Poetry Books

Book SynopsisBeginning with the impassioned, never-before-published title poem, here is the poet.

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Book Synopsis“One of the great American poets . . . he sounds like nobody else.”—Helen VendlerTrade Review"It’s a rocking double-wide mobile home of electric American verse." -- International New York Times

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Book Synopsis“Elegant, plain-spoken, and unflinching, Mark Doty’s poems . . . invite us to share their ferocious compassion.”—National Book Award, judges’ citation for Fire to FireTrade Review"Doty remains elegiac and continues to attend to beauty. He also does some of his best work yet as a nature poet." -- Publishers Weekly"This collection will win awards." -- Maggie Galehouse - Houston Chronicle"Doty is able to weave philosophical inquiry, personal anecdote, and awe at people and nature into a voice that is simultaneously warm and tinged with a useful measure of doubt." -- Craig Morgan Teicher - NPR"His best work yet…astute, contemplative and deeply moving." -- Elizabeth Lund - Washington Post"Mark Doty writes with absolute exactitude, with one eye on the ideal or absolute and one on the real; the ghost of Walt Whitman on one hand, and a laundromat on 16th Street in New York on the other. There is not a finer, more delicate, more sublime poet writing today in the English language. It’s a poet’s job to show us what we knew but never saw before; and it’s a poet’s job to tell us over and over what love is. Doty is this poet." -- Gerald Stern"One of the things that has been constant about Mark Doty’s work, poetry and prose, is his intense search for the exact word or phrase, of whatever issue, which leads him (and us) into the very furnace of meaning within the human story. It might be the color of the inside of a shell of a mussel found on the beach; it might be the recognition that the heart that feels close to dying might not die, if the will can be fed just a little." -- Mary Oliver"Mark Doty’s most representative poems are tender, intimate, open, and true. They have their roots in the essential dailiness of this life, with its ritual round of small duties and encounters, and they open out . . . into a world of embracing sympathy, camaraderie, and understanding. With his clarity of vision and great heart, Doty stands among us an emblematic and shining presence." -- Stanley Kunitz"When Mark Doty begins one of his extraordinary Deep Lane poems with ‘Into Eden came the ticks,’ not only the ticks of the natural world but the ticking of the underworld come to mind. Doty has never ceased searching everywhere for truth and awe, two words that constitute a definition of revelation. The perfect avatar for this brilliant book’s revelatory wonders may well be ‘a deer’s head floating in the bay, wreathed with flowers.’ Deep Lane is earthly, unearthly, and even when brutal, beautiful. These are sensational new poems." -- Terrance Hayes

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Book Synopsis“Stern’s unadorned craftsmanship has few rivals in American letters.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

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Book Synopsis2012 Poetry Midwest Booksellers Choice Award winner "[Todd Boss] can make any rhyme feel like a concealed weapon." —Sherman Alexie

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Book SynopsisFrom a dazzling, award-winning young poet, a collection that paints life as a celebration in the dark.

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Book Synopsis"Astonishing…[Satyamurti's Mahabharata] brings [the] past alive…as though it were a novel in finely crafted verse.".”—Vinay DharwadkerTrade Review"Carole Satyamurti’s Mahabharata, crucially not a translation, uses previous English versions as a springboard for her blank-verse "modern retelling". Her aim has been to produce a readable and gripping narrative, focusing on the story, for the reader who may have little or no previous knowledge of the epic, and in this she has been resoundingly successful." -- New Statesman"A bold new English translation captures the excitement and scope of the original Sanskrit epic poem." -- The Tablet

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Book SynopsisA lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer’s "nimble gallop" and brings an ancient epic to new life.Trade Review"The first version of Homer's groundbreaking work by a woman will change our understanding of it for ever... Emily Wilson’s crisp and musical version is a cultural landmark. Armed with a sharp, scholarly rigour, she has produced a translation that exposes centuries of masculinist readings of the poem." -- Charlotte Higgins, Poetry Book of the Day - The Guardian"Wilson’s approach has been to translate the text in a way that resonates with today’s politics. Her translation, spare and provocative, will engage a new generation of students." -- Times Literary Supplement"... Emily Wilson proves an appropriately beguiling female translator... This is certainly an Odyssey for our moment … [a] swift, unornamented text." -- The Spectator"The joy of Homer is precisely the generosity and suppleness of the material, the fact that it resists being read in a single way. That’s why a new kind of guide through his wild landscapes, across his wine-dark seas, is to be welcomed." -- The Guardian"Wilson’s Odyssey feels like a restoration of an old, familiar building that had over the years been encrusted with too much gilt. Wilson translates as though translation is a moral choice — you owe fidelity not to the author, nor to the protagonist, but to the truth behind the words and the times. She scrapes away at old encrusted layers, until she exposes what lies beneath." -- Financial Times"It is immensely satisfying to see The Odyssey in the hands of such a careful and creative scholar who can pore over the semantic nuances of Homer's Greek as well as those of her own English. Considerations of gender aside, perhaps Wilson's greatest achievement is to disprove the increasingly held view that versions of ancient texts require an established poet to be parachuted in, like a literary James Bond, to rescue their English lines from the prosaic. For a translation of The Odyssey that knows what it is talking about and sings as it speaks, this is the one to read." -- New Statesman"A masterpiece of translation—fluent, elegant, vigorous." -- Rowan Williams, University of Cambridge"As the first English translation of this ancient tale by a woman, this lively, fast-paced retelling of Homer’s epic is long overdue. Much as Homer did in his time, Wilson whisks the audience into a realm both familiar and fantastical. The world of Odysseus and his adventures take shape before the reader’s eyes, luminescent once more, in this engaging new translation." -- Justine McConnell, King’s College London" This will surely be the Odyssey of choice for a generation." -- Lorna Hardwick, The Open University"I am not quite sure why, but this instantly hot-wired me into tears." -- Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent"I think this is a really significant literary moment." -- Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"Friends, believe the hype. This translation is a marvel!... The sheer energy of the iambic pentameter is revelatory. Her word choices! The rhythm and the politics so delicious, so alive. And the man is devious and quick and fit to bursting with arrogance and cunning. He's perfect. It's sublime." -- Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers"The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson. One of the great narratives of all time. You think you know it ? Not until you read this one. Stunning translation/interpretation." -- Susan Hill"Now we have an excellent new translation of the epic by the British classicist Emily Wilson. Norton trumpets it as “the first English translation of the ‘Odyssey’ by a woman.”... But Wilson’s rendering is remarkable in other ways as well." -- The International New York Times"Emily Wilson wipes the dust of ages from Homer’s prose in her new translation of The Odyssey. Accessible and entertaining, she provides an elegant rendering of the classic." -- Peter Campbell, Favourite reads of 2017 - as chosen by scientists - The Guardian"There are many other [other than being the first female translation] stunning things about Wilson’s translation, from the five-beat lines to the straightforward speech, free from the elegant clunkiness that we usually see when scholars try to carry words over from one language to another. But one of them is certainly an awareness of her own daring." -- Eidolon"... Emily Wilson’s brilliant introduction to her new translation of The Odyssey shows the classical world as capable of feminist inflections." -- The Observer"... a monumental piece of work on her part..." -- Stig Abell - BBC Radio 4 Front Row"I thought this was just moving, it was musical, it was direct, it was straightforward […] anyone could read it and really, really enjoy it." -- Rosie Goldsmith - BBC Radio 4, Saturday Review"All the artistic choices work. I must admit when I heard we were reviewing The Odyssey, I thought ‘Oh no, it’s going to be wordy and dull’ […] but it wasn’t, it really felt fresh and alive and exciting." -- Sophie Hannah - BBC Radio 4, Saturday Review"... Emily Wilson's terrific new translation..." -- The i Paper"Poetry that reads like a thriller." -- R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps series"The new Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey is brilliant and sharp and swift and funny and will repay the reader a thousand times over." -- Katherine Rundell"Wilson’s translation is a superb achievement and a striking departure from the tradition of Homeric translation into English... [She] has produced a wonderfully distinctive—and modern—version of the poem." -- London Evening Standard"The real reason why Emily Wilson’s version of this nearly three-millennia-old poem is so important is that it combines intellectual authority with addictive readability." -- Edith Hall - The Sunday Telegraph"Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey speaks of 'a complicated man' with an 'old story for our modern times'." -- The Spectator"Emily Wilson... is the first woman to translate Homer's entire epic into English, and she has produced something extraordinary. In her hands, a work believed to have been written at around the end of the eighth century BC is transformed into something that might have been written yesterday: vivid, exciting and utterly immersive... her accessible and fascinating introduction explains the poem's origins and reception, and such crucial concepts as 'guest-friendship' (xenia)." -- The Lady"Emily Wilson, […] whose translation of The Odyssey – the first translation by a woman, might I add – is currently destroying me, so it’s good. You can just tell from the way she writes and from her very ballsy interpretive translation that she’s got a wicked, daring mind, and a deeply poetic one." -- Hannah Epperson - Female First"... this new version of The Odyssey... is a fresh and worthwhile addition to the many existing translations, both for newcomers and veteran readers... Wilson offers a neat, accurate and lively verse translation..." -- Minerva"... a perceptive reading of The Odyssey... Readers who want to get a feeling for the poem will find Wilson’s translation full of insights..." -- London Review of Books

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Book SynopsisThe epic poem that changed the course of human thought forever.

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Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition offers one of the largest collections of Middle English lyrics ever made available to the college student.

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Book SynopsisA stunning collection from a poet who “writes with a scalding aortal brilliance that leaves the reader drunk on dream” (New York Times Book Review).Trade Review"I have always deeply respected, indeed loved, Charlie Smith’s poems. Thirty years now." -- Gerald Stern"For pure, raw power of language, nobody in his generation comes close to Charlie Smith. But more than this, he explores with a rare and brutal honesty the abiding question of reacting humanely to a confusing and callous world. Very often in a Charlie Smith poem we enter the country of the anguished, the country of the ‘emotionally demolished.’ Our souls suffer and struggle, yet we endure and come out strengthened, awakened to the brilliance of the world and the joy of being human. Jump Soul is simply a magnificent book, the testament of a genuine artist. Charlie Smith is among the handful of the finest writers of his generation." -- David Bottoms"A generous offering… Smith explores regret while moving forward with equal abandon." -- Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisOne of the strongest literary renditions of the Shoah I know.-Saul Friedlander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Years of Extermination

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Book SynopsisIn this intense, illuminating collection of poems, Sandra Beasley examines how intimacy is lost and gained during our travels.Trade Review"Sandra Beasley is a master poet of facts, story, feeling, and the slipknot statement that binds them together. Inventive, ingeniously fitted, musical, precise, unfettered, her poems etch and mirror the clarities and strangeness of our human lives. This irresistibly visionary book resembles to no small degree a cabinet of wonders. To every phenomenon and circumstance of the heart, its poems open, saying, Yes, this too I know; this too we are. Then add, Now, let us see further." -- Jane Hirshfield, author of Come, Thief"Her lightness works best when it dapples her darkness—and when her darkness, as it often does, feels truly deep." -- Poetry

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Book SynopsisThe vividness and beauty of the language emerge in a fresh way... with evocative simplicity.Robert AlterTrade Review"...fascinating new volume..." -- Herald Scotland

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Book SynopsisLonglisted for the National Book Award.Trade Review"Stands as a textured but unified testament to [Hacker's] output over the past two decades." -- Publishers Weekly "[Hacker] remains an undisputed master of formal verse... one of the most extraordinary innovative poets writing today. No other poet manages the casual pyrotechnics she accomplishes in form." -- Carol Muske-Duke - Los Angeles Times

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Book SynopsisFrom eco-poetics to the erotic, Scavenger Loop measures the dimensions of the pastoral and the elegy in contemporary lyric poetry.Trade Review"This is David Baker’s finest book: combinations of poise and grit, sensitivity and impact, enlivened with an astute control of language. In ‘Scavenger Loop,’ the focal poem and Baker’s masterpiece, we encounter the poetically immaculate. This poem is a true pastoral elegy out of which a new beauty comes—the beauty of resistance, of saying enough is enough. We have an obligation to utter this, and Baker has." -- John Kinsella"The breadth of Scavenger Loop is immense, encompassing nature’s foment, the unbiodegradeable stuff of culture, and language itself. Somber yet savvy, elegant yet casual, Scavenger Loop is a book of becoming, a lost and found with a radius wide as consciousness itself. Reading it is like being inside the shifts of a capacious, roiling mind and, like all great poetry, it keeps unfolding with uneasy, surreptitious grace." -- Alice Fulton

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Book SynopsisThis breakthrough volume appropriates the vernacular notion of “rolling deep” to explore human intimacy and war.Trade Review"Devastatingly effective...lushly memorable." -- Washington Post"Extraordinary...Jackson has created a new poetry of praise." -- San Francisco Chronicle"A remixed Odyssey whose speaker 'rolls deep'...far from home by staying true to where he's from." -- New York Times Book Review"Major Jackson wants art to ‘Blow / back the ordinary / jive of planet Earth,’ and his new poems roil and buckle, skitter and swerve, clot and spill out into the world. Roll Deep is his fourth and best book; his voice seems to have broken loose, allowing for all manner of praise and lament, for observation and meditation, the grim and the goofball, and for outbreaks of pure sorcery, where ‘punctuation is my jury and the moon is my judge.’" -- Mark Doty"Major Jackson’s fourth collection of poetry, Roll Deep, juxtaposes the physical and the metaphysical, the external and the internal where the landscape and the mind of the poet converge until time bends. The imagery travels through a timely multiplicity, always surefooted and attuned, but never outdistancing the natural truth in this cosmopolitan voice. The poet writes the world he encounters, and imagines, with playfully deep interplay. The music in the language of Roll Deep is seductively straightforward, and each body-brain poem here puts genius squarely on the line." -- Yusef Komunyakaa

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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

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Book SynopsisA long-awaited poetry collection by one of our most essential Native American voices.Trade Review"Joy Harjo's Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is a marvelous instrument that veins through a dark lode of American history. The poet's finely tuned voice goes where 'Midnight is a horn player,' driven by tribute, prayer, and blues, excavating names, places, and dreams. And at the end of this epic voyage the reader surfaces at sunrise." -- Yusef Komunyakaa"[Joy Harjo's] poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times." -- Sandra Cisneros - The Millions

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Book SynopsisAn innovative and accessible guide to poetry writing by an award-winning poet and beloved professor.

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Book SynopsisA powerful new volume from the National Book Award finalist that demonstrates how the lyric is essentially elegiac.Trade Review"For decades now, Stanley Plumly has extended, refined, and amplified the Grand Tradition of the lyric poem in English. He crafts his poems with a jeweler’s precision, but they are also informed with an almost-leonine urgency and passion. This degree of artistry is sadly rare in contemporary poetry, and it allows him to bear, always with nobility, the losses and rueful reckonings that are forced upon us in our twilight years. These poems recall the later Stevens and the later Yeats—and to say this is high praise indeed. Against Sunset is a collection by a contemporary master." -- David Wojahn"The elm, the brickwork, the late-night bottle of wine with a friend, all that you have ever wished to store against oblivion: may these be blessed with light of the sort that emanates from every page of Stanley Plumly’s newest book. The poems are sonnet-haunted, even those that bear no trace of eight-and-six, with such deep courtesy do they honor the intelligence of form. I go to Stanley Plumly’s poems as they go to the past, to be taught how I ought to live." -- Linda Gregerson

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Book SynopsisLyrical narratives that chronicle a long marriage, rich with wit, dark irony, and poignancy.Trade Review"I’ve read, loved, admired, enjoyed, and was generally knocked out by Entering History. [Hammond] is sui generis as a writer. [The poems] fit in no school, are not summable up, have more wit and candor and sheer nerve than a dozen others. [The] comic turns scour our pretensions; some of the poems are harrowing, always revelatory, incredibly smart, and finally cathartic." -- Eleanor Wilner"The poems seem both vast and focused or intimate… ‘There’s nothing special about being a poet,’ the poet says, but there’s lots special about poetry that’s alert to the secret vibrations of contemporary life… These terrifying and glorious poems brim with proof of the powers of the poet’s transfiguring imagination." -- Henri Cole"A beautifully readable book. Intelligence permeates each phrase; [Hammond’s] language is alive to corruptions and multiplicities of sense… Her wit is an instrument of moral intelligence." -- Rosanna Warren

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Book SynopsisPulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn examines the difficulties of telling the truth, and the fictions with which we choose to live.Trade Review"A bold and elegant conversation with wisdom itself. . . . A complex guidebook to contemporary life. These poems explore life’s contradictions and mysteries while creating light from the dark spaces of death and doubt. . . . Triumphant." -- The Journal"Dunn takes aim at everything, especially our search for meaning in a culture of posttruth and too much news, some of it skewed. He does so with humor, wit, and a dose of gravitas, grasping detail and nuance. . . A timely and necessary addition." -- Library Journal (Starred)"Incisively capturing the oddities of logic and whimsies of reason, Pulitzer Prize-winner Dunn considers with grace, humor, and gravity the superstition and sophistry embedded in everyday life." -- Publishers Weekly"Stephen Dunn has long known how to begin a poem so it sounds like part of a conversation, how to move the poem along by following its own curiosities, and how to deliver just enough wisdom at the end. He’s still doing it all right here, better than ever, in this fresh new collection." -- Billy Collins"Occasionally one of our best poets gets even better. In Whereas, Stephen Dunn tells the truth about lying and (perhaps) tells lies about what constitutes truth. No one else uses abstraction as affectively or as wisely. No one else uses humor with such devastating charm. Dunn negotiates the labyrinthine simplicities that deepen our lives with deft maneuverings and always surprising clarity." -- Michael Waters"There’s a deep and reliable honesty that drives these poems, a kind of courageous revelation not of old wounds and losses, but of something like the-way-things-are. That the poems manage this kind of transmission of (no other word for it) truth, and make that truth so much a delight to hear—well, that’s what Stephen Dunn has been doing all his writing life. That’s why his poems have been, and remain, indispensable." -- Robert Wrigley

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Book SynopsisGalaxy Love showcases the voice of a beloved and acclaimed poet, celebrating the passions and rhythms of life.Trade Review"Gerald Stern, little by little, in these masterful poems, tasks the torque of knowledge and enlightenment in things möbius, people and places, Paris, Long Island, Harlem, the cuisine in between, who notices the stain of Nazi-fingers on the lips of Arendt, who bows down to the little animals once again and laughs out loud, it seems, because he still stuffs a twenty inside his shoe heel as in the early days—who charts a life of many loves and turns—and that indescribable and churning thing called—our lives. Pure movement of mind, passion, knowledge—a letter of sorts—to the universe." -- Juan Felipe Herrera, poet laureate of the United States"There has never been a poet like Gerald Stern, who likes to shake things and empty them out, and then share what’s found with the entire congregation. Sorrow and exultation get their equal turn, but it’s the human imagination and all its jubilant fecundity that’s paid special attention. Whether it’s a fistfight between Stevens and Hemingway (‘Who punched whom’) or Tolstoy dying unsweetened, what’s offered is nothing less than an excursion into the soul, where, as we all know, one finds love for the galaxy." -- Philip Schultz

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Book SynopsisA vividly rendered collection tracing the aftermath of a breakdown and the struggle to reconnect with the realities of daily life.Trade Review"Subtle, reflective. . . . These diorama-like texts, which locate a range of human feelings in the sundry details of the everyday, are something of a contemporary Book of Disquiet." -- Publishers Weekly"In Square Inch Hours Sherod Santos brilliantly negotiates the provinces of poetry and prose, of imagination and memoir, in devastating documents that range from fragments to sustained prose sequences. These are the lyrics of breakdown—of shock and aftershock—in coming face-to-face with dread and the depths of one’s own soul. At times piercing, at times as if anesthetized, Santos’s new work approaches the truths of love, death, family, sorrow. . . . As enigmatic as Borges, and beautiful in a way only Santos can be." -- David Baker"This is an immense book. Read its calm, its deeply crafted poise, in a single sitting, and you’ll finish absolutely breathless. Read it again, slowly, over a longer period of time, meditatively, and vistas will burst open. In distress, in disruption, in damage, out of elegy, there is renewal. I have never read a work quite like it, and every time I come up with a literary comparison, I realize it doesn’t hold, because Sherod Santos has produced a work entirely unique, in which literary, philosophical, and filmic references exist as extensions of the moment. These prose poems and aphorisms, these lyrical narratives, unfold exponentially. This truly is a work much greater than the sum of any parts. Stunning." -- John Kinsella"There are seraphim and scars, fog and Fellini in this brilliant collection, where the incisive, rhythmic imagery of poetry meets the depth and narrative of fiction. Every page evokes and invites the reader to see more clearly, to imagine more wildly, to read and to breathe more deeply." -- Amy Bloom"This is a book of observation, a catalog of urban surfaces and psychological detachment—as if suddenly Camus’s Stranger started to walk in the Chicago streets. Sherod Santos’s brilliant literary experiment." -- Adam Zagajewski

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Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition includes the First Folio text, along with an introduction, explanatory footnotes, note on the text and textual notes.

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Book SynopsisThis Norton Critical Edition brings research into this beloved poet’s body of work completely up to date.

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Book SynopsisThe collected works of Adrienne Rich, “one of the most influential and political American poets of the last century” (The Guardian).Trade Review"Poetry, like Adrienne Rich’s – in her Collected Poems... can awaken us to the kinds of deeper truths that are unsayable in prose..." -- Laura Elkin, Best Books of 2016 - The Guardian"The book is a fascinating document of shifts in style, swerves in perspective that never, for all that, touch or compromise the integrity of an essential poet." -- Eavan Boland, Our Favourite Books of 2016 - The Irish Times

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Book SynopsisJuxtaposing verse and image, A Poet’s Dublin is a study of origin and influence from “a major Irish poet” (Edward Hirsch).Trade Review"For Boland, one feels poetry has to be honorable and natural, though at times as terrifying as giving birth alone in the open meadow, and that it is also made of blood and the guilt of being human." -- Yusef Komunyakaa

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Book Synopsis“Here are the words of some of the women I have been, am being still, will come to be,” writes Audre Lorde of this volume, in which she brings together many of the most important poems she has written over the past thirty years.

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Book Synopsis[Abrams] can sum up whole epochs and genres with a telling phrase. . . .Admirably cogent and erudite throughout. -Kirkus Reviews

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Book SynopsisHer complex ideas are born into verse with the easy, simple beauty that is typical of her stunning lyric style.Boston GlobeTrade Review"The title of [Sarton's] luminous new verse collection alludes to its underlying theme: old age. It's a time when she has 'more of everything to care for, to maintain.' Her powers of observation have deepened: a cat's footfall on the stairs 'speaks of an eternal Now.' In a beautifully simple language shorn of all artifice, she speaks directly and with wisdom about grief, loneliness, death, coming to terms with one's life." -- Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisWith this her fourth book of poems, Rita Dove expands her role as a leading voice in contemporary American letters.Trade Review"What will impress readers most about Grace Notes is [Dove's] craftsmanship, the richness of her imagery, the delicacy and sureness of her ear. She is moving steadily toward an absolute mastery of her art."

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Book SynopsisThis collection of 160 short poems, demonstrating that brevity is indeed the soul of wit, spans Ammon's whole career, ranging from mordantly funny paradoxes to intensely compressed instants of lyric perception.Trade Review"Epigram, haiku, koan, imagist snapshot, proverb, aphorism, motto: Ammons's compressed, honed, precise lyrics now suggest one, now another of these genres. The mastery here is complete and all the more remarkable in light of Ammons's achievements in really long, sometimes book-length, poems. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Ammons has shown repeatedly and successfully that his work aims to embody the complementary principles of expansion and contraction. This pithy, witty book testifies to the sublime possibilities of the latter." -- Virginia Quarterly Review

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Book Synopsis"Here is the mature work of a poet who has always managed to delight—but who now demands something more of us. He asks us to enter the twenty-first century with open eyes: attentive to the past, eager for the future, naming what we love."--Judith Kitchen, Georgia ReviewTrade Review"Behind Stephen Dunn's obsession with what he calls the ordinary lies an immensely complicated and delicate search for understanding and- I think- for peace... He is a poet of wisdom, and he is a healer and a teacher... The music is perfect as the art is hidden, and some of the poems-'Turning Fifty,' for example-are unbearably beautiful. He is a magnificent poet." -- Gerald Stern

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Book SynopsisA keen awareness of our place in the cyclic nature of life is the theme that dominates this remarkably clear-sighted and gracefully written collection. . . . Highly recommended. Library Journal, on Heroes in Disguise

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Book SynopsisBorn in 1875, the German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart.

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