu Kapil’s work exceeds beyond the page; it is felt somatically, it moves and it pulses and tremors and it tears... the collection’s raw, understated tone draws attention to the harmful systematic and clinical processes of immigration.' Alycia Pirmohamed, The Scores'Bhanu Kapil’s brilliant and formally innovative How To Wash A Heart is a bold singular work… that lays bare the struggle of the immigrant… Kapil does this with a quiet brutality and stylistic flair.' Juliano Zaffino'In this emotionally-complex, lyrically-innovative, and thematically-rich collection, hospitality becomes a way of exploring the classical literary themes of arrival and departure, forcing them into a space where the question of belonging is perennially unanswered.'Devina Shah, The Poetry School'A brilliant and complex book, urgent in its message, How To Wash A Heart deserves (and requires) a wide and attentive readership.'Seán Hewitt, Irish Times'These books [How To Wash A Heart and The Olive Trees’ Jazz and Other Poems by Samira Negrouche] are gems. Both authoritative in the best sense of the word; stridently reflecting worlds of their own – that we know, and yet have never read described in this particular way, according to the contours along which our hearts move.'Khairani Barokka, The Poetry Review'How To Wash a Heart brilliantly dissects power, both ethnic and economic... It is a wise, thought-provoking collection which burrows under the skin.'Katrina Naomi'How to Wash a Heart asks extremely difficult and delicate questions that open a space for dialogue. It is also a beautiful book to hold and read. If only our public debates had Kapil’s subtlety, refinement, and distinction. How to Wash a Heart has already won an award in my heart, by merely beating, striving, pumping blood.'David Morgan O'Connor, RHINO Poetry'The book’s final pages, both the end of the sequence itself and the paratextual material, are devastating. How To Wash A Heart confronts “the link / Between creativity / And survival” – arguing that creativity is necessary for survival, but sadly not sufficient – more skilfully and innovatively than anything else I have read this year.'Dominic Leonard, The TLS'Bhanu’s book is kind of like walking into a kaleidoscope of heritage... It’s not like other books this year, subtle, nuanced and in the astro-plane only really wild poets get into. If the book was in a pub it would be the lady with the trolley full of black bags, you always wondered what was in them and now you can find out. Go on, go have a peek, let the words wash over you, let them roll through you and when you come out you will have the stench of something new and precious.'Arji Manuelpillai, Out-Spoken'How to Wash a Heart with its urgent salutory lessons about ways in which immigrants are unhoused and unmade punches above its weight of 44 pages.'Gail Low, Dundee University Review of the Arts'Kapil’s memorable protest depends upon her ability to overturn poetic expectation. She is never conventional… [in How To Wash A Heart] an assertive beauty surfaces from turmoil.'Kate Kellaway, The Observer‘Bhanu Kapil is a major writer, producing works that make you think and feel differently about the world, that end up wiring your brain differently. She explores racism, violence and the psychological effects of diaspora and uncertainty on the body of the immigrant in a poetry that is at once innovative and relatively comprehensible.’ Steven Waling, Magma Poetry'This book speaks of the wider experience of the refugee or immigrant. Notions of home and love change over time and become distorted so that the narrator becomes alienated both from their current situation and their own past. The poems capture perfectly the loneliness of being a guest in someone else’s home and in a country that is not your own. The conflicting emotions of such a situation – gratitude, indebtedness, confusion, discomfort, anxiety, fear, anger. [...] This is a beautiful, furious heart-rending book – utterly compelling.'Julia Webb, Under the Radar 'It is noteworthy, then, that How to Wash A Heart began its life in the UK, published by Liverpool University Press’s Pavilion Poetry. This represents a pivot in Kapil’s practice: after decades of living and working in the United States, she has also returned to the UK, a move that has coincided with her receiving greater recognition in her home country. [...] How to Wash A Heart speaks deliberately to the specifics of Britain: its racism, and its reception of immigrants. [...]What I love about Kapil is her concision, arrived at through processes of sifting which refuse to be rushed, which challenge us all to fully answer the question: What do you inherit, and what do you reproduce? The power of Kapil’s writing lies in her ability to evoke violence with a gentle touch. [...] Her books are spaces to rest, to lay down your armfuls of things. Now that she finds herself back here, on the near ground of Britain, it will be a joy and a wonder to see what she makes of it and our barrage of inheritances.'Stephanie Sy-Quia, The White Review'The poetic energy here doesn’t lie in the vocabulary but in the controlled fear that stalks those line breaks, interrupting each sentence as if the guest is choosing her words carefully, aware that someone may be listening behind the open door. [...] How to Wash a Heart tells a story about the ‘inclusive, complex, molecular’ chemistry of temporary host-guest bonds. But it produces that reality effect by hosting a series of unwelcome images that Kapil the artist can’t expel. [...] Kapil is both dissident and artist, of course: an agitator who won’t allow self-congratulation in through the back door, and the female artist using her body as a lightning conductor to pick up the violence latent in a place, or in her audience.'Peter Howarth, London Review of Books

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnavailable for more than 70 years, this early but important work is published for the first time with Tolkien's Corrigan' poems and other supporting material, including a prefatory note by Christopher Tolkien.Set In Britain's land beyond the seas' during the Age of Chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tells of a childless Breton Lord and Lady (the Aotrou' and Itroun' of the title) and the tragedy that befalls them when Aotrou seeks to remedy their situation with the aid of a magic potion obtained from a corrigan, or malevolent fairy. When the potion succeeds and Itroun bears twins, the corrigan returns seeking her fee, and Aotrou is forced to choose between betraying his marriage and losing his life.Coming from the darker side of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, together with the two shorter Corrigan' poems that lead up to it and which are also included, was the outcome of a comparatively short but intense period in Tolkien''s life when he was deeply engaged with Celtic, and particularly Breton, myth and legend.Originally written in 1930 and long out of print, this early but seminal work is an important addition to the non-Middle-earth portion of his canon and should be set alongside Tolkien's other retellings of myth and legend, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur and The Story of Kullervo. Like these works, it belongs to a small but important corpus of his ventures into real-world' mythologies, each of which in its own way would be a formative influence on his own legendarium.Trade Review‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun is a poem in the tradition of the medieval "lay", also illustrated by the Lay of the Children of Húrin, and in the Lay of Leithian. This 556-verse-long poem tells the tragic story of a lord who sacrifices his life by love: in order to have a child with his wife, then to remain faithful to his spouse, he gives his life to a witch.’ The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate website ‘The language is as time-worn as a Runic engraving yet clear as a bell … The holy and the unholy imbue everything. It is a world captured in stained glass.’ Daily Telegraph

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe poems of Charles Baudelaire are filled with explicit and unsettling imagery, depicting with intensity every day subjects ignored by French literary conventions of his time. ''Tableaux parisiens'' portrays the brutal life of Paris''s thieves, drunkards and prostitutes amid the debris of factories and poorhouses. In love poems such as ''Le Beau Navire'', flights of lyricism entwine with languorous eroticism, while prose poems such as ''La Chambre Double'' deal with the agonies of artistic creation and mortality. With their startling combination of harsh reality and sublime beauty, formal ingenuity and revolutionary poetic language, these poems, including a generous selection from Les Fleurs du Mal, show Baudelaire as one of the most influential poets of the nineteenth century.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe radiant climax to Dante's awe-inspiring epic, in a definitive new translation Having plunged to the utmost depths of Hell and climbed Mount Purgatory in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, Dante now ascends to Heaven, guided by his beloved Beatrice, to continue his search for God. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise, he grows ever closer to experiencing divine love in the overwhelming presence of the deity. Examining eternal questions of faith, desire, and enlightenment, Dante exercised all of his learning and wit, wrath and tenderness in his creation of one of the greatest of all Christian allegories. This edition prints Robin Kirkpatrick's impressive new translation alongside Dante's original Italian. 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 hisTrade 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

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese masterly poems span the decades of Nabokov''s career, from ''Music'', written in 1914, to the short, playful ''To Vera'', composed in 1974. ''The University Poem'', one of Nabokov''s major poetic works, is here in English for the first time: an extraordinary autobiographical poem looking back at his time at Cambridge, with its dinners, girls and memories, it is suffused with rich description, wit and verbal dexterity. Included too are the surreally comic ''A Literary Dinner'', the enchanting, ''Eve'', the wryly humorous ''An Evening of Russian Poetry'' and a meditation on the act of creation, ''Tolstoy'', as well as verse written on America, lepidoptery, sport, love and Nabokov''s Russian homeland.Trade ReviewThe poems are coy, clever, sophisticated, sonorous and worldly. In other words, Nabokovian * New York Daily News *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new verse translation by award-winning poet Alicia Stallings of one of the foundational works of ancient GreeceTLS BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018, selected by Rachel Hadas and Emily Wilson   The ancient Greeks revered Hesiod, believing he had beaten Homer in a singing contest and that after his dead body was thrown to sea, it was brought back by dolphins. His Works and Days is one of the most important early works of Greek poetry. Ostensibly written by the poet to chide his lazy brother, it recounts the story of Pandora’s box and humanity’s decline since the Golden Age, and can be read as a celebration of rural life and a hymn to work. Alicia Stallings’s new translation breathes new life into Hesiod’s work, rendering its vivid poetry for a new generation of classics readers.  For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more thanTrade ReviewStallings's new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days - witty, gritty, and unsettlingly relevant - is not to be missed. Toil; corruption in high places; injustice; the prevailing sense that things are getting worse - none of these prevents the Muses' chosen poets from doing their indispensable and soul-refreshing work -- Rachel Hadas * The Times Literary Supplement *A. E. Stallings brings Hesiod back to life in her rhyming translation of Works and Days, which mingles farming tips, myths and evocation of the seasons: 'when first the cuckoo cuckoos in the oak'. Stallings's lively and learned notes make it a treat * The Times *A. E. Stallings new verse translation of Works and Days for Penguin is a splendid development upon a recent flurry of Hesiod translation and poetic response ... Brilliantly sensitive ... Stallings's translation triumphs * The Oxonian Review *Mixing rhyme and assonance, this is a Works and Days for the age of rap. By translating Hesiod as poetry, Stallings encourages us to realize that the poem should not just be the object of scholarly study, but can be read aloud for fun -- Armand D'Angour * The Times Literary Supplement *Stallings is a true poet ... She finds enormous breadth and depth of resource in her open couplets ... No reader of the best poetry should miss this Works and Days -- Professor Peter McDonald * Literary Matters *Stallings makes a home for Hesiod in the English poetic landscape, where he can live the sort of idiosyncratic life that he enjoys in Greek, at once timeless and contemporary ... In prose, she makes for an appealing guide, elegant and accessible, intelligent and breezy ... A wonderful book -- Christopher Childers * New Criterion *A Brilliant rendition of a fountainhead epic ... For clarity and class and prosody that sings through its print, Stallings' Hesiod is unrivaled. Endear yourselves to the immortals and read this compelling translation that introduces with a formalist literary flourish that fragile Western Civilization which still, to this day, nurtures the best of artistic creation * Somerville Times *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA wonderful edition of Herbert''s poetry, edited by his acclaimed biographer John Drury and including elegant new translations of his Latin verse by Victoria Moul.George Herbert wrote, but never published, some of the very greatest English poetry, recording in an astonishing variety of forms his inner experiences of grief, recovery, hope, despair, anger, fulfilment and - above all else - love. This volume, edited by John Drury, collects Herbert''s complete poetry - including such classics of English devotional poetry as ''The Altar'', Easter-Wings'' and ''Love''. It also includes the verse Herbert wrote in Latin, newly translated into English by Victoria Moul.George Herbert was born in 1593 and died at the age of 39 in 1633, before the clouds of civil war gathered. He showed worldly ambition and seemed sure of high public office and a career at court, but then for a time ''lost himself in a humble way'', devoting himself to the restoration of a church and then

Read more less

Book SynopsisVisionary poet Allen Ginsberg was one of the most influential cultural and literary figures of the 20th century, his face and political causes familiar to millions who had never even read his poetry. And yet he is a figure that remains little understood, especially how a troubled young man became one of the intellectual and artistic giants of the postwar era. He never published an autobiography or memoirs, believing that his body of work should suffice. The Essential Ginsberg attempts a more intimate and rounded portrait of this iconic poet by bringing together for the first time his most memorable poetry but also journals, music, photographs and letters, much of it never before published.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES POETRY BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZEThe black poet would love to say his century beganWith Hughes or God forbid, Wheatley, but actuallyIt began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunsetBridges & windows. In a second I''ll tell you how littleWriting rescues.So begins this astonishing, muscular sequence by one of America''s best-selling and most acclaimed poets. Over 70 poems, each titled ''American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin'' and shot through with the vernacular energy of popular culture, Terrance Hayes manoeuvres his way between touching domestic visions, stories of love, loss and creation, tributes to the fallen and blistering denunciations of the enemies of the good.American Sonnets builds a living picture of the whole self, and the whole human, even as it op

Read more less

Book Synopsis''The mystery of Life, the mystery Of Death, I see Darkly as in a glass...''Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is perhaps the most contradictory of the great Victorian poets. She writes of the world''s beauty, but fears that it may be deceptive, even deadly. She is a religious poet, but much of her work is driven by uncertainty. Her poems are restrained, even secretive, but they seek nothing less than the mystery of Life and Death.This edition contains Rossetti''s strongest and most distinctive work: poetry (including ''Goblin Market'', ''The Prince''s Progress'', and the sonnet sequence ''Monna Innominata''), stories (including the complete text of Maude), devotional prose (with nearly fifty entries from the ''reading diary'' Times Flies), and personal letters. Those poems which Rossetti published, and those which she withheld from publication, are here brought together in chronological order, allowing the reader to observe her poetic trajectory. This edition also records the major revision

Read more less

Book Synopsis''the highest matter in the noblest form''John Donne''s description of the Psalms celebrates not only the perfection of the biblical psalms but their translation into poetic form by the Sidneys, who turned them into some of the most accomplished lyric poems of the English Renaissance. Although it was not printed until the nineteenth century, the Sidney Psalter was widely read in manuscript and influenced poets from Donne and Herbert to Milton and beyond. It turned these well-known and well-loved Psalms into sophisticated verse, selecting or inventing a different stanza form for each one. This variety of forms matches the appeal of their content: there are Psalms of praise and blame, Psalms of cursing and lamentation, Psalms of joy and exaltation, Psalms that recount history, and Psalms that describe Creation or divine law.This is the first complete edition of the Psalter for over forty years. The Psalms are provided in an authoritative modernized text, with helpful glosses and notes il

Read more less

Book Synopsis''The bitter tragedy of human life-- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. '' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city is played out alongside a magical romance of love and sacrifice, in which the Christian knight Rinaldo succumbs to the charms of the pagan sorceress Armida, and the warrior maiden Clorinda inspires a fatal passion in the Christian Tancred.Tasso''s masterpiece left its mark on writers from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, and inspired countless painters and composers. This is the first English translation in modern times that faithfully reflects both the sense and the verse form of the original. Max Wickert''s fine rendering is introduced by Mark Davie, who places TTrade ReviewThe translation is accompanied by a clear, detailed and helpful introduction by Mark Davie. * David Robey, Times Literary Supplement *Wickert's is a remarkable achievement...the translation is consistently faithful to almost every detail of the content. * David Robey, Times Literary Supplement *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn astonishing New World epicof human transfiguration and transformation, of nothing less than the great work of art that is our life among ourselves.' Steven Meyer, Boston ReviewThe greatest living American poet' Dante MicheauxFor over half a century, Jay Wright's poetry has been celebrated for its alertness to the multiplicity of human experience and identity. Wright's inexorable lyric voice, whose gravitational pull has an indelible music', transforms life into myth, body into spirit, image into icon, and ritual into collective consciousness. Revelling in the rich interplay between Native American, African American, Latin American and West African cultural forms, Wright detangles the threads of these complex historical forces to present a tapestry of the Atlantic World and the people who move within it. Published for the first time in the UK, Transfigurations is a career-defining volume that includes all of Wright's 20th century major poetry works - The Homecoming Singer (1971), S

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisSelections from Patti Smith's writings over the decade in which she made a lasting impact on America's underground literary and rock scene.Trade Review"[Early Work] burns . . . with the galvanizing sense of faith and transcendence that made [Smith] the last of the great rock poets." -- Entertainment Weekly"[Early Work] establishes Smith as a visionary belletrist who believed in rock as a spiritual outlet and haven for black sheep—an outpost on a continuum connecting such heroes as poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, Amelia Earhart, Harry Houdini and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini to a sexy, androgynous future." -- Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone"A poet of distinction." -- John Rockwell, New York Times

Read more less

Book SynopsisSIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT is one of the most important alliterative poems of Medieval literatureNow a major film THE GREEN KNIGHT starring Dev PatelFrom the north-west midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dates from the second half of the 14th century. Gawain, a knight in Arthur''s court, takes up the challenge of the Green Knight, and cuts off his head. The Knight informs Gawain he will have his revenge.Journeying to the Knight''s abode to receive his lot Gawain takes the hospitality of a Lord, and endures the advances of his wife. The Lord is the Green Knight and, when the time comes, merely nicks Gawain''s neck for his infidelity and dishonour. Is Gawain a failure, or a hero?

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, Bernard O''Donoghue''s poems have long captivated readers with their lyricism, their grace and with what John Burnside has called their ''scrupulous honesty''. This judicious selection, made by the author himself, draws on twenty years of work and presents O''Donoghue at his most mesmeric: often recalling the rural Cork of his upbringing as seen against the exile of his adulthood, ever alive to the desire but impossibility of return.

Read more less

Book SynopsisShakespeare''s Sonnets are as important and vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers and lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny, and presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader.In a series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning, technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets, as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell us about ourselves.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWallace Stevens is for many readers the supreme poet of twentieth century America, his unique voice combining meditative speculation with what he called ''the essential gaudiness of poetry'', in an oeuvre of astonishing profusion and exuberance.The Selected Poems was compiled by the poet at the request of Faber & Faber, in 1953, shortly before his death, and was intended to be representative of the range of his acheievement, from the whimsical and exotic lyrical inventions of Harmonium to the pondered large-scale and crafted masterpieces of his middle years.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhen The Orators was originally published in 1932 it was described by Poetry Review as ''something as important as the appearance of Mr Eliot''s poems fifteen years ago''. A long poem written in both prose and verse, it was a powerful addition to the canon of modernist poetry.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn The Funny Side Wendy Cope, herself one of the funniest poets now writing in English, has collected 101 of the poems that have most amused her. Acknowledged classics of the genre are to be found alongside newer pieces, and the collection as a whole illustrates the great range to be found under the heading of ''humorous poetry''.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA selection of the writer''s greatest nature poetry, selected by Tom Paulin, published in a beautiful new edition by Faber.At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overheadIn a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited;An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume,Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom . . .-The Darkling Thrush

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom the beginning, the poet was a wanderer, a storyteller, an imaginer of bridges between worlds. Zaffar Kunial is just such a poet and guide for us today. Yet his territory extends much further afield than those of the past through Kashmir, where his father was born and now lives, to the Midlands of his mother''s birth, and further north to ancestors in Orkney, as well as through language, memory and time. Already an acknowledged star of the Faber New Poets scheme, Kunial has won admirers in such measure as to ensure that Us is one of the most anticipated debuts in recent times. Across its pages, he vocalises what it means to be a human being planting your two feet upon the dizzying earth and he does so delicately, urgently, intimately in some of the most original and touching ways that you will read.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Sleeping Lord is perhaps the best introductory volume to Jones's work; the contours can be seen most clearly here, and the textures, though rich, are less elaborate than in The Anathemata, since there is an open, dramatic quality running through the book.' Peter Scupham, New StatesmanPublished months before David Jones's death in 1974, and modestly presented by the author himself as a collection of fragments', The Sleeping Lord continued the exploration of themes begun by its predecessors In Parenthesis and The Anathemata. Set mainly in different parts of the Roman Empire, either in the Holy Land or on the Celtic fringes, animated by his Catholic faith and by his own experiences as a soldier, formidably erudite and of a visionary intensity, the book springs from a lifetime's concern with questions of history, culture and religion. Mysterious, musical and alive with a sense of the wilderness and the elements, the poems show the st

Read more less

Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION'Jack Underwood has developed an utterly clear lyric that rebukes moral obviousness, drives against false certainty. It's as refreshing as it is instructive . . . Underwood has become one of my favorite poets.' Kaveh AkbarJack Underwood's poetry debut, Happiness (2015), was celebrated for its unconventional and daring tone: 'conversational, arresting . . . weird, singular' (Guardian). Such qualities are on accomplished display in this anticipated new collection, as the poems mature and move on to a wide range of preoccupations, including imminent societal collapse and public unrest; the limits, myths and complexities of masculinity and fatherhood; and uncanny, often amusing scenarios, such as serving drinks to a gathering of fifteen babies or group kissing in Empathy Class. Throughout, incongruous and domestic subjects realign in skewed lyrics and thought exper

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe poetry of Eluard is that of the real world and its natural sensations and feelings. The main themes that stand out are love, brotherhood and kindness. His imagery is characterized by its appeal to the senses and the importance of concrete objects and of everyday things.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA reissue of Rimbaud’s highly influential work, with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin lustig.Trade Review"Every writer produces some haunting passages, some memorable phrases, but with Rimbaud they are strewn all over the pages like gems tumbled from a rifled chest." -- Henry Miller"Rimbaud transformed French poetry, completely modernized it." -- Allen Ginsberg"Our greatest poet of revolt." -- Albert Camus

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first full-length collection in English by one of Latin America’s most significant twentieth-century poets. Trade Review"Pizarnik reveals an ecstasy in the instability of language and draws from it a mercurial, pathetic truth." -- Los Angeles Review of Books"In compressed fragments, stark monostichs, and dense prose poems, the late Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik’s oeuvre presents a rich inner world built from a litany of symbols." -- Scout Poetry"I...was blown away by the thoughtful interiority—by turns delicate and brutal—of this Argentine poet, who died of an intentional drug overdose at the age of 36. The poems in this new collection, translated by Yvette Siegert and published earlier this year, show a preoccupation with the space—not so large, but also interminably vast—between the workings of the mind and those of the natural world." -- Jane Yong Kim - The Atlantic"The darkly beautiful poems of the great Argentinian writer Alejandra Pizarnik generate an immersive, Gothic atmosphere in which art is both violence and respite, contamination and antidote, hell and paradise." -- The Boston Review""On the page she carves out spaces of solitude and silence in which language is reduced to its very essence..."" -- Matthew Phipps - The Millions"There is an aura of almost legendary prestige that surrounds the life and work of Alejandra Pizarnik" -- César Aira"To the allure Pizarnik has, as a figure wrapped in mystery and an inexplicable personality, must be added the fact that, word by word, she “wrote the night,” and the reader who takes an interest in her will discover that this nocturnal writing, which had a great sense of risk, was born of the purest necessity, something seen in very few 20th-century writers: an extreme lyric and a tragedy." -- Enrique Vila-Matas"Each of Pizarnik's poems is the cube of an enormous wheel." -- Julio Cortázar"Read Alejandra Pizarnik's poems. They're remarkable." -- The Poetry Foundation"Pizarnik made a huge impact on Spanish-language poetry, taking it down to its darkest depths and abandoning it there, leaving one of the most fascinating legacies in Argentine literature." -- The Argentina Independent"Brilliant, taut poems." -- Flavorwire"Pizarnik's poems flare up like deep, bright flames." -- Publisher's Weekly"This overdue bilingual edition showcases the exquisite range of her short career…Pizarnik's brilliant, otherworldy voice will resonate for generations." -- Booklist"To bear down on Pizarnik’s scant lines is to find their essential rigor: nothing is brittle, nothing breaks." -- Joshua Cohen - Harper's

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisNovelist, draughtsman, film-maker, essayist and critic John Berger is one of the major European intellectuals of our time. For sixty years he has been challenging the way we see the world and how we think about it, in books like Ways of Seeing, Permanent Red, To the Wedding, A Painter of Our Time, Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag and G. But although Berger has always written poetry, often smuggling poems inside books like The Seventh Man and The White Bird, this is the first time his poetry has been collected in English.Collected Poems reflects Berger''s longstanding concerns with art and politics, love and war, history and memory, emigration, immigration and the life of the European peasantry. It includes well-known poems like ''The Ladle'', ''Village Maternity'' and ''Death of La Nan M.'' as well over twenty previously unpublished poems. From ''My Coney'' (written in 1952 when Berger was just twenty-six) to ''They Are the Last'' written in 2008, Berger the poet demonstrates an enduring commitment to the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. These are perfectly framed still-life images, sensual and plain, delicate sketches of hard lives caught between the provisional quality of language and the permanence of things. John Berger''s Collected Poems reveals its author to be a major poet of our time.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNew translations of poems by prominent Peruvian poet Carlos Germán Belli. This selection of poems by internationally renowned Peruvian poet Carlos Germán Belli tempers a dark, ironic vision of worldly injustice with the red midnight sun of hope. Belli's contemplative verses express faith in language, in bodily joy, and in artistic form. These thirty-five poems explore public and domestic spaces of confinement and freedom, from paralysis to the ease of a bird in its azure cloister. Translations by Karl Maurer retain Belli's original meter, follow his complex syntax, and meet the challenges of his poetic language, which ranges from colloquial Peruvian slang to the ironic use of seventeenth-century Spanish. This bilingual edition also includes notes and reflections on Belli and on the art of translation. Beyond introducing American readers to a major presence in world poetry, The Azure Cloisteroffers a fresh approach to the translation of contemporary verse in Spanish. Trade Review"Belli’s work seeks the limits of human experience in forms that summon 'the bodies in which we dwell,' sometimes with what Maurer calls the 'tortuous Gongoresque syntax' of the Spanish Baroque, and in evocations of the timeless, abject, and ineffable." * Harriet (Poetry Foundation) *“Belli has proven time and again that poetry can be both a renewal and enrichment of the language and a protest against inequalities.” * Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas *"I began reading Belli when he published his first poems, back in the fifties, in a magazine called Mercurio Peruano, and I needed only to read those half dozen texts to feel that this was a new voice, of powerful lyrical worth and great imaginative audacity, capable—as only great poets are —of transforming ugliness into beauty, sadness into stimulation, and turning to gold—that is to poetry— whatever he touches. All that Belli has written since then has only confirmed and enriched his extraordinary gift of poetry." -- Mario Vargas Llosa, Winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature"Carlos Germán Belli is an indispensable poet, and his poetry--intimate, pure, inimitable--is waiting for us in the future. Reader, you are that future." -- Raúl Zurita, Chilean National Prize for Literature and Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry"Belli attends to the emotional hues and ironies of contemporary life with the refined textures of the Spanish Baroque. His poems create dreams and landscapes of past and present where language and experience bear the traces of technological change. In this remarkable translation, as in Belli's originals, a range of linguistic registers, times and places are woven into a seamless tapestry, and every rhythm and accent matters. Maurer has managed to invent an English idiom that captures the subtleties of a poet who—along with César Vallejo and Blanca Varela—is one of Peru's very greatest." -- Efraín Kristal, distinguished professor of Spanish, Latin American, and Comparative Literature, UCLA

Read more less

Book SynopsisMaterial Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.Trade ReviewThe poems have an unforced charm, delighting in the wonder that surrounds us * Guardian *Polley’s grasp . . . is masterful, and the book is a delight. He succeeds in echoing the texture of his poetic forebears, but with a wry panache which is all his own. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * The Poetry Review *What sustains these playful, wise, gentle lyrics is Polley’s technical skill. Longer poems are activated and maintained by their musicality and by a particular way with syntax that seeks to give texture and topography to the poems. One feels them as one is delighted by them -- Stephen Sexton * The Irish Times *How often do you come across a book you read again and again and always with increasing pleasure? It’s the quality of the writing that draws me back, both rooted and adventuring, elegant yet at ease in different registers and vocabularies … Jacob Polley’s language reaches to the heart of his subjects -- Jane Routh * The Friday Poem *

Read more less

Book SynopsisSix-hundred-year-old tales with modern relevance. This stunning full-colour edition from the bestselling Cambridge School Chaucer series explores the complete text of The Wife of Bath''s Prologue and Tale through a wide range of classroom-tested activities and illustrated information, including a map of the Canterbury pilgrimage, a running synopsis of the action, an explanation of unfamiliar words and suggestions for study. Cambridge School Chaucer makes medieval life and language more accessible, helping students appreciate Chaucer''s brilliant characters, his wit, sense of irony and love of controversy.Table of ContentsIntroduction; What are the Canterbury Tales?; Chaucer's language; The Wife of Bath's contribution; Text and notes: The portrait of the Wife of Bath (from The General Prologue); The Wife of Bath's prologue; The Wife of Bath's tale; The tale told by the Wife of Bath; Chaucer's pilgrims; Pilgrims and pilgrimages; Geoffrey Chaucer; Marriage or virginity?; The status of women in the fourteenth century; The role of the Church; Themes in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale; Glossary of frequently used words

Read more less

Book Synopsis'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'A beautiful new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's most iconic poems.

Read more less