- Table View
- List View
What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World
by Robert HassUniversally lauded poet Robert Hass offers a stunning, wide-ranging collection of essays on art, imagination, and the natural world—with accompanying photos throughout. What Light Can Do is a magnificent companion piece to the former U.S. Poet Laureate’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poetry collection, Time and Materials, as well as his earlier book of essays, the NBCC Award-winner Twentieth Century Pleasures. Haas brilliantly discourses on many of his favorite topics—on writers ranging from Jack London to Wallace Stevens to Allen Ginsberg to Cormac McCarthy; on California; and on the art of photography in several memorable pieces—in What Light Can Do, a remarkable literary treasure that might best be described as “luminous.”
What Light He Saw I Cannot Say: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets)
by Sidney BurrisWhat Light He Saw I Cannot Say, a new poetry collection from Sidney Burris, explores the interplay of human consciousness and objective reality, always in celebration of the imaginative spirit that brings them into a productive and often spiritual conversation. Poems both demanding and beguiling gain a deeper resonance as they encourage us to understand the often mysterious links that unite the people and events that crowd our daily lives. Deploying themes that encompass the physical, the spiritual, and the meditative, What Light He Saw I Cannot Say remains rooted in the human condition while showing how this experience is rich with vision and transcendence.
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by Daniel Mark EpsteinA noted biographer and poet illuminates the unique woman who wrote the greatest American love poetry of the twentieth centuryWhat Lips My Lips Have Kissed is the story of a rare sort of American genius, who grew up in grinding poverty in Camden, Maine. Nothing could save the sensitive child but her talent for words, music and drama, and an inexorable desire to be loved. When she was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.Edna St. Vincent Millay was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.Using letters, diaries and journals of the poet and her lovers that have only recently become available, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
What Love Comes To
by Sharon Olds Ruth Stone"A collection of poems that give rich drama to ordinary experience, deepening our sense of what it means to be human."-Pulitzer Prize finalist citation"There is a broad, powerful streak of independence-even disobedience-that runs through Stone's writing and has inspired a great number of women after her."-GuardianFinalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, this retrospective of Ruth Stone's poetry combines the best work from twelve previous volumes with an abundance of new poems. This comprehensive selection includes early formal lyrics, fierce political poems, and meditations on her husband's suicide and her own blindness. As Sharon Olds says in her foreword, "A Ruth Stone poem feels alive in the hands-ardent, independent, restless." What Love Comes To is a necessary collection from an American original.Can it be thatmemory is useless,like a torn webhanging in the wind?Sometimes it billowsout, a full high gauze-like a canopy.But the air passesthrough the rentsand it falls again and flapsshapelesslike the ghost rag that it is-hanging at the windowof an empty room.Ruth Stone is the author of twelve books of poetry. Among her many awards are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Eric Mathieu King Award, a Whiting Award, and she was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. She taught creative writing at many universities, finally settling at SUNY Binghamton. She lives in Vermont.
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
by Charles BukowskiThis second posthumous collection from Charles Bukowski takes readers deep into the raw, wild vein of writing that extends from the early 70s to the 1990s.
What My Mother Doesn’t Know
by Sonya SonesComposed entirely of short poems in free verse, What My Mother Doesn't Know captures the ups and downs of Sophie's freshman year of high school and her first real romance.
What Nature (Boston Review)
by Timothy Donnelly B. Fischer Stefania HeimPoetry that grapples with the intersection of natural and cultural crises. In an age of record-breaking superstorms and environmental degradation, What Nature seeks—through poetry—to make sense of how we interact with and are influenced by nature. Shifting its focus from what has already been lost to what lies ahead, What Nature rejects the sentimentality of traditional nature poetry. Instead, its texts expose and resist the global iniquities that create large-scale human suffering, a world where climate change disproportionately affects the poorest communities. The intersection of natural and cultural crises—like Standing Rock's fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan—are confronted head on. These poems, lyric essays, and hybrid works grapple with political unrest, refugeeism, and resource exploitation, transforming the genre of ecopoetics. Contributors Kaveh Akbar, Zaina Alsous, Desirée Alvarez, Rae Armantrout, Aase Berg, Kyle Booten, Jericho Brown, Kyce Bello, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Jesús Castillo,, Abigail Chabitnoy,Adam Day, Camille T. Dungy, Noah Dversdall, Gyrðir Elíasson, Tracy Fuad, Carolyn Guinzio, Amanda Hawkins, Sheikha Helawy, Claire Hero, Brenda Hillman, Joan Kane, Douglas Kearney, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Nam Le, Diana Keren Lee, Adrian Lurssen, Matt Massaia, Iréne Mathieu, Ted Mathys, Christopher Nelson, Kathy Nilsson, Greg Nissan, Elsbeth Pancrazi, Sarah Passino, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Roger Reeves, Evelyn Reilly, Emelia Reuterfors, Mutsuo Takahashi, Brian Tierney, Alissa Valles, Nicole Walker, Ellen Welcker
What Pet Should I Get? (Classic Seuss)
by Dr. SeussA #1 New York Times bestseller! This previously never-before-seen picture book by Dr. Seuss about making up one&’s mind is the literary equivalent of buried treasure! What happens when a brother and sister visit a pet store to pick a pet? Naturally, they can&’t choose just one! The tale captures a classic childhood moment—choosing a pet—and uses it to illuminate a life lesson: that it is hard to make up your mind, but sometimes you just have to do it! Told in Dr. Seuss&’s signature rhyming style, this is a must-have for Seuss fans and book collectors, and a perfect choice for the holidays, birthdays, and happy occasions of all kinds. An Editor&’s Note at the end discusses Dr. Seuss&’s pets, his creative process, and the discovery of the manuscript and illustrations for What Pet Should I Get?
What Pet Should I Get? (Beginner Books)
by Dr. SeussPick a pet with Dr. Seuss with this bestselling and silly tail of cats, dogs and more! A dog or a cat? A fish or a bird? Or maybe a crazy creature straight from the mind of Dr. Seuss! Which pet would YOU get? A trip to the pet store turns into a hilarious struggle when two kids must choose one pet to take home... but everytime they think they see an animal they like, they find something even better! Perfect for animal lovers and Seuss lover alike, this book will delight readers young and old. Discovered 22 years after Dr. Seuss's death, the unpublished manuscript and sketches for What Pet Should I Get? were previously published as a 48-page jacketed hardcover with 8 pages of commentary. This unjacketed Beginner Book edition features the story only. The cat? Or the dog? The kitten? The pup? Oh, boy! It is something to make a mind up. Beginner Books are fun, funny, and easy to read! Launched by Dr. Seuss in 1957 with the publication of The Cat in the Hat, this beloved early reader series motivates children to read on their own by using simple words with illustrations that give clues to their meaning. Featuring a combination of kid appeal, supportive vocabulary, and bright, cheerful art, Beginner Books will encourage a love of reading in children ages 3–7.
What Pet Should I Get?
by Dr SeussThis never-ever-before-seen picture book by Dr. Seuss about making up one's mind is the literary equivalent of buried treasure! What happens when a brother and sister visit a pet store to pick a pet? Naturally, they can't choose just one! <P><P> The tale captures a classic childhood moment--choosing a pet--and uses it to illuminate a life lesson: that it is hard to make up your mind, but sometimes you just have to do it! <P> Told in Dr. Seuss's signature rhyming style, this is a must-have for Seuss fans and book collectors, and a perfect choice for the holidays, birthdays, and happy occasions of all kinds. <P> An Editor's Note at the end discusses Dr. Seuss's pets, his creative process, and the discovery of the manuscript and illustrations for What Pet Should I Get?
What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt
by Hannah ArendtA landmark literary event, What Remains collects Arendt’s complete poetic oeuvre—never before published in English. Internationally renowned as one of the twentieth century’s foremost public intellectuals, Hannah Arendt was also intensely private. Though she often acknowledged that the language of poetry—especially that of Dickinson, Goethe, and Lowell—informed her work, only a few people knew that Arendt herself wrote poems. In fact, between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them signposts in an otherwise unwritten autobiography. For nearly forty years after her death, these poems remained hidden among the archives of the Library of Congress, until 2011, when they were rediscovered by scholar and translator Samantha Rose Hill. Now, for the first time in English, Hill and Genese Grill present Arendt’s poems in chronological order, taking us from the zenith of the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, and from Marburg, Germany, to New York’s Upper West Side. Throughout, Arendt uses poetry to mark moments of joy, love, loss, and reflection. In “W. B.,” written in 1942, she remembers Walter Benjamin, who died near the French-Spanish border while attempting to flee the Nazis: “Gentle whispering melodies / Sound from the darkness. / We listen so we can let go.” So, too, she reflects on mutability and transience in 1946: “I know that the houses have fallen. / We entered the world in them, wonderfully sure, that they / were more durable than ourselves.” She tries to understand her place in the world: “Ironically foolish, / I’ve forgotten nothing, / I know the emptiness, / I know the burden, / I dance, I dance / In ironic splendor.” A gift to all readers of Arendt, this stunning, dual-language edition provides an unparalleled view into the inner sanctum of one of our most original thinkers.
What Sadie Tied
by Carrie FinisonSadie has learned to tie her shoes! Now she wants to tie everything she can. She ties her socks, her sleeves, and even her hair! She gets so excited about tying other things together, though, that she doesn’t notice her shoe has come untied again!
What Star Is This
by Joseph SlateThe spiritually enchanted tale of the arrival of Baby Jesus - from Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem to the comet that illuminated the sky for the Wise Men - detailed in lyrical language and stunning illustrations, perfect for Christmastime.
What the Chickadee Knows (Great Lakes Books Series)
by Margaret NoodinMargaret Noodin explains in the preface of her new poetry collection, What the Chickadee Knows (Gijigijigaaneshiinh Gikendaan), "Whether we hear giji-giji-gaane-shii-shii or chick-a-dee-dee-dee depends on how we have been taught to listen. Our world is shaped by the sounds around us and the filter we use to turn thoughts into words. The lines and images here were conceived first in Anishinaabemowin and then in English. They are an attempt to hear and describe the world according to an Anishinaabe paradigm." The book is concerned with nature, history, tradition, and relationships, and these poems illuminate the vital place of the author’s tribe both in the past and within the contemporary world. What the Chickadee Knows is a gesture toward a future that includes Anishinaabemowin and other indigenous languages seeing growth and revitalization. This bilingual collection includes Anishinaabemowin and English, with the poems mirroring one another on facing pages. In the first part, "What We Notice" (E-Maaminonendamang), Noodin introduces a series of seasonal poems that invoke Anishinaabe science and philosophy. The second part, "History" (Gaa Ezhiwebag), offers nuanced contemporary views of Anishinaabe history. The poems build in urgency, from observations of the natural world and human connection to poems centered in powerful grief and remembrance for events spanning from the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850, which resulted in the deaths of more than four hundred Ojibwe people, to the Standing Rock water crisis of 2016, which resulted in the prosecution of Native protesters and, ultimately, the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline on sacred land. The intent of What the Chickadee Knows is to create a record of the contemporary Anishinaabe worldview as it is situated between the traditions of the past and as it contributes to the innovation needed for survival into the future. Readers of poetry with an interest in world languages and indigenous voices will need this book.
What the Living Do: Poems
by Marie Howe"A deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."--Liz Rosenberg Boston Globe Informed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe's writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation" (Boston Globe).
What the Road Said
by Cleo WadeWhat the Road Said is the New York Times-bestselling comforting and uplifting picture book from bestselling poet and activist Cleo Wade. Which way do I go? That is your choice to make, said the Road.But what if I go the wrong way?The Road curved a little, almost as if it was giving me a hug, and said,Do not worry. Sometimes we go the wrong way on our way to the right way.It's okay to be afraid or to sometimes wander down the wrong path. Bestselling poet and activist Cleo Wade's What the Road Said features illustrations by Lucie de Moyencourt and encourages us to lead with kindness and curiosity, remembering that the most important thing we can do in life is to keep going.
What the Soul Doesn't Want
by Lorna CrozierIn her newest collection, Lorna Crozier describes the passage of time in the way that only she can. Her arresting, edgy poems about aging and grief are surprising and invigorating: a defiant balm. At the same time, she revels in the quirkiness and whimsy of the natural world: the vision of a fly, the naming of an eggplant, and a woman who — not unhappily — finds that cockroaches are drawn to her. “God draws a life. And then rubs it out / with the eraser on his pencil.” Lorna Crozier draws a world in What the Soul Doesn’t Want, and then beckons us in. Crozier’s signature wit and striking imagery are on display as she stretches her wings and reminds us that we haven’t yet seen all that she can do.
What the Thunder Said: How The Waste Land Made Poetry Modern
by Jed RasulaOn the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece, a rich cultural history of The Waste Land’s creation, explosive impact, and enduring influenceWhen T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, it put the thirty-four-year-old author on a path to worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize. “But,” as Jed Rasula writes, “The Waste Land is not only a poem: it names an event, like a tornado or an earthquake. Its publication was a watershed, marking a before and after. It was a poem that unequivocally declared that the ancient art of poetry had become modern.” In What the Thunder Said, Rasula tells the story of how The Waste Land changed poetry forever and how this cultural bombshell served as a harbinger of modernist revolution in all the arts, from abstraction in visual art to atonality in music.From its famous opening, “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land,” to its closing Sanskrit mantra, “Shantih shantih shantih,” The Waste Land combined singular imagery, experimental technique, and dense allusions, boldly fulfilling Ezra Pound’s injunction to “make it new.” What the Thunder Said traces the origins, reception, and enduring influence of the poem, from its roots in Wagnerism and French Symbolism to the way its strangely beguiling music continues to inspire readers. Along the way, we learn about Eliot’s storied circle, including Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, and Bertrand Russell, and about poets like Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, whose innovations have proven as consequential as those of the “men of 1914.”Filled with fresh insights and unfamiliar anecdotes, What the Thunder Said recovers the explosive force of the twentieth century’s most influential poem.
What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American: Poems
by Richard HugoHere is a collection of poems by a writer whom the poet Carolyn Kizer calls "one of the most passionate, energetic, and honest poets living." Hugo's most important subject is the American West. In the present volume, people, places, dreams, and memories are explored again--always in search of the poet's self.
What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American
by Richard HugoHugo's most important subject is the American West; as William Stafford said of The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir, "A part of the West belongs to Hugo. By telling over and over again its places and people he reclaims it from the very bleakness he confronts; and it all begins to loom as a great intense abode that we can't neglect, that we can't bear to let go." In the present volume, people, places, dreams, memories are explored again-always in search of the poet's self. Hugo for many years directed the creative writing program at the University of Montana. He died in 1982.
What Though the Field Be Lost: Poems
by Christopher KempfBased on two years living and researching in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, What Though the Field Be Lost uses the battlefield there as a way to engage ongoing issues involving race, regional identity, and the ethics of memory.With empathy and humility, Kempf reveals the overlapping planes of historical past and public present, integrating archival material—language from monuments, soldiers' letters, eyewitness accounts of the battle—with reflection on present-day social and political unrest. Here monument protests, police shootings, and heated battle reenactments expose the ambivalences and evasions involved in the consolidation of national (and nationalist) identity. In What Though the Field Be Lost, Kempf shows that, though the Civil War may be over, the field at Gettysburg and all that it stands for remain sharply contested. Shuttling between past and present, the personal and the public, What Though the Field Be Lost examines the many pasts that inhere, now and forever, in the places we occupy.
What to Count (Made in Michigan Writers Series)
by Alise AlousiWith heart and insight, the poems in Alise Alousi’s What to Count speak to what it means to come of age as an Iraqi American during the first Gulf War and its continuing aftermath, but also to the joy and complexity of motherhood, daughterhood, and what it means to live a creative life. More than a description of the world, Alousi’s poetry actively lives in and of the world. These poems explore the nuances of memory through the changes wrought by time, conflict, and distance. In "The Ocularist" and "Art," and others, Alousi’s extraordinary verbal deftness precisely locates the still-tender pains and triumphs of collective being while trying to be an individual in the world. What to Count is a remarkable collection of contemporary poetry—both a lyrical splendor and a contemplative account of lineage, silenced history, and identity.
What To Do With a Box
by Jane YolenIf you give a child a box, who can tell what will happen next? It may become a library or a boat. It could set the scene for a fairy tale or a wild expedition. The most wonderful thing is its seemingly endless capacity for magical adventure, a feature imaginatively captured in cardboardesque art by Chris Sheban and rhythmically celebrated in this poetic tribute by renowned children's author Jane Yolen.
What to Miss When: Poems
by Leigh SteinPoems about pop culture, mortality, and the internet, written during the Coronavirus pandemic—for readers who are more likely to double-tap Instapoems than put their phone down long enough to read The Decameron.Catalyzed by sheltering in place and by a personal challenge to give up alcohol for thirty days, Leigh Stein, the poet laureate of The Bachelor, has written a twenty-first-century Decameron to frame modern fables. What to Miss When makes mischief of reality TV and wellness influencers, juicy thoughtcrimes and love languages, and the mixed messages of contemporary feminism. &“Think Starlight,&” the first poem in this collection, written before any self-quarantine orders, imagined the likelihood that the United States would follow in Italy&’s footsteps in terms of caseload and hospital overwhelm. By March 17, 2020, the imagined was the real: New York City had closed schools, bars, and restaurants—with the rest of the country close behind. With nihilist humor and controlled despair, What to Miss When explores fears of death and grocery shopping, stress cleaning and drinking, celebrities behaving badly, everything we took for granted, and life mediated by screens—with dissociation-via-internet, and looking for mirrors in a fourteenth-century pandemic text, a kind of survival response to living casually through catastrophe.
What W. H. Auden Can Do for You (Writers on Writers #5)
by Alexander McCall SmithBestselling novelist Alexander McCall Smith's charming account of how the poet W. H. Auden has helped guide his life—and how he might guide yours, tooWhen facing a moral dilemma, Isabel Dalhousie—Edinburgh philosopher, amateur detective, and title character of a series of novels by best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith—often refers to the great twentieth-century poet W. H. Auden. This is no accident: McCall Smith has long been fascinated by Auden. Indeed, the novelist, best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, calls the poet not only the greatest literary discovery of his life but also the best of guides on how to live. In this book, McCall Smith has written a charming personal account about what Auden has done for him—and what he just might do for you.Part self-portrait, part literary appreciation, the book tells how McCall Smith first came across the poet's work in the 1970s, while teaching law in Belfast, a violently divided city where Auden's "September 1, 1939," a poem about the outbreak of World War II, strongly resonated. McCall Smith goes on to reveal how his life has related to and been inspired by other Auden poems ever since. For example, he describes how he has found an invaluable reflection on life's transience in "As I Walked Out One Evening," while "The More Loving One" has provided an instructive meditation on unrequited love. McCall Smith shows how Auden can speak to us throughout life, suggesting how, despite difficulties and change, we can celebrate understanding, acceptance, and love for others.An enchanting story about how art can help us live, this book will appeal to McCall Smith's fans and anyone curious about Auden.