Poetry

The U.S. debut of internationally acclaimed poet and performance artist Shailja Patel, Migritude is a tour-de-force hybrid text that confounds categories and conventions. Part poetic memoir, part political history, Migritude weaves together family history, reportage and monologues to create an achingly beautiful portrait of women's lives and migrant journeys undertaken under the boot print of Empire. Patel, who was born in Kenya and educated in England and the U.S., honed her poetic skills in performances of this work that have received standing ovations throughout Europe, Africa and North America. She has been described by the Gulf Times as "the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy" and by CNN as "the face of globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange." Migritude includes interviews with the author, as well as performance notes and essays.

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Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) once wrote of a desire to leave behind "one poem, one story / that will tell what it was like / to be alive." In an abundance of memorable poems, he fulfilled this desire with candour and subtlety, emotion, and humour, sympathy and truth-telling. For many years, Nowlan has been one of Canada's most-read and -beloved poets, but only now is the true range of his poetic achievement finally available between two covers, with the publication of Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan.Nowlan takes us from nightmarish precincts of fear and solitude to the embrace of friendship and family. Delving into experiences of violence and gentleness, of alienation and love, his poetry reveals our shared humanity as well as our perplexing and sometimes entertaining differences. Nowlan's childhood and adult years are colourfully reflected in his poetry. These autobiographical threads are interwoven with fantasies, an astute historical consciousness, and a keen awareness of the shiftings and transformations of selfhood.Nowlan wrote with formal variety, visually shaping his poems with a dexterity that complicates impressions that he was primarily a "plainspoken" poet. His varied uses of the poetic line — his handling of line-lengths and -breaks, stanzas, and pauses — show him to be a writer who skilfully uses the page to suggest and embody the rhythms of speech. This long-awaited volume enables readers to experience his poetic genius in its fullness and uniqueness.

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The authoritative new translation of the epic Ramayana, as retold by the sixteenth-century poet Tulsidas and cherished by millions to this day.The Epic of Ram presents a new translation of the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas (1543–1623). Written in Avadhi, a literary dialect of classical Hindi, the poem has become the most beloved retelling of the ancient Ramayana story across northern India. A devotional work revered and recited by millions of Hindus today, it is also a magisterial compendium of philosophy and lore and a literary masterpiece.The third volume details the turbulent events surrounding the scheming of Prince Ram’s stepmother, who thwarts his installation on the throne of Avadh. Ram calmly accepts fourteen years of forest exile and begins his journey through the wilderness accompanied by his wife, Sita, and younger brother Lakshman. As they walk the long road, their beauty and serenity bring joy to villagers and sages dwelling in the forest.This new translation into free verse conveys the passion and momentum of the inspired poet and storyteller. It is accompanied by the most widely accepted edition of the Avadhi text, presented in the Devanagari script.

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An intriguing approach to the rewriting of myth, this book takes the reader on a journey through the history of languages and symbolic traditions. Through a main character, Queenie, a cow of many abilities and a history that takes in the creation of the universe, readers come to see the world in new ways. Cow leaps and flies into imaginative realms carrying mythology and language. Cow creates the universe and travels through the sky as a herd of stars.

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Why Brownlee Left, a Poetry Book Society Choice and winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, confirmed Paul Muldoon's reputation as the most inventive voice of his generation when it was first published in 1980. The key figure in the poet's third collection is the enigmatic Brownlee; strong-willed and wayward, past shaky, future hazy, present whereabouts uncertain. There are many new departures here, but Why Brownlee Left also explores with increasing authority themes already apparent in New Weather (1973) and Mules (1977). It culminates in a retelling of 'Immram Mael Duin', a strange voyage of self-discovery by the poet's legendary ancestor.

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

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Talks about failed and (less often) successful relationships, the dizzying crisis of early adulthood, leprechauns and spells and Miss Pringle's seven lovely daughters waiting to spring out of a cardboard cake, and the turnip.

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The Tower was W. B. Yeats's first major collection of poetry as Nobel Laureate after the receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923. It is considered to be one of his most influential collections. The title refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917 and later restored. The Tower includes some of his greatest and most innovative poems including 'Sailing to Byzantium', a lyrical meditation on man's disillusionment with the physical world; 'Leda and the Swan', a violent and graphic take on the Greek myth of Leda and Zeus and 'Among School Children', a poetic contemplation of life, love and the creative process.

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A collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift editions for poetry lovers. Poems is Wilfred Owen's only volume of poetry, first published posthumously in 1920 and edited by his friend and mentor, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen is regarded as one of the best poets of World War I and composed nearly all of his poems in just over a year, between August 1917 and September 1918. Owen was virtually unknown at the time of his death, yet his poetic account of a soldier's experience of war has shaped our impression of the horrors of the Western Front. This collection includes the well-known 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.

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A collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift for poetry lovers. In 1855 Walt Whitman published his first collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The volume received great praise from leading Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. This encouraged what would become a lifelong project as Whitman expanded and rewrote the volume until his death in 1892. Whitman's innovative use of free verse and the quotidian achieved his aim of reaching out to the everyday American. This edition, based on the earliest published version of 1855, features Whitman's most famous poem 'Song of Myself', an American epic inspired by his personal experiences.

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This is the first collection by Mary O'Malley to be published by Carcanet Press. From the child colonised, to the adult journey, from Ireland to America to Southern Europe, this is a poetic exploration of love and place and the poet's only true home - the language in which he or she writes.

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Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the greatest German language poet since Goethe, worked for a time as Rodin's secretary at Meudon. This title is a paperback edition of Stephen Cohn's celebrated translations and includes the complete German language text parallel with the English.

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Neruda's long-overlooked third book of poetry, critical in his poetic evolution, now translated into English for the very first time! Over twenty books by Pablo Neruda, the legendary Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, have been translated into English, a testament to his enormous appeal. Yet, the work Neruda pointed to as "one of the most important books of my poetry," has been woefully neglected and remains virtually unknown. venture of the infinite man was Neruda's third book, published in 1926, two years after his widely celebrated and still much beloved Twenty Love Poems. In a stark stylistic departure from the love poems, Neruda discarded rhyme, meter, punctuation and capitalization in an attempt to better capture the voice of the subconscious. In an epic poem comprised of fifteen cantos spread over 44 un-numbered pages, the Infinite Man sets forth on a virtual sleepwalk through time and space, on a quest to atone for his past and to rediscover himself. Neruda's readers were not prepared for this experiment, and venture did not garner the reception Neruda had hoped for. Indeed, decades after its publication, he lamented that it remained "the least read and least studied of all my work." venture is a strikingly clear example of a poet's creative and intellectual development, bridging the aching, plain lyricism of Love Poems, and the unique hermeticism of Neruda's next book, the landmark Residence on Earth. Neruda considered venture essential to his evolution: "Within its smallness and minimal expression, more than most of my works, it claimed, it secured, the path that I had to follow." Its long-overdue translation into English is cause for celebration! "Experimental, obscure, timeless, essential, venture of the infinite man, published two years after his famous Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, set Pablo Neruda on his course toward becoming the greatest poet in the history of the Spanish language. Its publication in English is a historic event, above all today, above all in this moment, above all, now."—Raúl Zurita "In his early twenties and after the enormous success of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Neruda surprised everyone by changing aesthetic gears in this book that was at once innovative and emblematic. The effort was part of what would ultimately become his ceaseless embrace of change as the sine qua non of style. Jessica Powell does wonders rendering these cantos for the first time into English, filling in a gap his legion of admirers will be thankful for. This isn't only an unseen Neruda but an unforeseen one too."—Ilan Stavans, editor of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda "What an act of generosity this book is. Eisner's introduction contextualizes and informs precisely as needed, and Jessica Powell’s translation achieves astonishing beauty and refreshing truth. She has listened deeply to Neruda’s text."—Katherine Silver "Jessica Powell is the 'distant light that illuminates the fruit' of venture of the infinite man, the twenty-two year old Pablo Neruda’s untranslated third book. One part quest and one part inner map, in Powell’s hands the delicious and strange language of the original dances effortlessly in English. Readers can now experience the moment Neruda evolved from being only a brilliant singer of love poems into a maker of rich, stunning worlds. This book is a treasure."—Tomás Q. Morín, author of Patient Zero "This book has the fascination of being Neruda becoming Neruda. It's the brilliant young poet who made himself famous at nineteen and twenty with Twenty Love Poems, beginning to absorb the lessons of the new surrealism and making his way to the world poet he would become in Residence on Earth. So it is a leap into the imagination of one of the crucial poets of the twentieth century as he is feeling his way."—Robert Hass

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Years after her death, a poet’s life and work speak across the generations, inspiring new music and more intentional living. What are the heart’s necessities? It’s a question Jane Tyson Clement asked herself over and over, both in her poetry and in the way she lived. The things that make life worth living she found in joy and grief, love and longing, and, most importantly, something to believe in. Her observation of the seasons of the soul and of the natural world have made her poems beloved to many readers, most recently jazz artist Becca Stevens. Clement’s poetry has gained new life – and a new audience – as lyrics in the songs of this pioneering musician of another century. Like many great poets, from Emily Dickinson to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jane Tyson Clement (1917–2000) has found more readers since her death than in her lifetime. A new generation that prizes honesty and authenticity is finding in Clement – a restless, questing soul with a life as compelling as her work – a voice that expresses their own deepest feelings, values, and desires. In this attractive coffee table collection of new and selected poems, editor Veery Huleatt complements Clement’s poetry with narrative sketches and scrapbook visuals to weave a biography of this remarkable woman who took the road less traveled, choosing justice over comfort, conviction over career, and love over fame.

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The Epic of the Cid records the deeds of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the Cid of history and legend. A powerful warrior in the Christian reconquest of medieval Spain, a formidable strategist, and a charismatic leader, the Cid deeply impressed his contemporaries, both Christian and Muslim. Already, in his lifetime, songs, stories, and chronicles were devoted to his exploits.In offering both a highly readable, colloquial prose translation of El Cantar de Mio Cid and selections from a wide variety of those contemporary accounts, this volume brings the historical figure back to life for modern readers.Harney's substantial Introduction and annotation provide the historical, military, and literary background necessary for an informed reading of the texts; also included are maps, a compendium of proper names, a bibliography, and an index.

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In this career-defining book, the poems of Dennis O'Driscoll are gathered together for the first time. Beginning with Kist in 1982 and ending with the posthumous Update in 2014, the selection was made by O'Driscoll himself before his death in 2012 and includes revised, authoritative versions of some older poems as well as thirtythree hitherto uncollected: the definitive poetic ouevre.

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Yannis Kondos is one of the most notable and representative of a generation of Greek poets (the 'Generation of Contention') born at the end of the Second World War, in whose poetry the themes of social protest, existential anguish, death, life's absurdities, technology and consumerism are presented through vivid images which link the real and the imaginary, the mundane and the universal, the rational and the ridiculous. Introduction and translation by David Constantine.

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Anthony McNeill was without doubt amongst the finest contemporary Caribbean poets, whose previous collections were hailed as works of immense originality. Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child won the 1995 Jamaican National Literary Award. Completed shortly before his death, it is a farewell to the world which moves like a bird in flight between moments of painful regret, wry humour and a sense of closure. Anthony McNeill's word-lanterns will continue to flame in the darkness long beyond his death.Anthony McNeill was born in Jamaica in 1941 and died in 1996. His previous collections include Reel from 'The Life Movie' (1972) and Credences at the Altar of Cloud (1979).

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When Mahadai Das died at the tragically early age of 49, there was an outpouring of grief across the Caribbean that a poet, who never quite had the chance to build a literary career to match her talents, had been lost. She had been known for some time as a highly promising Guyanese poet, but when Peepal Tree published her Bones in 1988, there was widespread critical recognition that here was an outstandingly original new voice. Then severe illness struck and though there followed occasional poems that developed the achievement of Bones, there was no new collection.This Collected Poems, discussed with Mahadai Das before her death, and organised in co-operation with the poet's sister, brings together almost all the poems she wrote. It includes I Want to Be a Poetess of My People (1976), My Finer Steel Will Grow (1982), and Bones (1988). In addition, A Leaf in His Ear brings together many of the fine poems published in journals and previously uncollected, and some unpublished work, from lively, humorous nation-language poems to experiments with ballad forms and the oblique, gnomic poems written in the years after Bones.With an introduction by Denise DeCaires Narain Gurnah.Mahadai Das was born in Guyana in 1954. She was a dancer, actress, teacher, beauty-queen and volunteer member of the Guyana National Service. She left Guyana to philosophy in the USA. Then came debilitating health problems. She died in 2003.

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This is a collection of observational poems centred around all aspects of working life. We all define ourselves to some extent by our job, or lack of a job, and the author explores the many different ways in which this definition manifests itself. From hairdressers to hangmen, and boxers to builders, the universal experience of work is approached from every angle, so that each reader will find something different to relate to.

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Snowdonia, 1880, and Jane Gruffydd is a newcomer to the district, dressed to the nines and almost fainting in the heat of the interminable prayer meeting out on the mountainside...In the pages of this classic 1936 novel, we see the passionate and headstrong Jane grow up and grow old, struggling to bring up a family of six children on the pittance earned by her slate-quarrying husband, Ifan. Spanning the next forty years, the novel traces the contours not only of one vividly evoked Welsh family but of a nation coming to self-consciousness; it begins in the heyday of Methodist fervour and ends in the carnage and disillusionment of the First World War. Through it all, Jane survives, the centre of her world and the inspiration for her children who will grow up determined to change the conditions of these poor people's lives, to release them forever from their chains.

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Lucid narratives of family dramas, global warming, and conversations with Death make a riveting new collection from this prize-winning poet. The poems swing between Mexico City, New York, a Staffordshire village and home, their engagement with the church, art and natural beauty provide sure-footed travelling companions. The second section is an extended sequence, in which Death relates stories of her encounters with people and culture.

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“Music is the brute that shows. It is the avowal of materials, And stutters between its clanging of things.”How should one think this musical groove of the poem whose back and forth motion shuffles the material of ordinary language and revives the frozen speech of old chants? This question by renowned French thinker Jacques Rancière is the entry point for his earnest and careful reading of one of France’s most singular and important contemporary poets. For Rancière, Philippe Beck sets himself the task of a poetry after poetry whereby Beck re-writes and transforms the poems of the past, reanimating faded genres, poetizing the prose of popular tales and even commentaries regarding poems. To read and follow this groove traced as such cannot simply be done by way of taking the poems as objects of study. It supposes a dialogue regarding what these poems attempt to do as well as an idea of a poetry which serves as their foundation. This book on Philippe Beck is thus also a book made with him.

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French-English bilingual edition. André Breton called Césaire's Cahier 'nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time'. It is a seminal text in Surrealist, French and Black literatures - published in full in English for the first time in Bloodaxe's bilingual Contemporary French Poets series. Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was born in in Basse-Pointe, a village on the north coast of Martinique, a former French colony in the Caribbean (now an overseas departement of France). His book Discourse on Colonialism (1950) is a classic of French political literature. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) is the foundation stone of francophone Black literature: it is here that the word Negritude appeared for the first time. Negritude has come to mean the cultural, philosophical and political movement co-founded in Paris in the 1930s by three Black students from French colonies: the poets Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana; Leopold Senghor, later President of Senegal; and Aimé Césaire, who became a deputy in the French National Assembly for the Revolutionary Party of Martinique and was repeatedly elected Mayor of Fort-de-France. As a poet, Cesaire believed in the revolutionary power of language, and in the Notebook he combined high literary French with Martinican colloquialisms, and archaic turns of phrase with dazzling new coinages. The result is a challenging and deeply moving poem on the theme of the future of the negro race which presents and enacts the poignant search for a Martinican identity. The Notebook opposes the ideology of colonialism by inventing a language that refuses assimilation to a dominant cultural norm, a language that teaches resistance and liberation.

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'This exhibition is not a jubilee, it's an account of my work. I demand help - not the glorification of non-existent virtues. That's what we are talking about, comrades, and not about glorifying private persons.' Mayakovsky was a poet, playwright, artist, director, actor, diarist, producer of agitprop posters and advertisement slogans, and writer of articles, essays and speeches. The inherent conflict of his status as an avant-garde communist writer working within the steadily narrowing cultural conditions of early Soviet Russia runs vividly throughout his work, and was a significant contributing factor to his suicide at the age of thirty-six. This groundbreaking collection draws together for the first time Mayakovsky's key translators from the 1930s to the present day, bringing some remarkable works back into print in the process and introducing poems which have never before been translated.The radical scope of its representation makes for the most comprehensive account of Mayakovsky's work to date - an account which charts not only the extraordinary range of his creative output, his rigorous and passionate innovation of language and form, and the intense power of his electrifying live performances, but also the fascinating and turbulent history of Mayakovsky's cultural and political representation in the western world. Edited by Rosy Patience Carrick

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Why God Is a Woman is a collection of poems written about a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex. It is also the story of a boy who, exiled from the island because he could not abide by its sexist laws, looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness and wonders: Why does God have to be a woman? Celebrated prose poet Nin Andrews creates a world both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women. Nin Andrews's books include The Book of Orgasms and Sleeping with Houdini.

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