Poetry / Poems

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFinalist, 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Lucille Clifton is one of the four or five most authentic and profound living American poets.--Denise Levertov

Read more less

Book SynopsisAimed at students and readers of poetry at all levels, The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry takes a tour through a galaxy of examples, demonstrating how to come to terms with poetry's verbal, formal, emotional, and conceptual power. It shows how reading poems enhances our enjoyment and understanding of life.Trade Review'One of the advantages this book will have over competitors in the field is that its tone and approach are grounded in practical experience of introducing challenging texts to readers who are relatively inexperienced with (and not a little afraid of) poetry. Andrew Hodgson's guide manages to make reading poetry continuously exciting without sacrificing difficulty. Consistently literary, it makes the literary available rather than austerely or arcanely remote. Above, all students will listen because the advice is presented without condescension as if from a writer addressing fellow-practitioners. I will certainly be recommending this book to my first-year close readers and I am sincerely heartened by the fact that, published by Cambridge University Press, it is set to become a standard text.' Josie Billington, University of Liverpool'Any student of poetry, not just beginners, should find this book helpful and encouraging. Its tone is amiable but not condescending, its range of themes and examples is generous, and its insights are sensible, interesting and smart.' Michael Ferber, University of New HampshireDeeply thoughtful and superbly eloquent, this is the most inspiring guide to the study of poetry that I've ever encountered. It's an introduction and a masterclass at once. Like the literature it illuminates, this book has riches to offer readers of every kind. Refusing bullet points and jargon, refusing to flatten or over-simplify, Hodgson takes us seriously. Opening up conversation at every turn, he encourages us to embrace poetry in all its exhilarating complexity and to feel it changing our minds. He looks carefully under the microscope at rhyme and metre, form and voice, and – inseparably – he makes a powerfully sustained argument for the transformative presence of literature in our lives. … In sum it's as idiosyncratic, argumentative, stylish, loving and generally human as literature is and textbooks aren't.' Alexandra Harris, University of Birmingham'Hodgson's guide is lucid, learned, and just plain useful. He patiently and precisely describes the pleasures and value of reading and writing about verse. Filled with a wide selection of well-wrought exempla and some well-culled insights from poets themselves, the book beautifully describes why poetry matters and how it works. Like the best poets, Hodgson thinks and feels deeply about words.' Stephen Dobranski, Distinguished University Professor, Georgia State University'This is an incredibly useful, accessible guide for anyone interested in sharpening their appreciation of poetry. Andrew Hodgson's book manages to be engaging and friendly, even when introducing potentially intimidating topics like metre and scansion, without ever patronising the reader or reducing the complexity of the ideas raised. He also never loses sight of the fact that students need to discover their own reasons for engaging with poetry, beyond the mundane demands of university assessment. Through its series of wide-ranging and lucidly explored examples, his book inspires a further plunge into poetic history, by reminding us that poetry is a vital record of the diversity of human experience, rather than a rarefied separation from it.' Dr Sarah Parker, Loughborough University'… the book's language is accessible, lucid, and direct, rarely dipping into undefined poetic jargon. As such, The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry would be useful for technical communicators looking to reintroduce themselves to the act of reading poetry critically, or even those looking for a way to write a guide for difficult and diffuse subjects with clarity.' Dylan Schrader, Technical CommunicationTable of ContentsIntroduction: Reading Poetry; 1. Reading a Poem; 2. Studying a Poet; 3. Writing about Poetry; Epilogue: What Should You Read?; Glossary of Common Forms and Genres; Further Reading.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom poetry slam champion Porsha O, a debut collection exploring black womanhood.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPoetry sensation Neil Hilborn returns with a highly anticipated second collection.

Read more less

Book Synopsis** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER **THE DEBUT POETRY COLLECTION FROM THE ORIGINAL MUMMY'S BOY, HUSSAIN MANAWER.'I remember the day I wrote my first ever poem, I was sitting on my bed in the attic and started jotting down lines on this little notepad, little did I know where it would lead me professionally, personally and also psychologically. This is my life's work to this date, all my notes, my favourite pieces that have served me through my darkest nights and carried me through every moment of pain, suffering, anxiety, panic and hardship.'Hussain's debut poetry collection will invite readers on his journey through depression and grief, and out the other side to a better place - there will be joy, hope, tears and laughter - the emotions that make up the fabric of human experience. His words will remind readers, that even in your lowest moments you can find the gold dust, Life is Sad and Beautiful will shift outlooks and stand as a powerful vehicle for growth and change.ABOUT HUSSAIN:Hussain Manawer is a globally acclaimed Poet, Mental Health Advocate and Producer - who was born in Newham and shortly after grew up in Ilford, Essex. Tagged 'The Original Mummy's Boy', Hussain derives much of his inspiration from his own experiences and intense grief at the sudden loss of his mother. Dignitaries, major brands and broadcasters seek him out to articulate the mental health struggles our world is facing. Amongst the credits to his name, commissions and collaborations include The Royal Family, The BAFTAs, The FA, Global Citizen, One Young World, Burberry, Anthony Joshua, Marcus Rashford, Tyson Fury, England FC, Peaky Blinders, Soccer Aid For UNICEF, Apple TV+ and many more.He most recently appeared alongside Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey in the mental health docu-series, 'The Me You Can't See', alongside Lady Gaga, Glen Close and others. Hussain's poetry can also be heard on the Archewell Audio Podcast Christmas Special with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Manawer was called upon earlier this year by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to create the 'Mental Health Minute' which was broadcast on all radio stations with an all-star line-up including David Beckham, Joanna Lumley, Shirley Bassey, Jessie Lingard, Jamie Oliver, Anne Marie and Charles Dance.Trade ReviewAn important exploration of navigating the darkest places - and coming through with hope. -- Red MagazineIt's powerful stuff, piercing the heart of what it means to experience grief, articulating the most confusing parts of the fog. -- I-D

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplorations of plant consciousness and human interactions with the natural world. From apples to ayahuasca, coffee to kurrajong, passionflower to peyote, plants are conscious beings. How they interact with each other, with  humanity and with the world at large has long been studied by researchers, scientists and spiritual teachers and seekers. The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence brings together works from all these disciplines and more in a collection of essays that highlights what we know and what we intuit about botanical life. The Mind of Plants, featuring a foreword by Dennis McKenna, is a collection of short essays, narratives and poetry on plants and their interaction with humans. Contributors include Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the New York Times’ best seller Braiding SweetgrassTrade Review “This is the book I have been waiting for! For far too long a deep ignorance has prevailed that plants are just inanimate objects. Now for the benefit of the whole of humanity The Mind of Plants dispels the darkness of that ignorance. The book is a bouquet of beautiful essays which delighted me with the knowledge that the plants are living organisms and we need to celebrate their sublime qualities with awe and gratitude. It is an enlightening book! The Mind of Plants integrates the science of ecology and biology with the pleasure of poetry and literature. It should become an essential part of the curriculum of all schools and universities. And of course it should be read by all those who wish to learn about the intricate mystery of plant life.” — Satish Kumar, Founder of Schumacher College, Editor Emeritus, Resurgence & Ecologist “This marvellous and hugely important book brings us a vitally important gift: the gift of melting – of melting our human consciousness into the varied and multifarious intelligences that live and thrive in the world of plants. Speaking to us through their human interlocutors, the plants in this book urge us to heal the disastrous split between ourselves and the world of nature so tragically instigated by Descartes and his many followers and successors. May the rich teachings from our plant kith and kin in this splendid book reawaken us to the wondrous sentience of our living planet, now brought so close to disaster by the greed and blindness of the modern world.” — Dr. Stephan Harding, Deep Ecology Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Holistic Science, Schumacher College. Author of Animate Earth and Gaia Alchemy “For millennia, we have taken the vegetable world for granted, deeming it inferior and devoid of inner purpose or complexity. This beautifully-curated volume combines research, cross-cultural narratives and personal experiences to unveil a profoundly different plant world, inviting us to rethink what we mean by intelligence and to reevaluate our place in Nature with open minds and renewed humility.” — Marcelo Gleiser, 2019 Templeton Prize Laureate, author of The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected “I hope this important, wide-ranging, and easy-to-read book enjoys a broad audience including researchers and people who simply love being in the presence of all types of florae. I'm sure that the more we study plants the more we'll see that the real question at hand is not if they have their own sorts of minds, but rather why plant minds have evolved and how they're used. "Animal-centric" views about "minds" need to be broadened to include all living beings on our magnificent planet. Science has already shown that merely visiting plants can alter herbivory, including seed production and competition—the Herbivory Uncertainty Principle—so let's keep the door open about the inner lives of the diverse florae that bless Earth. As someone who has studied nonhuman animal minds for decades, I've seen many changes in the narrow and dismissive views that once questioned whether nonhumans really had minds, and I'm sure that we'll see a similar broadening of attitudes about plant minds as relevant studies are performed and people shelve the idea that the notion of plant minds is absurd and anti-scientific.” — Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals and A Dog's World: Imaging the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans "This eclectic 21st century Herbal will take you on a joyous ride of discovery of connection between plants and people. Through the medium of stories, poetry or science the complexity and beauty of plant intelligence is reflected. This surprising, illuminating and diverse collection is a much needed antidote to 'plant blindness' so common in our societies, encouraging us to see, hear and feel the green life all around us. Throughout the book there are beautiful illustrations that bring the text alive". —Anya Ermakova, PhD is a member of Chacruna Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants “I absorbed Mind of Plants whole in just two days. With impressive breadth this book introduced me to plants around the world and to their place in different cultures. From metaphorically setting down roots to the literal thoughts engendered by electrical pulses, each chapter elegantly introduced different concepts and made me reflect as much on myself as on the natural world.” — Alice Little, Writer in Residence, Wytham Woods, University of Oxford, alicelittle.co.uk “Forget those weary stereotypes of hippies intoning to their geraniums. In this elegant, necessary and provocative collection, a new generation of philosophers, scholars, scientists, writers, artists and poets examine their relationship with plants, not as materials or useful things or means to our ends, but as kin. They ask us to put our preconceptions to one side and to receive plants as they actually are, all the while grappling with those most perplexing and tabooed philosophical questions: what is it to be a plant? and even, can plants actually think? Their answers will delight, enchant, challenge, and doubtless infuriate, but to be asking such questions at this moment of anthropogenic ecological crisis could not be more timely. They may yet change the way you view plants forever.” — Andy Letcher D.Phil (Oxon.), Ph.D is a Senior Lecturer at Schumacher College, UK, where he is Programme Lead for the MA Engaged Ecology. He is the author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom “Ryan, Viera, and Gagliano have cultivated an exemplary herbarium of stories, poems, and deeply personal essays centered around plants themselves. Each contribution begins from the uncommon assumption of intelligence in plants and presents novel ways of thinking about and with each species. Incorporating critical insights on plants from the sciences and humanities, The Mind of Plants is sensuous, grounded, and accessible. This book is vital for anyone who has ever felt a connection with a plant.” — Laura Pustarfi, Ph.D., Plant Studies Scholar “The Mind of Plants is a portal. The diverse, intimate layers of human and vegetal voices and experiences move us beyond the confines of our homo sapiens centrality to absorb, open to, and be opened by the ways trees and plants know, initiate, navigate, socialize, shape—mind— their lives and communities. Each plant encounter in these pages spins our modern conditioning a little, and a little more—softly, sensually, profoundly shifting what is continually re-enforced as the only paradigm through which to be with and know the green world: as inert resource solely for human consumption and well-being. Emerging from the portal, changed and humbled, we are held in a deepened sense of awe, interconnection, love, respect, perspective, and empathy for the minded aliveness and engagements of plants in their own right. The Mind of Plants is a portal of vital and overdue importance.” — Dr. Sarah Abbott, interdisciplinary researcher of sentient relations of trees, and associate professor at the University of Regina “The Mind of Plants is an enchanting collection of short reflections on the privileged encounter with plants as cognitive, mindful beings. Poetic, essayistic, and very personal, this book is full of insightful thoughts which are filling an important lacuna in human understanding that science cannot explain: The mind emerges from the encounter with a myriad of other beings. The Indigenous Amazonian people have long known and experienced their rainforest as a field of mind. To plug into the intelligence of this forest is a practice, that once discovered, has kept the author’s strong ties to these territories alive over decades.” — Ursula Biemann, artist, curator, and theorist “From apples to Ayahuasca, from spinach to Xiang-Si, this wide-ranging collection serves up forty essays and fourteen poems that, each in its own singular voice, collectively meditate on how and why plants scratch, sting, enchant, nourish, illuminate, intoxicate and enslave us. The contributors—including biologists, ethnobotanists, chemists, physicians, anthropologists, philosophers, writers and artists from diverse cultural backgrounds—enliven the emerging field of study on plant intelligence by interweaving poetry, personal stories, scientific findings and spiritual insights, sometimes within the same entry. Authors Jeremy Narby and Prudence Gibson invite us to “vegetalize” our thinking as well as our writing, while Alex Gearin warns of the dangers of projecting human intentions onto the radical otherness that constitutes the plant mind, lest we “reckless sorcerers of the Anthropocene” leave the world a sadder place. Equal parts herbal manual and alchemical spell book, this beautifully illustrated volume will appeal to scientists, shamans and poets alike.” — Glenn H. Shepard Jr., Ph.D., Ethnobotanist and Museum Curator at the Goeldi Museum, Brazil “How can you not love a botanical treasure trove that begins with apples and ayahuasca, ends with yoco and yopo and features inspired writing from luminaries like Robin Kimmerer, Luis Eduardo Luna, Dennis McKenna and Jeremy Narby? A feast for the heart, mind, and ethnobotanical soul!” — Mark Plotkin, PhD, Ethnobotanist and Host of the Plants of the Gods Podcast “Crafted by more than fifty wise spirits, The Mind of Plants offers us a key to the planetary garden.” — Zheng Bo, PhD, Filmmaker and artist

Read more less

Book SynopsisBullhe Shah’s work is among the glories of Panjabi literature, and the iconic eighteenth-century poet is widely regarded as a master of mystical Sufi poetry. This striking new translation is the most authoritative and engaging introduction to an enduring South Asian classic.Trade ReviewThe lucid and informative introduction by the volume’s editor and translator, Christopher Shackle, takes readers through the trajectory of Sufism from Persia to India and the several orders within the movement in India. But most useful is a short essay on the themes of the lyrics. The poems that follow open up in all their appeal, universal and timeless in their great subject of love, endearing in their simplicity of expressiveness. -- Neel Mukherjee * New Statesman *Drawing from the Sufi tradition of mysticism, Bullhe Shah wrote poetry that is sharp, simple and immortal. His verses question strictures of organized religion and societal norms. They are beautiful paeans to romantic and mystical love underpinned by rich spiritual philosophy. -- Pragya Tiwari * India at LSE blog *

Read more less

Book SynopsisPenguin presents the unabridged audio CD edition of Mythos written and read by Stephen Fry.THE TIMES AUDIOBOOK OF THE WEEK''Perfect for the 21st Century. Ebullient, funny, Fry retells the Greek myths with elegance'' The Times''A cracking good story'' The Times Literary Supplement ''A wondrous new immersion in ancient stories we only thought we knew. Page to page, Mythos is brilliant, funny, erudite, inventive, surprising and enthralling'' Richard North Patterson''Fry''s lively writing certainly conveys his lifelong passion for Greek myths . . . It''s a rollicking good read'' The Independent_________No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly and brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. They are like us, only more so - their actions and adventures scrawled across the heavens above. From the birth of the univTrade ReviewThe Greek myths are told to you here by the ever-soothing voice of Stephen Fry, who takes you from Zeus to Athena with his typical humour. The Greek gods of the past become relatable as pop culture, modern literature and music are woven throughout. It is joyfully informal yet full of the literary legacy threaded through so much of the tapestry of contemporary Greece * The Guardian *Wit and erudition are impressively evident . . . Read by Fry with his accustomed ebullient showmanship [he] gives the legends modern resonance by telling them with a contemporary colloquial twist' -- AUDIOBOOK of the WEEK * The Times *Mythos is the best thing he's written since his superb first novel . . . it is entertaining and edifying - one cannot really ask for more than that * The Telegraph *Fry's lively writing certainly conveys his lifelong passion for Greek myths . . . It's a rollicking good read * The Independent *Fry reimagines the Greek myths with wit, warmth and humanity, bringing them into the modern age. A welcome addition to any bookshelf * Book Bag *Mythos is Stephen's vivid retelling of the Greek myths. Bringing to life the Gods, monsters and mortals of Ancient Greece, he reimagines their astonishing stories for the modern world. * Express and Star *Perfect for the 21st Century. Ebullient, funny, Fry retells the Greek myths with elegance * The Times *A wondrous new immersion in ancient stories we only thought weknew. Page to page, Mythos is brilliant, funny, erudite, inventive, surprising and enthralling -- Richard North Patterson * - *[Fry] exhibits prodigious learning, a great facility with words, and enormous erudition and enthusiasm * Mail on Sunday *Lively, humorous and intimate, this retelling has real charm * The Guardian *Fry takes us from Zeus to Athena with humour. The Greek gods of the past become relatable as pop culture, modern literature and music are woven throughout. Joyfully informal yet full of the literary legacy * Guardian *Fresh revivals of the myths of ancient Greece. In his own imitable style, Fry takes an erudite look at the doings of gods, goddesses, kings, queens and ordinary mortals * The Bay *I quite like Mythos, Stephen Fry's book on the Greek myths - he makes them amusing. I like people that illuminate the past with humour -- Jools HollandMythos has the gripping nature that one would hope for from a modern blockbuster. Filled with a sharp and delightful sense of humour, Stephen Fry's many witticisms making it an even more enjoyable read. I would recommend it for so many reasons * The National *Brilliant . . . Stephen Fry's writing style makes it appealing to all. There's something for everyone * The Herald *Reimagines the lives of ancient Greek gods and goddesses through a humorous lens, using casual language and making valuable comparisons to modern characters or events. It's also just really, really funny * American Express Essentials *Arguably the greatest living Englishman * Indendent on Sunday *The patron saint of British intelligence * Daily Telegraph *National Treasure: noun - someone or something regarded as emblematic of a nation's cultural heritage, such as Stephen Fry * Oxford English Dictionary *

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry PrizeRichard Osmond's debut collection Useful Verses follows in the tradition of the best nature writing, being as much about the human world as the natural, the present as the past: Osmond, a professional forager, has a deep knowledge of flora and fauna as they appear in both natural and human history, as they are depicted in both folklore and herbal - but he views them through a wholly contemporary lens. Chamomile is discussed through quantum physics, ants through social media, wood sorrel through online gambling, and mugwort through a traffic cone. In each case, Osmond offers an arresting and new perspective, and makes that hidden world that lives and breathes beside us vividly part of our own. This is a fiercely inventive, darkly witty and brilliantly observed debut from a voice unlike any other you have read before - and as far from any quaint and conservative notion of 'nature poetry' as it is possible to get.Trade ReviewUseful Verses is a remarkable first collection: great precision of language married to a uniquely informed and focused view of the natural world. -- William BoydOsmond's job as a wild-food forager makes it unsurprising that his debut collection, Useful Verses, should be such a treasure trove of information. But what gives his poems energy is not just that they exhibit a deft authority on plants and poisons, remedies and road-kill, but that they are equally attuned to human and digital environments. The result is a work that reveals much about the world, both ancient and modern. * Guardian *‘Useful Verses is a wonderfully original collection, which relishes and renews everything that poetry can do with language. It’s also a challenging vision of our relations with the natural world.’ -- Professor Edna Longley, Chair of the judging panel for The Seamus Heaney Centre: First Collection Poetry Prize 2018

Read more less

Book SynopsisRomanticism coincided with two major historical developments: the Industrial Revolution, and with it, a turning point in our relationship to the earth, its inhabitants, and its climate. Drawing on Marxism and philosophy of science, The Calamity Form shines new light on Romantic poetry, identifying a number of rhetorical tropes used by writers to underscore their very failure to make sense of our move to industrialization. Anahid Nersessian explores works by Friedrich Hölderlin, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and others to argue that as the human and ecological costs of industry became clear, Romantic poetry adopted formal strategiesamong them parataxis, the setting of elements side by side in a manner suggestive of postindustrial dissonance, and apostrophe, here an address to an absent or vanishing natural environmentas it tried and failed to narrate the calamities of capitalism. These tropes reflect how Romantic authors took their bewilderment and turned it into a poetics: a theoTrade Review"Reading this always arresting, often startling study feels a little like reading a poem by Donne; unlike things and scales of attention get pressed together to yield a new kind of understanding, at once intellectual and emotional. . . . [The Calamity Form] is a page-turner, the likes of which I can’t remember encountering. Reading Nersessian is like talking to a person of enormous intelligence, originality, creativity, energy, wit, confidence, and style who also works to make herself unknowing enough—vulnerable, susceptible enough—to channel the unheard melodies of the best known of Romantic era poems." -- Marjorie Levinson * Critical Inquiry *"The Calamity Form injects a Marxist soul into Deconstruction’s veins. . . [The Calamity Form] is thoroughly a book of the present and is poised to become a touchstone of contemporary Romantic studies." -- Bakary Diaby * Los Angeles Review of Books *"The Calamity Form gives a compelling demonstration of how we might have our formalist cake and eat history too. . . . Formalism doesn’t mean a total sidelining of the historical, but a commitment to studying how literature creates structures that are abstracted from the world. . . . The Calamity Form is a work of Marxist criticism whose key tenet and admirable example is to call for Marxist critics to do their jobs carefully: to use the tools of formal analysis to make precise, ambitious claims about how texts mediate the conditions of their composition." -- Jack Chelgren * Chicago Review *"Nersessian reads promiscuously, in the best sense, across disciplines, traditions, and languages. It's a densely crafted book fairly brimming with ideas—there is action on every page—and it's written with brio and an almost Pynchonesque vocabulary. . . . Nersessian’s prose takes risks and in a small way is commensurate with the excesses she charts so well in Keats or with which she rhymes in Adorno. It is likely we will be coming to terms for years to come with this distinctive foray into clouds of unknowing." -- Ian Balfour * Studies in Romanticism *"Calamity form is simply 'a caution against taking the heroic possibilities of literature too seriously.' That leaves plenty more to take seriously, chiefly the experience of these texts, which Nersessian both plumbs and re-creates with erudition, verve, extraordinary intelligence, and a literary mind par excellence." -- William Galperin * Modern Language Quarterly *"Nersessian brings a new and deeper understanding to Romantic poetry’s response to capitalism, but she also includes discussions of 20th- and 21st-century visual media. Because of this range and the author's attentive 'thinking about the limits of historical materialism for literary study', this probing, erudite study will appeal to scholars interested in such subjects as formalism, ecocriticism, Marxist theory, and literary theory as well as to those who study literature." * Choice *“Acute, lyrical, beautifully researched, and crisply argued, The Calamity Form tracks the ‘slender promise’ of momentary solace Romantic poetry made in the face of early nineteenth-century capitalism. Though Nersessian ratchets down the claims that have been made on the poetry’s behalf, she neither imagines it as simply making peace with the world as it was, or as guilty of the failure to change it. Instead, The Calamity Form sees in its archive a myriad of subtle openings onto possible futures, offering not a solution to capitalism but a range of wary, vigilant attitudes toward it, probing something like what Nersessian suggests Keats thought was ‘the upside of degradation.’ It is a powerful book.” -- Christopher Nealon, Johns Hopkins University“To name the Industrial Revolution as ‘the calamity form’ is to begin at the end, at the birth of a total transformation that will promise planetary death. This book intervenes into an astonishing multiplicity of debates: poetry and its scholarship, ecocriticism, the matter of capital, literary theory, and more. It renovates Romanticism and takes its place in the blossoming field of Marxist poetics. But perhaps most of all it is a demand, careful and clear, that we unmake the world that gave us this calamity and the calamity that gave us this world. At this late date, a romantic communism is no longer possible; a communist romanticism herein makes its return.” -- Joshua Clover, University of California, Davis"Anahid Nersessian's star has ascended at a pace almost unheard of in our contemporary moment, where ambitious theory is mostly in abeyance, and the sheer glut of publications, to say nothing of our deracinated academic labor market, makes it nigh impossible to gain a hearing beyond one’s narrow disciplinary specialism. Nersessian stands out in part because hers is a critical voice that often enough refuses the scholarly commonplaces of our age, not least an adherence to positivist notions of 'context' and the 'archive.' Of her three monographs to date, The Calamity Form is, I think, the best." * Genre *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Parataxis; or, Modern Gardens Chapter Two: Wordsworth’s Obscurity Chapter Three: Keats and Catachresis Chapter Four: Apostrophe: Clouds Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry 2017Claudia Rankine described the poems in Alsadir’s first book as 'lawless,' ‘provocative, and 'heartbreaking' as they 'converse from the inside out… come alive in the back and forth of a mind attempting to understand what it means to be in relation to.’ Fourth Person Singular continues to blow open the relationship between self and world in a working through of lyric shame, bending poetic form through fragment, lyric essay, aphorisms mined from the unconscious, and pop-up associations, to explore the complexities, congruities, disturbances - as well as the beauty - involved in self-representation in language. As unexpected as it is bold, Alsadir's ambitious tour de force demands we pay new attention to the current conversation about the nature of lyric – and human relationships – in the 21st century.Trade ReviewReviews Fourth Person Singular ‘defends and explodes lyric form.’ Walton Muyumba, National Book Critics Circle ‘Blazingly intelligent.’ Patrick Flanery, BBC Radio 4 Open Book ‘It’s a way of writing, fragmentary, distilled, claiming for itself the unmediated interior lyrical thought without its usual formal decoration, that seems particularly current... looking aslant at the grand narratives... pressing at the problem (of creativity/authenticity) with a kind of honesty the lyric doesn’t have, disowning the lyric, whilst simultaneously stealing all its furniture.' Sasha Dugdale, PN Review ‘While there’s a buzz of Superwoman sci-fi, even self- satire, about some of this...Alsadir makes a whole book out of a notion English readers have found hard to grasp for the past half-century, that it isn’t the poet who narrates the poem but the writer’s creative persona addressing a created listener...Fourth Person Singular [is] ambitious, witty, profound and fun.’ Magma Poetry Magazine ‘Tonally quiet yet barbed with insight.’ BK Fischer, American Book Review ‘One of the strangest most provocative books of poetry to arrive in these islands in many years.’ Dave Coates, Dave Poems ‘Written mostly as prose poems, the vignettes, aphorisms and anecdotes in Alsadir’s second poetry collection, Fourth Person Singular, turn inward to explore the rabbit holes of daily experience. Alsadir is an alchemist of the mundane. She finds metaphors in everything from highbrow art films and philosophy. The poems get emotionally messy, which I find exciting because this is a poet who knows a thing or two about rabbit holes and chooses to explore them anyway.’ Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet ‘[A] flashing and aphoristic examination of the anxious mind.’ Jeremy Noel-Todd, The Sunday Times ‘To read Fourth Person Singular is to fall in love – that’s all I can say to capture the experience of being so scarily and exhilaratingly close to someone else’s thoughts on every vital page. Alsadir’s work is, as ever, full of astute observations and insights driven by a deep intellect, alive to the world and our fears, pressures, dreams and ideas. But there’s something greater here too: a unity of form and content, process and delivery which transfigures the conceptual and the lyric. I don't remember the last time I've read something which is at once so alive and so vigorously smart and ambitious; uniquely self-aware, caustically funny whilst constantly generous and compassionate. The rare joy of a writer finding the exact form for their voice and their mission. Essential reading.’ Luke Kennard ‘The movement from philosophy to personal experience, poetry, and atrocity, is intuitive yet careful, and without voyeuristic flânerie.’ Paul Batchelor, The New Statesman ‘A relief from the unbending isolated lyricism of mainstream British poetry.’ Sandeep Parmar, The White Review 'Books of the year' list ‘Fourth Person Singular is poetry that is neither verse nor exactly prose poetry, but aphorism, perception, quotation, annotation, a squeezing between the gaps in the windows and doorways of experience seeking for air. It is more than its pieces: it is a whole that is a form of understanding. It is that whole that is the complex and revelatory poem.’ George Szirtes ‘An important book for contemporary poetry.’ Sophie Collins, The White Review ‘Fourth Person Singular is an exhilarating, scrambling, blankly depressing, grieving, stabbing, and brilliant attempt at restoring silence (and thought) to our experience of the world.’ Will Harris, The Poetry School ‘[S]ardonically funny as well as cerebral', 'Alsadir’s “I” is refracted through a series of simultaneous and overlapping texts; lyric fragments jostle with footnotes, annotations and marginalia, all of which explode the “fiction of a singular voice”.’ Joanne O'Leary, The Times Literary Supplement ‘Fourth Person Singular is an elegant reckoning with the paradoxical temporality and multiple ontology of first-person writing. In probing the possibility and claims of lyric poetry, as well as its relationship to shame, Alsadir provides a powerful, ambivalent, yet beautiful instance of its ongoing need.’ Katherine Angel ‘Fourth Person Singular… merges questions of psychoanalysis and the self with fragmented considerations of lyric meaning.’ Rebecca Tamás, The White Review

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA collected series of intertwined poetic essays written by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito—part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy. Written between April 2012 and November 2013, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits adopts a non-linear narrative flow that mimics the growth of plants, and can be read as a companion piece to Ito’s beloved poem "Wild Grass on the Riverbank". Rather than the vertiginously violent poetics of the latter, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits serves as what we might call a phyto-autobiography: a recounting of one’s life through the logic of flora. Ito’s graciously potent and philosophical prose examines immigration, language, gender, care work, and death, all through her close (indeed, at times obsessive) attention to plant life. Trade Review"Finding the humanity in the plant world, these evocative essays will take root in readers’ minds.”―Publishers Weekly“Ito’s vivid descriptions of the physicality of the natural world carry over to her reflections on what it means to be a human moving through the environment… Jon Pitt’s translation gracefully conveys Ito’s engaged yet casual tone while allowing space for the rhythm and mouthfeel of each sentence, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that every paragraph in this book is a joy to read.” —Kathryn Hemmann, Contemporary Japanese Literature“Tree Spirits, Grass Spirits enchanted me. Ito’s prose, in Pit’s translation, is vivid, precise, and wholly sensory. This is nature writing at its most evocative, and is vitally engaged with the world.” —Jessica Lee"Ito’s vivid descriptions of the physicality of the natural world carry over to her reflections on what it means to be a human moving through the environment… Jon Pitt’s translation gracefully conveys Ito’s engaged yet casual tone while allowing space for the rhythm and mouthfeel of each sentence, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that every paragraph in this book is a joy to read." —Kathryn Hemmann"These ambient poems about the flora of the California desert and Kumamoto, Japan are philosophical meditations on the peculiarity of human storytelling and naming practices… Ito’s poems suggest that the ways we humans look at plants contain information about how we produce both selves and others as well as narratives about death and transformation." ―Angela Hume"Hiromi Ito’s Tree Spirits Grass Spirits, beautifully translated by Jon L Pitt, is my new favorite book. Maybe my old favorite too. Because I feel like I have, all along, been dreaming about it: a travelogue into the intimate relationship—and the sympathetic oblivion—between the changeless yet always changing world of plants, the always changing yet changeless mind of a poet, and the nature of their disappearance into each other’s spirits." ―Brandon Shimoda"…Ito’s insightful prose addresses the connective space between the human and the more-than-human world. In her delicate style, full of wonder and memory, Ito’s botanical world becomes meaningfully entangled with preciousness and resiliency that may offer a clue to the common fate of all life on earth." —Obi Kaufmann

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis* A Belletrist Book of the Month! A poignant collection of poetry and prose that tackles the complexities of heartache, gender roles, queerness, and toxic masculinity.Introspective, vulnerable, and tantalizing, this is a love letter to queerness — capturing the joy, grief, ecstasy, and hope that accompany it. The poems tackle the complexities of infatuation, heartache, sexual assault, and toxic masculinity. Across three acts, Weissmann offers readers an unfiltered view into his psyche through several romantic relationships. These poems magnify the reality of exploring emotional and physical intimacy with multiple genders, all while navigating the journey of self-love. Her, Him & I is a coming-of-age celebration of heartbreak and healing.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“[A] handsome new book . . . all this inchoate material is given context by Sieburth’s learned, elegantly written commentary. He is the perfect guide.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post“[These] unfinished works written after 1861 and appearing in English together for the first time, Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Belgium Disrobed, and a selection of ‘late prose poems and projects’ deliver what their titles seem to promise: a soul stripped of guises and illusions.”—Ange Mlinko, New York Review of Books“[A] fascinating volume . . . valuable as much for Mr. Sieburth’s brilliant prefaces as for the orts and scraps that Baudelaire scribbled on pieces of hotel stationery. Among the writings are acidulous outtakes from a never-written series of philosophical memoirs.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal“Sieburth makes nuanced choices in his translations. . . . Late Fragments gathers Baudelaire’s final sketches in a way that presents a new image of a man who, much like Ezra Pound, failed to ‘make it cohere.’ Yet by exhibiting these failings, this volume shows Baudelaire at his most relevant: contradictory, fragmentary, raging against the vicissitudes of modern circumstance.”—Aaron Peck, Times Literary Supplement“Richard Sieburth’s superb translation of Baudelaire’s Late Fragments (Yale) is that rare book that provides more than it promises. It opens with a thirty-five-page biographical sketch that surpasses most full-length biographies of Baudelaire in its scholarly depth, succinctness and profound insight. The long introductions to each of the individual works contain some of the best criticism available of Baudelaire’s ‘counteraesthetic of dissonance, dispersion and disjointure’, reprising as it does ‘the entire French inheritance of aphorism, apothegm, epigram, maxim, réflexion, sentence, and pensée.’ Indeed, Baudelaire’s late turn towards the ‘form of the unfinished, the abandoned, the aborted, the ruined’ heralds the larger twentieth-century turn from contained lyric to disjunctive prose.”—Marjorie Perloff, Times Literary Supplement, “Books of 2022”“There could be no finer companion with whom to view the ruins of Late Baudelaire than Richard Sieburth, here in the multiple roles of translator, literary historian, and exegete, in this expansive and magnificent edition. Astonished voyager, set sail . . . ”—Eliot Weinberger“In Richard Sieburth’s lucid and precise translation and commentary, Baudelaire has found at long last a proper English voice.”—Alberto Manguel“Charles Baudelaire, one of the world’s great poets, was also something else: the maker of unforgettable, often troubling aphorisms and prose poems. Richard Sieburth’s commentary is infallibly subtle, and the translations are both loyal and imaginative.”—Michael Wood, Princeton University“Late Fragments is a marriage of true minds: Charles Baudelaire, one of the great poets, who seems more relevant with every passing year, and Richard Sieburth, one of today’s finest—and most poetic—translators. This is a brilliant and indispensable translation milestone.”—Marjorie Perloff, author of Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics “Richard Sieburth’s translations splendidly capture the dazzling pyrotechnics of Baudelaire’s late style, by turns arrogant and abject, emitting bursts of fragmentary distress signals that often as not become provocations and missiles.”—Peter Nicholls, author of Modernisms: A Literary Guide “Syphilitic, misanthropic, maudit to the core, in his late years Baudelaire forged from his vertiginous miseries a compelling new idiom; these fractured, elliptical, haunting texts, beautifully translated by Richard Sieburth, present a fatally wounded heart laid bare, stray petals of evil adrift in the abyss.”—Mark Ford, University College London

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisAuthoritative edition of Hafiz’s most important poems, including original Persian and brilliant English translationsRecent translations of Hafiz have been controversial. Omid Safi, an Islamic studies scholar at Duke, notes that “there are so many fake translations of Hafiz floating around, offering ‘versions’ that have no earthly connection to anything that the Persian poet and sage of Shiraz named Hafiz ever said. Elizabeth Gray offers us something different: poetic translations rooted in close readings of the original Persian, developed in consultation with a native speaker scholar.”A “ghazal” is usually understood to mean lyric poetry concerned with love. But what had been a courtly love lyric concerned with wine and physical beauty became, in the hands of Sufis like Farid ud-Dín ‘Attar and Jalal ud-Dín Rumi, a way to describe a mystic’s relationship with God. Ghazals also became a means of veiling from theological and political conservatives the Sufi belief in the possibility of an intuitive, personal union with God.Háfiz became the greatest of all Sufi poets, called the “Tongue of the Invisible” and the “Interpreter of Mysteries.” His command of the ghazal’s traditional imagery and themes blends eroticism, mysticism, and panegyric into verse of unsurpassed beauty. His eighty ghazals are presented in this book. Persian originals appear on facing pages to brilliant English translations of Gray and Anvar.In the afterword, Persian scholar Daryush Shayegan notes how “there is no antagonism between the earthly wine and the divine wine, just as there is none between profane love and the love of God, since one is the necessary initiation to the other.”

Read more less

Book SynopsisA lyrical requiem for Mayröcker's late partner, the writer Ernst Jandl. Austrian poet and playwright Ernst Jandl died in 2000, leaving behind his partner, poet Friederike Mayröcker—and bringing to an end a half century of shared life, and shared literary work. Mayröcker immediately began attempting to come to terms with his death in the way that poets struggling with loss have done for millennia: by writing. Requiem for Ernst Jandl is the powerfully moving outcome. In this quiet but passionate lament that grows into a song of enthralling intensity, Mayröcker recalls memories and shared experiences, and—with the sudden, piercing perception of regrets that often accompany grief—reads Jandl’s works in a new light. Alarmed by a sudden, existential emptiness, she reflects on the future, and the possibility of going on with her life and work in the absence of the person who, as we see in this elegy, was a constant conversational and creative partner.Trade Review"A magnificent translation. . . [Theobald] gives us an autofictional masterpiece of raw emotion, that will resonate with anyone who has ever given thought to how quickly life passes. . . . A web of associations and recollections, Requiem for Ernst Jandl is full of references to both the dead and the living, to literary theorists and to poets, to friends with their advice for the bereaved, and to places both real and dreamed up – and most of all, to Jandl himself. Through the powerful immediacy of her at times heart-wrenching language, Mayröcker proves that grief does not have to be private and can acquire a dignity that triumphs over any worry about decency." * Times Literary Supplement *

Read more less

Book Synopsis “Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy.” Many of Ginsberg’s most famous poems. Wake-up nightmares in Lower East Side, musings in public library, across the U.S. in dream auto, drunk in old Havana, brooding in Mayan ruins, sex daydreams on the West Coast, airplane vision of Kansas, lonely in a leafy cottage, lunch hour on Berkeley, beer notations on Skid Row, slinking to Mexico, wrote this last night in Paris, back on Times square dreaming of Times Square, bombed in NY again, loony tunes in the dentist chair, screaming at old poets in South America, aethereal zigzag Poesy in blue hotel room in Peru—a wind-up book of dreams, psalms, journal enigmas & nude minutes from 1953 to 1960 poems scattered in fugitive magazines here collected now book. . . .make no mistake, Reality Sandwiches, 1953-60 . . . is genuine poetry, and Ginsberg''s commitment marks his superiority over more graceful and refined but tepid cra

Read more less

Book SynopsisPetrarch fashioned so many different versions of himself for posterity that it is an exacting task to establish where one might start to explore. . . . Hainsworth's study meets this problem through examples of what Petrarch wrote, and does so decisively and succinctly. . . . [A] careful and unpretentious book, penetrating in its organization and treatment of its subject, gentle in its guidance of the reader, nimble and dexterous in its scholarly infrastructure—and no less profound for those qualities of lightness. The translations themselves are a delight, and are clearly the result of profound meditation and extensive experiment. . . . The Introduction and the notes to each work form a clear plexus of support for the reader, with a host of deft cross-references. --Richard Mackenny, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkTrade ReviewHainsworth's translations from the Italian are first-rate, both in terms of accuracy to the intent of the originals . . . and in terms of conveying the force of Petrarch’s imagery. The translations from the Latin read freshly and easily . . . they are sure-footed, managing to capture the mix of pride and playfulness which characterizes Petrarch's composite prose style. The notes to the individual poems are well-judged, just enough to keep the reader on track without parading off-putting erudition. --Jonathan Usher, Emeritus, University of EdinburghA judicious selection of the varied writings of the great humanist, translated from both Latin and Italian. The Introduction is admirably structured, clear, and coherent, and presents Petrarch to the reader without didacticism or oversimplification. Hainsworth has a light editorial touch. . . . All in all, a luminous portrait of the 'father of humanism'. --David Marsh, Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Mending a Broken Lineage: Women, Writing, Theology; Fear & Women's Writing: Choosing the Better Part; 'A Wretched Choice?': Evangelical Women & the Word; 'My God Became Flesh': Angela of Foligno Writing the Incarnation; Speaking Funk: Womanist Insights into the Lives of Syncletica & Macrina; 'A Moor of One's Own': Writing & Silence in Sara Maitland's "A Book of Silence"; With Prayer & Pen: Reading Mother E J Dabney's "What It Means to Pray Through"; Writing a Life, Writing Theology: Edith Stein in the Company of the Saints; Writing Hunger on the Body: Simone Weil's Ethic of Hunger & Eucharistic Practice; The Body, to be Eaten, to be Written: A Theological Reflection on the Act of Writing in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Dictee"; Not with One Voice: The Counterpoint of Life, Diaspora, Women, Theology, & Writing; Embodying Theology: Motherhood as Metaphor/Method; Postscript: Wounded Writing / Healing Writing.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA mesmerising new collection from Canisia Lubrin, author of Voodoo Hypothesis.

Read more less

Book SynopsisBuild your child's reading confidence at home with books at the right levelPoems inspired by the world all around us.Lime/Band 11 books have longer sentence structures and a greater use of literary language.Text type A poetry book.Pages 30 and 31 tie many of the poems together in a reader response page that shows the river's journey to the sea, and can be used as a prompt for speaking and listening activities.Curriculum links Geography: use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to key physical features, including beach, cliff, coast, forest, hill, mountain, sea, ocean, river, soil, valley, vegetation, season and weather'.

Read more less

Book SynopsisI seem to be your new favorite novel.One that keeps you up at night,turning my pages.Fingers lingering on me so you don't lose your place.In her first collection of poetry, Lili Reinhart explores the euphoric beginnings of young love, battling anxiety and depression in the face of fame, and the inevitable heartbreak that stems from passion.Relatable yet deeply intimate, provocative yet comforting, bite-size yet profound, these beautiful poems are about growingup, falling down, and getting back up again. They capture what it feels like to be a young woman in today's image-obsessed world with Lili's trademark honesty, optimism, and unique perspective.Accompanied by striking and evocative illustrations, the poems in Swimming Lessons reveal the depths of female experience, and are the work of a storyteller who is coming into her own.Trade Review‘Reinhart is committed to authenticity…and candid about her battles with anxiety and depression.’―Harpers Bazaar ‘There's a reason her fans feel they know her. She's been outspoken on various platforms about deeply personal topics.’ ―Glamour ‘Reinhart is a force to be reckoned with.’ ―Who What Wear ‘She's a breath of fresh air. Navigating her way through fame her own way, not for a second trying to be anyone she's not, and showing every one of her millions of fans that it's OK to be who you are. In fact, it's the only way.’ ―ASOS

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisJames Fenton''s An Introduction to English Poetry offers a master class for both the reader and writer of poetry. Simply and elegantly written and discussing the work of poets as wide ranging as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Tennyson, Kipling, Milton and Blake, it covers all varieties of poetic practice in English.''It is hard to imagine a beginner who could not learn from [this book]. If you know a young poet, give them this'' The Times Literary SupplementTrade Review'It is hard to imagine a beginner who could not learn from [this book]. If you know a young poet, give them this' The Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsThe history and scope of English poetry; where music and poetry divide; the training of the poet; the sense of form; the iambic pentameter; variations in the line; patterns of stress; mysteries of the trochee; the genius of the trochee; the shorter lines; the iambic tetrameter; the longer lines; the shorter stanza; the longer stanza; the sonnet; minor forms; rhyme; syllabics; free verse; writing for the eye; poetic drama and opera.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIain Sinclair is the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry non-fiction, including Lud Heat; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Downriver; Radon Daughters; Lights Out for the Territory; Rodinsky's Room, with Rachel Lichtenstein; Landor's Tower; London Orbital; Dining On Stones; Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk; American Smoke and London Overground. Downriver won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award. He lives in Hackney, east London.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis A tragic epic love story by one of the greatest medieval Persian romance poets, in a modern-verse English translationBased on historical characters of the seventh-century Iranian court and written 850 years ago, the narrative poem about Khosrow and Shirin shares a shelf with the most intensely romantic classic stories, from Tristan and Isolde to Layla and Majnun to Romeo and Juliet.The love between an Iranian prince (Khosrow) and an Armenian princess (Shirin) is at the centre of this tumultuous tale in which the powers of politics and warfare intertwine with no less powerful forces of erotic desire and the quest for personal and spiritual fulfilment.Dick Davis''s translation has captured the energy and poetry of Nezami's original in modern verse. Khosrow and Shirin will enchant both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new audience for Nezami's masterpiece.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWithin classical music, much writing on the Western song tradition since 1800 has assumed a direct link between musical cultures and national literatures, and song has typically been interpreted as one of the means by which constructions of nationalism and nationhood have been pursued in the cultural sphere. Yet song can also be a mobile and cosmopolitan genre and form of cultural practice, able - through performance, publication, and translation - to cross boundaries between cultures and languages. This volume brings together musicologists, literary scholars, linguists, and cultural historians to examine the ways in which song creation, practice, and interpretation has been defined by, and in turn defines, conceptions of nationalism and the transnational. It focuses on four key poets - the Persian Hafiz, German Heine, American Whitman, and French Verlaine - and examines how their poems have been ''translated'' into song, and how music can challenge the seemingly organic relationship bTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION Philip Ross Bullock and Laura Tunbridge: 'L'invitation au voyage' HAFIZ 1: Natasha Loges: Hafiz between Nations: Song Settings by Daumer/Brahms and Peacock/Beamish 2: Stephen Downes: Szymanowski, a Hafiz 'Grablied', and the 'translation' of Nietzsche 3: Philip Ross Bullock: The German Roots of Russian Orientalism: Hafiz's Poetry in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Song HEINE 4: Suzannah Clark: Traces of Tourism and Transnationalism in Liszt's Heine Settings 5: Benjamin Binder: Performance Matters in Heine: The Case of Pauline Viardot's 'Das ist ein schlechtes Wetter' 6: Laura Tunbridge: 'Once again...speaking of' Heine, in Song VERLAINE 7: Peter Dayan: Why song in Verlaine's Verse is Always Already Beyond the Nation 8: David Evans: French Impressions: The Transnational Afterlives of Verlaine's 'La Lune blanche' in Song 9: Carlo Caballero: Paul Verlaine in Parallel: Loeffler, Fauré, Debussy 10: Helen Abbott: Song Just Beyond the Nation, or Debussy via Verlaine WHITMAN 11: Jennifer Ronyak: Johanna Müller-Hermann's Lied der Erinnerung: Austria, America, and Beyond 12: Lawrence Kramer: The Émigré Walt Whitman: Songs of Mourning, 1943-48 13: Elizabeth Helsinger: A Song, the Sea, and a Listening Boy: Whitman - Swinburne - Delius 14: Emma Sutton: Whitman and Stevenson: Singing the Nation from Scotland to Samoa via Ohio and Hawai'i AfterwordTerence Cave:

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Hsu-Tang Library presents authoritative and eminently readable translations of classical Chinese literature, in bilingual editions, ranging across three millennia and the entire Sinitic world.This anthology opens up new religious and poetic worlds for readers. It consists of translations of poems written by Buddhist nuns from China''s late imperial period (1368-1911). Appreciation of these poems is enhanced by individual biographical accounts for each of the sixty-five nun-poets and an Introduction to the historical, religious, and literary context of these poems, including a concise discussion of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist poetry.The nuns in this anthology come from a range of backgrounds: some were placed in convents when very young; others were former palace ladies or courtesans who found refuge in the religious life; others were women left widowed or destitute in the wake of the various political and social upheavals of the times, especially the violent transition beTable of ContentsIntroduction The Poems Wulian After the Rain An Autumn Night: Written in the Moment Jieshi Early Morning Qingming Miaoni Spring Night The Girl Nun from Yan Gatha Xingkong Reflecting on Myself Mojing Going by Way of Tiger Hill Jueqing Poem Inscribed on a Convent Wall Wuwei Deathbed Gatha Jiyin Dharma Hall Gatha Deyin Early Autumn: A Distant Evening View Song of Planting Bamboo Lady Huang Jieling Came to Stay at My Mountain Boudoir, Written in the Moment Derong Pitying the Caged Bird Who is Just Like Me Plum Blossom Jingming Improvised Dharma Instructions to My Disciples Jingyin Going to See Huang Yuanjie but Not Finding Her In Dumu Jin'gang Gatha Gatha Deathbed Gatha Xiang'an Yinhui Gatha: Eating Bamboo Shoots Deshan Carries His Bowl Miaohui Passing By the Tomb of Tenth Daughter Ma Drinking on Flower-Raining Terrace, I Was Assigned "Falling Leaves" as the Topic for a Poem Daoyuan Seated Meditation: Reflections Sengjian Early Summer The Autumn Flowering Crabapple Tree Shenyi A Dream Journey to Mount Tiantai Crossing Again the Hengyun Mountain, Thinking of Jingwei Zaisheng Composed in Early Spring Winter's Day Narrating My Feelings on a Winter's Night Jingwei The Emerald Sea Random Thoughts on Living in the Country Facing the Moon on an Autumn Night Sitting at Night Shangjian Huizong Village Life Thoughts on Living in Seclusion A Friend from the Inner Chambers Comes to Visit: Remembering Old Times Heartfelt Recollections Wugou Writing of My Feelings (Version 1) Writing of My Feelings (Version 2) Climbing the Mountain after the Snow Chaoyi Deathbed Gatha Mingxuan Wuzhen Autumn Night Falling Leaves Inscribed on a Ying Stone Weiji Xingzhi Ode to the Honeybees Living in the Mountains Listening to the Geese Jingnuo Chaoyue Song of the Ancient Plum Trees Passing by Yongqing Monastery, I Came Upon Its Peonies and Wrote These For Lady Yang A Celebration in Verse of the Autumn Orchid Chaoyan Miyin Self-Encomium Yizhen Mid-Autumn Younger Sister Yuying and I Planned to Meet on the Ninth Day, But She Didn't Arrive Living in the Mountains Among Falling Leaves Matching the Rhymes of "Cloud Hermitage" Shangxin Ice Yuanduan Yufu My Study: An Impromptu Verse Miaohui Dawn Sitting at Bo're Convent Shiyan Recalling a Dream Swallows Rising at Dawn: An Expression of Feelings A Reply to Sixth Elder Sister Ruixian Wanxian Inside the Convent: Reflections Lianhua Kedu Gatha Yinyue Xinglin In the MountainsThe Three Blows Gatha When Sansheng Saw People He Came Out, When Xinghua Saw People He Did Not Ansheng Ode to the Silkworm Mourning Zhanna Zhuanzheng Deathbed Gatha Zhisheng Ode to the Snow The Chrysanthemum Deri Early Autumn Feelings by a Rainy Window Deyue On an Autumn Night Listening to the Crickets Zhiyuan A Lament for Peng E Qiyuan Xinggang The First Month of Summer Retreat: A Song of Leisure Dharma Instructions for Mingyuan Dharma Instructions for Person of the Way Xu Chaogu Addressing the Congregation on My Birthday Matching Jiang Yundu's "Autumn Pavilion Song" Ode to the Plum Blossom Yigong Chaoke Grieving for My Master Climbing up to a Thatched Hut on Lingyin and Gazing at Feilai Peak: An Impromptu Poem Yikui Chaochen Five Gathas: Sitting in Meditation (To a Previous Tune) To a Previous Tune Just Before Parting from My Elder Brothers Bidding Farewell to the Lay Dharma-Protectors of Meixi Of My Feelings after Visiting the Nun Weiji from Xiongsheng and Not Finding Her In Hymn: The Honeycomb In Praise of the Venerable Bamboo (To a Previous Tune) On the Fifteenth of the Twelfth Lunar Month After the Snow, Returning Home by Boat I Improvised This Poem Presented to Chan Master Zhuying Inside my Boat on My Return Home to Dongting: An Impromptu Poem Deathbed Gatha Zukui Xuanfu An Ode to Honeybees An Ode to Fireworks Breaking off a Plum Branch to Offer to the Buddha To Myself A Leisurely Visit to an Ancient Temple Returning to the Mountain, I Cross the Lake Returning to the Mountains, I Laugh at Myself A Leisurely Stroll on a Moonlit Night Traveling by Boat on a Winter Day In Search of Plum Blossoms Dharma Instructions for Practitioner Keren Taking up Residence in a Hermitage Living in the Mountains: An Impromptu Poem Reading the Recorded Sayings of Layman Pang Leaving My Old Retreat on Dongting The Moon in the Water: A Gatha My Aspirations Dharma Instructions for Person of the Way Xunji To Layman Zhao Fengchu (second of two verses) The Road is Hard (To the Tune "Immortals by the River") Summer Rest on East Mountain Song of the Twelve Hours of the Day Living in the Mountains: Miscellaneous Gathas Thoughts Baochi Xuanzong Matching the Ten Verses of Chan Master Cishou Huaiyin's "Cloud Dispelling Terrace" Silk-embroidered Peonies Harmonizing with Temple Manager Teacher Shao's "Mastering Yangqi's Primary Strategy": Four Verses Watching the Snow from Nanzhou's Phoenix Rising Tower Dharma Instructions for Person of the Way Liyan Jizong Xingche Living the Nanyue Mountains: Miscellaneous Verses Mist and Clouds Peak Gods and Immortals Grotto Heavenly Terrace Temple Mount Zhong's Great Illumination Temple The Great Yang Spring The Second Month of Autumn: A Parting Poem Enjoying the Snow on New Year's Day My Aspirations Written to Rhymes by the Layman of Zhoukui Hermitage Visiting the Monk of Nanyue on His Sickbed: Two Poems To Chan Elder Dharma Brother Zaisheng on Her Fiftieth Birthday At the Zhixi Cloister on Hidden Lake, Presented to Chan Master Daoming Presented to Layman Xu Jingke Having Borrowed a Meditation Hut from Chan Practitioner Zhubing, I Wrote a Poem to Present to Her A Farewell Poem for Person of the Way Yan Duoli New Year's Eve of the Year Wuxu (1658) Composed for Layman Gu Mengdiao on His Sixtieth Birthday On an Autumn Day, Thinking of My Mother Dharma Instructions to the Lay Assembly: Four Gathas Ziyong Chengru A Bell Shattered After Being Struck and I Was Moved to Compose a Gatha Upon Hearing the Sound of Wood Being Chopped Ode to the Snow Two Verses: Living in the Mountains Thoughts in the Bingzi Year (1696) An Excursion to the Western Hills Gatha: Boarding My Boat Early Autumn Sentiments To My Elder Dharma Brother Ruru Asking Questions of the Masters: Four Gathas A Miscellaneous Chant Walking Through the Rice Paddies, I Casually Composed This Gatha Eight Miscellaneous Gathas (selection of three) Entrusting Head Student Zhi with Robes and Whisk, I Composed This Gatha Mingxiu Seeing Off Relatives, Bowing to My Master, and Taking the Vows My Inscription for a Painting of West Lake Requested While Staying at My Convent in Jingzhou Shuxia In Deep Autumn, Returning to My Hometown; in Sixth Uncle's Garden Pavilion, Standing in Front of the Chrysanthemums To the Tune "Immortal by the River" Composed While on a Boat To the Tune "Bodhisattva Barbarian": A Parting Poem Wuqing Feelings Huiji Reply to Lady Gioro Heseri Lianghai Ru'de Poems of the Pure Land Untitled Verses Written in Imitation of an Ancient Style: The Filial Girl Lu of Pinghu Buddha-Recitation (Selections from a Series of Forty-Eight Poems) Abbreviations Bibliography Index of Sources

Read more less

Book SynopsisLush Diodorus sets the lads on fire,But now another has him in his net -Timarion, the boy with wanton eyes . . . Meleager, AP 12.109Encompassing four thousand short poems and more, the ramshackle classic we call the Greek Anthology gathers up a millennium of snapshots from ancient daily life. Its influence echoes not merely in the classic tradition of the English epigram (Pope, Dryden) but in Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, H.D., and the poets of the First World War. Its variety is almost infinite. Victorious armies, ruined cities, and Olympic champions share space with lovers'' quarrels and laments for the untimely dead - but also with jokes and riddles, art appreciation, potted biographies of authors, and scenes from country life and the workplace.This selection of more than 600 epigrams in verse is the first major translation from the Greek Anthology in nearly a century. Each of the Anthology''s books of epigrams is represented here, in manuscript order, anTrade ReviewThis new edition of Greek epigrams, translated by Gideon Nisbet ... must be counted as a service to society as well as a significant literary achievement. * Robert S. Erickson, The New Criterion *The verse translations are elegant, often witty, and amazingly faithful, and all the explanatory material helpful. * Professor Simon Hornblower, University of Oxford *This lively, learned, witty, yet sometimes melancholy, translation is a thing of great beauty. Dipping in and out of it has been a joy. * Professor Llloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Cardiff University *My quibbles with Nisbet often concern the Greek text being translated. He accepts that of W.R. Paton, The Greek Anthology, Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols (Cambridge MA 1916-1918), but a look at subsequent textual work might have repaid the effort: for example, Tueller's revision of Paton for the difficult texts of book 3. Nisbet wisely avoids burdening his book with scholarly detail, although the endnotes are helpful on mythical and historical matters, and sometimes on stylistic points hard to convey in translation. He provides further guidance in the introduction and index. Especially for those new to the subject, the introduction (vii-xlii) outlines the history of Greek epigram and the Anthology, reviews its content, sketches modern reception and offers a helpful bibliography. * Joseph W. Day, JHS *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Christian epigrams Epigrams at Cyzicus Erotic epigrams by various poets The dedicatory epigrams Epigrams on tombs Epigrams of Saint Gregory the Theologian Rhetorical epigrams Advisory epigrams Sympotic and scoptic epigrams Strato's Boyish Muse Epigrams in assorted metres Arithmetical problems, riddles, and oracles Miscellaneous epigrams The Planudean Appendix Explantory Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn ancient Central Asian epic, passed down through generations, carries the reader into a world of nomads, warriors and horselords A Penguin ClassicThis tale from the Manas epic gives the reader startling, brilliantly colored access to the world of the horse-based nomad cultures of Central Asia. Written down in the early twentieth century but drawing on sources of antiquity, The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy Khan is the bravura telling of the story of a new and uncertain khan, Boqmurun, and his decision to hold a great gathering to commemorate the life and death of Kökötoy, his already legendary predecessor. From the Muslim lands to the west to China in the east, great warriors and their turbulent retinues gather in the high grasslands to feast, compete and quarrel. Beautifully translated by Daniel Prior, The Memorial Feast allows the reader to get closer than any other source to a sense of the values, glamour and odditiesTrade ReviewPrior's translation ... is written in clear, idiomatic, and often lively English ... Prior's reliable and well annotated translation ... will certainly help further the popularity of the Kirghiz epic tradition. -- Karl Reichl * Turkic Languages *Prior's translation reads in an appropriately lively and energetic way - and even in this form lends itself to being read aloud ... a fine example of how to present a literary work from a lesser-known culture and tradition to readers. -- M. A. Orthofer * complete review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn immense achievement, comprising a decades-long career - new and collected poetry from one of Canada''s most honoured and significant poetsSpanning almost four decades, Dionne Brand''s poetry has given rise to whole new grammars and vocabularies. With a profound alertness that is attuned to this world and open to some other, possibly future, time and place, Brand''s ongoing labours of witness and imagination speak directly to where and how we live and reach beyond those worlds, their enclosures, and their violences.Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems begins with a new long poem, the titular Nomenclature for the Time Being, in which Dionne Brand''s diaspora consciousness dismantles our quotidian disasters. In addition to this searing new work, Nomenclature collects eight volumes of Brand''s poetry published between 1982 and 2010 and includes a critical introduction by the literary scholar and theorist Christina Sharpe.Nomenclature:

Read more less

Book SynopsisRoger McGough was a member of the group Scaffold in the 1960s when he contributed poems to the Penguin title The Mersey Sound, which has since sold over a million copies and is now available as a Penguin Classic. He has published many books of poems for children and adults, and both his Collected Poems (2004) and Selected Poems (2006) are also available in Penguin. He presents Poetry Please on Radio 4 and is President of the Poetry Society. He was honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2001 and with a CBE in 2005 for services to literature.Trade ReviewThe same blend of mischievous wordplay, subversion of cliche and distinctive sense of humour that makes him one of Britain's most popular poets * Spectator *As Far As I Know is self-effacing, unshowy, frequently funny, but with a quiet frankness * Scotsman *Moving poems on memory, love, aging, death and youth ... with his characteristic mix of wordplay and punning, wit, melancholy and self-deprecation * Independent *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn inspired new translation of the work of one of the world's greatest fabulistsTrade ReviewLewis Galantière Prize, American Translators Association, 2008. "The translations are not literal but instead convey the spirit of the 17th-century writer. The volume includes . . . extensive notes offering comments and explicating sources, references, translation difficulties, and so on; and lovely illustrations by David Schorr. Highly recommended."--Choice"Ably translated from the French by Shapiro, the voices of the animals, birds, insects (and even the occasional human) who populate La Fontaine's fables come alive in rhyme and rhythm that develop the traditional tales." --Library Journal"In Shapiro's translations, meaning and sound patterns flow into each other with metrical control and create La Fontaine's soothing melody, which is reinforced through a never-ending wit and humor to articulate and to overcome his distaste for human folly."--Translation Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisAddresses the desire to explore and retain the heightened awareness and insight that comes to us when confronted by the death of someone we knowTrade ReviewJanet Morley’s selection of poems and her interpretation of them offers a way of meeting death, and all its consequences for our lives, which is challenging, sensitive and profound. This book takes us very close to the deepest questions we all have to face. -- The Rt Revd Tim StevensThe Heart's Time and Haphazard by Starlight: Morley brings to her writing the poet’s sensitivity to language, the critic’s capacity to analyse and interpret, the theologian’s discernment of the sacred, and the teacher’s ability to communicate insight in fresh and memorable ways. -- Nicola Slee, theologian and poet

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe 117th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Mary-Alice Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worldsTrade Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis broken world so often breaks our hearts and sends us searching for a word of divine love. In Dear God, award-winning and beloved author Bunmi Laditan bravely says what we're all thinking in this wittingly fresh and stunningly relatable collection of letters drawn from her journey of prayerful wrestling with God.

Read more less