Poetry Books

Book SynopsisMarius von Mayenburg is a German playwright and translator whose previous plays include Fireface, which premiered at the Royal Court in 2000 and was published by Methuen Drama, Parasites and The Cold Child. Trade ReviewFor all its humour and satire on beauty and the homogenisation of the human race, the play is also a deeply complex reflection on identity that sees four actors take on eight roles, switching between characters and scenes with surreally seamless fluidity. The Independent "Marius von Mayenburg's savage social satire...highlights the dangers of living in a society with rigidly conformist notions of physical perfection...Mayenburg's point [is] that we inhabit a modern vanity fair where identity is up for grabs." Michael Billington, Guardian, 13.06.08 "A cautionary fairytale for the modern age. Maybenburg takes his scalpel to the current fixation with makeovers, botox and surgery, with size zero and the struggle to preserve youth at all costs...But...he does all this with a twinkle in his eye." Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 17.06.08 "The Ugly One...is a metaphysical teaser and a theatrical dare." Susannah Clapp, Observer

Read more less

Book SynopsisLonglisted for the 2014 National Book Award Never has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a father come together in such a sustained elegy. This unabashed sequence speaks directly from Hirsch’s heart to our own, without sentimentality. From its opening lines—“The funeral director opened the coffin / And there he was alone / From the waist up”—Hirsch’s account is poignantly direct and open to the strange vicissitudes and tricks of grief. In propulsive three-line stanzas, he tells the story of how a once unstoppable child, who suffered from various developmental disorders, turned into an irreverent young adult, funny, rebellious, impulsive. Hirsch mixes his tale of Gabriel with the stories of other poets through the centuries who have also lost children, and expresses his feelings through theirs. His landmark poem enters the broad stream of human grief and rai

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht''s groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo. Also included is A Short Organum for the Theatre, Brecht''s most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama. Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on Theater is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century''s most influential dramatists.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAll actors and acting teachers need The Ultimate Scene and Monologue Sourcebook, the invaluable guide to finding just the right piece for every audition. This remarkable book describes the characters, action, and mood for more than 1,000 scenes in over 300 plays. This unique format is ideal for acting teachers who want their students to understand each monologue in context.  Using these guidelines, the actor can quickly pinpoint the perfect monologue, then find the text in the Samuel French or Dramatist Play Service edition of the play. Newly revised and expanded, the book also includes the author’s own assessment of each monologue.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Aeneid of Virgil is one of the greatest works of Classical antiquity. In this study the poetic qualities of epic are analysed and illustrated by frequent quotations from the Latin, always with prose translations. The book will be appreciated by students and teachers of literature, and by knowledgeable non-academic readers.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMoves the unabashedly juvenile persona elliptically constructed in Zirconia into a seriously amusing, unblushing womanhood. This title contains poems, taking on with equivocal weightlessness the lexicons and trimmings of fashion, as it applies to the Self and the garments that clothe the Self, and self-obliteration.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). This authoritative edition presents students with a new, more complete, more challenging, but also more credible Swinburne than ever before. This edition presents the first rigorous scholarly edition of a substantial selection of Swinburne''s work ever produced. Swinburne was one of the most brilliant and controversial poets of the nineteenth century: a republican; a scorner of established Christianity; a writer of sexual daring; a poet of loss and of love. Yet he is also the most misunderstood poet of the Victorian period. This new edition, with substantial editorial material, presents a new and convincing portrait of a man sharply different from what is usually said of him. Beginning with his unpublished ''Ode to Mazzini'' (1857) and ending with his last major critical work on The Age of Shakespeare (1908), this edition offers Swinburne in the round--a man of astonishing consistency whose formal innovations and critical penetration remain persistently engaging as well as provocative. A major introduction explores Swinburne''s complicated reaction to the scandal of his first major collection, Poems and Ballads (1866); his life-long commitment to radical voices (Blake, Hugo, Landor, Shelley); his permanent hostility to tyranny; his sense of literature as a living form and of the heroic personality of the artist; his dazzling art criticism and adroit analysis of Renaissance and modern literature; his exceptional elegies for dead friends; his burlesques and richly atmospheric fiction and drama. The edition draws on rich contemporary sources, manuscripts, and the diverse print culture of Swinburne''s day, as well as moving through ancient and modern languages that Swinburne wrote with fluency.Explanatory notes and commentary are included to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life of Swinburne.Trade ReviewWith a lively introduction, expertly chosen selections, and a commanding scholarly apparatus, this volume presents a vital poet to a new generation of scholars and students. The full range of Swinburne's long and never-boring career is represented in bursts of poetry and criticism, from the unspeakably beautiful and fearsomely inventive to the politically confused and aesthetically derivative-all of them, for different reasons, fascinating. This definitive edition will help readers know the fullest version of our most enduring literary iconoclast. * Nathan K. Hensley, Georgetown University *Francis O'Gorman's excellent edition is the ideal introduction to Swinburne, presenting a generous representative selection of his poetry and prose that includes his best-known work along with some less familiar but significant texts. Meticulously edited and contextualized, this is an edition that will be of enormous value to established scholars and new students alike. * Catherine Maxwell, Queen Mary University of London *O'Gorman's handsome tome is an editorial feat that gives proportinate representation to all Swineburne's phases from the 1850s to the Edwardian period. ... The edition samples iconic poems and pivotal essays whilst recalibrating the Swinburne canon by including obscure yet fascinating work. The mixing of genres according to a rough chronological order offers a panoramic view of Swinburne's development and thematic concerns. * Notes and Queries *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION NOTE ON THE TEXT Ode to Mazzini Of the birth of Sir Tristram, and how he voyaged into Ireland (Queen Yseult) Letter to the Editor of The Spectator, 7 June 1862 (pp.632-3) [on George Meredith s Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads] Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (The Spectator, 6 September 1862) Dead Love (1859) Atalanta in Calydon (1865) from Preface to A Selection from the Works of Lord Byron (1866) from Poems and Ballads (1866) Laus Veneris The Triumph of Time Les Noyades Itylus Anactoria Hymn to Proserpine Hermaphroditus The Leper Before the Mirror Dolores The Garden of Proserpine Dedication, 1865 from Mr Arnold s New Poems (1867) From Chapter 2, Lyrical Poems , William Blake: A Critical Essay (1868) from Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence (1868) from Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (1868) from The Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1870) from Songs Before Sunrise (1871) Super flumina Babylonis Mentana: First Anniversary The Litany of Nations Hertha Before a Crucifix Tenebræ Cor Cordium In San Lorenzo On the Downs An Appeal from Simeon Solomon: Notes on his Vision of Love and Other Studies (1871) Tristram and Iseult: Prelude of an Unfinished Poem (1871) from Victor Hugo s L Année terrible (1872) from Bothwell (1874) from Songs of Two Nations (1875) from Diræ Celæno A Choice The Augurs A Counsel from Report of the First Anniversary Meeting of the Newest Shakespeare Society (1876) from Note of an English Republican on the Muscovite Crusade (1876) The Sailing of the Swallow (1877) from Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878) The Last Oracle A Forsaken Garden Relics Ave Atque Vale: In Memory of Charles Baudelaire Memorial Verses on the Death of Théophile Gautier Sonnet (With a Copy of Madamemoiselle de Maupin) In Memory of Barry Cornwall Inferiae Cyril Tourneur A Ballad of François Villon, Prince of All Ballad-Makers A Vision of Spring in Winter The Epitaph in Form of a Ballad, which Villon made for Himself and his Comrades, Expecting to Hanged along with them' From A Study of Shakespeare (1880) from Songs of the Springtides (1880) Thallasius On the Cliffs from Specimens of Modern Poets: The Heptalogia or The Seven Against Sense: A Cap with Seven Bells (1880) The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell Nephelidia Poeta Loquitur (c.1880n) from Studies in Song (1880) After Nine Years Evening on the Broads By the North Sea Emily Brontë (1883) from A Century of Roundels (1883) In Harbour Plus Ultra The Death of Richard Wagner Plus Intra The Roundel Wasted Love Before Sunset A Flower-piece by Fantin To Catullus Insularum Ocelle from A Midsummer Holidayand Other Poems (1884) IX. On the Verge Lines of the Monument of Giuseppe Mazzini Les Casquets In Sepulcretis On the Death of Richard Doyle A Solitude Clear the Way! from Poems and Ballads, Third Series (1889) March: An Ode To a Seamew Neap-Tide In Time of Mourning The Interpreters To Sir Richard F. Burton (On his Translation of the Arabian Nights) A Reiver s Neck-Verse The Tyneside Widow Recollections of Professor Jowett (1893) from Astrophel and Other Poems (1894) A Nympholept Loch Torridon: To E.H. Elegy 1869-91 Threnody October 6, 1892 A Reminiscence Hawthorn Dyke The Ballads of the English Border from A Channel Passage and Other Poems (1904) The Lake of Gaube In a Rosary Trafalgar Day Cromwell s Statue On the Death of Mrs Lynn Linton Russia: An Ode Carnot The Transvaal Dedication of ACS s Poems (London: Chatto & Windus 1904) from The Age of Shakespeare (1908) Christopher Marlowe EXPLANATORY NOTES FURTHER READING

Read more less

Book SynopsisA visionary selection from one of America's foremost poets

Read more less

Book SynopsisA stunning new collection from Poland's leading poet

Read more less

Book SynopsisA shimmering collection from a fascinating, formally engaged poet.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA selection of luminous, fiercely intelligent verse from Egypt's premier poet. Iman Mersal is Egypt'sindeed, the Arab world'sgreat outsider poet. Over the past three decades, she has crafted a voice that is ferocious and tender, street-smart and vulnerable. Her early work captures the energies of Cairo's legendary literary bohème, a home for Lovers of cheap weed and awkward confessions / Anti-State agitators and People like me. These are poems of wit and rage, freaked by moments of sudden beauty, like the smell of guava mysteriously wafting through the City of the Dead. Other poems bear witness to agonizing loss and erotic temptation, the breath of two bodies that never had enough time / and so took pleasure in their mounting terror. Mersal's most recent work illuminates the trials of displacement and migration, as well as the risks of crossing boundaries, personal and political, in literature and in life.The Threshold gathers poems from Mersal's

Read more less

Book SynopsisA rich, meditative new collection of poetry from John Koethe, the necessary and great poet (Hyperallergic).It's presumptuous, but if you're reading this youProbably know my usual obsessions and preoccupations:The worldboth the word and what it stands forand time,Which is or isn't real, depending on my mood. I've alwaysHated poems about philosophy, and I hope I still do,But since I don't know what that means anymore, here I am,Musing on my ends and my beginnings one more time . . .In Beyond Belief, John Koethe poses eternal and essential questions about the rhythms of time, language and literature, and the space between attention and belief. The eleventh book of poetry from America's philosopher-poet is an intimate, searching collection that gives life to the mundane and lends words to our most interior and abstract musings. What makes a life real? Words on a page, the accumulation of moments and memories, or nothing at all

Read more less

Book SynopsisIncandescent poems about living and aging—about being awake in this young century—by one of our most moving and eloquent poets.Trade Review"Restless and serene, spirited and subdued...[Pastan’s] poems look at the drama and depth of ordinary life." -- Paris Review"Not a dark book but one rich with supple humor and affirmation... by one of the most accomplished poets writing today." -- Library Journal"Linda Pastan’s work appears to be a happiness shared with nature and personal relationships. All that, yes, yet it’s about what we’re in danger of losing. This is the kinetic quality of Pastan’s poetry, calmed by lyricism…I read this book as a meditation with its constant pulse, reminding us that the poet who never races with the clock has all the time she needs." -- Washington Independent Review of Books"[Pastan] has the talent to blend seriousness and playfulness in a variety of forms and rhythms…Perhaps her finest accomplishment…she has given her readers a healthy series of reflective and life-changing poems—poems to enrich us." -- Missourian

Read more less