Poetry / Poems

Book SynopsisLandsmoder, by the Salvadoran poet, historian, and performance artist Elena Salamanca, is a searing, and sometimes grotesque, exploration of the intersections between nationalism, dogma, patriarchy, and violence. Originally read aloud from the oldest standing monument in San Salvador’s centro histórico, the performance poems in Landsmoder retool the laudatory pomp of patriotic ceremony to protest the weaponization of national myth as a mask for erasure, cruelty, and neglect at the hands of the state. This unflinching collection, whose title comes from a Norwegian word that Salamanca translates as “madre de la patria” — or “mother of the nation/homeland/fatherland”— is a work of feminist grief, rage, and irony populated with churning wombs, bloodied flags, and ratteboned she-wolves. Appearing now in a bilingual edition nearly a decade after it was first performed, Landsmoder remains an urgent subversion, loud as ever, both on and off the page. Trade Review"In its unique combination of protest, performance, and translation, this book opens Salamanca’s truly monumental work to new audiences and future generations." –Diego Báez, Poetry Foundation

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Book SynopsisIn this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension.Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways to consider how nature accomplishes both balance and deep transformation. In visual figures and prose blocks that bridge the divide between poetry and nonfiction, Jessica E. Johnson employs scientific idioms to construct an allegory about a family in the Pacific Northwest. The region becomes a character in its own right, with cedars, moss, and heavy cloud knitting the mother, father, boy, and girl into their setting. This far-reaching volume also serves as a study of the ecologies of contemporary parenting, with adults and children affected by “feeds” both on screen and off as their bodies metabolize food, the environment, and excess feelings such as rage. From climate change to kombucha to smartphones and curated produce, the smallest details of daily life in “Plasticland” catalyze a larger examination of selfhood: “Despite so many attempts to resolve this tension, sometimes you are you and also sometimes mother just as light can be both particle and wave.”Trade Review“Capturing the ephemeral ways in which one is strange to oneself—the edges of self, of forests, of spaces, of existence entangled with the limitation of the shapes of things, this book, full of multi-species encounters, enacts the discontinuous and porous nature of selfhood and of being more than what can be contained within the confines of a body. With a keen perception and a lyricism that penetrates like light, Metabolics is a collection that will possess you.” * Janice Lee, author of 'Separation Anxiety' and 'Imagine a Death' *“Johnson metabolizes the strange rituals of daily life into poetic language. With a ‘vast, provisional body,’ she moves between the home and the world, touching and consuming the real (plastic, cats, trees, devices) and the virtual (the internet, social networks, texts) in entangled ‘cycles within cycles.’ Once you enter this book, it too will consume your attention. It will eat your imagination until you become ‘something more than you imagined.’” * Craig Santos Perez, author of 'Habitat Threshold' *“Metabolics is a song for our times where ‘the car consumes refined bones’ and the speaker’s ‘energy is taken up. . . by the emotional exoskeleton of text threads with their fibrous connection to all your feelings.’ Metabolics pinpoints the environmental conditions of late capitalism where the ‘wonderland sky’ is threatened by ‘the understory tinder quick to catch,’ and ‘the trees said nothing so the children screamed their songs.’ What does it mean to mother now? To teach? To live in a body at the edge of a forest that is ready to burn? Each prose poem in Metabolics is a window into these questions, and yet each poem captures much more than a moment in time. Johnson’s poetics requires us to confront our troubled present, regard the ‘chemical conspiracy between trees. . . bodies listening to bodies.’ What a marvelous book.” * Tyler Mills, author of 'Hawk Parable' *“‘Herein to hold my dailiness I have borrowed the language of certainty.’ Johnson’s Metabolics transports the reader into a twining, double helix of ‘job and sweat and screen time and so many kinds of holding,’ entangling threads of motherhood, organic growth and decay, digital overload, anthropogenic awareness, and the body’s own softening with keen critique and powerful bafflement. Like mycorrhizal fungi, each strand and each poem feeds every other, creating a stronger, larger, more mysterious whole. Johnson’s voice is both detached and interior, plainspoken and strange-syntaxed; at times I was reminded of Eavan Boland’s attention to the domestic, at times of C. D. Wright’s haunting journeys through scientific/historic fact. In the end, though, Metabolics is utterly its own unique experience, one that will leave the reader inspired to re-examine and re-engage the deep strangeness of our daily lives. I am so grateful to have read this book.” * Elizabeth Bradfield, author of 'Toward Antarctica' and 'Theorem' *“These poems do just what we hope poems will do: they wake us up to our lives. Clear-eyed, they trace in loving micro-attention how the day happens in our bodies, our minds, our devices, our plastics, our politics, our dreams. They are about mothering, and they are about mothering attentiveness. Through such care, language transforms into ‘CO2 wafting into an open leaf pore,’ and we breathe again.” * Eleni Sikelianos, author of 'Your Kingdom' *"Metabolic, a gripping, felt collection littered with beautiful phrasings and insights, is grounded in those quiet, wordless moments of satiety that take us by surprise and keep us rooted to the world and to ourselves. . ." * Mom Egg Review *"The domestic is both glorified and made strange in Jessica E. Johnson’s Metabolics. This hybrid book-length poem of twelve connected pieces is attuned to language and image in a way that provides a unique portrait of family and environment (specifically the Pacific Northwest) as the speaker interrogates the self and what it means to live in a world that prizes devices over forests." * RHINO *"The veil-like lace Johnson places over the everyday allows the reader a different view of the life she’s living as a mother, teacher, wife, poet, and person in the world. With close reading the veil is lifted and prismatic truths shine." * Joan Biddle's Blog *

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Book SynopsisWoodsmoke is a poetry collection that renders the experience of living out life in a single, exquisite place—“in the shadow of the mountain my father said was mother to us all”—Mount Pisgah in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Wayne Caldwell, author of the novel Cataloochee, brings us the waning days of Posey Green, who cuts his own firewood, looks after himself, and tends to the land where his wife Birdie and her people are buried. Posey’s colloquial narrative poetry is presented as found verse, conjured from Posey’s internal musings—and these poems alternate with those of a new neighbor, a sympathetic female poet who observes Posey and his surroundings and creates a more formal poetic record of his days.Trade Review"The beauty of Woodsmoke is that it gives us the pleasures of both poetry and prose as it unveils not only the story of one man’s life, but the story of a whole culture. I’ve long admired Wayne Caldwell’s novels, and I’m now an admirer of his poetry. Woodsmoke is an absolute delight." —Ron Rash, In the Valley and Serena "Sit in a quiet place, preferably in front of a woodfire, take deep breaths, and listen to Posey Green. His voice is a beautiful elegy for a southern Appalachian language and mindset almost gone." —Charles Frazier, Varina and Cold Mountain "A beautiful book that reminded me of things about our culture that are so often overlooked. Woodsmoke and Posey are rooted in the core of the Appalachian spirit: a commitment to hard work, the land, and neighborliness. Like splitting and stacking wood, this collection of poems honors the complex intricacies of a life so many might refer to as simple or easy." —Savannah Sipple, WWJD and Other Poems "Alert to the equal importance of nature’s most miniscule creatures and the power of one’s true love, this collection touches on the common threads that bind us all together." —Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Even As We Breathe "Skeptical, thoughtful, funny, proud, and humble, Posey Green tells the most telling truths. I read this volume through, then read it again. For dessert." —Fred Chappell, As If It Were and I Am One of You Forever "At once familiar and alive with curiosities and the kind of delight in the unknown I seek out in a book of poems, Woodsmoke brings me to a familiar landscape and breaks it open for me to feel anew." —Matthew Wimberley, All the Great Territories

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Book SynopsisThis collection of poetry interrogates the impact of grief and partner violence on a family lineage, as well as the connections between sorrow and joy as they relate to poetry, women's writing, and the process of the “confessional.” Inextricably woven into these investigations of various types of grief is the question of what gendered and socioeconomic statuses we bring with us when we choose poetry as a method of recording the intimacies of a life.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR ERIN SLAUGHTER"A poem can slice you right open and get down to something inside you like the very core of a jawbreaker and linger there. I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun by Erin Slaughter is a bundle of these poems left on your front doorstep as an offering. Here, Slaughter melts loneliness down; she writes of wandering through a world where none of us and all of us are truly alone." --The Talisman (review by Ella Corder)"This book is grimoire, is grain silo, is Americana and marginalia, is a hotel room across state lines. Slaughter gleans and gathers up deliciousness: ashes and gin, winged liner, bleach, blackberry throb, tootsie rolls, dirty martinis, cheese shards and a deer carcass, a store-bought orchid, a peeled ankle. Soak yourself in this work, its every sensation--like flesh falling off the rib, vicious and bittersweet. I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN is not to be missed--o 'horrible brightness,' o 'lovelaced void,' a 'radiating dark' that will have you hollering yes. Oh hell yes." --Emily Corwin, author of tenderling and sensorium"'Forgiveness, your mouth / is the wet hungering mouth of the world / & its hungering for itself,' writes Erin Slaughter in her collection I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN. The speaker here is the 'actor in [her] own quiet being,' and in her full-bodied inhabitation of difficult inheritances, fraught beauties, and inevitable losses. These are poems of praise and consolation, of gratitude and grief; they reach toward hope even as they note the kindnesses we offer to the 'small, cruel moments [that] will ruin us.' Slaughter's poems brim with musicality and keen vision. They linger in a moment when we are not quite enough for one another and when we are all each other has." --Paula Cisewski, author of Quitter, Ghost Fargo, and Upon Arrival

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Book SynopsisThis bilingual edition of St. Teresa of Avila’s poems with commentary engages readers with all facets of the Saint’s life: the mystic and monastic reformer, the artist and proto-feminist, and the philosopher with a penchant for paradox.“What a gift then to read Dana Delibovi’s translations of St Teresa d’Ávila’s complete poems—sweet treasure!—so elegant and concise, the language lyrical yet simple and accessible, the music of the stanzas and the profundity of her voice carried into English. I also appreciated Delibovi’s curation: the short introductions and thematic arrangement of the poems—nothing overly ponderous and academic. It’s as if we are on a pilgrimage into the heart and soul and song of this amazing woman and spiritual leader and poet.” —Julia Alvarez, poet, novelist, and essayist; author of The Cemetery of Untold Stories“Dana Delibovi’s translations and the essays that accompany them are thoughtful, inviting, insightful, and rich. Through them, Saint Teresa’s passionate words pierce through the page and bloom beautifully in the reader’s mind - and heart.” —Randon Billings Noble, Be with Me Always: Essays; A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, editor“Saint Teresa has, at last, found an English translator who has deeply penetrated the poet’s essence, her revelatory reverence and rapturous beauty.” —Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, Night Suite, Remission, and A Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960St. Teresa of Avila’s poems, written in the 16th century, speak to the spiritual longing of our times and invite us to find peace amid turmoil. St. Teresa walked a path of grace, seeking the divine within the human soul, and her poetry lights this path for all of us. This is the first translation of St. Teresa’s poetry by a woman poet and captures the saint’s spiritual vigor and famously conversational tone in English. That voice is echoed in well-researched commentary strengthened by the translator’s willingness to share her spiritual journey.

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Book Synopsis“Between God and the soul, there is no in-between,” said Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, and that idea frames the poems in this collection.Norris’ central idea is that mystery is the core of being. It is in us and around us. Given a chance, something deep inside will show up as longing, something that can’t be explained but needs expression. This is what she begins to call “soul singing.”A well-known writer and poet now in her eighties, Gunilla Norris offers this collection of short prayers, tender moments of awareness, even humming, that express her yearning for and experience of connecting with the Source of all. Norris’ expressions have a universal feel, and speak across a spectrum of traditions. Above all, Soul Songs shows how sometimes we simply can’t help but lift our hearts and sing for the soul’s sake.

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Book SynopsisIn her second collection, JUMP THE GUN, Jennie Malboeuf digs deep into the hidden recesses of a life, exploring the stages and struggles of womanhood, the ways in which memory shapes us, and the continual fight against the dark undercurrents of grief and gun violence that shadow our daily lives in America.The speaker in these poems wrestles with the everyday fears and realities we often try to ignore: the complex expectations placed on young girls and mothers alike, the illusion of childhood innocence, and the very real consequences of our environmental destruction.Split into two sections—with poems that layer blood-soaked images alongside close-ups of the body and domestic life that bloom with intimacy—this collection deftly illustrates the beauty that can be found in tragedy, the fragility of the natural world, and the resilience of the human relationships that fill it.To read JUMP THE GUN is to witness yourself through the crosshairs. In Malboeuf’s words, “What hit you has become you. / Pieces of the bullet embedded / in your skin. Even / that which you come from / will never be the same. / But from violence comes / the tides, the seasons.” 

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Book Synopsis One of America’s most revered military veteran writers and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist—Bruce Weigl—brings readers face-to-face with our country’s legacy of violence, the suffering of combat PTSD, and what it means to be truly haunted. Taking its cue from James Wright’s goal to write “the poetry of a grown man,” the poems in Apostle of Desire juxtapose the peace and comfort offered by the natural world with the bruising intensity of manmade violence. These sudden tonal shifts express a vulnerability and extremity of feeling that strips audiences’ own emotions bare, leading readers to question their roles as bystanders and consumers of violent media. In sharing his intertwining feelings of love and shame for both country and self, Weigl places readers into the role of the watcher and opens a window into the traumas of the Vietnam War and life’s daily battles with PTSD. The honesty of Weigl’s poetry exposes the ghosts of pain while still witnessing the glories of love, nature, and his ongoing experiences with the rich daily life of contemporary Vietnam. Readers will face the solitude of regret and the hopeful pursuit of redemption—remembering the past and looking toward the future.

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Book SynopsisFINALIST FOR THE 2024 CHANGES BOOK PRIZE JUDGED BY LOUISE GLÜCK & EILEEN MYLES The poems of Dream State arise from the poet’s experience living and working in Iraq, not as a soldier or journalist, but as a writer, translator, teacher, and preservationist of Kurdish culture. In a stunning act of cogenerative imagination, Levinson-LaBrosse’s poetic voice emerges alongside the voices of others with whom she has collaborated. Together with her poems, these translated memories, testimonies and stories form an interdependent environment bridging time and perception. As a book, Dream State resists categorization. And yet it is fundamentally accessible in its humanity. People come together in understanding, and break apart just as quickly. Fictions shatter and endure, while national imaginations always seem to be at risk. And everywhere the poet turns, she learns that peace is never self-sustaining. True peace is an enduring act of courage, and one that must be lived everyday. As the 2003 Iraq invasion reached its twentieth anniversary (2023) and the Islamic State’s attempted genocide in Shingal reaches its tenth (2024), Dream State attempts to sit with other people’s experiences, rather than extract details to exploit them; amplifies the work around the poet, rather than supplant it; and trusts that listening to individual perspectives will lead to common understanding.

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Book SynopsisArtaud the Mômo is Antonin Artaud’s most extraordinary poetic work from the brief final phase of his life, from his return to Paris in 1946 after nine years of incarceration in French psychiatric institutions to his death in 1948. This work is an unprecedented anatomical excavation carried through in vocal language, envisioning new gestural futures for the human body in its splintered fragments. With black humor, Artaud also illuminates his own status as the scorned, Marseille-born child-fool, the “mômo” (a self-naming that fascinated Jacques Derrida in his writings on this work). Artaud moves between extreme irreligious obscenity and delicate evocations of his immediate corporeal perception and his sense of solitude. The book’s five-part sequence ends with Artaud’s caustic denunciation of psychiatric institutions and of the very concept of madness itself. This edition is translated by Clayton Eshleman, the acclaimed foremost translator of Artaud’s work. This will be the first edition since the original 1947 publication to present the work in the spatial format Artaud intended. It also incorporates eight original drawings by Artaud—showing reconfigured bodies as weapons of resistance and assault—which he selected for that edition, after having initially attempted to persuade Pablo Picasso to collaborate with him. Additional critical material draws on Artaud’s previously unknown manuscript letters written between 1946 and 1948 to the book’s publisher, Pierre Bordas, which give unique insights into the work from its origins to its publication.Trade Review"Artaud the Mômo is a fierce collection." * Chicago Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisA well-known English playwright and poet of the 17th century, Ben Jonson wrote the humorous drama Every Man in His Humour. The play, which is set in London, has a varied ensemble of individuals in a number of hilarious and sarcastic scenarios. A character's humour, which refers to their major personality attribute or temperament, differs depending on who they are. Jonson expertly captures the follies and eccentricities of human nature via clever conversation, mistaken identities, and humorous miscommunications. The comedy Every Man in His Humour makes fun of the social mores, ambitions, and pretenses of the day. It paints a realistic and engaging picture of Elizabethan life, complete with recognizable class distinctions, efforts to assimilate, and social mobility. The drama examines themes of self-discovery, change, and the negative effects of having lofty goals and aspirations. It illustrates the absurd results that occur when people attempt to change who they are in order to fit in, which eventually results in mayhem and bewilderment. Every Man in His Humour is an important work of English literature that demonstrates Ben Jonson's skill for character development, razor-sharp humor, and social satire.

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Book SynopsisWith help from American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs, Birds and Poets is a set of essays. Burroughs writes approximately his love of birds and his mind on poetry and the innovative spirit. He is known for his keen perspectives of nature and the outside. In this series, Burroughs seems at how birds and literary suggestion are linked. He talks approximately the beauty and value of hen song and how the world of birds can encourage poets. Burroughs makes use of stunning language to make human beings enjoy the complicated melodies and behaviors of different forms of chickens. He does this through drawing comparisons among their herbal expressions and poets' creative mind. Birds and Poets writings are just like Burroughs' transcendentalist thoughts in that they stress the non-secular hyperlink between people and the natural international. He writes approximately how nature can heal and inspire, and he makes use of birds as examples of splendor and as literary idea. Burroughs' writing style is both helpful and considerate. It makes readers take a look at the sector via the eyes of a naturalist and discover thought within the simple beauty of birds.

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Book SynopsisAn anthology of poetry on Nikkei incarceration, written by descendants of the WWII prisons and campsA tribute to the 150,000 people incarcerated by the United States and Canada during WWII, this anthology is the first of its kind. The poetry expresses a range of experiences and perspectives from the afterlife of this historical yet enduring injustice. With a foreword by acclaimed poet, activist, and concentration camp survivor, Mitsuye Yamada, and an introduction by the editors, poets Brynn Saito and Brandon Shimoda, The Gate of Memory explores intergenerational trauma as the contributors, all of whom are descendants of those who were incarcerated, sift through an intimate record of wartime incarceration. Contributors to this anthology include poets of Japanese American, Japanese Canadian, Okinawan American, Okinawan Canadian, Japanese Hawaiian, Alaska Native, mixed race Nikkei, and Japanese descent. Their poems reimagine, reinhabit, and retell the story of incarceration while embodying its many legacies, through a diversity of modes and themes, creating a panoramic portrait of anti-Asian racism, assimilation, loyalty, resistance, and redemption. The anthology illuminates individual perspectives and reveals collective experience. It insists upon the imperative of poetry in the processes of solidarity and transgenerational healing. With contributions from: Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, Brittany Arita, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Brian Komei Dempster, Miya Folick, Sesshu Foster, Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, Steve Fujimura, Laura K. Fukumoto, Cathlin Goulding, Rebecca A. Green, Richard Hamasaki, Sharon Hashimoto, Casey Hidekawa Lane/Levinski, Garrett Hongo, Jodi Hottel, Kurt Yokoyama Ikeda, Kevin Irie, Michael Ishii, Erica H. Isomura, Lauren Emiko Ito, Susan Kiyo Ito, Miya Iwataki, Dr. Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, W. Todd Kaneko, Traci Kato-Kiriyama, Amanda Mei Kim, Christine Kitano, Aisuke Kondo, Garrett Kurai, Keiko Lane, Katherine Terumi Laubscher, Alison Lubar, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Angela Marian May, Ali Meyers-Ohki, Emily Mitamura, Hikari Leilani Miya, Starr Sumie Miyata, James Fujinami Moore, Paulette Tkl Un Yeik Moreno, David Mura, Heather Nagami, Noriko Nakada, Greer Nakadegawa-Lee, Carolyn Nakagawa, Yukiko Nakagura, Ryan Hitoshi Nakano, Tamiko Nimura, Mona Oikawa, Troy Osaki, Michael Prior, Brynn Saito, Rob Sato, Brandon Shimoda, Patrick Shiroishi, Leanne Toshiko Simpson, Dana Swensen, Kenneth Tanemura, Micah Tasaka, George Uba, Amy Uyematsu, Terry Watada, Anne Watanabe, Syd Westley, Sho Yamagushiku, Doug Yamamoto, Traise Yamamoto

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Book SynopsisSo many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are in verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of a transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form's sake, and the new form is itself different from the original No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than the Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary distinction, no poem has an intellectual and emotional substance more independent of its metrical form. At the age of thirty-five, Dante is lost. Metaphorically by temptation and the turns of life's ever-changing path; and literally, in a dark and ominous wood to which there seems no escape. Attacked by three beasts of Hell, Dante has no recourse but to retreat into the hopeless darkness of the wood, saved only by the light of the Roman poet, Virgil sent forth to guide him through the underworld and to salvation by the Divine Symbol of Love, Beatrice. Journeying through the Nine Circles of Satan's domain, Dante is met by historical figures and acquaintances alikewhose acts of violence, fraud, treachery, and betrayal in life forged chains of nightmares and suffering in death. Hailed as one of the greatest works of literature ever written, The Divine Comedy is a highly influential poem that has dazzled readers for over five centuries, with its' first book, The Inferno, being one of the most recognizable pieces of fiction ever published. Revisit the masterfully crafted story of Dante's descent into Hell, with a beloved translation by revered American scholar Charles Eliot Norton, adapted into prose. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

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Book SynopsisThese paired Arthurian legends suggest that erotic desire and the desire for companionship undergird national politics. The maiden Britomart, Queen Elizabeth''s fictional ancestor, dons armor to search for a man whom she has seen in a crystal ball. While on this quest, she seeks to understand how one can be chaste while pursuing a sexual goal, in love with a man while passionately attached to a woman, a warrior princess yet a wife. As Spenser''s most sensitively developed character, Britomart is capable of heroic deeds but also of teenage self-pity. Her experience is anatomized in the stories of other characters, where versions of love and friendship include physical gratification, torture, mutual aid, competition, spiritual ecstasy, self-sacrifice, genial teasing, jealousy, abduction, wise government, sedition, and the valiant defense of a pig shed.Trade ReviewTeachers of Spenser will also welcome two more installments of the Hackett editions of separate books of The Faerie Queene under the general editorship of Abraham Stoll, this time on books 2 and on books 3 and 4. In my view, these are the most attractive, inexpensive, but also comprehensive editions to date, with far better (and easy to read) notes on mythology and name symbolism (matters increasingly foreign to our undergraduates) than almost all previous versions. --Catherine Gimelli Martin, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900In his introduction, Erik Gray offers a tidy preface to book 2 of The Faerie Queene, providing a brief but provocative discussion of some of Spenser's sources and poetic models. In his introductory subsections, Gray's analysis begins with more basic material and becomes progressively complex in sequential paragraphs, offering compelling points of departure for further study by readers at all levels. In addition, Gray offers a list of some later writers influenced by Spenser's writing, situating Spenser in the broader literary canon and defining some preliminary connections for students for many literary fields. To encourage the reader's further inquiry, Gray highlights a particularly troubling passage from book 2, offering various critical perspectives on the portrayal of Temperance therein, and grounding further interpretation. --Rachel E. Frier, Sixteenth Century JournalTable of ContentsThe Faerie Queene, Book Three; The Faerie Queene, Book Four; The Letter to Raleigh; The Life of Edmund Spenser; Textual Notes; Glossary; Index of Characters; Works Cited.

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Book SynopsisOffers a bilingual text and features a translation of the canticle of "The Divine Comedy" by the translator of Virgil's "Aeneid" and Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". This title includes Introduction and Notes by Anthony Oldcorn.Trade ReviewI deeply admired Lombardo's translations of Iliad and Odyssey, as did my students--they were universally complimentary, loving the way the poetry flowed, and many of them learned the habit of reading the text aloud, much to the astonishment of their classmates from other sections of the courses. But their encounter with his Inferno was of a different order, as was mine. Lombardo's Inferno is so knowledgeable of the translation tradition (which it uses to marvelous effect), so poetically well-crafted, so compelling to read, so well-documented without overwhelming the reader, that I simply did not want to put it down. My students had much the same reaction. Although in the first session they were responsible for only the first third of the book, I quickly noticed that most of them had already read it through. They found it compelling to read and were captivated by a journey to which many of them had the week before said they did not look forward. --Ted Humphrey, Barrett Professor in the Barrett Honors College, Arizona State University"This newest verse translation offered by Stanley Lombardo artfully carries into English the radical vernacularity, both linguistic and cultural, of Dante’s Inferno. Readers and teachers who want a text that will resonate with contemporary and colloquial American English would do well to choose this translation. Lombardo’s translation revels in the street music of Dante’s vernacular poetry and occasional vulgar style in the Inferno. At times the interaction between Dante's stock devils, the Malebranche, sounds like the dialogue in a Scorsese fillm. ""Lombardo performs other poetic feats so that Dante’s poetry might stand out in English with the same vitality with which Dante infused his vernacular poem. Lombardo finishes every canto with a brief interlocked rhymed passage to give the reader a taste of Dante’s terza rima. He also shifts into rhyme for Dante’s diatribes. As Lombardo aptly points out in his preface, style and meaning must cohere if the art of the poet is to resurface in a translation, and the forcefulness of his translation allows Dante’s harsh poetry to carry through." "The volume contains various helpful tools for the reader to understand the Inferno, both as an expression of the medieval intellect and as a cornerstone of the European literary tradition, and provides ample headnotes, prepared by veteran Dante scholar Anthony Oldcorn, to each canto. Neither a simple summary nor a detailed gloss, the notes do provide narrative signposts while giving a feel for the myriad ethical, philosophical, and poetical themes that Dante confronts." "The eminent Dante scholar Steven Botterill provides a masterly introduction to the Inferno that grounds the poem in Dante’s Italy while refraining from dwelling on unnecessary detail. Botterill organizes the introduction into themes rather than offering a vita auctoris. The novice reader of Dante will learn the important facts of Dante’s life without having ever read the word Guelph or Ghibelline. Instead, Botterill, following his translator, emphasizes Dante as a vernacular poet and the radical invention of his poem." "Similarly, the endnotes, by Oldcorn, opt for brevity and elegance over the exhaustive apparatus that accompanies many editions of the Commedia. Reading Oldcorn’s endnotes is like discussing the text over coffee with a remarkably sophisticated friend. He diligently fills in expected gaps in the reader’s literary knowledge while also engaging in an urbane literary conversation. Oldcorn covers Dante’s fundamental literary genealogies while paying attention to his place in the Western tradition. This translation aims to bring Dante to a new audience of readers who are unfamiliar with Dante and the Italian tradition in general." --Jason M. Houston, Speculum

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Book SynopsisThe Wanderer's Journal, a pocket-sized (4 x 6) notebook, features a smyth-sewn binding with a ribbon marker and a flexible hardcover with a copper foil embossed image of Odin's ravens, Hugin and Munin, stamped on the front. In addition to 148 blank ruled pages, the journal includes 13 illustrated rune pages with rune translations on the reverse pages. The rune illustrations by E.L. Wilson are based on Dr. Jackson Crawford's handwritten runes from 13 verses he selected from the Norse poem Hávamál. The translations are sourced from Dr. Crawford's frank and down-to-earth translations from The Cowboy Hávamál, included in his 2019 Hackett Publishing book,The Wanderer's Hávamál.The Old Norse was written with the sixteen-letter Younger Futhark runic alphabet, which is used in this journal.

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