Poetry Books

Book SynopsisMatthew Arnold praised the Iliad for its ''nobility'', as has everyone ever since -- but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its ''bright unbearable reality'' (the word used when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem''s energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer''s extended similes and on the brief ''biographies'' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer''s glance. ''The Iliad is an oral poem. This translation presents it as an attempt - in the aftermath of the Trojan War - to remember people''s names and lives without the use of writing. I hope it will have its own coherence as a series of memories and similes laid side by side: an antiphonal account of man in his world... compatible with the spirit of oral poetry, which was never

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Book SynopsisCasting: 10 m / Scenery: InteriorThe greatest of all English war plays, Journey''s End shows the effect of war on a group of young officers. The play is a tragic and moving piece for advanced casts.

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

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Book SynopsisSimon Weinberg is dead. And, on a November morning, six people gather at his funeral - brothers and a sister, lovers and in-laws. Mourning allows them a special privilege and, for a few hours, they are isolated in another world under a lingering sun, in the shadow of the deceased.Written by the winner of the award-winning Art, Conversations after a Burial is a savage but richly comic play which explores that ineffable moment of mourning, when the newly deceased is still almost palpable, the moment in which one can maintain the memory of a breath, the intense pause between absence and the return to everyday existence, between loss and life.

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Book SynopsisPhilip Larkin''s second collection, The Less Deceived was published by The Marvell Press in 1955, and now appears for the first time in Faber covers.The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter in, Till wind distresses tail and mane; Then one crops grass, and moves about - The other seeming to look on - And stands anonymous again. from ''At Grass''

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Book SynopsisThe Greek poetry of the seventh to the fifth century BC that we call elegy was composed primarily for banquets and convivial gatherings. Its subject matter consists of almost any topic, excluding only the scurrilous and obscene.Trade ReviewThese two additions to the Loeb Classical Library [Greek Iambic Poetry and Greek Elegiac Poetry] will be welcomed by readers at all levels. Archolicus, Hipponax, Solon, the Theognidea, and many others are now accessible as never before...The translations, into prose, are wonderfully clear and readable. All traces of translationese have been removed, or more likely were never there. While the revisions are plain, they are always instructive and can be elegant. It will repay students to read these versions not just as a crib, but to compare them carefully with the Greek. There are surprises and delights for the attentive...Gerber has a gift for finding English that shows how the Greek works...The notes are marvels of condensed information...Gerber throughout the notes writes in a clear, concise, and scrupulous style. In effect he had summarized for his readers a great deal of information about current interpretations and problems of dozens and dozens of fragments...Gerber has distilled an impressive amount of scholarship. That feat, together with the excellence of his translations, makes these volumes among the most distinguished of those recently issued. -- H.G. Edinger * Phoenix *Gerber's texts and general scholarship, including helpful notes, are fully up-to-date, his presentation is lucid...and his translations are neat and accurate, as well as faithful to, for example, the obscenity of iambos (the era of euphemistic Loebs is over). These volumes form a fine complement to Campbell's Greek Lyric set; they deserve to be widely used. -- Stephen Halliwell * Greece and Rome *

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Book SynopsisExtant works by Sidonius Apollinaris are three long panegyrics in verse, poems addressed to or concerned with friends, and nine books of letters.

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Book SynopsisFilelfo (1398–1481), one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance, was the principal humanist working in Lombardy in the middle of the Quattrocento and served as court poet to the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. His Odes constitute the first complete cycle of Horatian odes since classical antiquity.Table of Contents* Introduction to Filelfo's Odes Texts and Translations: * Book 1. Apollo. Latin Texts and English Translations. * Book 2. Clio. Latin Texts and English Translations. * Book 3. Euterpe. Latin Texts and English Translations. * Book 4. Thalia. Latin Texts and English Translations. * Book 5. Melpomene. Latin Texts and English Translations. Appendixes: * Appendix A. Dedicatees, Dramatis Personae, Themes, and Meters. * Appendix B. Distribution and Frequency of the Meters in Filelfo's Odes. * Appendix C. Filelfo's Meters and his Classical Models. * Appendix D. Biographies. * Note on the Text: Manuscripts and Orthography. * Bibliography * Abbreviations * Manuscripts * Early Printed Editions * Secondary Sources

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Book SynopsisIn his most influential work, the Metamorphoses, Ovid (43 BCAD 17) weaves a hexametric whole from a huge range of myths, which are connected by the theme of change and ingeniously linked as the narrative proceeds from earliest creation to transformation in Ovid's own time.

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Book SynopsisJackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list.Trade ReviewJackie Kay tells the story of a black girl’s adoption by a white Scottish couple – from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother and the daughter. This unique and honest volume of poems has been adapted for radio. Also included in the book are new poems reflecting issues of sexuality, Scottishness and being working-class. * Spare Rib *Jackie Kay has been gathering a reputation for a few years as an outstanding young talent in British poetry and playwriting… The Adoption Papers could well become a key work of feminism in action… a wonderfully spirited, tender and crafted contribution to Scottish writing, to black writing, and to the poetry of our time. It is a work of the utmost generosity and truth. -- Alastair Niven * Poetry Review *

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Book SynopsisA text of William Blake's poetry and prose.Trade Review"[An] essential book in the study of an always fascinating author." Times Literary Supplement (TLS)

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Book SynopsisTHE GREAT GATSBY is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. Fitzgerald-inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island's north shore-began planning the novel in 1923, desiring to produce, in his words, 'something new-something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.' Progress was slow, with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was vague and persuaded the author to revise over the next winter. Fitzgerald was repeatedly ambivalent about the book's title and he considered a variety of alternatives, including titles that referenced the Roman character Trimalchio; the title he was last documented to have desired was Under the Red, White, and Blue. In its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, and became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film adaptations in the following decades. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title 'Great American Novel.' In 1998, the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period.

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Book Synopsis'Truly a marvellous collection ... There is balm for the soul, fire for the belly, a cooling compress for the fevered brow, solace for the wounded, an arm around the lonely shoulder - the whole collection is a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss' Stephen FrySometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization - I'm not the only one who feels like this.In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is something here to ease your pain.'The book is delightful; it rightly resituates poetry in relation to its biggest and most serious task: helping us to live and die well' Alain de Botton

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Book Synopsis'So you know how on the news these days there's just this endless stream of horrendous shit going down, like every single night? Suicide bombs, mass shootings, genocides, drone strikes, school massacres – it's like the end of the world or something... And you're kind of like – "Could I even cope if that stuff happened to me?"' Six young people are caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the heart of London. By turns terrifying, inspiring, brutal, heartbreaking and hilarious, BU21 is verbatim theatre from the very near future. Stuart Slade's play comprises six interlinking monologues. It premiered at Theatre503, London, in 2016, in a co-production with Kuleshov, before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios, London, in January 2017.Trade Review'Brave, blackly comic… the stories here are gut-churningly vivid, compassionate, yet often wildly, horribly funny' * The Times *'Slade offers six close-up, compelling and often blackly comic stories and the result is a constantly sparky 90 minutes that delights in surprising and wrong-footing us' * Evening Standard *'Amongst the trauma and suffering lurks an awful lot of humour… gallingly graphic, desperately bleak, heartrendingly sad and quite, quite hilarious' * Exeunt Magazine *'The real star of this show is Stuart Slade's script. It's not just the pace that runs relentlessly across the 90 minutes all-through, but his ear for how people speak, their lexicons and their rhythms. An Alan Bennett for the Millennial Generation is a big label to put on a young playwright, but Slade is building a corpus of work to justify it... superb work' * BroadwayWorld.com *'Intelligent, questioning and very funny' * The Stage *'What a daring feat of writing this is… hauntingly credible, shudderingly so… captures the internal conflict of global terror: the sense that it was somehow deserved, the pull to be part of something, the impulse to laugh and to cry' * WhatsOnStage *'Strikingly real, shocking and even heartbreaking at times… the dialogue is snappy and at some points surprisingly funny despite the tragic subject matter… a haunting piece that in the light of current events, will stay with the audience' * The Upcoming *'Around two-thirds of the way through I realised I'd become so caught up that I'd forgotten BU21 has not actually happened… Slade's fresh, intelligent writing is full of life and action' * West End Wilma *

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Book SynopsisImmensely popular with contemporary readers, Smith’s major poetic works are foundational poetic texts of the Romantic period. Smith’s innovations in poetic form have also placed her at the forefront of twenty-first century scholarship on the period. This edition presents her three major poetic works — Elegiac Sonnets (1784-1800), The Emigrants (1793), and Beachy Head (1807). They also remain major texts for thinking through such questions as the relationship between public and private; the ethical treatment of refugees and other persecuted people; the position of women in a patriarchal society; and the usefulness of science as a way of making sense of a complex and ever-changing world.This Broadview edition includes a new critical introduction which takes into account the developments in scholarship on Smith’s work and women’s writing over the past three decades, and it provides readers with a wealth of contextual material for understanding the writer and the social and literary environment within which she wrote, including key works by her precursors and contemporaries, selections from her letters, and reviews of her poetry.Trade Review“This welcome edition of Smith’s poetry renders her verse readily comprehensible to those new to it while simultaneously fostering ongoing scholarship. It provides all of the major poems and deftly situates them within multiple illuminating contexts, including a vital appendix that details how Elegiac Sonnets grew across successive editions. The editors’ lucid introduction to Smith’s life, career, and verse offers an innovative account of the poetic persona that won her popular attention. A scrupulous editorial framework consisting of informative footnotes, the illustrations to Elegiac Sonnets, and valuable appendices will facilitate study of her work at every level. This edition will contribute to flourishing attention to Smith’s poetry among those pursuing feminist, historicist, ecocritical, and formalist approaches to the period.” —Sarah Zimmerman, Fordham University“In their introduction to this invaluable edition, Claire Knowles and Ingrid Horrocks make a strong case for the vital importance of Charlotte Smith’s poetry to both the literary and the socio-political history of the Romantic era. They also show her to be a cosmopolitan poet whose internationalist perspectives and sympathies resonate today. Smith scholars will welcome the comprehensive bibliography as well as the breakdown of the nine Elegiac Sonnets editions that clarifies the publication history of this evolving work. The judiciously chosen appendices reveal Smith as a lodestone of late-eighteenth-century British culture—a writer who revived the English sonnet, mastered blank verse, earned the respect of reviewers, and inspired countless fellow poets to honor her in verse.” —Kari Lokke, University of California, Davis“Together Claire Knowles and Ingrid Horrocks are ideal editors for a new, much-needed, paperback edition of Charlotte Smith’s major poetic works … Romanticists will welcome Knowles and Horrocks’s equally affordable and expertly edited volume.” — Elizabeth A. Dolan, European Romantic Review “Charlotte Smith: The Major Poetic Works is a well-contoured new Broadview volume edited by Claire Knowles and Ingrid Horrocks. The ‘major poetic works’—Elegiac Sonnets, The Emigrants and the posthumous Beachy Head—set one another off to advantage, showcasing Smith’s formal and perspectival versatility, not to mention the dramatic flair and sense of irony that enliven her fiction and plays. Knowles and Horrocks capably survey the Smith criticism that has accumulated in the three decades since her initiation into the Romantic canon. … The poems themselves are thoughtfully edited, while the appendices lay out a rich context for Smith’s work, fulfilling the editors’ expressed ‘hope’ that their own readers will ‘gain a sense of the writer herself and a better understanding of the powerful reaction she evoked from the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century reading public’ (p. 42). Appendix B is especially nourishing: well-chosen selections from John Thelwall, Mary Robinson, and Coleridge place Smith in the context of contemporary debate about the ‘legitimate sonnet.’” — Jayne Lewis, Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth CenturyTable of Contents Appendix A: Key precursors and contemporaries Thomas Gray, “Sonnet on the Death of Mr Benjamin West” (1775) From William Cowper, The Task (1785) William Bowles, “Sonnet VIII. To the River Itchin, near Winton,” from Fourteen Sonnets, Elegiac and Descriptive (1789) Jane West, “On the Sonnets of Mrs. Charlotte Smith,” from Miscellaneous Poems, and a Tragedy (1791) From Frances Burney, Brief Reflections Relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) Mary Robinson, “Sonnet XLIII,” Sappho and Phaon (1796) From William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book One (1798-99) Anne Bannerman, “Sonnet VII,” from Poems of Anne Bannerman (1800) From Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society: A Poem, with Philosophical notes (1803) John Keats, “Sonnet VII: When I have fears that I may cease to be,” from Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848) Appendix B: Contemporaries on Smith and the sonnet John Thelwell, “An Essay on the ENGLISH SONNET; illustrated by a comparison between the Sonnets of MILTON and those of CHARLOTTE SMITH,” European Magazine (1792) Mary Robinson, from “Preface” to Sappho and Phaon (1796) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from “Introduction to the Sonnets,” Poems (1797) Appendix C: Selections from Smith’s letters related to her poetry To William Davies, 25 April 1797 To Joel Barlow, 3 November 1792 To Joseph Johnson, 12 July 1806 Appendix D: Selected reviews of Smith’s major poems Review of Elegiac Sonnets (1784) in the Monthly Review Review of Elegiac Sonnets (1786) in the Gentleman’s Magazine Review of The Emigrants (1793) in the European Magazine Review of The Emigrants (1793) in the Monthly Review Review of Beachy Head (1807) in British Critic Appendix E: Poetry about Smith appearing in newspapers and magazines Anonymous, “Sonnet to Mrs. Smith” D, “Sonnet to Mrs. SMITH, on reading her Sonnets lately published” “Pastor Fido,” “On passing the retreat of Charlotte Smith near Chichester, in Sussex” “Ticklepitcher,” “Ode to Charlotte Smith” “Oberon” (Mary Robinson), “Sonnet to Mrs Charlotte Smith on Hearing That Her Son Was Wounded at the Siege of Dunkirk.” Appendix F: Tables of Contents for the volumes of Elegiac Sonnets published during Smith’s lifetime

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Book SynopsisA collection of thrilling verse, including both new poems and beloved favourites, from the celebrated poet, modern cult icon, and author of nineteen books including Chelsea Girls. Eileen Myles' work is known for its blend of reality and fiction, the sublime and the ephemeral. At once intimate and open-hearted, her poems are a raw, complex and compelling diary of postmodern life and invite readers into astonishing new considerations of familiar settings, from the beginnings and ends of love and the imperatives of sexual desire, to the daily wonder of a poet's life in New York City and beyond - into lush-and sometimes horrible-dream worlds, imbuing the landscapes of her writing with the vividness and energy of fantasy. I Must Be Living Twice reflects Myles' sardonic, unapologetic, and freewheeling literary voice. Steeped in the culture of New York City, I Must Be Living Twice is a prism refracting a radical world and a compelling life.Trade ReviewEileen Myles' essential poetry is the hip kid leaning against their locker secretly burning with intensity, the smartest boy in the class who doesn't care he has a scar down his face -- Lena DunhamWhen Myles is described as an "avant-garde" poet, it makes her art sound difficult and intimidating. It isn't. * Guardian *It has taken time for the literary world to catch up with Myles's politics and poetics... [has] a modern, light-footed technique, which delights in skilfully switching perspectives between one line and the next. * Sunday Times *Amazing -- Kim Gordon[A] new generation of public feminists, including Beth Ditto, Lena Dunham and Tavi Gevinson, cite her as an inspiration, finding in her writing a ribald and ponderous succession to the New York School' New York Times * New York Times *She and her work are unsettled in the best sense: restless, disturbing, changeable... She is exemplary for more and more young writers precisely because she has gone her own way. * Ben Lerner *One of the richest and most conflicted human hearts you're likely to find -- Dan Chiasson * New York Review of Books *It's not often that a writer embodies the kind of trailblazing, unapologetic realness and talent that American poet Eileen Myles does. * Wonderland *Eileen Myles's poetry is kinetic, ecstatic, muscular, hilarious, sorrowful, valiant, original, necessary, and timeless. For those of you who are encountering it for the first time, I envy your ride. * Maggie Nelson *

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Book SynopsisIf the most wonderful time of year is enough to plunge you into a gloom, look no further. This collection of spirited stories and vibrant poetry will brighten your mood as it brings together Charles Dickens and Philip Larkin, W.H.Auden and Wendy Cope, Jilly Cooper and Dylan Thomas. From tales of carolling and snatched mistletoe kisses to ''The Worst Christmas Dinner, Ever'', there''s something here to amuse and interest Christmas lovers, grinches, and everyone in between.

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

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Book SynopsisFeatures Christmas poems from a range of years, in a range of styles.Trade Review'U. A. Fanthorpe is a national treasure. A new book from her is always a unique pleasure to be savoured for its truth, disconcerting obliqueness and even more disconcerting directness.' Liz Lochhead, Poetry Book Society Bulletin

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Book SynopsisThis is an anthology to delight both lovers of reggae and lovers of poetry which sings light as a feather, heavy as lead over the bedrock of drum and bass. If in the past Caribbean poetry seemed split between the English literary tradition and the oral performance of dub poetry, Wheel and Come Again brings together work which combines reggae's emotional immediacy, prophetic vision, fire and brimstone protest and sensuous eroticism with all the traditional resources of poetry: verbal inventiveness, richness of metaphor and craft in the handling of patterns of rhythm, sound and poetic structure.Its range is as wide as reggae itself. There are poems celebrating, and sometimes mourning, the lives and art of such creative geniuses as Don Drummond, Count Ossie, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Bob Marley, Big Youth, Bunny Wailer, Winston Rodney, Patra and Garnett Silk. There are poems of apocalyptic vision, fantasy, humour and storytelling; poems about history, culture, politics, religion, art, human relationships and love; poems which employ standard Caribbean English, poems written in Jamaican nation language and many poems which move easily between the two.From its birth in the ghettos of Kingston, reggae has become an international musical language, and whilst Jamaicans are inevitably well represented in this anthology, Wheel and Come Again reflects reggae's universal appeal with contributors from the USA, Canada, Britain, Guyana and St. Lucia. What all have found in reggae is an art with a rich aesthetic which, like the poetry they aspire to write, speaks to the body, mind and spirit, which compels a state of heightened expectancy with its combination of pattern and surprise: 'Counting out the unspoken pulse/ then wheel and come again'."Wheel and Come Again is no academic treatise - it is an attempt to hold a dancehall session in poetry, to take readers to the heart of reggae and carry them into the compelling seduction of the drum and bass' (26). This bold assertion, made in the introduction of Dawes's latest work, Wheel and Come Again, could have also added the word 'celebration'. And there is a lot to celebrate in this anthology"Geoffrey Philp, The Caribbean Writer.Kwame Dawes is widely acknowledged as the foremost Caribbean poet of the post-Walcott generation. He currently holds the position of Distinguished Poet In Residence and Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina.

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Book SynopsisOne of the nation's favourite poems in a beautifully illustrated edition for children.Trade ReviewKeeping's illustrations are amongst the most powerful images ever to have appeared in children's literature. * Books for Keeps *The striking quality of these classic poems is such that they still offer excitement and intensity for today's young readers with Keeping's unique interpretation providing a marvellous way into the poetry. * Dave Chant, Carousel *

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Book SynopsisWith an Introduction by Tim Cook. Shakespeare's sonnets have an intensity of both feeling and meaning unmatched in English sonnet form. They divide into two parts; the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a fair youth for whom the poet has an obsessive love and the second chronicles his love for the notorious 'Dark Lady'. In addition to the sonnets, this volume includes Shakespeare's two lengthy narrative poems on classical themes, The Rape of Lucrece which looks forward to the dark imagery of Macbeth, and Venus and Adonis which mixes ribaldry and tragedy in unique Shakespearean manner. The Phoenix and the Turtle is a beautiful metaphysical and allegorical short elegy, and takes its place with Shakespeare's better-known poetry.

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Book SynopsisWith an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Anne Varty, Royal Holloway, University of London. Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative years includes the haunting elegy to his young sister and the grieving lyric at the death of his father. The religious drama of his romance with Rome is captured here, as well as its resolution in his renewed love of ancient Greece. He explores forbidden sexual desires, pays homage to the great theatre stars and poets of his day, observes cityscapes with impressionist intensity. His final masterpiece, 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', tells the painful story of his own prison experience and calls for universal compassion. This edition of Wilde's verse presents the full range of his achievement as a poet.

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Book SynopsisA powerful expressionist drama from the 1920s about the dependent status of women in an increasingly mechanised society, based on the true story of Ruth Snyder. Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. 'This is a play written in anger. In the dead wasteland of male society – it seems to ask – isn't it necessary for certain women, at least, to resort to murder?' - Nicholas Wright Sophie Treadwell's play Machinal was first seen on Broadway in 1928, in London in 1930, and was later revived in the 1990s. This edition of Machinal includes an introduction by Judith E. Barlow.Trade Review'Gripping... doesn't loosen its hold on the senses until its shattering climax' * Independent *'Stingingly fresh and provocative' * Time Out New York *'[A work of] rare and disturbing beauty' * New York Times *'Gaspingly intense... Machinal remains pretty extraordinary stuff... [Treadwell's] spare, percussive language frequently feels like it could have been written yesterday' * Time Out *'A dazzling piece of work... Machinal, written in 1928, has lost none of its cold fury, its expressionistic power to depict a woman trapped by a society that expects her to marry and conform. It is astonishingly modern' * Whatsonstage *'An unforgettable portrait of a particular woman and of America itself as a hellishly dehumanised assembly line' * Guardian *'Feels strikingly modern: its sharp, splintered depiction of a young woman breaking apart in a dehumanising, mechanised world could have been written yesterday… an eloquent and groundbreaking play' * Financial Times *'Machinal was decades ahead of its time and still feels astonishingly, and depressingly, pertinent' * Radio Times *'Captivating, intense and resonant... a fascinating piece, a formally bold and explicitly feminist study of an ordinary woman who snaps under societal pressure... demonstrates Treadwell’s adventurousness as a playwright' * The Stage *

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Book SynopsisInspired by Georges Seurat's pointillist masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical celebrates the art of creation and the creation of art. In the first half of the musical, set in 1884, the people - and the animals - in the painting come to life in a world where, for the artist George, art comes before love, before everything. In the second half, a century later, Seurat's great-grandson is wrestling with the same obsessions in present-day New York. Sunday in the Park with George was premiered on Broadway in May 1984, in a production directed by James Lapine. An earlier, incomplete version had been performed Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in July 1983. The musical went on to win the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The first London production opened at the National Theatre in March 1990. It won the 1991 Olivier Award for Best New Musical.Trade Review'The first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has ever produced' * New York Times *'Penetrates the mystery of artistic creation... overpoweringly affecting... what a show this is... irresistible' * Daily Telegraph *'This is great musical theatre' * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThree of the most famous tragedies from Ancient Greece, all featuring female protagonists - in modern, much-performed translations. This volume, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classic Collections series, contains: Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Marianne McDonald. The first great 'resistance' drama, and perhaps the definitive Greek tragedy. Bacchae by Euripides, translated by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael. The story of revenge by the half-man half-god Dionysos on Pentheus, King of Thebes, and all his people. Medea by Euripides, translated by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael. The powerful myth of Medea, who murders her children as revenge for her husband's infidelity.

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

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Book SynopsisChase Twichell's poetry is marked by a strong identification with the natural world, one that exceeds any with other human beings. There's a dissociation born of a rough childhood, which only the later poems address head-on, though many earlier ones circle around it. Central early concerns are the heartbreak of love between men and women, the ecological decimation of our planet, and the nature of the human mind. Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been shows the evolution of a distinctive voice in American poetry through several collections written over 35 years. Beginning with "Perdido" (1991), each of her collections has had a distinct centre of gravity, with each poem contributing to a whole larger than the sum of its parts. Perdido probes the relationship between love and death. "The Ghost of Eden" (1995) grieves and rails against our poor stewardship of the earth. "The Snow Watcher" (1998) chronicles the early years of her study of Zen Buddhism - a crucial influence on all her later work - and begins to address a central fact of her childhood: early sexual abuse at the hands of a "family friend", and a lifelong battle with depression. "Dog Language" (2005) continues to explore these themes, and also the dementia and death of her father from alcoholism. In the background, questions regarding the human self continue to arise. The new poems of "Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been" are much more frontal in their treatment of these evolving, interlocked concerns, forthrightly taking on childhood sexual trauma, mental illness and substance abuse. But the heart of the book is the poems' focus on Twichell's continuing, deepening enquiry into the nature of the self as seen through the eyes of Zen. What is most interesting (and problematic) about these poems is that just as poetry goes where prose cannot, so Zen goes where language cannot. Thus the poems become sparer and sparer as they approach saying what cannot be said.Trade Review'Suppose you had Sappho's passion, the intelligence and perspicacity of Curie, and Dickinson's sweet wit, all mixed into a brilliantly shifting connectivity of ideas, scenes, creatures, phantoms, moods, and suspicions, and set her in the life we know we live. Then you would have the poems of Chase Twichell, which are so splendid and astonishing' - Hayden Carruth. 'They are full of sharp observation, both of the world and herself, unsentimental poems with a sinewy intellectual toughness - they open out into a stark, sometimes bewildered clarity' - Robert Hass, Washington Post.

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Book SynopsisThe Sonnets explore many of Shakespeare's most common themes: jealousy, betrayal, melancholy. They ache with unfulfilled longing, and, for many, they are the most complete and moving meditations on love ever written.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an afterword by Peter Harness.The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, a cycle of 154 linked poems first published in 1609, are reproduced in full in this Macmillan Collector’s Library edition. Filled with ideas about love, beauty and mortality, the sonnets are written in the same beautiful and innovative language that we have come to know from Shakespeare's plays. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man known as the 'Fair Youth', while others are directed at a 'Rival Poet', and a 'Dark Lady'.Trade ReviewEvery generation continues to be in his debt. Shakespeare’s plots, which are brilliantly polyvalent, continue to inspire ceaseless adaptations and spin-offs. His unforgettable phrase-making recurs on the lips of millions who do not realise they are quoting Shakespeare * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisJohn Wilders - literary advisor to the BBC TV Shakespeare series - brings thorough scholarship and a practical understanding of performance needs to this new edition. Clarity, accessibility and rigour are the hallmarks of an edition which will provide invaluable guidance for all its readers. "This edition has a very helpful introduction and good clear text, as well as the exceptionally excellent and detailed notes." Dr Michael Herbert, St Andrews University "a useful treatment of a complex play'Barry Gaines, University of New Mexico, Shakespeare QuarterlyTrade ReviewAntony and Cleopatra is a tragedy, and a fascinating examination of the devious intricascies of politics. * Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 12.05.10 *'The play is a wry examination of the wonder and the absurdity of love in middle ages.' * Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 12.05.10 *'Shakespeare's Antony is a charismatic leader, a reckless politician and a desperate, lust driven lover, with a touch of a demigod.' * John Peter, Sunday Times, 16.05.10 *'it combines hard politics with erotic fascination' * Libby Purves, The Times, 15.10.10 *Cleopatra's speech in which she mourns for Antony and 'transforms a vainglorious old roue into a god in perhaps the most transcendentally beautiful verse Shakespeare ever wrote.' * Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 15.10.10 *'easily Shakespeare's finest historical foray' * Paul Callan, Daily Express, 15.10.10 *'The legendary sex bomb Cleopatra, one of the toughest as well as the most fascinating of Shakespeare's heroines' * Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday, 24.10.10 *'This is a tragedy of love poisoned by politics and politics betrayed for love' * John Peter, Sunday Times, 24.10.10 *'Shakespeare's tragedy of passion, politics, and performance' * Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 16.12.10 *'...after all, this is a play about delusions and illusions, about the love affair between a drama queen and a great warrior who manages to botch everything he touches, including his own death'. * Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 16.12.10 *'It's the die-hard lust for life and sheer overblown poetry of its middle aged lovers that makes 'Antony and Cleopatra' the hedonist's favourite tragedy.' * Caroline McGinn, Time Out London, 16.12.10 *

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Book SynopsisThe world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrún, and the Fall of the Nibelungs.In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir most celebrated of dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also great hate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions of forgetfulness.In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún hTrade Review“Will appeal strongly to readers already haunted by the deeper, more sombre musics of Middle-earth” The Times “This is the most unexpected of Tolkien’s many posthumous publications; his son’s ‘Commentary’ is a model of informed accessibility; the poems stand comparison with their Eddic models, and there is little poetry in the world like those” Times Literary Supplement “The compact verse form is ideally suited to describing impact… elsewhere it achieves a stark beauty” Telegraph

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.''Stars, hide your fires!Let not light see my black and deep desires.''One of Shakespeare''s darkest and most violent tragedies, Macbeth''s struggle between his own ambition and his loyalty to the King is dramatically compelling. As those he kills return to haunt him, Macbeth is plagued by the prophecy of three sinister witches and the power hungry desires of his wife.

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Book SynopsisDubbed 'an immaculate survivor' by Robert Creeley, Tom Raworth has remained steadfastly independent of literary fashions and cliques throughout a poetic career spanning fifty years. As When is the first selection of Raworth's writing to address the full range of his work, from the first poem he ever shared with anyone outside his family, 'You Were Wearing Blue', to his most recently published poem, 'Surfing the Permafrost through Methane Flares'. The book includes prose work and notational pieces that were intentionally left out of his Collected Poems (2003), along with poems that were only published in little magazines or as ephemeral cards and broadsides. Some pieces appear in correct, definitive versions for the first time.Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgements xiiiIntroduction xviiA Note on the Selection xxviiiYou Were Wearing Blue 1Wedding Day 2Waiting 3But I Don' Love 4Morning 6Three 6The Blown Agent 7Ah the Poetry of Miss Parrot's Feet Demonstratingthe Tango 7Hot Day at the Races 8North Africa Breakdown 9You've Ruined My Evening/You've Ruined My Life 10Now the Pink Stripes 11Collapsible 11Love Poem 12These Are Not Catastrophes I Went Out of My Way toLook For 14Gitanes 15Tom Tom 16The Explosive Harpoon 17The University of Essex 18Going to the Zoo 20How Can You Throw It All Away on This Ragtime? 20Lion Lion 21Lemures 21South America 22Come Back, Come Back, O Glittering and White! 23On the Third Floor and a Half 23Claudette Colbert by Billy Wilder 24The Moon Upoon the Waters 25Purely Personal 26Notes of the Song/Ain't Gonna Stay in This Town Long 26Entry 27Blue Pig 27Lie Still Lie Still 28You Can't Get Out 28Stag Skull Mounted 29Greetings from Your Little Comrade 36Moonshine 36Taxonomy 37The Auction of Olson's Head 37Logbook 38Continued (Subtitles) 48Dreaming 50Friday 52Births of Images and Deaths 54In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was withGod, and the Word Was God 55Art Is the Final Correction 56Rather a Few Mistakes than Fucking Boredom 57Drop in Existence 58Just Out of the Picture 58How to Patronise a Poem 59Tracking (notes) 62Faces Change and Changes Face Us 69True Confessions (notes) 71Songs of the Depression 75Gaslight 76Love and Pieces 78Wandering 79Bounce 80Patch Patch Patch 81Future Models May Have Infra-red Sensors 82Mirror Mirror on the Wheel 84Belt 85Chicago 85University Days 85Uncertain Steps 86From Time to Time in the Past 87Mixed 87xEverything 'Under' the Sun 88No Peace/Black Holes/Earth Cracks 88Laid Waste by the Luftwaffe 89The Ethical Artist 89Infinite Variety Stales 90New Year 90Cap 91Into the Wild Blue Yonder 91Boomerang 92Doctor Mends 92Not a Step Do I Stir until That Cat's Back to Its Colour 93A Blue Vacuum Cleaner 93The Beckoning Harpoon 93Out Takes 94Dormitory Life 97There Are Few People Who Put On Any Clothes(starring it) 98The Conscience of a Conservative 106Perpetual Motion 113Horse Power 118Variations on Horse Power 124Message Bottle 126Piety 132Skiey 132Never Mind 133Hearing 133The Dresden Codex 134Well 134Gracious Living "Tara" 135Eurode 136I Am Specious, Herr Kommandant 138A Silver Bullet Made from a Crucifix 138Everything I Have Is Yours 139Magnetic Water 140Lenin's Minutemen 141Pratheoryctice 142Proust from the Bottom Up 143Mordant Fleas 144Rome by Anonymous 145xiSleep, Perch 145Indian Giver 146The West 147No Idea at All 147English Opium 148August 1st 1982 148Electronic Atmospheres 149West Wind 150Descriptive Verse 171Creaking 171from Curtains 172Nothing 176The Vein 177All Fours 187Coal Grass Blood Night Emerald 190Dark Senses 192Out of a Sudden 195Death to a Star 196Unable to Create Carrier 200Cat Van Cat 201Landscaping the Future 202Suffering from Painful Trapped Mood 204Baggage Claim 206Never Entered Mind 208Caller 209Birthday Poem 223Seesound 224From Mountains and Gardens 226I Wasn't Before 227Title Forgotten 227Got On 228Stilled Motion Epitaph 236Asyndeton 236Surfing the Permafrost through Methane Flares 237Index of Titles 241Index of First Lines 245xii

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Book Synopsis'Expatriation: my having had a patria, a fatherland, to leave, did not occur to me until I was forced to invent one. [...] This luxury of inattention, invention, and final mismatch...a 'Trinidad' being created that did not take my Trinidad away (my Trinidad takes itself away, in reality, over time)...that is expatriation, no? An exile, a migrant, a refugee, would have been in more of a hurry, would have been more driven out or driven towards, would have been seeking and finding not.'In Measures of Expatriation Vahni Capildeo's poems and prose-poems speak of the complex alienation of the expatriate, and address wider issues around identity in contemporary Western society. Born in Trinidad and resident in the UK, Capildeo rejects the easy depiction of a person as a neat, coherent whole - 'pure is a strange word' -embracing instead a pointilliste self, one grounded in complexity. In these texts sense and syntax are disrupted; languages rub and intersect; dream sequences, love poems, polylogues and borrowed words build into a precarious self-assemblage.' Cliche', she writes, 'is spitting into the sea', and in this book poetry is still a place where words and names, with their power to bewitch and subjugate, may be disrupted, reclaimed. The politics of the body, and cultures of sexual objectification, gender inequality and casual racism, are the borders across which Capildeo homes, seeking the modest luxury of being 'looked at as if one is neutral ground'. In the end it is language itself, the determination to speak, to which the poet finds she belongs: 'Language is my home, I say; not one particular language.' Measures of Expatriation is in the vanguard of literature arising from the aftermath of Empire, with a fearless and natural complexity. 'Expatriation: my having had a patria, a fatherland, to leave, did not occur to me until I was forced to invent one. [...] This luxury of inattention, invention, and final mismatch...a 'Trinidad' being created that did not take my Trinidad away (my Trinidad takes itself away, in reality, over time)...that is expatriation, no? An exile, a migrant, a refugee, would have been in more of a hurry, would have been more driven out or driven towards, would have been seeking and finding not.'Trade Review"Capildeo is both Trinidadian and universal. The reader is taken on an inventive and linguistically fresh journey." Tears in the Fence" "

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Book SynopsisEdited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series, with Henry V as its inaugral volume, presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing endeavours to take account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry himself, astute and charismatic, who led his ‘band of brothers’ to victory in the Battle of Agincourt, could indeed seem to be ‘this star of England’. In recent decades the play has attracted increasing critical attention and is now highly controversial. Kenneth Branagh's film-production reflected the changing valuation. Does this play have a sceptical sub-text which subverts its patriotism? Is Henry's achievement beset by irony? Has current scepticism distorted a predominantly and proudly nationalistic drama? Henry V demonstrates Shakespeare's acclaimed ability to bring new complexity to the material that he adapted, so that different eras may find within his work the familiar and the strange, the congenial and the harsh, the sustaining and the challenging.

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Book SynopsisEdited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. In Henry IV, Part 1, the King is in a doubly ironic position. His rebellion against Richard II was successful, but now he himself is beset by rebels, led by the charismatic Harry Hotspur. The King’s son, Prince Hal, seems to be more concerned with the pleasures of the tavern world and the company of the fat rogue, Falstaff, than with concerns of state. Eventually, however, Hal proves a courageous foe of the rebels. This history play is lively in its interplay of political intrigue and boisterous comedy, subtle in the connections between high statecraft and low craftiness, exuberant in its range of vivid characters, and memorable in its thematic concern with honour, loyalty and the quest for power. In Henry IV, Part 2, the King is ailing, Falstaff is ageing, and the kingdom itself, where rebellion is still rife, seems diseased or debilitated. The comedy has a melancholy undertone, and the politics verge on the Machiavellian. Eventually, the resourceful Hal, inheriting the crown as Henry V, must prove that he can uphold justice in the realm. Here Shakespeare demonstrates a mastery of thematic complexity and subtlety, and shows the price in human terms that may be exacted by political success.

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