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Under the Sign
by Ann LauterbachA new collection from the author of Or To Begin Again, a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Poetry Ann Lauterbach is one of America’s most innovative and provocative poets, acclaimed for her fierce, sensuous and intellectually charged poems. In this, her ninth book of poems, Lauterbach pursues longstanding inquiries into how language forms and informs our understanding of the relation between empirical observation and subjective response; worldly attachment and inwardness; the given and the chosen. The poems set out not so much to find cogent resolutions to these fluid dyads as to open them to the fact of unknowing that is at the core of all human curiosity and desire. A central prose section tracks along a meditative edge, engaging the risky task of opening the mind to the limits of apprehension; the final section evokes, in the figure of the instructor, the essential contemporary question of how information becomes knowledge. .
Under the Silver Moon: Lullabies, Night Songs & Poems
by Pamela DaltonCut-paper artist Pamela Dalton's magically intricate illustrations illuminate a generous collection of lullabies and goodnight poems. Recalling traditional favorites from childhood and embracing a wide range of sources and cultures, this timeless collection makes a lovely addition to any e-bookshelf or bedtime read-aloud ritual. Sure to enchant both children and their parents, Dalton's exquisite detail and sophisticated aesthetic—always informed by warmth and a deep humanity—will speak to anyone looking for the perfect book for a newborn.
Under the Silver Moon: Lullabies, Night Songs & Poems
by Pamela DaltonA &“lovely&” collection of lullabies and goodnight poems, accompanied by magically intricate illustrations (Publishers Weekly). Recalling traditional favorites from childhood and embracing a wide range of sources and cultures, this timeless collection is a beautiful addition to any bedtime read-aloud ritual. Sure to enchant both children and their parents, cut-paper artist Pamela Dalton&’s exquisite detail and sophisticated aesthetic—always informed by warmth and a deep humanity—will speak to anyone wanting a gentle descent into dreamland. &“The tender fragility of Ms. Dalton's scissor-cut pictures seems just right for bedtime.&” —The Wall Street Journal
undercurrent
by Rita WongThe water belongs to itself. undercurrent reflects on the power and sacredness of water--largely underappreciated by too many--whether it be in the form of ocean currents, the headwaters of the Fraser River or fluids in the womb. Exploring a variety of poetic forms, anecdote, allusion and visual elements, this collection reminds humanity that we are water bodies, and we need and deserve better ways of honouring this.<P><P> Poet Rita Wong approaches water through personal, cultural and political lenses. She humbles herself to water both physically and spiritually: "i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater & glaciers / listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry." She witnesses the contamination of First Nations homelands and sites, such as Gregoire Lake near Fort McMurray, AB: "though you look placid, peaceful dibenzothiophenes / you hold bitter, bitumized depths." Wong points out that though capitalism and industry are supposed to improve our quality of life, they're destroying the very things that give us life in the first place. Listening to and learning from water is key to a future of peace and creative potential.<P> undercurrent emerges from the Downstream project, a multifaceted, creative collaboration that highlights the importance of art in understanding and addressing the cultural and political issues related to water. The project encourages public imagination to respect and value water, ecology and sustainability. Visit downstream.ecuad.ca.
Underground: New and Selected Poems
by Jim Moore"Jim Moore writes of history, of love, of pain, of the intimate revelations of a consciousness alive to itself." —C. K. Williams "It's coming so fast,"says an old woman across from me, speaking to no one in particular:she nods her head in agreement with herself and strictly speakingwho can argue with her? —from "Underground"Jim Moore's first career retrospective shows a poet whittling down experience to its essential confrontation with one's own limitations, whether it be time running short, or understanding running thin, or capacity to think or feel or love enough running low. Underground gathers the best poems from Moore's seven previous books and includes twenty new poems. This is the definitive volume by a poet of great depth and generosity.
The Underground Poetry Metro Transportation System for Souls: Essays on the Cultural Life of Poetry (Poets On Poetry)
by Tony HoaglandThe Underground Poetry Metro Transportation System for Souls collects 16 essays by late Tony Hoagland. Gathered by Hoagland himself into a volume for the Poets on Poetry series, these pieces grapple with an expansive range of poetic and cultural concerns—and the surprising and necessary knowledge to be found where they cross paths. His trademark humor and irony, at once approachable, thoughtful, and sophisticated, lead the way toward clear-eyed, sometimes difficult, considerations of contemporary American culture. Through his curiosity, he elevates the seemingly quotidian into a profound subject worthy of close consideration. Hoagland’s generosity of spirit imbues his work with empathy for experiences beyond his own, and his honesty allows him to turn a critical eye on himself and to acknowledge the limits of his understanding. This collection will be rewarding not just for readers of contemporary poetry, but for anyone who wants to step back, take a look at our American reality, and know we’ll be okay.
Underlife
by January Gill O'NeilThe dynamics of race, family, motherhood, career, sex and ultimately, transformation are explored in this debut collection. Underlife represents the wilderness of thought and emotion hidden away from the external world. Through O'Neil's narratives we see our lives as if for the first time.
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
by Thomas LynchEssays on how the author coped when his father died and he took up the family business and responsibilities as an undertaker
The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin
by William LoganWilliam Logan has been called both the "preeminent poet-critic of his generation" and the "most hated man in American poetry." For more than a quarter century, in the keen-witted and bare-knuckled reviews that have graced the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement (London), and other journals, William Logan has delivered razor-sharp assessments of poets present and past. Logan, whom James Wolcott of Vanity Fair has praised as being "the best poetry critic in America," vividly assays the most memorable and most damning features of a poet's work. While his occasionally harsh judgments have raised some eyebrows and caused their share of controversy (a number of poets have offered to do him bodily harm), his readings offer the fresh and provocative perspectives of a passionate and uncompromising critic, unafraid to separate the tin from the gold.The longer essays in The Undiscovered Country explore a variety of poets who have shaped and shadowed contemporary verse, measuring the critical and textual traditions of Shakespeare's sonnets, Whitman's use of the American vernacular, the mystery of Marianne Moore, and Milton's invention of personality, as well as offering a thorough reconsideration of Robert Lowell and a groundbreaking analysis of Sylvia Plath's relationship to her father.Logan's unsparing "verse chronicles" present a survey of the successes and failures of contemporary verse. Neither a poet's tepid use of language nor lackadaisical ideas nor indulgence in grotesque sentimentality escapes this critic's eye. While railing against the blandness of much of today's poetry (and the critics who trumpet mediocre work), Logan also celebrates Paul Muldoon's high comedy, Anne Carson's quirky originality, Seamus Heaney's backward glances, Czeslaw Milosz's indictment of Polish poetry, and much more.Praise for Logan's previous works:Desperate Measures (2002)"When it comes to separating the serious from the fraudulent, the ambitious from the complacent, Logan has consistently shown us what is wheat and what is chaff.... The criticism we remember is neither savage nor mandarin.... There is no one in his generation more likely to write it than William Logan."—Adam Kirsch, Oxford AmericanReputations of the Tongue (1999)"Is there today a more stringent, caring reader of American poetry than William Logan? Reputations of the Tongue may, at moments, read harshly. But this edge is one of deeply considered and concerned authority. A poet-critic engages closely with his masters, with his peers, with those whom he regards as falling short. This collection is an adventure of sensibility."—George Steiner"William Logan's critical bedevilments-as well as his celebrations-are indispensable."—Bill Marx, Boston GlobeAll the Rage (1998)"William Logan's reviews are malpractice suits."—Dennis O'Driscoll, Verse"William Logan is the best practical critic around."—Christian Wiman, Poetry
Undone
by Sue GoyetteShortlisted for the 2005 Atlantic Poetry Prize, the 2005 Dartmouth Book Award and the 2005 Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry Undone is a cornucopia of passionate poems arranged into three sections. "Forgotten" has mostly to do with the aftermath of a heart-rending breakup; "Kindred" features poems on fellow artists in poetry, music and painting (ranging from Georgia O'Keeffe to Snoopy, beagle-novelist); in "Apprentice," leaving is transformed into celebration, poem after poem about fierce loving of a world that we will have to leave. In these hard-hitting, highly personal poems, lamentation is a key note. Crushing loneliness weighs heavily on the spirit. But Sue Goyette has ways of sharing pain with a compensating lift: wonderful flights of metaphor, language charged with verbal energy. "Isn’t that our job," she asks, "to coax out the light in the story?" It's a job she takes to heart and performs brilliantly. The poems in Undone have the amplitude proper to "watching wide" -- a discipline good for seeing shooting stars and, as this book illustrates, all other kinds of light in a darkness palpable but never enveloping, not when probed so truly and sung so beautifully.
The Undressing: Poems
by Li-Young LeeCelebrated poet Li-Young Lee returns with a breathtaking new volume about the violence of desire and the peace of love. The Undressing is a tonic for spiritual anemia; it attempts to uncover things hidden since the dawn of the world. Short of achieving that end, these mysterious, unassuming poems investigate the human violence and dispossession increasingly prevalent around the world, as well as the horrors the poet grew up with as a child of refugees. Lee draws from disparate sources, including the Old Testament, the Dao De Jing, and the music of the Wu Tang Clan. While the ostensive subjects of these layered, impassioned poems are wide-ranging, their driving engine is a burning need to understand our collective human mission.
Unearthed
by Tracy RyanThis collection of elegies for dead friends and a past love is also a tribute to poet Tracy Ryan's embattled but joyous life on a plot of land in the bush. In a long sequence addressed to her Swiss–German first husband, Ryan delves into the feelings found with unresolved grief and lost love and the ambivalent emotions that remain after severing intense relationships. The universal themes from one of Australia's most gifted scribes is a must read for anyone with an interest in poetry.
Unending Blues
by Charles SimicWhether he draws for inspiration on American blues, Serbian folktales, or Greek myths, Simic's words have a way of their own. Each of these forty-four poems is a powerful mixture of concrete images. Each records the reality and myth of the world around us-and in us. "Short, perfectly shaped, Simic's poems float past like feathers, turning one way, then another" (Village Voice).
Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry
by Joseph M. ConteDrawing on the work of contemporary American poets from Ashbery to Zukofsky, Joseph M. Conte elaborates an innovative typology of postmodern poetic forms. In Conte's view, looking at recent poetry in terms of the complementary methods of seriality and proceduralism offers a rewarding alternative to the familiar analytic dichotomy of "open" and "closed" forms.
Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser's Twentieth Century
by Rowena Kennedy-EpsteinIn Unfinished Spirit, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein brings to light the extraordinary archive of Muriel Rukeyser's (1913–1980) unpublished and incomplete literary works, revealing the ways in which misogyny influences the kinds of texts we read and value. Despite her status today as an influential poet, much of Rukeyser's critical and feminist writing remained unfinished, suppressed by the sexism of editors, political censure, the withdrawal of funding and publishing contracts, as well the conditions of single motherhood and economic precarity.From Savage Coast, her novel of the Spanish Civil War (which Kennedy-Epstein recovered, edited, and published to great acclaim in 2013) to her photo-text collaboration with Berenice Abbott, essays on women writers, radio scripts, and biographies, Unfinished Spirit traces the creation, reception, and rejection of Rukeyser's most ambitious texts—works that continued the radical, avant-garde project of modernism and challenged an increasingly hegemonic Cold War culture. Bound together by Rukeyser's radical vision of artistic creation and political engagement, these incomplete texts open a space to theorize the politics of the unfinished for understanding women's artistic production, reasserting the importance of the archive as a primary site of feminist criticism.
Unfold: Poetry + Prose
by Ari B. CoferFrom the author of paper girl and the knives that made her comes unfold, a poetic, aching, and hopeful retelling of realizations made while on the journey to healing from both loss of love and loss of self.Through poetry and short essays, unfold shows that true growth comes from being unafraid to face what&’s hidden inside, to be vulnerable, and to be unashamed of what we find when we finally open up.
The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself
by Arielle Estoria“A moving, fresh, unique poetry collection and a generous invitation into the mind of the poet. Both a galvanizing wake-up call and a tender lullaby.” — Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed“What I love about Arielle’s writing is that she takes readers on this journey step by step, filled with wisdom and grace. This book will help anyone seeking to unfold into their bloom.” — Morgan Harper Nichols, author of All Along You Were Blooming and Peace is a PracticeIn this beautiful collection of poems, essays, and meditations, Arielle Estoria tenderly reveals the places in her life where she has been broken open and mended back together in new ways. In doing so, she shows each of us how when we walk through our own process of “unfolding,” though it may be uncomfortable at times, there is light on the other side. Let these words guide your soul, and return home to the person you were always meant to be.
Unfolding in Light: A Sisters' Journey in Photography and Poetry
by Joan Scott Claire ScottA collection of sixty-four black-and-white photographs and sixty-two poems, Unfolding in Light offers a vision of hands as images, symbols, and archetypes, allowing the numinous to shine through the mundane. Sisters Joan Scott and Claire Scott provides an intimate pause that gives the reader a quiet moment to reflect on the meaning of everyday hands: an ill child&’s hands; a dying woman&’s hands; hands of lovers, young and old; hands at work, at play, in pain, in prayer, and in love.
Unfolding Journey
by Catherine WeeksPoetry, like music, is another way to express emotions. The words follow a winding path carrying your feelings along with them. The rhythms speak to your heart and draw you in giving a voice to things you may not know you needed to say.Life is an unfolding journey of joys and sorrows, confidence and confusion. Unfolding Journey follows those ups and downs in my life. Feelings turned into words. Words given as a gift from our Heavenly Father- words He didn&’t intend for me alone.Let the words He gave sink into your heart. Let them become His words to you. Words to guide and to heal, to bring you to tears or laughter. Make His message part of your unfolding journey.
The Unfolding of The Seasons: A Study of James Thomson's Poem (Routledge Revivals)
by Ralph CohenFirst published in 1970, The Unfolding of The Seasons provides an interpretation and evaluation of James Thomson’s poem The Seasons. Professor Cohen urges its reconsideration as a major Augustan poem, arguing that Thomson’s unity, diction and thought combine with a conception of man, nature and God which is poetically tenable and distinctive. The case for The Seasons as an important work of art depends upon its effectiveness as a moving vision of human experience, and Professor Cohen believes that many critics have not felt this effectiveness because they have misconceived Thomson’s vision and misunderstood his idiom. His study aims to persuade them to return to the poem and to examine it within the context of an Augustan tradition. Professor Cohen shows that Thomson’s great achievement is to have fashioned a conception which, by bringing nature to the forefront of his poem, became a new poetic way of defining human experience. Thomson was not the first nature poet in English, but he was the first to provide an effective idiom in which science, orthodox religion, natural description, and classical allusions blended to describe the glory, baseness and uncertainty of man’s earthly environment, holding forth the hope of heavenly love and wisdom. This study shows that Thomson found a personal idiom by means of which he created an artistic vision. It will appeal to those with an interest in English literature and in philosophy.
Unforgetting Private Charles Smith
by Jonathan Locke HartPrivate Charles Smith had been dead for close to a century when Jonathan Hart discovered the soldier’s small diary in the Baldwin Collection at the Toronto Public Library. The diary’s first entry was marked 28 June 1915. After some research, Hart discovered that Charles Smith was an Anglo-Canadian, born in Kent, and that this diary was almost all that remained of this forgotten man, who like so many soldiers from ordinary families had lost his life in the First World War. In reading the diary, Hart discovered a voice full of life, and the presence of a rhythm, a cadence that urged him to bring forth the poetry in Smith’s words. Unforgetting Private Charles Smith is the poetic setting of the words in Smith’s diary, work undertaken by Hart with the intention of remembering Smith’s life rather than commemorating his death.
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise
by Mahmoud Darwish Sinan Antoon Munir Akash Fady Joudah Amira El-ZeinMahmoud Darwish is a literary rarity: at once critically acclaimed as one of the most important poets in the Arabic language, and beloved as the voice of his people. A legend in Palestine, his lyrics are sung by fieldworkers and schoolchildren. He has assimilated some of the world's oldest literary traditions while simultaneously struggling to open new possibilities for poetry. This collection spans Darwish's entire career, nearly four decades, revealing an impressive range of expression and form. A splendid team of translators has collaborated with the poet on these new translations, which capture Darwish's distinctive voice and spirit. Fady Joudah's foreword, new to this edition, addresses Darwish's enduring legacy following his death in 2008.
Unheard Voices: An Anthology of Stories and Poems to Commemorate the Bicentenary Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade
by Malorie BlackmanIn March 1807, the British Parliament passed an Act making the trading and transportation of slaves illegal. It was many years before slavery, as it was known then, was abolished, and slavery still continues today in different ways, but it was a big step forward towards the empancipation of a people. Malorie Blackman has drawn together some of the finest of today's writers and poets to contribute to this important anthology. Their short stories and poems sit alongside first-hand accounts of slavery from freed slaves, making a fascinating and absorbing collection that remembers and commemorates one of the most brutal and long-lasting inflictions of misery that human beings have inflicted upon other human beings.