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One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan
by John StevensThe hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan's poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born in eighteenth-century Japan, his extraordinary poems, capturing in a few luminous phrases both the beauty and the pathos of human life, reach far beyond time and place to touch the springs of humanity.
The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle
by Madeleine L'EnglePraise for The Ordering of LoveBy Madeleine L'Engle"In a brilliant marriage of myth and manner, histories sacred and profane, prayers of petition and of praise, these poems both articulate and illumine the trouble in the gap in which we live-the gap between human affections and Divine Love. L'Engle is unfailing in her willingness to see through-not around-human suffering, and in so doing announces no final severing of spirit and flesh but an enduring vision of resurrection in that crux, in the cross, in the One in Whom all things meet, continuing." -Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim and Philokalia: New and Selected Poems"I love L'Engle's poetry for the way it incarnates not only the great Truths of the faith, but all the little truths of our ordinary existence-our working and playing and loving and fighting and dreaming and idling and all the rest of it-and for the way it shows us that those big and little truths should not, cannot, be separated."-Carolyn Arends, recording artist and author"Why is L'Engle one of the defining poets of our time? Because when life hurts, she does not shrink from the wounds. She clarifies the murk with hope as we feel the lift of grace."-Calvin Miller, Beeson Divinity SchoolBirmingham, Alabama"We are, all of us, the richer for this carefully crafted and prayerfully rendered collection."-Phyllis Tickle, Author, The Divine Hours"Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared."-Madeleine L'EngleMadeleine L'Engle's writing has always translated the invisible and intricate qualities of love into the patterns and rhythms of visible life. Now, with compelling language and open-hearted vulnerability, The Ordering of Love brings together the exhaustive collection of L'Engle's poetry for the first time. This volume collects nearly 200 of L'Engle's original poems, including eighteen that have never before been published. Reflecting on themes of love, loss, faith, and beauty, The Ordering of Love gives vivid and compelling insight into the language of the heart.From the Hardcover edition.
The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle
by Madeleine L'Engle"In a brilliant marriage of myth and manner, histories sacred and profane, prayers of petition and of praise, these poems both articulate and illumine the trouble in the gap in which we live--the gap between human affections and Divine Love. L'Engle is unfailing in her willingness to see through--not around--human suffering, and in so doing announces no final severing of spirit and flesh but an enduring vision of resurrection in that crux, in the cross, in the One in Whom all things meet, continuing." -Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim and Philokalia: New and Selected Poems. "I love L'Engle's poetry for the way it incarnates not only the great Truths of the faith, but all the little truths of our ordinary existence--our working and playing and loving and fighting and dreaming and idling and all the rest of it--and for the way it shows us that those big and little truths should not, cannot, be separated." -Carolyn Arends, recording artist and author. "Why is L'Engle one of the defining poets of our time? Because when life hurts, she does not shrink from the wounds. She clarifies the murk with hope as we feel the lift of grace." -Calvin Miller, Beeson Divinity School Birmingham, Alabama. "We are, all of us, the richer for this carefully crafted and prayerfully rendered collection." -Phyllis Tickle, Author, The Divine Hours. "Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared." -Madeleine L'Engle. Madeleine L'Engle's writing has always translated the invisible and intricate qualities of love into the patterns and rhythms of visible life. Now, with compelling language and open-hearted vulnerability, The Ordering of Love brings together the exhaustive collection of L'Engle's poetry for the first time. This volume collects nearly 200 of L'Engle's original poems, including eighteen that have never before been published. Reflecting on themes of love, loss, faith, and beauty, The Ordering of Love gives vivid and compelling insight into the language of the heart.
Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets
by Christopher Hennessy"Outside the Lines explores the personal and historical forces that have shaped the work of a dozen gifted poets. The answers given to Hennessy's astute, perfectly tailored questions remind a reader how exciting poetry can be, and how writers create, through language, the world as we have never known it. These adventuresome interviews will stir anyone who cares about the making of art." ---Bernard Cooper, author of Maps to Anywhere. Editor Christopher Hennessy gathers interviews with some of the most significant figures in contemporary American poetry. While each poet is gay, these encompassing, craft-centered interviews reflect the diversity of their respective arts and serve as a testament to the impact gay poets have had and will continue to have on contemporary poetics. The book includes twelve frank, intense interviews with some of America's best-known and loved poets, who have not only enjoyed wide critical acclaim but who have had lasting impact on both the gay tradition and the contemporary canon writ large, for example, Frank Bidart, the late Thom Gunn, and J. D. McClatchy. Some of the most honored and respected poets, still in the middle of their careers, are also included, for example, Mark Doty, Carl Phillips, and Reginald Shepherd. Each interview explores the poet's complete work to date, often illuminating the poet's technical evolution and emotional growth, probing shifts in theme, and even investigating links between verse and sexuality. In addition to a selected bibliography of works by established poets, the book also includes a list of works by newer and emerging poets who are well on their way to becoming important voices of the new millennium.
Ovid - The Poems of Exile
by Peter GreenIn the year A. D. 8, Emperor Augustus sentenced the elegant, brilliant, and sophisticated Roman poet Ovid to exile--permanently, as it turned out--at Tomis, modern Constantza, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. The real reason for the emperor's action has never come to light, and all of Ovid's subsequent efforts to secure either a reprieve or, at the very least, a transfer to a less dangerous place of exile failed. Two millennia later, the agonized, witty, vivid, nostalgic, and often slyly malicious poems he wrote at Tomis remain as fresh as the day they were written, a testament for exiles everywhere, in all ages. The two books of the Poems of Exile, the Lamentations (Tristia) and the Black Sea Letters (Epistulae ex Ponto), chronicle Ovid's impressions of Tomis--its appalling winters, bleak terrain, and sporadic raids by barbarous nomads--as well as his aching memories and ongoing appeals to his friends and his patient wife to intercede on his behalf. While pretending to have lost his old literary skills and even to be forgetting his Latin, in the Poems of Exile Ovid in fact displays all his virtuoso poetic talent, now concentrated on one objective: ending the exile. But his rhetorical message falls on obdurately deaf ears, and his appeals slowly lose hope. A superb literary artist to the end, Ovid offers an authentic, unforgettable panorama of the death-in-life he endured at Tomis.
The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry
by Hilary Herbold Arnold RampersadFor over two centuries, black poets have created verse that reflects the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their variety of visions and styles, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry aims to offer nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people.
A Palace of Pearls
by Jane Miller"Book by book, Jane Miller has evolved a mode, a voice, a palette and landscape entirely her own. If she were a painter, one might describe it as a descendant of cubism, a composition of multiple planes and reflections that appears to emerge out of itself, true to laws of its own nature, and yet is disturbingly recognizable, continuously suggestive, intimate and beautiful. Her subject is love and illusion and their revelation about each other."--W. S. Merwin"Reading Jane Miller's poetry is like channel-surfing on acid."--L.A. WeeklyJane Miller is a traveler stimulated by ideas beyond our immediate sphere. In this book-length sequence animated and propelled by a confrontation with her dead father, she meditates on home, love, war and the responsibility of the poet.A Palace of Pearls is inspired by one of the most spectacular civilizations in history, the Arab kingdom of Al-Andalus--a Middle Age civilization where architecture, science and art flourished and Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in relative harmony. The reader roams through "rooms," encountering Greek, Judaic and Roman mythology, and through the streets of fifteenth-century Spain and contemporary Rome in Miller's most personal and associative volume.From A Palace of PearlsWe bow our heads for the ancient draping of the gardenia lei in the hotel lobby and are relieved of our possessions as per a reminder that one must enter Paradise a little nakedJane Miller is the author of eight previous books of poetry and essays. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award. She lives in Tucson and teaches in the creative writing program at The University of Arizona, having served as the program's director from 1999-2003.
Paradise Lost
by John Milton David Scott KastanParadise Lost remains as challenging and relevant today as it was in the turbulent intellectual and political environment in which it was written. This edition aims to bring the poem as fully alive to a modern reader as it would have been to Milton's contemporaries. It provides a newly edited text of the 1674 edition of the poem--the last of Milton's lifetime--with carefully modernized spelling and punctuation. Marginal glosses define unfamiliar words, and extensive annotations at the foot of the page clarify Milton's syntax and poetics, and explore the range of literary, biblical, and political allusions that point to his major concerns. David Kastan's lively Introduction considers the central interpretative issues raised by the poem, demonstrating how thoroughly it engaged the most vital--and contested--issues of Milton's time, and which reveal themselves as no less vital, and perhaps no less contested, today.The edition also includes an essay on the text, a chronology of major events in Milton's life, and a selected bibliography, as well as the first known biography of Milton, written by Edward Phillips in 1694.
Paradise Lost: Is An Epic Poem (Dover Thrift Editions)
by John Milton John A. HimesMilton's great 17th-century epic draws upon Bible stories and classical mythology to explore the meaning of existence, as understood by people of the Western world. Its roots lie in the Genesis account of the world's creation and the first humans; its focus is a poetic interpretation "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe / With loss of Eden."In sublime poetry of extraordinary beauty, Milton's poem references tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid. But one need not be a classical scholar to appreciate Paradise Lost. In addition to its imaginative use of language, the poem features a powerful and sympathetic portrait of Lucifer, the rebel angel who frequently outshines his moral superiors. With Milton's deft use of irony, the devil makes evil appear good, just as satanic practices may seem attractive at first glance.Paradise Lost has exercised enormous influence on generations of artists and their works, ranging from the Romantic poets William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley to Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
Pencil Talk and Other School Poems
by Anastasia SuenSee what fun school can be… when you add some poetry! A simple school day is a lot more fun when you add a little poetry! Follow along for a fresh look at spelling tests, recess, music class and more, in this spirited collection of school day poems.
The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse: 1509-1659
by H. WoudhuysenThe era between the accession of Henry VIII and the crisis of the English republic in 1659 formed one of the most fertile epochs in world literature. This anthology offers a broad selection of its poetry, and includes a wide range of works by the great poets of the age - notably Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Sepnser, John Donne, William Shakespeare and John Milton. Poems by less well-known writers also feature prominently - among them significant female poets such as Lady Mary Wroth and Katherine Philips. Compelling and exhilarating, this landmark collection illuminates a time of astonishing innovation, imagination and diversity.
Petrarch in English
by Thomas RocheFranceso Petrarch (1304-1374), creator of the sonnet form, remained for more than three hundred years the most influential poet in Europe, his works more widely read than even those of Dante. This collection contains English language versions of his poems from across six centuries, in a wide variety of translations and reinterpretations. Spanning the Trionfi series and the Canzoniere - Petrarch's empassioned sonnet-sequence concerning his beloved Laura - it also includes great English poems influenced by Petrarch. From Chaucer's early adaptation of a Petrarchan sonnet in Troilus and Criseyde to the sixteenth century translations by the Earl of Surrey, Byron's mocking consideration of the Canzoniere in Don Juan and Ezra Pound's parody Silet, all provide a unique insight into the significance of the founder of the European lyric tradition.
Playing at Stillness: Poems
by Rhina P. EspaillatFor years I have been telling everyone I know about Rhina Espaillat's work, giving her books to friends as gifts, teaching her poems in my writing workshops, rereading them to renew my faith in the written word. She has been and continues to be one of my favourite American poets. This book displays her range -- from exquisitely executed formal verse to wonderfully fluid and appealing free verse poems. Humorous and playful, astute and poignant, she never gets in her way -- her craft does all the work and we delight in the results. The poems keep surprising me. Again and again as I read them, I feel deeply grateful to this wonderfully generous and skilled writer -- by Julie Alvarez. Rhina Espaillat's immaculate verse is characterised by a bemused melancholy and serenity which are hard to find in American letters. A greater contrast to her contemporaries (and I believe her inferiors), Plath and Sexton, would be similarly hard to find. This a wonderful collection in which every parent, will find the best poem for a son's wedding that I have ever read (yes, even better than Wilbur's!) But readers long familiar with Espaillat might be surprised by the wit with which she rebukes. -- by Tim Murphy.
Playtime Rhymes
by Sally Gardner37 familiar rhymes, songs and games, ranging from the traditional Ring-a-ring o' Roses to Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear from the original book Playtime Rhymes.(P)2004 Orion Publishing Group.Ltd
Poem of My Cid (Selections) / Poema de Mio Cid (Selección): A Dual-Language Book
by Stanley AppelbaumThe Poema de Mio Cid recounts the adventures of Rodrigo Diaz, an 11th-century hero of Islamic Spain. The Cid and his legendary exploits were already the subjects of ballads, songs, and children's tales by the time of this 12th-century epic poem. The sole dual-language edition currently available.
The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition
by Emily DickinsonFranklin, the foremost scholar of Dickinson’s manuscripts, has prepared an authoritative one-volume edition of all extant poems by Emily Dickinson—1,789 poems in all, the largest number ever assembled—rendered with Dickinson's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact.
The Poems of John Dryden: 1697-1700 (Longman Annotated English Poets)
by Paul Hammond David HopkinsThis volume completes the five-volume Longman Annotated Poets Edition of the poems of John Dryden, the major poet of Restoration England. It provides a modernized text along with full explanatory annotation. The poems include Dryden's spirited translation from Ovid, Homer, Chaucer, and Boccaccio.This volume presents, in newly-edited texts and with a substantial editorial commentary, the complete non-dramatic poetry of John Dryden’s later years. It contains the full text of Dryden’s final collection, Fables Ancient and Modern, including its prose Dedication and Preface, together with a number of other poems of the late 1690s, and some posthumously published items.
Poems to Dream Together: Poemas para soñar juntos
by Francisco X. AlarcónA bilingual collection of poetry by acclaimed Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcón celebrating family, community, nature, and the positive power of dreams to shape our future.A young boy dreams that "all humans / and all living / beings / come together / as one big family / of the Earth." So begins this delightful bilingual collection of poems by Francisco X. Alarcón. As we travel through the boy's colorful universe, we learn about his family and community working together and caring for each other and the world in which they live. Neighbors help repair adobe homes. The boy and his family share old photographs, tend their garden, and pamper Mamá who "works day and night." Tribute is paid to those who toil in the fields, and to César Chávez. Most of all, we see how dreams can take many forms, from the fantastic imaginary ones that occur while we sleep to the realistic ones that guide our lives and give us inspiration for the endless possibilities of the future. Partly based on Alarcón's own dreams and family memories of growing up in Mexico and California, and vibrantly illustrated by Paula Barragán, these joyous, universal poems will inspire all readers to dream their own dreams for a better, compassionate, and loving world. "Close your eyes / and now get ready / to hop on a dream."
Poetics And Rhetoric (Barnes And Noble Classics)
by Aristotle George Stade S. H. Butcher Eugene Garver W. Rhys RobertsPoetics and Rhetoric, by Aristotle, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. <P><P> Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. <P><P> It is no exaggeration to say that all Western literary criticism flows from Aristotle. In the Poetics he focuses mainly on drama, especially tragedy, and introduces ideas that are still being debated more than two thousand years later. Among them is the often misunderstood theory of the unities of action, place, and time, as well as such concepts as: art as a form of imitation, and drama as an imitation of human actions; plot as a drama’s central element, and "reversal” and "recognition” as important elements within a plot; and the purging of pity and fear from the audience as the function of tragedy. Rather than offer these ideas merely as abstract theories, Aristotle applies them in cogent analyses of the classic Greek dramas--the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. <P><P> In the Rhetoric, Aristotle turns to the principles of persuasive writing, including argumentation and the logical development of proof, appeals to emotion, and matters of delivery and style. Perhaps most essentially, Aristotle teaches us how to engage in the central civic activities of accusing and defending, recommending policies, and proving and refuting ideas. <P><P> These two foundational works are key documents for understanding the culture and politics of Western civilization, and how they continue to evolve today. <P><P> Eugene Garver is Regents Professor of Philosophy at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. He is the author of Machiavelli and the History of Prudence, Aristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief, and the forthcoming Living with Thought: A Confrontation with Aristotle’s Ethics.
Poetry and Repetition: Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)
by Krystyna MazurThis book examines the function of repetition in the work of Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery. All three poets extensively employ and comment upon the effects of repetition, yet represent three distinct poetics, considerably removed from one another in stylistic and historical terms. At the same time, the three are engaged in a highly interesting relation to each other - a relation readers tend to explain in terms of repetition, by positing Whitman and Stevens as the two alternative 'beginnings' out of which Ashbery emerges. Krystyna Mazur analyses the work of the three poets to discern patterns that may operate across a relatively broad spectrum of examples, as well as to consider the variety of ways in which repetition can structure a poetic text.
Poetry Speaks to Children
by Elise PaschenMore than 90 poems, for children ages six and up, celebrate the written word and feature a star-studded lineup of beloved poets, including: Roald Dahl; J. R. R. Tolkien; Robert Frost; Gwendolyn Brooks; Ogden Nash; John Ciardi; Langston Hughes; Sonia Sanchez; Seamus Heaney; Canada's best-loved children's poet, Dennis Lee; Rita Dove; Billy Collins; Nikki Giovanni and X. J. Kennedy.
Portable Altamont
by Brian Joseph DavisIt was the saddest thing I'd seen. How he kept thinking he was a cat and he wouldn't get out of that filthy litter box.And then, in the back of the cruiser, meowing for his cat brothers to save him.Deliciously wicked satires about local and international celebrities, the poems in Portable Altamont evince an irrepressible grasp of the zeitgeist, its machinations and manipulations, its possibilities and puerility. Who other than artist and raconteur Brian Joseph Davis could have imagined Margaret Atwood as a human beatbox, Jessica Simpson applying for arts grants or the Swedish Chef reciting T. S. Eliot? Davis uses every literary form available to revel in and rearrange pop culture. Even the index turns into a short story about Luke Perry's descent into a shadowy underworld of Parisian intellectuals and terrorists. A word of warning: this book is a complete and utter fiction. Philip Roth is not David Lee Roth's brother. Reese Witherspoon is not a Communist cell leader, and Don Knotts has never been a New Age guru. The stuff about Nicole Richie, however, is absolutely true. Portable Altamont is that rare book that is both incendiary and compulsively readable. Get to it before the lawyers do! 'Innovative in form, striking in content, Portable Altamont loads a literary blender with pop-culture icons both high and low, tosses in a jigger of surrealism and a pint of sardonic wit, sets the controls for hypermashup and then decants a delirious, delicious smoothie with brain-expanding powers.' - Paul Di Filippo, author of Ribofunk and The Steampunk Trilogy.
The Portable Poetry Workshop
by Jack MyersThis "breakthrough" book clearly, comprehensively, and practically informs any student of poetry about the techniques of their craft using the workshop method.
Postcards from the Interior (American Poets Continuum)
by Wyn CooperPostcards from the Interior is a collection of postcard poems written from different geographical locations and varied states of heart and mind. The first section, "Postcards from Vermont," is composed of poems about Vermont towns and historical landmarks. The second section, "Postcards from the Interior," stretches to include poems from far-flung places, real and imagined. Adroit at juxtaposing the exterior weather of landscapes and the interior weather of the human condition, Cooper writes poetry with the heft of a Romantic meditation and the breezy ease of contemporary song lyrics.Wyn Cooper has published three previous poetry collections. A poem from his first book was turned into lyrics for Sheryl Crow’s Grammy-winning song "All I Wanna Do." He lives in Battleboro, Vermont.
Practice, Restraint
by Laura SimsLaura Sims's debut is the work of an organic synthesizer, one practiced in the restrained art of listening. Her poems exhibit an attenuation that is akin to devotion: By means of maxim and miniaturization, she sorts and stacks the products of humanness. Memes and phonemes of a haiku-like fineness are thereby invited to break the surface of the page.