Poetry / Poems

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Book SynopsisThere''s something fresh and fantastic in Aurian Haller''s view of the world. In Song of the Taxidermist, he demonstrates both a fascination and unease with the independence of the body -- its resistance to the self''s colonizing imperative. Employing a powerful visual and intellectual imagination, a camera and a roving curiosity, he investigates the ways that flesh inhabits the spaces around us. Building upon the stories of famous taxidermied specimens -- the celebrated French giraffe, Zarafe, and the Alaskan sled dog, Togo -- he explores what it means when the shell of a being becomes iconic in a culture: how place, an idea, or a quality might fill a standing skin. Like his compatriots Erin Mouré, Roo Borson, and Michael Ondaatje, Aurian Haller pushes beyond the constraints of the short lyric or narrative moment to experiment with larger thematic forms. This stunning new collection, so carefully executed in image and phrasing, so agile in its metaphors, is both astonishing in scope and lush in its imaginative landscape.

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Book SynopsisPatrick Warner''s Perfection the follow-up to his award-winning Mole makes a carnival of our most potent and dangerous obsessions. A factory outlet sells designer human parts at cut-rate prices, a midlife crisis becomes a cleansing ritual, a chocolate-chip pancake stands accused at trial, and the predatory voice of anorexia speaks to a transfixed audience. In descending the rabbit hole of this wildly imaginative collection, we find ourselves amid a field of engagement where destructive ideals of beauty, politics, art, romantic love, and spirituality are ambushed by roguish parody, acerbic satire, life-affirming laughter, and a hard-won pragmatism. And while Warner''s trademark playfulness and formal ingenuity remain intact, his classic arms-length objectivity gives ground to a private and autobiographical directness of style often evaded in his earlier work. In Perfection, where death is certain and certainty is hell-bent on death, Warner refuses to rest on his laurels, continuing to build on his reputation as one of the most respected voices in Canadian poetry.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Questions in Bed is a quick study, yet it is with multiple readings that the nuance of the verse is revealed." * Scene *"Questions in Bed considers its questions with verve, in a clear voice that crackles with surprising word collocations and staccato consonance. The poems that spring from this music are much more a singing in their chains than a pointing to the chains themselves." -- A.F. Moritz"Questions in Bed considers its questions with verve, in a clear voice that crackles with surprising word collocations and staccato consonance. The poems that spring from this music are much more a singing in their chains than a pointing to the chains themselves." — -- David O'Meara

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Book SynopsisIn his second collection of poems, Jeff Latosik looks to those provisional moments of arrival and anchoring in what Canadian poet Don Coles has called the catastrophe of time. Safely Home Pacific Western is a combination of words common to travel-package tour buses, and, as the title implies, there will be journeys to be had: into ruined stretches of the rural US andOntario mine country, across the English Channel in a hot air balloon, into the flight paths of fish hurled across Northern Territory Australia by a water spout, and even the far blinking orbit of a Navstar satellite. But unlike that modern promise of a brief, comfortable excursion, these poems often end up in strange, uncomfortable places that shore up the always prevalent chaotic impulses of civilization, finding not reconciliation but charged moments of witness, of coming to terms with the very act of looking. Moving through alternate histories, cutting edge and antiquated technology, and the wily languaTrade Review"Jeff Latosik's Safely Home Pacific Western is a unique take on a travelogue, focusing on the impact of the sights alogn the way and exploring varieties of individual interpretation." * Arc Poetry Magazine *"Jeff Latosik's materials are slyly intriguing, his manner nimbly inventive. One doesn't say this often, but if you want adventure, go to poems like those in Safely Home Pacific Western, a book that gets no less adventurous with each read, but even wittier and more deeply moving." -- Jacob Polley

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Book SynopsisIn Fauxccasional Poems, Daniel Scott Tysdal imagines himself into poetic voices not his own, writing to commemorate events that never occurred, for the posterity of alternative universes and the delight of our own. From the reign of the first philosopher king once envisioned by Plato, to the twelfth-century Iroquois colonization of Europe, to Barack Obama''s career as a poet, to the lasting peace to come under the rule of the Democratic Kampuchea Global Party, Tysdal envisions the paths not taken and what might have been. In these poems, the crew of the Enola Gay refuse to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, John F. Kennedy evades assassination, and Karl Marx moonlights as an agent provocateur for a capitalist consortium. In a dizzying display of poetic insight, technical prowess, and playful parody, Fauxccasional Poems brings these alternate universes to life, forcing the reader to ponder the contingency of history and how each moment brings us to a thousand turning points. Despite our certainties, nothing is ever as it seems, and the future unfolds against our best designs. History is an unreliable vessel for the upwelling of our deepest hopes and fears, and in Tysdal''s hands poetry shakes history by the lapels and shouts, Wake up! Your time is now!

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Book SynopsisAt one moment, a pure abstraction; at the next, an incontrovertible presence of hooves, antlers, and fur. The beating heart of this assured debut by Richard Kelly Kemick is the Porcupine caribou herd of the western Arctic.In Caribou Run, Richard Kelly Kemick orchestrates a suite of poems both encyclopedic and lyrical, in which the caribou is both metaphor and phenomenon text and exegesis. He explores what we share with this creature of blood and bone and what is hidden, alien, and ineffable.Following the caribou through their annual cycle of migration, Kemick experiments with formal and thematic variations that run from lyric studies of the creature and its environment, to found poems that play with the peculiar poetry of scientific discourse, to highly personal poems that find resonance in the caribou as a metaphor and a guiding spirit. Running the gamut from long-lined free verse and ghazal form to tightly controlled tankas and interwoven rhyme schemes, CaTrade Review"Caribou Run honours its title subject by its sheer depth of research and by its willingness to explore the relationship between man and nature from numerous angles. Wisecracking, earnest, and charmingly obsessive, Kemick introduces himself here as a poet who believes in something larger than his own self, and so is a poet to watch." -- Nick Thran

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Katherine Leyton’s debut offers a sobering view of the social uses and sometimes cruel mediations of the female body. In All the Gold Hurts My Mouth, sexual politics move between individual, material realties and abstracted representation while considering the intricacies of desire, sociopathy and power relations connecting the two." -- Mariianne Mays * herizons *

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Book SynopsisWinner, New Brunswick Book Award for PoetryA Quill & Quire Best Book of the YearLike the novella in fiction, the long poem is an oft-neglected form. Too long for publication in most literary journals and anthologies, too short to merit book-length publication, the long poem occupies a lonely space in literature. M. Travis Lane is a master of the form, in which her considerable poetic skills reach their apex. There are few that match her brilliance. This volume collects all of her long works — most of them now out of print — from a five-decade commitment to the art. M. Travis Lane has long flown under the radar of Can Lit, crafting luminous poems and sharp literary criticism — much of it published in the Fiddlehead, one of Canada's premier literary journals — but in recent years her work has been drawing the attention it deserves. Evidence of this recognition is her 2015 Governor General's Award nomination for Crossover, a collection the still-vital poet published at the age of 81. Her poetry is modernist, dense, and highly allusive, drawing adeptly on classical and biblical sources, imbued with a feminist and ecocritical perspective. Her musical lines, vivid metaphors, and phenomenological acumen launch her into the company of such poetic luminaries as Don McKay, Jan Zwicky, and Tim Lilburn. In the long poetic form, these qualities reach their highest expression. This volume, an exquisite collection that brings together her long poems for the first time, constitutes an important addition to the canon of Canadian literature and to the canon of feminist literature in North America.Trade Review"With a multiplicity of voices, these poems offer a generously imagined theatre of the human. M. Travis Lane's The Witch of the Inner Wood is more than a rich, wide-ranging collection. Here is one of Canada's finest poets at work, revealing the power of her lyrical voice. A treasure of a book." -- Anne Simpson"Canadian poetry has always had secret masters; poets who, without fanfare, deepened their style and vision — and extended the presiding genius of our tradition. M. Travis Lane is one of these figures. She has become, for our attitudinizing era, an especially powerful example of how emotional complexity and psychological depth aren't a matter of 'spontaneous overflow' but are built from lucid stanzas, uncompromising compression, and effective metaphors. These qualities can be seen in the astonishing long poems selected for The Witch of the Inner Wood, a book that will cement Lane's status as one of our most significant poets." -- Carmine Starnino"M. Travis Lane keeps the Aristotelian tradition in poetry: to move from lyric poetry to longer verse forms. Thus she has always done — with meet cadence, with right diction, with sweet wisdom. But the Collected Long Poems gather at long last her consistent achievement, her persistent excellence, her insistent, epic impulse. Lane accepts our collective debt to classical poets, the undead — deathless — bards of antiquity. The wording is precise, the imagery compelling, the verses supple. If you have not read Lane before, prepare to travel: like T.S. Eliot, she wants you to have a transporting experience in your imagination. If you have read Lane before, prepare for fresh astonishment. She is Homeric breadth and Sapphic brevity in this suite of superb poems." -- George Elliott Clarke

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Book SynopsisThe house is still standing is peopled with charlatans, gingerbread men, children, and savants the thousands and the particular. Adrienne Bartlett builds this nimble first collection with a supple craft. The poems deke and swerve, from the wry to the theatrical to the intimate. Whether riffing on the secret identities of public intellectuals and pop icons or penning elegiac verse, Barrett''s voice is strong, anchored, inviting. Although she takes her readers through both substance / and its downfall, in the end, the structure is sound, she is holding up.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Otolith challenges the idea that madness is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. With metaphors and imagery as wild as the ecologies she encounters, Emily Nilsen shows that repeating the same question can yield multiple answers: Otolith’s world is not static, won’t hold still for its photograph, doesn’t sit pretty. And this is its virtue." -- Sue Sinclair"Otolith is a house built by gravity and movement, at once weighty and ephemeral. These poems are fogged in and present, placed and displaced. Nilsen is a poet of the interstitial, of longing, of the sensitive shift itself." -- Matt Rader"Spend enough time at a remote research station, suggests Emily Nilsen, and you, too, will identify fifty different species of fog. In Otolith, Nilsen’s poems measure all that environmental science cannot: the alignment of a tree planter’s sensibility to charred forest, the geolocation of grief. Wake before dawn and follow Nilsen’s ‘solitary, rugged route’ into our fragile ecology." -- Sonnet L'Abbé

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Book SynopsisLove is a boxcar going off the rails. For anyone who has experienced the highs and lows of love and wants to know they are not alone.Patricia Young's new collection confirms her status as one of Canada's great and most versatile contemporary poets. In Amateurs at Love, she explores the dynamic, liminal space between lovers, taking precise aim at the silent climacteric moments of the heart: the interrogating, persuading, confiding, reflecting moments that help us feel and understand that distance.Her response is unexpected, unsettling and emotionally pungent. To the question of what is love, her interlocutor answers,I think it means a boxcar going off the rails, grain spilling down a gully, fermenting over summer, a bear gorging on that grain, passing out in a field, a bear that could wake any moment, hung-over and thirsty and ready to kill for a drop of water In forms ranging wildly from pangramic love songs to prose poems, Young guides her readers through the many layers of human relationship with unappeasable joy. Her poetic voice, her bold and unconventional metaphors, her rich incantatory rhythms and linguistic dexterity, lure us into a pulsing universe that leaves no aspect of human nature unblemished.

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Book SynopsisStately and majestic, yet scuffed with wear and disillusion, the poems of Smaller Hours mount the sky like columns and fora of some archaic ruin. Through these ancient halls, Kevin Shaw tracks Eros, clearing away the rubble and polishing the marble, along the way exploring queer ways of keeping time. Music and movies, clocks and inventors populate these poems. History casts a shadow over all.Kevin Shaw''s debut collection is a tour de force of control and grace; musical lines anchored by powerful rhythms dance into the reader''s ear. The speakers of these lyrics encounter Nijinsky in a waiting room, Ovid at the laundromat, or re-enact a devastating flood after a night of drinking. From a mixtape full of quarter-century-old regrets, to the sensuality of a harmonica buzzing against pursed lips, to the violence and hope of Stonewall, Smaller Hours collapses the past with the present and the personal with the public, taking a sideways glance at historical figures Trade Review"Incantatory music box, intricate as a mechanical watch and wrestling with its melodies, Smaller Hours takes us along the edge of the small and violent disasters that are men." -- Shane Rhodes"Five decades after Edward A. Lacey self-published Forms of Loss, English Canada’s first book of gay-male poetry, meet Kevin Shaw. The challenges of being gay may have changed—a little (we still must choose to come out)—but the candour with which queer experience is now limned is given equally rich voice in Smaller Hours. Shaw is a poet worth waiting for." -- John Barton"Even though the focus of the book is the gay experience, Smaller Hours uses the full resources of poetry to create a wider human, artistic statement about self-discovery, identity, disappointment, acceptance, and the unsteady playing out of love within the context of history." -- Susan Ioannou * The Antigonish Review *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMiller is one of the ablest experts in the language of Greek poetry, and he has a razor-sharp sense for the nuances of the wording. A lastingly important sourcebook; I strongly recommend it. --Gregory Nagy, Harvard UniversityAndrew Miller is one of the--if not the--leading authority on classical antiquity’s most difficult lyric poet, Pindar. This book of translations and social and literary commentary proudly takes its place next to Richmond Lattimore’s. There is no better introduction to the problems and accomplishments of Greek lyric poetry, and the expert will appreciate the seriousness and brilliance of insight from a Hellenist of the highest caliber. --Joseph M. Romero, Mary Washington College. . . the translations are first-rate, better than anything comparable I know. The author is intelligent and scrupulous; he succeeds in maintaining a much higher level of accuracy and readability than any of his competitors. --Emmet Robbins, University of Toronto

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Book SynopsisWhile preserving the basic narrative of the Iliad, this bare-bones abridgement highlights the epic's high poetic moments and essential mythological content, and will prove especially useful in surveys of world literature, and in Western civilization surveys.

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Book SynopsisPresents a Sappho by a master poet and translator that treats the fragments as aesthetic wholes, complete in their fragmentariness, and which is also, as the translator puts it: 'ever mindful of performative qualities, quality of voice, changes of voice...Trade ReviewThe four sections of this book [Introduction, Translator's Note, translations, Notes on Ancient Sources] work remarkably well together, presenting the fragments of Sappho according to 'the idea of the isolated message' (xvii). The dominant and characteristic interest shared by both Lombardo as translator and Gordon as introducer is their concerted effort to validate 'fragments as esthetic wholes' (xxvi). Lombardo's translations are pleasantly distinct from those of any other I am aware of both for their sonorous but straightforward rendering in modern spoken American English . . . [an edition] better both for its clear translations, and for the breadth and depth of the critical Introduction. Lombardo's strategy as translator is to convey not only the Greek by means of English, but also the experience of reading 'Sappho as a pure, received text' (xxvi) by means of direct, plain presentation of the poem . . . A unique and welcome contribution to the diversity of English translations available. --Travis Feldman, The Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewI have long been an admirer of Stanley Lombardo's translations of Homer, and I was curious to see how he would adapt his fast-paced, lively style to Sappho. He has succeeded admirably. His translation of 73 poems of Sappho is clear, energetic, and close to the Greek. Pamela Gordon's Introduction gives a lucid and useful guide for the non-specialist to the last fifty years of scholarly debate on Sappho. This edition will be particularly useful for instructors of courses in translation seeking an introduction to Sappho for the Greekless student. It is also a pleasure to read. --Laurel Bowman, The Classical BulletinGordon's Introduction is a clear summation of the poetic and scholarly aura surrounding the figure of Sappho and these literary fragments. . . . This essay, complete with selective bibliography at the end, could be assigned to undergraduates as a first introduction to both the poetry and the phenomenon of Sappho. . . . Lombardo's translations are lively and accessible; Sappho lives anew for the English reader. . . . Ideal for teaching at the undergraduate level. --Cashman Kerr Prince, New England Classical Journal

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Book SynopsisRendered in an idiom drawn from present-day nature guides, gardening handbooks, how-to manuals, and scientific treatises--and in a style influenced by twentieth-century poetry--this bold new translation seeks to renew our appreciation of a work often relegated to the pigeonhole of didactic poetry about farming. In doing so, it reveals the Georgics as a remarkable window on Roman conceptions of the natural world and of the place of human life within it--and also conveys a sense of how daring were Virgil''s poetics in their day. Footnotes offer a wealth of information on mythology, agriculture, wildlife, geography, and astronomy while highlighting the technical, scientific, ethnographic, and other registers of the poem.Trade ReviewChew's translation is, both in aesthetic and scholarly terms, an excellent piece of work. I find her approach refreshing and true to the spirit of the Georgics; her adventurousness strikes me as just the thing to rescue the poem from the appearance of blandness that a more straightforward style of translationese would inevitably, but misleadingly, impose upon it. This Georgics does not read much like any previous version of it. Chew helps the English reader to get a sense of Virgil's avant-garde poetics, which is the main thing that almost all translators of the Georgics work to eliminate, if indeed they are even aware of it. First-rate. --Joseph Farrell, Professor of Classical Studies, University of PennsylvaniaThis is a translation with a difference, intended for readers without Latin. The most striking feature is the use of variations of type and layout. . . . Invocations are set out like memorial inscriptions; tasks or points to look for in animals come in the form of numbered or bulleted lists, assembling a plough reads like an instruction manual. Similes appear in italics, but so do the key words in some descriptive passages. The positioning of the text is used to illustrate the meaning of a quincunx, terracing, or the flight of a swarm of bees. These innovations serve to distinguish between what might be termed the poetry and the practical. Explanations are sometimes incorporated into the translation, which is in free verse, but mostly these are in the generous footnotes. . . . Chew has done considerable research into ancient and modern methods of husbandry and the notes concentrate on agriculture, astronomy, and botany. . . . Some [renderings] are particularly apt: 'the cicadas' complaining plainsong bursts the strawberry trees' for 'cantu querulae rumpent arbusta cicadae;' `'the murmur of the groves grows and grows' for 'et nemorum increbescere murmur.' . . . Chew should certainly achieve her aim of bringing the work to a wider readership. As she claims in her Introduction, 'Plain and simple, it is an American Georgics.' _—Anne Haward, The Joint Association of Classical Teachers ReviewMy graduate seminar members and I enjoyed Dr. Chew's rendering of the Georgics immensely. We were delighted and instructed by her playful blend of argots and typefaces, and by her artful blend of information in the notes. This translation opened the poem for me all over again—and it has long been among my favorites. Chew's translation offers a dazzling survey of musical styles in the poem. The fifteen of us send our thanks for her provocative and delightful achievement. -—Thomas A. Goodmann, University of Miami"A translation that is worthy of considerably more critical attention than it has received, not just because it contributes to what is now the well-documented and important phenomenon of classical literature being translated by women, but because it is a suggestive, challenging, vivid text, capable of creating Vergil anew for a new and wide range of demographics."—Fiona Cox, University of Exeter, in Classical Receptions Journal

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Book SynopsisRendered in an idiom drawn from present-day nature guides, gardening handbooks, how-to manuals, and scientific treatises--and in a style influenced by twentieth-century poetry--this bold new translation seeks to renew our appreciation of a work often relegated to the pigeonhole of didactic poetry about farming. In doing so, it reveals the Georgics as a remarkable window on Roman conceptions of the natural world and of the place of human life within it--and also conveys a sense of how daring were Virgil''s poetics in their day. Footnotes offer a wealth of information on mythology, agriculture, wildlife, geography, and astronomy while highlighting the technical, scientific, ethnographic, and other registers of the poem.Trade ReviewChew's translation is, both in aesthetic and scholarly terms, an excellent piece of work. I find her approach refreshing and true to the spirit of the Georgics; her adventurousness strikes me as just the thing to rescue the poem from the appearance of blandness that a more straightforward style of translationese would inevitably, but misleadingly, impose upon it. This Georgics does not read much like any previous version of it. Chew helps the English reader to get a sense of Virgil's avant-garde poetics, which is the main thing that almost all translators of the Georgics work to eliminate, if indeed they are even aware of it. First-rate. --Joseph Farrell, Professor of Classical Studies, University of PennsylvaniaThis is a translation with a difference, intended for readers without Latin. The most striking feature is the use of variations of type and layout. . . . Invocations are set out like memorial inscriptions; tasks or points to look for in animals come in the form of numbered or bulleted lists, assembling a plough reads like an instruction manual. Similes appear in italics, but so do the key words in some descriptive passages. The positioning of the text is used to illustrate the meaning of a quincunx, terracing, or the flight of a swarm of bees. These innovations serve to distinguish between what might be termed the poetry and the practical. Explanations are sometimes incorporated into the translation, which is in free verse, but mostly these are in the generous footnotes. . . . Chew has done considerable research into ancient and modern methods of husbandry and the notes concentrate on agriculture, astronomy, and botany. . . . Some [renderings] are particularly apt: 'the cicadas' complaining plainsong bursts the strawberry trees' for 'cantu querulae rumpent arbusta cicadae;' `'the murmur of the groves grows and grows' for 'et nemorum increbescere murmur.' . . . Chew should certainly achieve her aim of bringing the work to a wider readership. As she claims in her Introduction, 'Plain and simple, it is an American Georgics.' _—Anne Haward, The Joint Association of Classical Teachers ReviewMy graduate seminar members and I enjoyed Dr. Chew's rendering of the Georgics immensely. We were delighted and instructed by her playful blend of argots and typefaces, and by her artful blend of information in the notes. This translation opened the poem for me all over again—and it has long been among my favorites. Chew's translation offers a dazzling survey of musical styles in the poem. The fifteen of us send our thanks for her provocative and delightful achievement. -—Thomas A. Goodmann, University of Miami

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Book Synopsis A pillar of the West African oral tradition for centuries, this epic traces the adventures and achievements of the Mande hero, Sunjata, as he liberates his people from Sumaworo Kante, the sorcerer king of Soso, and establishes the great medieval empire of Mali. David Conrad conveys the strong narrative thrust of the Sunjata epic in his presentation of substantial excerpts from his translation of a performance by Djanka Tassey Conde. Readers approaching the epic for the first time will appreciate the translation''s highly readable, poetic English as well as Conrad''s informative Introduction and notes. Scholars will find the familiar heroes and heroines taking on new dimensions, secondary characters gaining increased prominence, and previously unknown figures emerging from obscurity. Trade ReviewThanks to his careful editing and translating of Condé's narrative, Conrad offers a highly readable version of the epic that is about a third of its original length. The translation communicates not only the poetic qualities and the essential events of the Sunjata legend but also the master bard's performance values. Thus, this rendering will fascinate those who already know the story and culture and those coming to the epic for the first time. Conrad provides an excellent introduction to Mande oral tradition, the role of the griot, and the Manding belief system. Though he makes no claim for this as the complete scholarly edition, he does provide helpful scholarly notes, a glossary, and a good bibliography. . . . Summing up: Highly recommended. --L. W. Yoder, CHOICEThis is an important resource for college teachers who would like their students to read a text which more fully resembles an oral poem and which communicates a richer, more complex, and more compelling version of the Sunjata story. . . . [This] version . . . is much more worthy to be placed among the great epics of world literature. It is eminently readable for students and instructors who are willing to give it the same kind of attention they give to Homer translations. --Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Temple UniversityConrad offers a great deal for students and instructors, with a solid Introduction which provides the context and history of the epic, a note on Mande nomenclature, maps, an epilogue, and a glossary of important names and terms. This is truly one-stop shopping for the Sunjata epic. I think Conrad's book will be a classic. --Konrad Tuchscherer, St. John's UniversityTable of ContentsPart I: The Late Classics / Post-classic in Oaxaca - An Introduction; Part II: Chronology, Continuity and Disjunction - Etic and Emic Perspectives; Part III: Continuity and Abandonment of Houses in the Valley of Oaxaca - Lambityeco and Macuilxochitl; Part IV: Changing Power Relations and Interaction in the Lower Rio Verde Valley; Part V: Sacred History and Legitimisation in the Mixteca Alta; Part VI: New Research Frontiers in Oaxaca and Eastern Guerreo; Index.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSarah Ruden's translation is clear, lean, intelligent, and delightfully readable. The notes provide guidance without encumbering the text. This will be marvelous for classroom use, for reading aloud, or simply for reading for pleasure. --Pamela Gordon, Department of Classics, University of KansasThe translation moves along at a smart and elegant pace. . . . Ruden is clearly a writer with considerable skill in poetic expression. . . . [Sheila Murnaghan's] introduction does a good job of introducing the Homeric Hymns to a general audience and assisting the inexperienced reader in reading the longer hymns, in particular. [This] new translation will clearly fill a niche for a convenient and inexpensive translation of the Homeric Hymns into English verse. . . . --Roger S. Fisher, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewClear, inclusive, luminously helpful, the Ruden/Murnaghan Homeric Hymns is a text I'll use next time I teach my ever-expanding Mythology in Literature class. Introduction, translation, and notes are all of superior quality. --Rachel Hadas, Department of English, Rutgers University

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Book Synopsis Readers of this witty and fluent new translation of The Canterbury Tales should find themselves turning page after page: by recasting Chaucer''s ten-syllable couplets into eight-syllable lines, Joseph Glaser achieves a lighter, more rapid cadence than other translators, a four-beat rhythm well-established in the English poetic tradition up to Chaucer''s time. Glaser''s shortened lines make compelling reading and mirror the elegance and variety of Chaucer''s verse to a degree rarely met by translations that copy Chaucer beat for beat. Moreover, this translation''s full, Chaucerian range of diction--from earthy to Latinate--conveys the great scope of Chaucer''s interests and effects. The selection features complete translations of the majority of the stories, including all of the more familiar tales and narrative links along with abridgments or summaries of the others. To reflect Chaucer''s interest in poetic technique, Glaser presents the tales written in non-coupleTrade Review This version of The Canterbury Tales is indeed 'fast-paced and entertaining'. It includes translations of most of the tales (certainly all of the most popular ones) and abridgments and summaries of a few others. Glaser's main innovation in this translation is a rather striking decision to render Chaucer's standard iambic pentameter line in iambic tetrameter. . . . Those who read his translation of The Canterbury Tales will likely be motivated to tackle a linguistically more challenging, yet more rewarding Middle English edition. Those who lack the time for such a task will still be able to appreciate the humor and variety of one of Chaucer's greatest works and will, through the basic and clear Introduction, get a sense of the historical and literary background of Chaucer, his times, and his works. The near conversational tone of the Introduction, furthermore, makes for an unintimidating encounter with a period of literature that, for many, is foreign and remote. As a kind of gateway text, therefore, Glaser's new translation of The Canterbury Tales will be much appreciated and valued by a non-specialist audience. --Jennifer A. Smith, Comitatus

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Book SynopsisPresents an abridgment of Stanley Lombardo's translation of Virgil's "Aeneid", suitable for use in such courses as those surveys of Roman history or classical mythology in which time may not permit a reading of the epic in its entirety. This book highlights the place of the "Aeneid" in Roman mythology, history, and literature.Trade Review"In 2005, Lombardo published his full Aeneid, and in doing so offered an elegant modern verse translation of Virgil. This has now been abridged, but nevertheless the essence of the original is maintained. . . . Lombardo gives us a realistic Aeneas, whose frail humanity and thoughtful heroism are manifested subtly, in unpretentious, yet dignified language. . . . This would prove a worthy (and cheap!) addition to a bookshelf lacking the full translation by Lombardo. He manages to give a real sense of Virgil through a style that is elegant and solemn, yet never overbearing." --Philip Harrison, The Journal of Classics Teaching"This attractive volume, an abridgment of Stanley Lombardo's complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid (Hackett, 2005), adds a Latin epic to the author's burgeoning set of translations of mainly Greek poetry. Lombardo has proved himself a poet-translator and performer of exceptional ability and innovation; by publishing in written and audio media, he has contributed to the awareness in the readership of translations the centrality of performance to Homeric epic. The recently published Aeneid represented his first foray into Latin epic, and he has translated Virgil with the same combination of austerity and accessibility that marked his Homers. . . . The translation is excellent, on the whole, and perfectly captures the pace and character of the original." --Joanne McNamara, Bryn Mawr Classical Review"Stanley Lombardo shows in the strength of his verse the talent that marks him as the most Greek and Roman of the modern translators of ancient epic." --Douglas Domingo-Forasté, Professor of Classics, California State University, Long Beach

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Book SynopsisStanley Lombardo''s deft abridgment of his 2005 translation of the Aeneid preserves the arc and weight of Virgil''s epic by presenting major books in their entirety and abridged books in extended passages seamlessly fitted together with narrative bridges. W. R. Johnson''s Introduction, a shortened version of his masterly Introduction to that translation, will be welcomed by both beginning and seasoned students of the Aeneid, and by students of Roman history, classical mythology, and Western civilization.Trade Review"In 2005, Lombardo published his full Aeneid, and in doing so offered an elegant modern verse translation of Virgil. This has now been abridged, but nevertheless the essence of the original is maintained. . . . Lombardo gives us a realistic Aeneas, whose frail humanity and thoughtful heroism are manifested subtly, in unpretentious, yet dignified language. . . . This would prove a worthy (and cheap!) addition to a bookshelf lacking the full translation by Lombardo. He manages to give a real sense of Virgil through a style that is elegant and solemn, yet never overbearing." --Philip Harrison, The Journal of Classics Teaching"This attractive volume, an abridgment of Stanley Lombardo's complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid (Hackett, 2005), adds a Latin epic to the author's burgeoning set of translations of mainly Greek poetry. Lombardo has proved himself a poet-translator and performer of exceptional ability and innovation; by publishing in written and audio media, he has contributed to the awareness in the readership of translations the centrality of performance to Homeric epic. The recently published Aeneid represented his first foray into Latin epic, and he has translated Virgil with the same combination of austerity and accessibility that marked his Homers. . . . The translation is excellent, on the whole, and perfectly captures the pace and character of the original." --Joanne McNamara, Bryn Mawr Classical Review"Stanley Lombardo shows in the strength of his verse the talent that marks him as the most Greek and Roman of the modern translators of ancient epic." --Douglas Domingo-Forasté, Professor of Classics, California State University, Long Beach

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Book SynopsisBook Five of The Faerie Queene is Spenser''s Legend of Justice. It tells of the knight Artegall''s efforts to rid Faerie Land of tyranny and injustice, aided by his sidekick Talus and the timely intervention of his betrothed, the woman warrior Britomart. As allegory, Book Five figures forth ideal concepts of justice and explores how justice may be applied in a real world complicated by social inequality, female rule, political guile, and excessive violence. At the same time, as historical allegory, it retells a number of the most important events of early modern England, in particular the controversies surrounding the colonization of Ireland. An integral part of the larger poem, Book Five also stands on its own as one of the most challenging meditations on justice in English literature.Trade ReviewThis edition of book 5 of The Faerie Queene is a welcome contribution. Stoll presents a text that will be very useful in the classroom. The decision to make available individual (or in two cases, paired) books of the romance will make it possible for instructors to teach their preferred books of the romance; Stoll's edition of book 5 will certainly increase the likelihood that the Legend of Justice will reappear in undergraduate classrooms, introducing students to a text in which Spenser scholars are increasingly interested. We will all benefit from that. --Andrew Fleck, Sixteenth Century JournalTwo editions of Spenser are both from the same series, published by Hackett Publishing Company, which is providing inexpensive paperback volumes of The Faerie Queene, under the general editorship of Abraham Stoll. The volumes printed this year, books 1 and 5, are edited, respectively, by Carol V. Kaske and Stoll himself. A single volume combining books 3 and 4, edited by Dorothy Stephens, is forthcoming, as is book 6, edited by Andrew Hadfield. The volumes are attractively printed, with notes at the bottom of the page. Each volume includes an introduction, the Letter to Raleigh, a brief 'Life of Edmund Spenser,' textual notes, a glossary, an 'Index of Characters,' and a bibliography. Kaske's introduction to book 1 forms an accessible student guide, touching on a wide range of topics, from versification, genre, and allegory, to 'Spenser's Religious Milieu.' At the same time, there are fresh flashes of insight, no doubt derived from Kaske's long experience of teaching a complex poem. . . . Eschewing 'political and biographical allegory (p. xvi), the notes offer plenty of help to the student seeking to get behind the veil of Spenser's dark conceit, for they emphasize symbolism and historical context, especially literary context or 'sources.' Stoll's edition of book 5 of the Faerie Queene includes a judicious introduction of considerable merit. Not simply well written and learned, it partitions the information in an accessible and interesting way. Stoll is fully attuned to the recent controversies surrounding the Legend of Justice, but he does more than record them for the student reader; he manages to express sympathy for both poet and poem. Students need to hear the historical nature of Spenser's achievement for English literature, and Stoll leads nicely with this topic: book 5 is 'one of the most challenging meditations on justice in English literature' (p. ix). Stoll is as sensitive to the violence of book 5 as he is to its strangeness and beauty. Students will appreciate the short inventory of important works of criticism at the end of each section. The notes are not as full as Kaske's, but perhaps appropriately so. . . . I look forward to having access to the remaining volumes in this series. --Patrick Cheney, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

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Book Synopsis This rich and lively anthology offers a broad selection of Middle English poetry from about 1200 to 1500 C.E., including more than 150 secular and religious lyrics and nine complete or extracted longer works, all translated into Modern English verse that closely resembles the original forms. Five complete satires and narratives illustrate important conventions of the period: Athelston, a historical romance; The Cock and the Fox, a beast fable by Robert Henryson; Sir Orfeo, a Breton lai; Saint Erkenwald, an alliterative saint''s life; and The Land of Cockayne, a fantasy. The book concludes with substantial excerpts from longer narratives such as Piers Plowman and Confessio Amantis. The poems are accompanied by introductions, notes, marginal glosses, source notes, and appendixes, including a bibliography and a list to help readers locate the lyrics in current original-language editions. Trade Review[An] excellent edition. Beautiful layout, attractive format. A good balance of Worldly and Religious texts.--Maryellen Keefe, Department of Humanities, SUNY Maritime College

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Book SynopsisOffers a broad selection of Middle English poetry from about 1200 to 1500 CE, including more than 150 secular and religious lyrics and nine complete or extracted longer works, all translated into Modern English verse.Trade Review[An] excellent edition. Beautiful layout, attractive format. A good balance of Worldly and Religious texts.--Maryellen Keefe, Department of Humanities, SUNY Maritime College

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Book Synopsis"Faerie Queene: Book 6 and the Mutabilitie Cantos".Trade ReviewA thoughtful edition with just the right amount of annotation for a class on sixteenth century literature. --Byron Nelson, West Virginia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction; The Fearie Queen, Book Six; Introduction; The Fearie Queen, Book Seven, the Mutabilitie Cantos; The Letter to Raleigh; The Life of Edmund Spenser; Textual Notes; Glossary; Index of Characters.

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Book SynopsisA collection of fifty prose poems provided with accurate translation that conveys the lyricism and nuance of the original French text. It includes an introductory essay, explanatory notes, and a bibliography that show the development of Baudelaire's work over time. It also features a translation of Baudelaire's early novella, "La Fanfarlo".Trade ReviewAttractively produced and presented, this useful edition of Paris Spleen and La Fanfarlo reads as both serious and engaging. The introduction is clear without being condescending. It seems to me very much to the point--as is Baudelaire as always. --Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate School, CUNYA new translation is certainly welcome for providing fresh perspective on this provocative work, and the added bonus of Baudelaire's early novella, La Fanfarlo , makes this edition particularly useful and illuminating of the author's career as a whole. --Marc Caplan, Professor, Department of German and Romance Languages, The Johns Hopkins UniversityIn this new translation Raymond MacKenzie has followed recent tradition in placing together Baudelaire's early novella and the collection of fifty prose poems which were published after his death. La Fanfarlo , published in 1847, is discussed in MacKenzie's clear and thought-provoking introduction under the heading "an experiment in narrative." As a narrative experiment Baudelaire's novella is one he judged to have failed, but MacKenzie's translation of the tale has a lightness of touch that captures the humour and pacing of this baroque fantasy and places it in the context of the poet's defiance of narrative expectations. The true experimental writing here is to be found in the prose poems of Paris Spleen . . . . if this translation is more prose than poetry, it allows a contemporary and fresh way of looking at the prose poems, and most importantly, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, succeeds in not blocking the light of the original. -- Nineteenth-Century French Studies

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Book SynopsisMikes Cowboy Tour - See Author Info

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Book SynopsisJune Green did not take up writing poetry until she was nearly 70, when failing eyesight robbed her of most of her customary activities and she needed some-thing else to pass the time. There was no thought of publication, and each subject was just what she happened to think of on that day, with no relationship to the other poems. It was immediately apparent that she had hit on an activity for which she had a natural talent, completely untaught, and as the poems accumulated it also be-came plain that some of them might be combined to tell a number of stories. Eventually she had many of the poems printed in two small booklets for family distribution, and the ones that dealt with her childhood on a Saskatchewan farm during the depression years were also published in a newspaper there, earning considerable acclaim. After her death at 83 it turned out that there were almost enough additional poems to print a third book-let and the decision was made to include everything, along with most of

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Blodgett shows that he has the courage to go way out on a limb when his poetics demand it.. Apostrophes II contains the finest verse I've read in a long time. In terms of technical excellence and intellectual excitement, I was reminded throughout of Eliot.... every poem stopped me cold with passages of such beauty that I simply had to reread them again and again." James Deahl, CBRA

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[The] reissued What the Crow Said and The Words of My Roaring.honour Kroetsch's enormous contribution to Canadian literature and.ensure his work will be available to a new generation of readers." University of Toronto Quarterly, Winter 2001/2002, Letters in Canada, vol 71:1

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The extraordinary beauty and vitality of Blodgett's poetry breathes world music: "the dance that dances us, of apples, grass and night"." Nancy Clasby, ARC, Canada's National Poetry Magazine"(Apostrophes IV).will reinvent all those favorite memories of summertime bliss.""To read Blodgett is to dislocate oneself from the world and go floating in the cosmos." Shawna Lemay, Edmonton Journal"There's a probing intellect at work beneath the often charming, even hypnotic, surface of these poems.. Blodgett is a master of the shimmering, choral effects language can attain.. Apostrophes IV is another rich and accomplished collection from a highly refined imagination." Harry Vandervlist, Quill & Quire

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Darbasie takes his readers on an intimate journey that encompasses the "landmarks of [his] fascination," (44) namely the fault lines where one reality collides with another, and identities converge. At once colloquial and esoteric, autobiographical and political, the poems are guided by two main metaphors: music and carnival, two of the island's richest traditions. The collection's "playful romp / among Old World, New World roots" (57) is framed by the overarching metaphor of the island, both a geographical place and a microcosm of the world." Stephanie Heidenreich, Prairie Fire Review of Books (see full review at www.prairiefire.mb.ca/reviews/darbasie_n.html)"In its entirety, the collection forms a cultural mosaic taking the reader on a relatively gentle, yet disruptive, post-colonial journey. Separately, each poem stands on its own as an elegantly written snapshot from a single lifetime. The inclusion of actual photos on the back cover complete the autobiographical framework and gives this text a sense of authenticity within a poetic vision that simultaneously threatens and challenges the notion of the authentic at every turn....A Map of the Island stands alone as a beautifully connected mosaic that also exists separately as individual poems laying claim to the experience of youth - both connected and disconnected by geography, material goods, nation, and colonialist disruption." David Bateman, Canadian Ethnic Studies".charming and delightful." Douglas Barbour, The Edmonton Journal"His poems evoke the life, conflicts and memories of the West Indies, told through a prairie perspective, as he struggles to understand the meaning of home." Prairie Books Now"Darbasie's poetry is as rhythmic and musical as the Calypso musicians who provided the background sound for his childhood." Naton Leslie, MultiCultural Review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Robert K offers readers a zanily brilliant and hauntingly austere series." Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe & Mail"Kroetsch shows how brilliantly a wily intelligence can slip the bonds of expectation to create surprising and challenging new work." Harry Vandervlist, Quill & Quire"Intellectually taut and supremely tricky." Shawna Lemay, The Edmonton Journal"This book of poetry is a trip--you do not want to miss it." Sheri-D Wilson, ARC: Canada's National Poetry Magazine, Summer 2002"In The Hornbooks of Rita K, acclaimed poet and prose writer Robert Kroetsch explored his own alter ego, as well as the idea that regardless of where or how far we wander from our roots, a little corner of home stays with us.... It is a rare treat to encounter an author whose work exudes the confidence to use language so playfully and still tell a story. Typically, Kroetsch laughs off any notion that he is widely regarded as an icon of Canadian literature. 'That's someone else,' he says. But no one else could have written The Hornbooks of Rita K." Vern Clemence, The StarPhoenix"Kroetsch's narratives are never traditional. In The Hornbooks of Rita K his story develops by accretion, or the slow process of sedimentation, as Raymond shuffles Rita's poems and his commentary into piles. This shuffling allows Kroetsch's playfulness to shine and offers its own occasion for wry commentary.... The Hornbooks of Rita K marks a welcome return of one of Canada's foremost poets." Richard Henry, SUNY Potsdam, World Literature Today"Of all the writers working in Canada today, Robert Kroetsch is perhaps the one who exerts more quiet influence than any other--and on a national scale. A superb mentor, a wonderful editor, and tirelessly generous to the literary community, Robert Kroetsch is a truly outstanding model and mentor as an artist, an intellectual, and an educator. Hundreds of students and writers can attest to his influence." Aritha VanHerk, University of Calgary"Renowned for exploring the external landscape (i.e., the prairie), Kroetsch focuses more on the internal landscape. Rita K reads more like a story with a beginning, middle and end....[I]t's Kroetsch at his finest and absolutely worth a read." Treena Kortje, Winnipeg Free Press"Rita's poem and Raymond's notes and emendations, a hall of mirrors in which Kroetsch himself does and doesn't appear, are a poetic anti-treatise, a comic primer and poignant meditation on versions of authorship and meaning, on what gets in and out through the back door of intentions, on what gets left behind on longing and lines around reflected eyes. True to Kroetsch's inimitable form, The Hornbooks of Rita K resists quotation and summary....[T]he book also contributes to fascinated reading and out loud laughs..." FastForward"Novelist, poet, essayist and teacher Robert Kroetsch is internationally known and justly celebrated as one of the fathers of contemporary Canadian literature....His latest volume, The Hornbooks of Rita K, continues to challenge the forms that limit expression." Coast Reporter"As novelist, poet, essayist and teacher, [Kroetsch] has introduced more of the seminal ideas that have shaped the postmodern growth of western Canadian fiction and poetry than any other writer--perhaps all other writers." Coast Reporter"Robert Kroetsch should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in the art and craft of poetry. Kroetsch should also be required reading for anyone who thinks poetry is no longer relevant, usurped perhaps by something hipper like rock and roll. Robert Kroetsch is a hip and sexy writer. Don't let the term sexy throw you off: I am referring to his use of language, his delight in things delightful and in the book's characters-the bereft, lovelorn Raymond and the acerbic Rita. Nor should you let the term "hip" throw you off. Kroetsch's writing is hip because it's very smart and still immensely readable. It's so good you can hardly tell." Nancy Jo Cullen, Alberta Views March /April 2002"The hornbooks are fragmentary texts, including both Rita's other, often unfinished poems and Raymond's rueful reflections on Rita's life. Numbered and presented out of chronological order, they build up to a picture of a life and also a story of a relationship....Over the course of the book, this project becomes an unsettling operation that creates oddly prismatic and shimmering effects without ever leading to a sense of securely knowing what really matters." Margaret Mackey, Contemporary Canadian Adult Books with Teen Appeal"The Hornbooks of Rita K is packed with ideas about the exchange processes, the sharings, that constitute writing. With a framework that allows such a variety of procedures, it is rich in ideas, modes and range. It is not at all surprising that it was nominated for the Governor General's Award." Australian Canadian Studies, Vol. 2, No.1"The Hornbooks of Rita K is Robert Kroetsch's radical continuation of an oeuvre that comprises nine novels, several volumes of poetry (see Complete Field Notes) and numerous critical essays....For newcomers to (post)postmodern Canadian writing, the complex Hornbooks - with a modern art flap-cover and shadowy back doors preceding each section - is no easy reading, but for those risking entrance, it may well function as an instructive avant-garde poetics." British Journal of Canadian Studies"Kroetsch.has created a small gem of book.. By turns reportage, recapture, rumination, imagination; by turns deeply searching, lightly whimsical, or refreshingly palpable, the two lives--shared and hidden--play out, with the matter of poetry itself seldom absent." Peter Skinner, Foreword Magazine

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