Poetry Books

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis is a handy and a welcome volume. * Modern Language Reviews *Table of ContentsLetter to Posterity; The Ascent of Ventoux; Selections from the Canzoniere

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Book SynopsisIn its vivid rendering of the savagery lurking within civilization, Othello is arguably the most topical and accessible tragedy from Shakespeare's major phase as a dramatist.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 is illustrated throughout by Sir John Gilbert, and includes an introduction by Ned Halley.Othello is an intense drama of love, deception, jealousy and destruction. Desdemona's love for her husband Othello, the Moor, transcends racial prejudice; but his trusted ensign, the envious Iago, conspires to devastate their lives. The play raises uncomfortable and pertinent questions about both racial identity and sexuality, as Othello and Desdemona's relationship becomes the voyeuristic site of Iago's attempt to destroy them.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 SynopsisEuripides (c. 485–406 BCE) has been prized in every age for his emotional and intellectual drama. Eighteen of his ninety or so plays survive complete, including Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae, one of the great masterpieces of the tragic genre. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

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Book SynopsisLunch in Soho with a former lover - but Zanzotti''s is under new management, and as the wine takes effect fond memories give way to something closer to the bone . . .Christopher Reid''s poem, which since its first publication has been filmed by the BBC and presented on stage in numerous venues, follows the lunchtime reunion of two long-separated lovers. Every smallest detail is cherished, as step by step the narrative moves towards its tragicomic outcome.

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Book SynopsisSocial media sensation Billy Chapata shares insight and advice into the powerful world of love, heartbreak, and what comes next. This collection of poetry and prose will justify heartache and inspire the fortitude to survive and prosper.From Chameleon Aura author Billy Chapata comes his second major poetry collection, Flowers on the Moon. Chapata presents his signature blend of experience and advice through a chaptered series of prose and poetry. Filled with the familiar themes of love, loss, resilience, and growth From Chameleon Aura but with fresh poems and new advice, his touching narrative celebrates humanity for its undeniable worth, and this collection will leave readers warm with hope for growth, rebirth, and, most prominently, self-acceptance.Trade Review"A thought-provoking and heartfelt collection." (Goodreads)

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Book SynopsisSorcerer is a book in the form of a script/novel/manual about the pleasures of being with others and of being alone. Three friends hang out and share a long and unremarkable conversation about getting dressed, headaches, ticks, compression fantasies, surgery, and their aspirations, among other things. The characters find contentment in each other's company, conversing in the placid, eerie rhythms of a sitcom in which conflict never arises. When two of the friends go home for the night, the remaining one watches TV, dances, and takes apart his face in front of a giant mirror.Trade Review'Atkins and Zultanski's play redesigns the contemporary home as a machine for comedy, sadness, and anxiety. Sorcerer is a unique work of theatre and literature, beautiful and unsettling.' - Dan Fox; 'With Sorcerer, Ed Atkins and Steve Zultanski invite us 'round for an evening of conversational bricolage, word games, and mild social debarment (with grapes). We are privy to the trivial crosscut with the vital; we submit to compression fetish and sulphuric mythology; we ruminate on the merits of facial deconstruction, and most crucially of all, we are reminded once again about the awful sad joy of humanness and what it means to be alone.' - Graham Lambkin; 'Vivid on the page, Sorcerer is a surprising and compelling hallucinatory theatre text for a cast of three. In it a set of hyper-naturalistic micro-conversations are laid out in an unblinking deadpan; crisp dialogues that focus in on the body, mapping the detail of daily actions and experiences from the removal of clothing, to the acquisition of new skills, and the precise interior feeling of headaches. Atkins & Zultanski have made the score for a complex, haunting event.' - Tim Etchells; 'Sorcerer is the emphatic magic of lived-time actions. This is a dialogue between the object body and other objects, so distended and loud as to be near silent. Where each action held might also begin to corrupt, or stain, pulling too hard, tuning in and tearing out. A politics of who we are in how we are, learnt, programmed, actioned and acted.' - Ghislaine Leung; 'In this ingenious work, Zultanski and Atkins innovatively deploy both material and human gesture to paint a sad yet almost comic scenario of contemporaneity. A group of friends conduct inane conversation about subjects like how to take off your pants (with accompanying gestures), yet these people raise serious compassion in us, for they are us. Atkins and Zultanski's brand of drolly underwrought utterance show us once more that innovative device is the sine qua non of really good art.' - Gail Scott

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Book SynopsisAn essential collection from the leading figure of Chinese poetry translation, presenting work of insight, humor, and musicality that continues to resonates across thousands of years.Red Pine is one of the world''s finest translators of Chinese poetic and religious texts. His new anthology, Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine, gathers over thirty voices from the ancient Chinese past?including Buddhist poets Cold Mountain (Hanshan) and Stonehouse (Shiwu), as well as Tang-dynasty luminaries Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan.Dancing with the Dead also includes translations from such religious texts as Puming?s Oxherding Pictures and Verses and Lao-Tzu?s Daodejing, as well as poems and woodblock illustrations from Su Po-Jen?s Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, one of the world?s first printed books of art.?Throughout the book, poems are accompanied by footnotes providing historical context, and each section includes a new and illuminating introduction chronicling Red Pine?s relationship to the poet?discovery, travel, scholarship. Dancing With The Dead is more than a book, it is a journey: part travel essay, part road map, part guided meditation. It is a history translated in poem.For Red Pine, ?translating the words in a Chinese poem isn?t that hard, but finding the spirit that inspired those words, the music of the heart, and asking it to inspire [his heart], that is how, and why, [he] translates.??our luggage is full of river travel poems?may we ride forth together again.?? Wei Yingwu

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Book SynopsisA care package, left by r.h. Sin, found by you.From New York Times bestselling author, r.h. Sin, comes a care package of two new poetry and prose collections boxed together in an elegant slipcase.

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Book SynopsisBring on the merriment and song whenever you open this collection of Shakespeare’s entertaining comedies. The comedies of William Shakespeare—including The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It—have entertained readers and theatergoers for centuries. This elegant Word Cloud edition of Shakespeare’s Comedies includes all fourteen of the Bard’s comedies in a single volume so readers can revisit their favorite plays and passages with ease. 

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Book SynopsisIntended for all readers of Shakespeare, this beautiful and ground-breaking book arranges Shakespeare's sonnets printed in 1609 in chronological order and intersperses the sonnets from the plays among them. A lively introduction provides essential background, while explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases illuminate the sonnets' meanings.Trade Review'What a fresh and lovely idea! I've been speaking the sonnets for most of my life. They are such wonderful training for an actor, and the notes and paraphrases in this book are just what we all need to guide us through them.' Judi Dench'This new arrangement of Shakespeare's sonnets is a revelation. Paul Edmondson, and Stanley Wells have truly illuminated the author's themes, preoccupations and obsessions. In so doing the poems have a fresh, and startlingly clear narrative progression. Thanks to their scholarship I found myself experiencing this work as never before. There is a directness, simplicity, and humanity, which shines from the page. It was an honour to read them in this form. I hope a large audience will enjoy seeing (and hearing), this new light shone on a great literary treasure.' Kenneth Branagh'Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells have done something daring, controversial, and richly illuminating. To the 154 poems collected in the celebrated volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets they have conjoined the sonnets that appear in the plays – such as the famous lines shared by Romeo and Juliet. To these they have added a number of passages from the plays that are in effect close relations to the conventional sonnet form. The result is to break down the walls and set Shakespeare's famous sequence in a much expanded field of poetic making. But that is not all: jettisoning the order in which the sonnets first appeared in print, Edmondson and Wells arrange them in what they take to be their chronological order of composition. The result is something radical and unsettling. To make these deeply familiar poems seem unexpected and new is a significant achievement.' Stephen Greenblatt, Author of Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics and The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve'A marvellously refreshing new look at Shakespeare's devotion to the sonnet form, expanding our understanding of the published sonnets by adding those he included in the plays. The single sentence description of each sonnet is also immensely useful and helpful to even the most seasoned reader.' Gregory Doran, Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director'This is a book of clarity and love which shadows the mind in time of Shakespeare the poet and in so doing brings us closer than ever before to his own awareness of the reach of his genius.' Carol Ann Duffy'All the Sonnets of Shakespeare presents a wealth of valuable material and compelling interpretations in a clear, comprehensible, and convincing style that will hold appeal not only for Shakespeare scholars and students, but for all devotees of 'the supreme poet-dramatist' and his work.' Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts'A valuable project, and one which achieves what Shakespeare editions so often promise but so rarely deliver: which is to prompt a genuinely new way of looking at these familiar works.' Daniel Swift, The Spectator'What Edmondson and Wells have done is both groundbreaking and profoundly significant … whether dipping in for a brief encounter or wanting to fully immerse oneself in the entire Sonnet canon, with scholarly explication and guidance, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare is a one volume tour de force. 400 years after his death, Edmondson and Wells have breathed new life into our engagement with his poetic output and a revised understanding of the man, his motives and his responses to creative muses … I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of their book and rediscovering the Sonnets for yourself! The casual reader will be both enlightened and entertained and the scholar will be academically stimulated.' Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Yorkshire Times'… a model of editing, which scraps the conventional sentimentalities and lets us read the Sonnets as poems - explorations into worlds of possible feeling, speech and thought, rather than coded memoirs.' Rowan Williams, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2020'In putting Shakespeare's dramatic sonnets alongside the 1609 group, this edition exhibits the breadth with which he handles the form.' Molly Clark, Times Literary Supplement'This book is a gift to scholars and students … This study will prove valuable to all who specialize in Shakespearean topics.' M. H. Kealy, Choice'Exploring the sonnets hidden in some of Shakespeare's most revered plays gives a new flavour and dynamic to those characters. It draws our attention to the author's intention in each play, where he makes a character unexpectedly speak in poetry. It illuminates that moment and poses new questions. The detailed and extremely in-depth introduction strongly supports the original works and allows us to examine all of Shakespeare's sonnets in a new, exciting and precise way. I learned a lot from reading this. I hope you do too.' Lolita Chakrabarti'… this is a volume into which one can dip suggestively, creatively and repeatedly to find things new. It is, frankly, the most exciting reconception of the Sonnets since John Benson's Poems in 1640, and the same motive of making them 'serene, clear and elegantly plain' serves to intensify their drama, their diversity and their brilliance.' Jane Kingsley-Smith, Shakespeare SurveyTable of ContentsIntroduction Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells; About this Volume; Sonnets; Textual Notes, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare: Literal Paraphrases, Numerical Index of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), Index of First Lines.

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Book SynopsisVisually arresting and utterly one-of-a-kind, Sarah J. Sloat's Hotel Almighty is a book-length erasure of pages from Misery by Stephen King, a reimagining of the novel's themes of constraint and possibility in elliptical, enigmatic poems. Here, "joy would crawl over broken glass, if that was the way." Here, sleep is a "circle whose diameter might be small," a circle "pitifully small," a "wrecked and empty hypothetical circle." Paired with Sloat's stunning mixed-media collage, each poem is a miniature canvas, a brief associative profile of the psyche—its foibles, obsessions, and delights.Trade ReviewAIGA 50 Books 50 Covers of 2020 The New York Times Book Review, “New & Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins” Library Journal, "Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" Academy of American Poets, “2020 Featured Fall Books” "Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations" Electric Literature, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image" Neon Pajamas, "Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020" Hypoallergic, “Typographic Eye Candy”: 50 Standout Book Covers From 2020 “Absolutely marvelous.” —Mary Ruefle "This book of erasure poems uses Stephen King’s “Misery” as its source text, highlighting themes of captivity and imagination. Sloat reproduces the original pages she used, adorned with fanciful collages on the erased sections." —”New and Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins,” The New York Times Book Review "Sarah J. Sloat’s debut poetry collection, Hotel Almighty, is a visual feast. This assemblage of erasure poems and full-color collages is a fantastical, Rubik’s Cube of a delight." —Kelly Fordon, New York Journal of Books "Sloat’s brilliant erasures. . . are visual delights that transcend confinement." —"Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations," Kenyon Review "Sarah J. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty (Sarabande, Sept.) goes all out with erasure and mixed-media collage to reimagine Stephen King’s Misery." —"Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" by Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal "Hotel Almighty is a collection full of possibility and surprise. Of yes, misery and confinement, but also of playfulness and hope. It’s worth noting how unusual and thrilling it is to encounter a book of poems infused with so much color. The sophistication of the erasure pairs with the illustrative nature of collage to create a distinct mood, at times, like a subversive picture book for the Future Adult version of the kid drawing in the back of the room, who is too smart or dark or witty for the rest of the class." —"Misery Loves Company: A Conversation with Sarah J. Sloat" by J.M. Farkas, The Rumpus "More in the spirit of play than protest, S. Jane Sloat creates poetry from prose, reconstituting the words and world of Stephen King’s Misery. Sloat finds dreamy delight in King’s suspenseful tale: ‘In an act of imagination/late at night./He threw back his head and/a variety of strange and poisonous flowers grew.’ These lines feel like they speak to the creative process in general and to this book in particular. Each page is a poem revealed through erasure, strange word-flowers growing up from crayons, collage fragments, and loose threads that suggest a feminine hand." —Electric Literature, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image" "Sarah J. Sloat's visual spectacles feel like unique and refreshing dreamscapes. Where a table or desk transforms into a craft bonanza of vivid lines, vintage clippings, yarn, scissors, wallpaper, string. Hotel Almighty offers all of those things. Bring me erasure. Bring me poetry. Bring me analog collage. Bring me Misery on every damn page." —"Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020," Neon Pajamas "Hotel Almighty will make your brain spin until the last page, weaving colorful paper cut-outs, vibrant dots, and gold threads with word-jewels excavated from Misery, bewildering you with a new sense of what poetry is capable of." —Rhino "At a time when many contemporary poets experiment with and teach erasure as a poetic technique, Sloat's collection showcases the many potentials of the form. Sloat's visual compositions occur on three or four levels at once, as she aligns the forms of the source text, the verbal text, the collage, and the collection. I believe this multi-level resonance sets new parameters for poetry. With her flexibility with syntax and fluid subjects, Sloat forges new insights that call us to question the way we relate to what confines us, and to re-set the limits of a poem. I've loved reading and re-reading Hotel Almighty. I find something new each time I open the book, and I continue to learn from the box of many boxes Sloat presents here." —Diagram, online "[Misery] explores the mode and function of artistic creation as it relates to life itself, the ways confinement and suffering can become means to radical opening. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty internalizes all of this, both commenting and building on King’s explorations in both the form and lyricism of her erasures." —Dream Pop Journal, online "Sloat’s work here belongs within the offbeat orthodoxy of found poetry; the popular label 'blackout poetry' certainly applies to her method of scratching out, painting over or otherwise obscuring printed text, thereby bringing novel messages to the surface. And yet these terms, which live in negative language, don’t fully capture Sloat’s sublime, unsettling outcomes. She coaxes Technicolor poetry from preexisting pages; new verse isn’t merely found—as in stumbled upon—but unearthed." —The Curator "[A]n innovative, compelling work of visual lyric." —Women’s Voices for Change, online "Hotel Almighty is a profound work of reinvention — from King’s pop fiction to a hybrid work where houses grow wild with flowers, where one asks hell to “subside a little” (42), and where the reader enjoys every minute of the bizarre, vivid, delightful journey." —The Indianapolis Review "This is the technical and dramatic pinnacle of erasure poetry." —Naoko Fujimoto Poetry & Graphic Poetry “Sarah J. Sloat’s erasure-collages create intimate and intricate pairings that ricochet back and forth between text and image. In one, a picture of a giant hand tenderly touching a tiny telephone speaks to the page’s mournful question, ‘If I could be / A dim shape slumped over / and round / Would that be so bad?’ In another, the erased text (‘The sound of the wind filled the phone / squeezing into the line / like a nerve awake at night’) is translated into red stitches approaching, then encircling a tree. Hotel Almighty is a marvel.” —Matthea Harvey

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Book SynopsisThe electrifying, Tony Award-winning playset inside the elusive world of a recording studio, as a rock band on the brink of superstardom attempts to create their difficult second album. Published alongside the West End production in 2025.

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2018Nick Laird has been an assured and brilliant voice in contemporary poetry since his acclaimed debut, To a Fault, in 2005. Feel Free, his fourth collection, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird''s forebears Heaney, MacNeice and Yeats. With characteristic variety, invention and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems and free verse) the poet explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint - the family, the impress of history, the body itself - and how we might transcend them.Feel Free is always daring, always renewing, and Laird''s most remarkable work to date.

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Book SynopsisThis is the third Selected Poems by Edwin Morgan from Carcanet, but the first since 2000 and the first to cover the full range of his poetry from his first collection in 1952 to his last in 2010, the year of his death at the age of ninety. All his different voices speak here - animals, inanimate objects, dramatic monologues by people, (famous people, unknown people and imaginary people) - in a multitude of forms and styles - sonnets, science fiction, concrete, sound, his own invented stanzas - together with his evocations of place, especially his home city of Glasgow, and a wide selection of his deservedly famous love poems. They all illustrate his incurable curiosity and a kind of relentless optimism for humanity.Trade Review'For the range of his inventiveness, the generosity of his imagination, the moral alertness of his social observation. Edwin Morgan is the man for me.' - Carol Ann Duffy

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Book SynopsisOffers economical, metrical translations that convey the range of effects of the playwright's verse, from the idiomatic speech of its dialogue to the high formality of its choral odes.Trade ReviewDiane Arnson Svarlien's body of work means a quantum leap forward in the vibrancy and immediacy of classical verse drama. I first learned of her work when I was searching, madly, for a translation of Medea for a production I had been hired to direct. I sought out every published version. I tried to track down any unpublished ones rumored to exist. All the others were wanting; her translation was revelatory. Merely read her translation of the play, then read another. You will sense the difference. This is particularly true if you are a practitioner of theatre. --Patrick Wang, Director of Diane Arnson Svarlien's Medea in its world premiere at the Stella Adler Studio, and of the feature film In the Family, nominated for a Best First Feature Independent Spirit Award.The excellent Introduction by Robin Mitchell-Boyask displays an admirable command of up-to-date scholarship and judiciously leaves controversial matters open to one's own interpretation. Arnson Svarlien's verse translation has both elegance and power--it reads well, not just to the eye, but (happily for the director and actors) also to the ear. --Ian Storey, Department of Classics, Trent UniversityMitchell-Boyask's Introduction gives the reader a lively and accessible overview of Euripides' life, the circumstances of the original performances, and critical debate on the three plays. Footnotes to the translations provide students with useful background without over-burdening the text. The translations themselves are lively, vigorous, colorful, and direct, while remaining very close to the Greek; I laughed out loud more than once when I realized that, yes, this was exactly what Euripides had said. Arnson Svarlien has also taken care with the meter. Iambic trimeter, the 'spoken' meter of Greek, has been represented with iambic pentameter in English; but even in the lyric passages, whose meters do not translate into English, responsion within odes has been preserved. Yet all of this attention to such details of meter and accuracy sacrifices nothing in clarity or pace. Arnson Svarlien's translations are an ideal introduction to Euripides for students with no Greek and little knowledge of the ancient world. They remind me of why I love Euripides. --Laurel Bowman, Department of Classics, University of VictoriaTable of ContentsIntroduction; Translator's Preface; Maps; Alcestis; Medea; Hippolytus.

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Book SynopsisExperience a cosmic love story like no other, told through a collection of stunning poetry and enchanting imagery.Eclipse, a collection of poetry and art from Wilder, illustrates a magical journey of love between the sun and moon. Readers will experience firsthand the dichotomy of night and day, light and dark, presence and absence, and how one doesn’t exist without the other. Separated into three parts—“Stars,” “Between,” and “You & Me,”—Eclipse dives into the abundant emotions someone experiences only when in the throes of passion.

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Book Synopsis“some ekphrastic evening, this’ll be both criticism and poetry and failing that fall somewhere that seems like in between.” So writes poet, critic, theorist, and MacArthur fellow Fred Moten in his latest poetry collection perennial fashion presence falling. Much like the poems found in The Feel Trio (Letter Machine 2014), which was a National Book Award finalist, and All That Beauty (Letter Machine, 2019), the poems here present Moten’s “shaped prose” on the page and the dizzying brilliance of both polyphonies and paronomasia. Within this collection, the poems hold an innate quantum curiosity about the infinitude of the present and the ways in which one could observe the history of the future. Poems beget poems, overflowing and flowering, urging deeper etymological investigations. In perennial fashion presence falling, Moten approaches the sublime, relishing that intermediary space of microtonal thought.Table of ContentsContentsthe red sheaves coveringcorduroy, no strings attachedthe interfacial layer is violence, not carethe intrafacial lairafro-alienation lining outtables and gemsthe faerie ornithologiesylphtet (a triologue of self and soulare you one of these motherfuckers?color fieldtiling, lining notestilling, limning notes surfacingthe abolition of art, the abolition of freedom, the abolition of you and meapproaching asécowrecked and led to trespassfingerprintingtaj subjductionsubductive laurenwith the band2why you leave ‘em with me?got ‘im!merda nostraknottingepistrophe and epistrophyor discovering graves say, grave says

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Book SynopsisCelebrating the art forms of ballet and fashion, this beautiful book explores the creative collaborations between New York City Ballet and the top fashion designers of our age, including Virgil Abloh, Christopher John Rogers, Anna Sui, and Valentino, among others.Featuring more than thirty contemporary fashion designers, New York City Ballet Choreography & Couture highlights their distinctive work for ballet. From the shorts suits of Thom Browne accommodating the movement of dancers, and the leather harness detailing of Prabal Gurung to the baroque flounces of Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen or the jewel-encrusted slip dresses of Carolina Herrera, this enchanting volume highlights how fashion design is adapted for dance to amplify movement and music.The stunning photography by Pari Dukovic features breathtaking images of the dancers in motion, along with detail shots highlighting the couture elements of the costumes. Author Marc Happel, NYCB’s DirTrade Review"The New York City Ballet has staged an annual fashion gala since 2012, bringing together choreographers and fashion designers for collaborations both whimsical and mind-bending. A decade’s worth of their creations are vividly showcased in “New York City Ballet: Choreography and Couture,” with a foreword by Sarah Jessica Parker." — New York Times"The list of designer collaborators for New York City Ballet’s annual Fall Fashion Gala reads like the ultimate fashion Rolodex. Carolina Herrera, Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten, Virgil Abloh, and Sarah Burton are just a few of the 30 names who have designed costumes for the annual celebration of dance and fashion over the past 12 years and whose work is celebrated in a new Rizzoli monograph titled New York City Ballet: Choreography & Couture." ~GRAZIA

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Book SynopsisFollowing Rilke’s advice to “live the questions," this book invites us to draw upon his startling insights and often unconventional wisdom to see ourselves as ripening, unfolding, and always becoming.“This is a book to savor, soaking up the rewards of stories, insights, and provocations about the passage of our lives." —Sally Gillespie, author of Climate Crisis and Consciousness: Re-imagining our World and Ourselves"You Are the Future beckons us to discover a wise way to live a life in the company of self and others.” —Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet, peace activist, and host of On Being’s “Poetry Unbound” Rainer Maria Rilke''s poetry has inspired readers for more than a century, and never more so than now. His rare spiritual vision speaks uniquely in a time when many are seeking freedom of thought and a more wholistic way of living. Written by two award-winning writers who have journeyed deeply with Rilke, this book invites readers—with Rilke—to “live” the deep questions facing us in our day, embracing the poet’s refusal to reach for simplistic “answers.” Through the originality and insight of their writing, Burrows and Dowrick honor readers’ own experiences and, in conversation with Rilke, invite them to examine their lives and “desire the change,” as the poet put it. In so doing, they bring sublime poetry into the heart of daily life, where the gifts it carries are most needed. All translations are by Mark S. Burrows, a widely respected Rilke scholar and translator.

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Book SynopsisInternational best-selling author of Love & Misadventure, Lullabies (Goodreads Readers Choice Award), and Memories, Lang Leav presents a completely new collection of poetry with a celestial theme in The Universe of Us. Planets, stars, and constellations feature prominently in this beautiful, original poetry collection from Lang Leav.  Inspired by the wonders of the universe, the best-selling poetess writes about love and loss, hope and hurt, being lost and found.  Lang's poetry encompasses the breadth of emotions we all experience and evokes universal feelings with her skillfully crafted words. * International Bestseller:  Over 26K copies sold in the UK of Love and MIsadventure (2013) 9781449456146   * Hits the sweet spot of YA/Adult crossover appeal - hitting both the teen fiction and love poetry bestseller lists at multiple online retailers.  This is the perfect keepsak

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Book SynopsisAlan Bennett''s beloved, best-known play, with a beautiful typographic cover. The best moments in reading are when you come across something a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead.As an unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys pursue sex, sport and a place at university, adolescent anarchy and staffroom rivalry provoke insistent questions about history and education.The History Boys premiered at the National Theatre, London, 2004, winning Evening Standard, Critics' Circle, Olivier and South Bank Awards. On Broadway, it received numerous awards, including six Tonys.

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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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Book SynopsisAn abridgement of Stanley Lombardo's translation of the "Odyssey". It offers more than half of the epic, including all of its best-known episodes and finest poetry, while providing concise summaries for omitted books and passages.

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Book SynopsisAs one of the leading influencers in theatric art, John Macfarlane is widely regarded as one of Wales''s finest theatre designers and painters. This is the first book about John Macfarlane and his works, both within and outside of the theatre world.

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Book SynopsisA luminous collection of wonder, wildness and the capabilities of love in the face of destruction, from one of poetry's sharpest up-and-coming voices

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Book SynopsisTreasury of verse by the great Victorian poet, including the long narrative poem, Enoch Arden, plus "The Lady of Shalott," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," selections from The Princess, "Maud" and "The Brook," more.

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Book SynopsisBeautifully redesigned as a gift edition, this bilingual Spanish-English volume, which has sold nearly 250,000 copies, presents the joyfully erotic love poetry of Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda.Trade ReviewSensual as a tropical night swirling in honeysuckle and jazz. . . . With its lush textures and effervescent lyricism, this book is like a smoky champagne which two lovers, mesmerized by each other’s presence, are sipping. * San Francisco Examiner *Erotic feeling and human affection convey a warmth and immediacy that is direct, delicate, subtle, and strong by turns. * Booklist *Table of Contents Translator's Note Dedication Morning / Mañana Afternoon / Mediodía Evening / Tarde Night / Noche Notes Index of First Lines

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Book SynopsisPhaedra * Oedipus * Medea * Trojan Women * Hercules Furens * ThyestesSeneca''s plays are the product of a sensational, frightening, and oppressive period of history. Tutor to the emperor Nero, Seneca lived through uncertain and violent times, and his dramas depict the extremes of human behaviour. Rape, suicide, child-killing, incestuous love, madness and mutilation afflict the characters, who are obsessed and destroyed by their feelings. Passion is constantly set against reason, and passion wins out. Seneca forces us to think about the difference between compromise and hypocrisy, about what happens when emotions overwhelm judgement, and about how, if at all, a person can be good, calm, or happy in a corrupt society and under constant threat of death.Seneca was one of the most prolific, versatile, and influential of all classical Latin writers, and the only tragic playwright from ancient Rome whose work survives. This new edition of his six best plays captures Seneca''s style in a verseTrade ReviewI am awstruck by how good this is * Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson's Book of The Year, 3/12/2010 *Wilson catches the beauty of their descriptive passages with simple felicity. * TLS, *A fine new translation. * William Fitzgerald, Times Literary Supplement *This edition of Seneca's tragedies is fresh, affordable, and teachable. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *Table of ContentsPhaedra ; Oedipus ; Medea ; Trojan Women ; Hercules Furens ; Thyestes

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Book SynopsisThe poetry of Horace (born 65 BC) is richly varied, its focus moving between public and private concerns, urban and rural settings, Stoic and Epicurean thought. His Odes cover a wide range of moods and topics. Love and political concerns are frequent themes of the Epodes.

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Book SynopsisCats have been with us for thousands of year. They are:Enigmatic friendsLone hunters, family petsOur garden tigersand they too can be a man''s best friend. The haiku is an ancient and honourable Japanese verse form - three lines, seventeen syllables - encapsulating a vision of the poem''s subject; a person, place, even a cat...CAT HAIKU presents cats as you''ve never seen them before. In a series of brilliant vignettes, Deborah Coates gets inside the minds of our cats and comes up with some surprising revelations. You will never look at your (or anyone else''s) cat the same way again.Trade Reviewhilarious collection of wise feline words * Your Cat *

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Book SynopsisThe Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This 2007 edition provides a newly-edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers.

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Book SynopsisAntigone was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was an occupied nation and part of Hitler's Europe. The play depicts an authoritarian regime and the play's central character, the young Antigone, mirrored the predicament of the French people in the grips of tyranny. One of the masterpieces of the modern French stage.Trade Review"Anouilh is a poet, but not of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing." Director, Peter Brook

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Book SynopsisA masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student editionTrade ReviewIt is the element of might-have-been in Chekhov's characters that makes their sense of waste so tragic ... I know of no more moving climax in world drama. * Guardian *Michael Frayn has left his signature upon our contemporary enjoyment of Chekhov...this Uncle Vanya possesses all the scrupulous, subtly idiomatic life we have come to expect from his hand, allied with - and this is the true mark of Frayn - a fine sense of Chekhovian complexity. * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisThe influence of Zen Master Ikky (1394–1481) permeates the full field of medieval Japanese aesthetics. His work is allusion rich, and, as is common to his Tang poetic models, his verse makes frequent allusion to elements from the full range of China’s cultural history and literature. He draws as well from a variety of Buddhist texts in Chinese, including its koans.

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Book Synopsis''Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York''Shakespeare''s final drama of the Wars of the Roses cycle begins as the dust settles on England after bloody civil war, and the bitter hunchback Richard, brother of the king, secretly plots to seize the throne. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal. Richard III shows a man who, in his skilful manipulation of events and people, is a chilling incarnation of the temptations of power in a land shocked by war.Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley WellsEdited by E. A. J. HonigmannIntroduction by Michael Taylor

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Book SynopsisIn its towering central characters, vast geographical and historical sweep, and its variety of style and mood, Anthony and Cleopatra is perhaps the most ambitious of Shakespeare''s designs. Yet the degree and nature of its success remain surprisingly contentious, and performances of the play have seldom matched the extravagant expectations of its admirers. Michael Neill''s wide-ranging introduction from a number of angles, including those of gender and race. He examines the sources and discusses the theatrical challenge presented by Shakespeare''s technique, with its extraordinary tensions between rhetoric and action. A full stage history further illustrates its theatrical fortunes; both here and in the extensive commentary this edition illuminates the play''s theatrical dimensions as well as the rich complexity of its poetic language. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable Trade Review'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford Times

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Book SynopsisLove''s Labour''s Lost, now recognized as one of the most delightful and stageworthy of Shakespeare''s comedies, came into its own both on the stage and in critical esteem only during the 1930s and 1940s, after three hundred years of neglect by the theatre and undervaluation and misuse by critics. The Introduction to this new edition pays particular attention to this process of rehabilitation. The text, based on the quarto of 1598 and taking full account of the extensive scholarly study that text has received over recent years, rests on the hypothesis that the quarto goes back, probably by way of `lost'' quarto, to an authorial manuscript representing the play in a state prior to `fair copy''. If this is so, the quarto takes on a special significance because through it we can watch Shakespeare in the act of composition, improvising, changing his mind, and revising as his play develops under his hand. The editor offers a number of new readings of difficult and disputed passages, togetheTrade Review`Hibbard lucidly expounds the intricately patterned structure of his play ... and he dispatches the largely distracting question of its 'topicality' with heartening promptness.' English Studies, Volume 72, Number 6, December 1991`This Oxford text of Love's Labour's Lost is lucidly informative, scrupulous but concise,. and in general a model of restrained and level-headed editing.' Cedric Watts, University of Sussex, Review of English Studies, Vol. 43, 8/92'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford TimesTable of ContentsList of illustrations; Introduction; The Play; The Date and `Sources'; The Text; Editorial Procedures; Abbreviations and references; Love's Labour's Lost; Appendix A: Two `False Starts'; Appendix B: Alterations to lineation; Appendix C: The music for `The Hit It'; Appendix D: The name of Armado's page; Index

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Book SynopsisFord wrote darkly about sexual and political passion, thwarted ambition, and incest. This selection also shows his ability to portray the poignancy of love as well as write entertaining comedy and create convincing roles for women. Setting Ford's earliest surviving independently-written play, The Lover's Melancholy; alongside his three best-known works, this edition includes an introduction with sections on each play, addressing gender issues, modernrelevance, and staging possibilities. Includes: The Lover's Melancholy; The Broken Heart; `Tis Pity She's a Whore; Perkin Warbeck.Table of ContentsThe Lover's Melancholy ; The Broken Heart ; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore ; Perkin Warbeck

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Book SynopsisThe Modern Husband * The Clandestine Marriage * She Stoops to Conquer * Wild OatsThis edition brings together four eighteenth-century comedies that illustrate the full variety of the century''s drama. Fielding''s The Modern Husband , written before the 1737 Licensing Act that restricted political and social comment, depicts wife-pandering and widespread social corruption. In Garrick and Colman''s The Clandestine Marriage two lovers marry in defiance of parental wishes and rue the consequences. She Stoops to Conquer explores the comic and not-so-comic consequences of mistaken identity, and in Wild Oats, the ''strolling player'' Rover is a beacon of hope at a time of unrest.Part of the Oxford English Drama series, this edition has modern-spelling texts, critical introduction, wide-ranging annotation and an informative bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Select Bibliography ; THE MODERN HUSBAND ; THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE ; SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER ; WILD OATS ; Explanatory Notes ; Glossary

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

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Book SynopsisThe repackaging of the acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series continues with more dazzling new covers to excite Shakespearians of all ages

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Book SynopsisThe powerful new collection from award-winning poet, Emily Berry. Emily Berry's Dear Boy was described as a blazing debut', winning the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013. Stranger, Baby, its follow-up, is marked by the same sense of fantasy and play, estrangement and edgy humour for which she has become known. But these poems delve deeper again, in their off-kilter and often painful encounter with childhood loss. This is a book of mourning, recrimination, exhilaration and oceanic feeling': ''A meditation on a want that can never be answered.''

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Book SynopsisIn the decades since his death in 1963, Louis MacNeice''s reputation as a poet (and, indeed, amongst poets) has grown steadily, and there are now several generations of readers in Ireland, Britain, and beyond, for whom he is one of the essential poets of the twentieth century. His work has also received increasing attention from academic writers and students. For both readers and critics, the nature of MacNeice''s poetic work as a whole is a matter of importance, and the second posthumous Collected Poems, entirely re-edited by Peter McDonald, attempts, for the first time, to print MacNeice''s poetry in groupings corresponding closely to the collections published by Faber between 1935 and 1963. This makes it easier to read the poet in the published forms in which he was read by his contemporaries. In choosing to re-create the environments of MacNeice''s individual volumes of poetry, moreover, this new Collected reflects the opinion that MacNeice works bes

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Book SynopsisSimon Armitage''s new collection is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. Here comes everybody: Snoobie and Carla, Lippincott, Wittmann, Yoshioka, Bambuck, Dr Amsterdam, Preminger. The man whose wife drapes a border-curtain across the middle of the marital home; the English astronaut with a terrestrial outlook on life; an orgiastic cast of unreconstructed pie-worshipers at a Northern sculpture farm; the soap-opera supremacists at their zoo-wedding; the driver who picks up hitchhikers as he hurtles towards a head-on collision with Thatcherism; a Christian cheese-shop proprietor in the wrong part of town; the black bear with a dark secret, the woman who curates giant snowballs in the chest freezer. Celebrities and nobodies, all come to the ball.The storyteller who steps in and out of this human tapestry changes, trickster-style, from poem to poem, but retains some identifying traits: the melancholy of th

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