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The Wings of Angels: A Memoir of Madness
by Sandy JeffsPlumbing the depths of human experience in her journey into madness, Sandy Jeffs shares her experience in this collection of poetry reminiscent of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. With stark dignity and intense fear, these poems cross into a realm where nightmares wrestle with dreams, death by devouring is a way station, and the underworld becomes a tourist destination. In the midst of this darkness, Jeffs's leavening sense of humor peoples her descent with the sirens of the supermarket, a high-tech, technicolor Armageddon, and a modern Cerberus with three heads: Ken, Barbie, and Ronald McDonald. Written with great insight into the experience of madness, this collection will intrigue all readers with an interest in the wayward workings of the mind.
The Winter Count
by Dilys LemanAlthough relatively few First Nations joined the 1885 Métis insurgence, the Canadian government reacted punitively, instituting draconian "Indian" policies whose ill-effects continue to resonate today. The Winter Count traces these developments alongside another narrative - the debate over the sanity of Métis leader Louis Riel. Dilys Leman weaves original poems and reconstituted archival texts, including medical reports, diaries, treaties, recipes, even a phrenological analysis, to create a montage that both presents and disrupts official history. Her narrative questions politically expedient myths that First Nations were allies of the Métis, would rise again in greater numbers, and needed to be scrupulously controlled to secure the opening of the West. Leman evokes the voices of historical and imagined characters to convey a political landscape teetering into lunacy and a government obsessed with its own vision of nation-building. We hear a bureaucrat extol the merits of the pass system, a court interpreter's ludicrous translation of treason felony into Cree, and Dr Augustus Jukes agonizing about his role on the secret medical commission tasked with reassessing Riel's sanity, which would determine if he could be executed. The Winter Count is a cautionary tale about moral responsibility. As Leman laments, our failure to be accountable human beings will surely haunt us: "Laudable pus / Political speeches / This water / brought too late / to a boil / Lance and forceps / rattling / their pot."
The Winter Count (Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series #30)
by Dilys LemanAlthough relatively few First Nations joined the 1885 Métis insurgence, the Canadian government reacted punitively, instituting draconian "Indian" policies whose ill-effects continue to resonate today. The Winter Count traces these developments alongside another narrative - the debate over the sanity of Métis leader Louis Riel. Dilys Leman weaves original poems and reconstituted archival texts, including medical reports, diaries, treaties, recipes, even a phrenological analysis, to create a montage that both presents and disrupts official history. Her narrative questions politically expedient myths that First Nations were allies of the Métis, would rise again in greater numbers, and needed to be scrupulously controlled to secure the opening of the West. Leman evokes the voices of historical and imagined characters to convey a political landscape teetering into lunacy and a government obsessed with its own vision of nation-building. We hear a bureaucrat extol the merits of the pass system, a court interpreter's ludicrous translation of treason felony into Cree, and Dr Augustus Jukes agonizing about his role on the secret medical commission tasked with reassessing Riel’s sanity, which would determine if he could be executed. The Winter Count is a cautionary tale about moral responsibility. As Leman laments, our failure to be accountable human beings will surely haunt us: "Laudable pus / Political speeches / This water / brought too late / to a boil / Lance and forceps / rattling / their pot"
The Winter Dance Party: Poems, 1983–2023
by David KirbyThe Winter Dance Party lays out, not someone’s entire life, but that person’s life as a poet. This enthralling, career-spanning book by the National Book Award finalist David Kirby is made up mainly of new poems along with a generous number of older ones alternating with one another in nine sections that proceed, not chronologically, but more like chapters in a surreal memoir, with long poems followed by short poems, exploratory formats next to more traditional ones, straightforward poems cheek by jowl with ones that are more allusive.
The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki (Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture)
by Donald KeeneRather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export.Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene charts Shiki's revolutionary (and often contradictory) experiments with haiku and tanka, a dynamic process that made the survival of these traditional genres possible in a globalizing world. Keene particularly highlights random incidents and encounters in his impressionistic portrait of this tragically young life, moments that elicited significant shifts and discoveries in Shiki's work. The push and pull of a profoundly changing society is vividly felt in Keene's narrative, which also includes sharp observations of other recognizable characters, such as the famous novelist and critic Natsume Soseki. In addition, Keene reflects on his own personal relationship with Shiki's work, further developing the nuanced, deeply felt dimensions of its power.
The Winter's Tale: A Commentary on the Structure
by Fitzroy PyleFirst published in 1969. Critics have in the past described The Winter's Tale as a work of "haphazard structure". More recent criticism has defended the structure of the play and this work shows that the evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare took infinite pains with the choice and disposition of the materials of The Winter's Tale. The scene-by-scene commentary considers The Winter's Tale in isolation, but prologue, epilogue and appendix place it in the context of related plays, and discuss, among others, the problem of genre as it affects the play.
The Wisdom of Omar Khayyam (Wisdom)
by The Wisdom SeriesA Persian poet&’s masterpiece While better known in his time for his mathematical and astronomical works, eleventh-century Persian philosopher and poet Omar Khayyam is best known today for his romantic poetry collected in the Rubaiyat. This selection presents 365 of the approximately 1,000 quatrains, translated from the original Persian. Khayyam&’s poetry draws readers in with its lush imagery and timeless observations on the human experience and the metaphysical mysteries of our world. As wise and intriguing as they are beautifully crafted, Khayyam&’s verse has inspired much Western art and literature.
The Wisdom of Trees: How Trees Work Together to Form a Natural Kingdom
by Lita JudgeWith lush illustrations, poems, and accessible scientific information, The Wisdom of Trees by Lita Judge is a fascinating exploration of the hidden communities trees create to strengthen themselves and others.We clean the air and seed the clouds, we drench the thirsty land with rain. We are like wizards.The story of a tree is a story of community, communication, and cooperation. Although trees may seem like silent, independent organisms, they form a network buzzing with life: they talk, share food, raise their young, and offer protection. Trees thrive on diversity, learn from their ancestors, and give back to their communities. Trees not only sustain life on our planet—they can also teach us important lessons about patience, survival, and teamwork.A New York Public Library Best Book of 2021A New York Public Library Top Ten Book for KidsGreen Earth Book Award LonglistAn ALA SustainRT Top 10 Sustainability-Themed Children’s Books 2022
The Wish Book: Poems
by Alex Lemon"To read this book is to meet a man who would climb the sky." —BOB HICOKIn his follow-up to Fancy Beasts, a book that &“slice[d] straight through nerve and marrow on its way to the heart and mind of the matter&” (Tracy K. Smith), Alex Lemon dazzles with his exuberance and candor. Whether in unrestrained descriptions of sensory overload or tender meditations on fatherhood and mortality, Lemon blurs the nebulous line between the personal and the pop-cultural. These poems are full of frenetic energy and images pleasantly, strangely colliding: jigsaws and bathtubs and kung-fu and X-rays. A carnival barker calls. A jellyfish celebrates a shaky adulthood. A sliding door shatters with the passing through of a body. And a heart is &“ecstatically / Torn apart like Twizzlers.&”Lean and muscular, The Wish Book is a collection of fireworks and wild emotion, defined by Lemon&’s distinct brand of poetic edginess.
The Wit In The Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt
by Anthony HoldenHe was born in the year Dr Johnson died, and died in the year A.E. Houseman and Conan Doyle were born. The 75 years of Leigh Hunt's life uniquely span two distinct eras of English life and literature. A major player in the Romantic movement, the intimate and first publisher of Keats and Shelley, friend of Byron, Hazlitt and Lamb, Hunt lived on to become an elder statesman of Victorianism, the friend and chamption of Tennyson and Dickens, awarded a sate pension by Queen Victoria. Jailed in his twenties for insulting the Prince of Wales, Hunt ended his long, productive life vainly seeking the Poet Laureatship with fawning poems to Victoria. A tirelessly prolific poet, essayist, editor and critic, he has been described as having no rival in the history of English criticism. Yet Hunt's remarkable life story has never been fully told.Anthony Holden's deeply researched and vibrantly written biography gives full due to this minor poet - but major influence on his great Romantic contempories.
The Witness Of Poetry (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures #38)
by Czeslaw MiloszCzeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, reflects upon poetry's testimony to the events of our tumultuous time. From the special perspectives of "my corner of Europe," a classical and Catholic education, a serious encounter with Marxism, and a life marked by journeys and exiles, Milosz has developed a sensibility at once warm and detached, flooded with specific memory yet never hermetic or provincial. Milosz addresses many of the major problems of contemporary poetry, beginning with the pessimism and negativism prompted by reductionist interpretations of man's animal origins. He examines the tendency of poets since Mallarmé to isolate themselves from society, and stresses the need for the poet to make himself part of the great human family. One chapter is devoted to the tension between classicism and realism; Milosz believes poetry should be "a passionate pursuit of the real." In "Ruins and Poetry" he looks at poems constructed from the wreckage of a civilization, specifically that of Poland after the horrors of World War II. Finally, he expresses optimism for the world, based on a hoped-for better understanding of the lessons of modern science, on the emerging recognition of humanity's oneness, and on mankind's growing awareness of its own history.
The Wolf is at the Door: Tales of Courage
by The Editors at Scott ForesmanThis book is a interesting collection of poetry, essays, fiction and non-fiction work from various authors on courage and intends to encourage reading among young readers.
The Woman Downstairs
by Julie BruckWinner of the 1994 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (QSPELL, now the Quebec Writers' Federation) In The Woman Downstairs, eloquence joins intimately with an attentive and hungry eye. Julie Bruck explores the accidents and acquaintances of life, its small coincidences and occurrences, its unexpected meetings. With a passionate distance, Bruck blends the outside observer's cool embrace with a desire to know intensely life’s eccentric smallnesses, to gentle the beautiful out of the mundane. By turns witty and thoughtful, Bruck's writing is always graceful, always a delight.
The Woman I Kept to Myself
by Julia Alvarez75 poems weave together the narrative of a woman's inner life, Julia Alvarez's own clear voice that sings out in every line.
The Woman I Kept to Myself
by Julia AlvarezThe works of this award-winning poet and novelist are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: those of the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life. In these seventy-five autobiographical poems, Alvarez’s clear voice sings out in every line. Here, in the middle of her life, she looks back as a way of understanding and celebrating the woman she has become.
The Woman Who Fell from the Sky
by Joy HarjoJoy Harjo, one of this country's foremost Native American voices, combines elements of storytelling, prayer, and song, informed by her interest in jazz and by her North American tribal background, in this, her fourth volume of poetry. She draws from the Native American tradition of praising the land and the spirit, the realities of American culture, and the concept of feminine individuality.
The Woman Who Married a Bear: Poems (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series)
by Tiffany MidgeWinner of the Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry, Midge deftly weaves Plains Indian myths into the present day and seeks to define love, the nature of desire, and identity in the twenty-first century. The book includes a series of poems, each titled &“Considering Wakatanka,&” that weave together the themes throughout the book. The Woman Who Married a Bear showcases the wholly individual voice of a talented poet.
The Woman in the Moon
by Marjorie SaiserThe poems in this collection move into the past with her mother and father and also explore the present both with family and culture. The poems range in quick flourishes of conventional subjects rendered in exquisite imagery and observations to everyday occurrences that are suddenly spiked with clear focus and complex movements.
The Woman in the Moon
by Marjorie SaiserThe poems in this collection move into the past with her mother and father and also explore the present both with family and culture. The poems range in quick flourishes of conventional subjects rendered in exquisite imagery and observations to everyday occurrences that are suddenly spiked with clear focus and complex movements. Saiser’s poems are intricate and graceful in their treatments of numerous subjects, including landscape and evening, grocery stores and roadways, death and birth, love and loss, where sudden realizations seem at once deep and clear and natural. The voice in these poems is fluid and sure.
The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life
by Jennifer Michael HechtThe Wonder Paradox offers a lively, practical, and transcendent road map to meaning and connection through poetry.Where do we find magic? Peace? Connection?We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, official archives to record legacies, the wisdom of sages read aloud, weekly, to map out the right way to live—in kindness, justice, morality. These rhythms and structures of society were all once set by religion. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show.So how then to celebrate milestones? Find rules to guide us? Figure out which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can’t be said? Where, really, are truth and beauty? The answer, says The Wonder Paradox, is in poetry.In twenty chapters built from years of questions and conversations with those looking for an authentic and meaningful life, Jennifer Michael Hecht offers ways to mine and adapt the useful aspects of tradition and to replace what no longer feels true. Through cultures and poetic wisdom from around the world—Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Issa, Tagore, Frost, Szymborska, Angelou, and others—she blends literary criticism with spiritual guidance rooted in the everyday. Linking our needs to particular poems, she helps us better understand those needs, our very being, and poetry itself.Our capacity for wonder is one of the greatest joys of being human; The Wonder Paradox celebrates that instinct and that yearning.
The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal
by James CrewsThe editor of the bestselling poetry anthologies How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness presents a collection of highly accessible, uplifting poetry celebrating the small wonders and peaceful moments of everyday life. James Crews, editor of two best-selling poetry anthologies, How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness, presents an all-new collection of highly accessible poems on the theme of celebrating moments of wonder and peace in everyday life. As Crews writes in the introduction: "[A] deep love for the world is present in every one of the poems gathered in this book. Wonder calls us back to the curiosity we are each born with, and it makes us want to move closer to what sparks our attention. Wonder opens our senses and helps us stay in touch with a humbling sense of our own human smallness in the face of unexpected beauty and the delicious mysteries of life on this planet." The anthology features a foreword by Nikita Gill and a carefully curated selection of poems from a diverse range of authors, including Native American poets Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Kimberly Blaeser, and Joseph Bruchac, and BIPOC writers Ross Gay, Julia Alvarez, and Toi Derricotte. Crews features new poems from popular writers such as Natalie Goldberg, Mark Nepo, Ted Kooser, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Jacqueline Suskin, along with selections from emerging poets. Readers are guided in exploring the meaning and essence of the poems through a series of reflective pauses scattered through the pages and reading group questions in the back. This anthology offers the perfect intersection for the growing number of readers interested in mindful living and bringing poetry into their everyday lives.
The Wonderful School (Little Golden Book)
by May JustusA sweet rhyming story from 1971 about a beloved schoolteacher is back in print!There once was a very unusual schoolThat had for its teacher Miss Tillie O'Toole . . .So begins a rollicking story about a beloved teacher who presents all her lessons in riddles and rhyme, takes her students outside for picnics and kite-flying, and teaches them good, old-fashioned common sense along with the three R's. Charming illustrations of red-haired Miss Tillie O'Toole and her multicultural class make this breezy Little Golden Book as much fun to look at as well as read aloud!
The Woods Are On Fire: New and Selected Poems (Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry)
by Ted Kooser Fleda BrownThe Woods Are On Fire is Fleda Brown’s deeply human and intensely felt poetic explorations of her life and world. Her account includes her brain-damaged brother, a rickety family cottage, a puzzling and sometimes frightening father, a timid mother, and the adult life that follows with its loves, divorces, and serious illnesses. Visually and emotionally rich, Brown’s poems call on Einstein, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Law and Order, Elvis, and Beethoven. They stand before the Venus de Milo as well as the moon, as they measure distances between what we make as art and who we are as humans. In wide-ranging forms—from the sestina to prose poems—they focus on the natural world as well as the Delaware legislature and the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton.The Woods Are On Fire includes nearly fifty new poems, along with poems selected from seven previous books, showcasing an influential American poet’s work over the last few decades.
The Words We Keep
by Erin StewartA beautifully realistic, relatable story about mental health and the healing powers of friendship and art, perfect for fans of Kathleen Glasgow's Girl in Pieces and Jennifer Niven&’s All the Bright Places. 'Gorgeous and deeply touching.' – Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces and You'd Be Home Now 'Wild, beautiful, and free. The Words We Keep is a poetic page turner. A raw, relatable story of mental illness, romance, and the power of love.' – Jennifer Niven, New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places It&’s been two months since the Night on the Bathroom Floor – when Lily found her sister, Alice, hurting herself. Now Alice is coming home after treatment and it&’s getting harder for Lily to outrun the compulsive thoughts she's having. Meeting Micah, a guy with a troubled past of his own, the pair embark on a poetry project that helps Lily to see that the words she&’s been holding back, desperately want to break through. But what will Micah think if he finds out who she really is? 'A sprawling, engrossing read' – Kirkus Reviews 'A luminous exploration into the restorative power of love and art.' – Jeff Zentner, Morris Award–winning author of In the Wild Light
The Work of Self-Representation
by Ivy SchweitzerIn The Work of Self-Representation Ivy Schweitzer examines early American poetry through the critical lens of gender. Her concern is not the inclusion of female writers into the canon; rather, she analyzes how the metaphors of "woman" and "feminine" function in Puritan religious and literary discourse to represent both the "otherness" of spiritual experience and the ways in which race and class function to keep the "other" in marginalized positions.Schwetizer argues that gender was for seventeenth-century new England -- and still is today -- a basic and most politically charged metaphor for the differences that shape identity and determine cultural position. To glimpse the struggle between gender ideology and experience, Schweitzer provides close readings of the poetry of four New Englanders writing between the Great Migration and the first wave of the Great Awakening: John Fiske, Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, and Roger Williams.Schweitzer focuses exclusively on lyric poetry, she says, because a first-person speaker wrestling with the intricacies of individual consciousness provides fruitful ground for exploring the politics of voice and identity and especially problems of authority, intertextuality, and positionality. Fiske and Taylor define the orthodox tradition, and Bradstreet and Williams in different ways challenge it. Her treatment of the familiar poetry of Bradstreet and Taylor is solidly grounded in historical and literary scholarship yet suggestive of the new insights gained from a gender analysis, while discussions of Fiske and Williams bring their little-known lyric work to light.Taken together, these poets' texts illustrate the cultural construction of a troubled masculinity and an idealized, effaced femininity implicit in the Puritan notion of redeemed subjectivity, and constitute a profoundly disturbing and resilient part of our Puritan legacy.