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Light and Shadows: Selected Poems and Prose
by Robert Bly James Wright Dennis Maloney Antonio T. De Nicolas Clark Zlotchew Juan Ramón JiménezJuan Ramón Jiménez, along with Antonio Machado and Unamuno, formed the generation of '98 which ushered in a renaissance in Spanish poetry at the turn of the century. Their work inspired the next generation of Spanish poets including Lorca, Aleixandre, Alberti, and Guillen. Juan Ramon, as he was fondly known, was very supportive of younger writers, commenting on their work and publishing it in magazines he edited. Juan Ramón Jiménez was a poet of solitude and lightness. His poems were ecstatic moments of life which rise up like sparks from a campfire. Rather than relying on rhythm and technique, he emphasized how a poet should live, realizing that only in solitude do man's emotions finally become clear to him. In 1956 Jimenez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In awarding the prize the Nobel Committee honored Jimenez "for your lyric poetry, which in the Spanish language, constitutes an exemplar of high spirituality and artistic purity" and said "by being an idealist dreamer, Jiménez represents ... the highest Spanish tradition and honoring him is also honoring Machado and Garcia Lorca ..." The joy of receiving the Nobel Prize was diminished by his intense grief over the illness of his wife, Zenobia, who died shortly after. Jiménez stopped writing, living himself only until 1958. Jiménez dedicated over fifty years of his life to poetry. Each poem had a life of its own, a bit of the Tao running through it. He seems to have gradually become aware of the natural force residing in all things: a tree, a woman, a moonlit mountain ... This collection brings together a selection of poems from all periods of his work and is rounded out with a generous selection from Juan Ramón Jiménez's widely-admired prose work Platero and I.
Light at the Seam: Poems
by Joseph BathantiLight at the Seam, a new collection from North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti, is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and its people even as it succumbs to them. More than mere cautionary tale, this is a volume of hope and wonder.
Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope
by Kwame AlexanderFrom NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events. A book in the tradition of James Baldwin&’s &“A Report from Occupied Territory,&” Light for the World to See is a rap session on race. A lyrical response to the struggles of Black lives in our world . . . to America&’s crisis of conscience . . . to the centuries of loss, endless resilience, and unstoppable hope. Includes an introduction by the author and a bold, graphically designed interior.
Light: Poems
by Souvankham ThammavongsaA beautiful re-issued edition of poetry from the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of How To Pronounce Knife FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHORWinner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry Light examines the word that gives the collection its name. There are poems about a sparkle, about how to say light, about a scarecrow, a dung beetle, a fish without eyes. Known for her precision and elegance, for her spare, clear voice, for distilling meaning from details, for not wasting words, Thammavongsa confirms her gifts with these astonishing poems. Light is a work that shines with rigour, humour, courage, and grit.First published in 2013, Souvankham Thammavongsa&’s award-winning third book of poetry is an indispensable contribution to Canadian literature.
Lighthead
by Terrance HayesWinner of the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry<P><P> In his fourth collection, Terrance Hayes investigates how we construct experience. With one foot firmly grounded in the everyday and the other hovering in the air, his poems braid dream and reality into a poetry that is both dark and buoyant. Cultural icons as diverse as Fela Kuti, Harriet Tubman, and Wallace Stevens appear with meditations on desire and history. We see Hayes testing the line between story and song in a series of stunning poems inspired by the Pecha Kucha, a Japanese presentation format. This innovative collection presents the light- headedness of a mind trying to pull against gravity and time. Fueled by an imagination that enlightens, delights, and ignites, Lighthead leaves us illuminated and scorched.
Lighthouse for the Drowning (Lannan Translations Selection Series)
by Jawdat FakhreddineThis first US publication of Jawdat Fakhreddine-one of the major Lebanese names in modern Arabic poetry-establishes a revolutionary dialogue between foreign, Modernist values and Classical Arabic tradition. Fakhreddine’s unique poetic voice is a remarkable accomplishment-a breakthrough for the poetic language of his generation-that presents poetry as a beacon, a bright light that both opposes and penetrates all forms of darkness.
Lighting the Shadow
by Rachel Eliza GriffithsLighting the Shadow is about a woman's evolving journey through desire, grief, trauma, and the peculiar historical American psyche of desire and violence. These poems explore the international and psychological wars women survive--wars inflicted through various mediums that employ art, race, and literature. Furthermore, the collection is about a woman's transformation and acceptance of her complicated attempts to balance her spirit's own spectrum. Pulling the poet away from death, these poems insist that she open her life to her own powers and the powers of a greater world--a world that is both bright and dark.
Lights and Mysteries
by Thomas CentolellaHis first, Terra Firma, offered a cleverly mixed San Francisco post-Beat, neo-Zen hip view of the dark side of human nature from a kind of lapsed Catholic perspective of frailty and sin. The 43 poems in this volume continue the stylistic mixed bag, yet constitute a more coherent collection as they trace a three-part journey from new love to lost love and bitter self-examination to renewed compassion.
Like Bug Juice on a Burger
by Matthew Cordell Julie SternbergI hate camp. I just hate it. I wish I didn’t. But I do. Being here is worse than bug juice on a burger. Or homework on Thanksgiving. Or water seeping into my shoes. In this sequel to Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie, Eleanor is off to summer camp. At first she’s excited, but when she gets there she finds bugs, no electricity, and terrible food. And worst of all: swim class, where she just can’t seem to keep up with the other campers. But as the days go by, Eleanor realizes that life is full of special surprises—even after some belly flops.
Like Memory, Caverns
by Elizabeth C. DoddLike Memory, Caverns is an elegiac book, mourning losses from the personal to the planetary. Though personal in tone, these graceful, meditative poems reach insistently outward to the natural and social worlds, moving beyond today's confessionalism. In fact, the self keeps disappearing, as the world as it is seen seems to replace the seer. This poetry explores the tenuousness of each individual moment while affirming a necessary--if difficult--existence of the free spirit. Elizabeth Dodd writes a remarkably musical free verse, with her eye kept focused on the tangible significant detail of natural imagery.
Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie
by Julie SternbergSternberg tells the story of 8-year-old Eleanor, whose beloved babysitter, Bibi, must move away to care for her ailing father. Lyrically written in a poetic style, this story follows Eleanor as she tries to bear the summer without Bibi.
Like the Singing Coming off the Drums
by Sonia SanchezLike the Singing Coming off the Drums is a dazzling exploration of the intimate and public landscapes of passion from one of our master poets. In haiku, tanka, and sensual blues, Sonia Sanchez writes of the many forms love takes: burning, dreamy, disappointed, vulnerable. With words that revel and reveal, she shares love's painful beauty.
Like: Poems
by A. E. StallingsA Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in PoetryA stunning new collection by the award-winning young poet and translatorLike, that currency of social media, is a little word with infinite potential; it can be nearly any part of speech. Without it, there is no simile, that engine of the lyric poem, the lyre’s note in the epic. A poem can hardly exist otherwise. In this new collection, her most ambitious to date, A. E. Stallings continues her archeology of the domestic, her odyssey through myth and motherhood in received and invented forms, from sonnets to syllabics. Stallings also eschews the poetry volume’s conventional sections for the arbitrary order of the alphabet. Contemporary Athens itself, a place never dull during the economic and migration crises of recent years, shakes off the dust of history and emerges as a vibrant character. Known for her wry and musical lyric poems, Stallings here explores her themes in greater depth, including the bravura performance Lost and Found, a meditation in ottava rima on a parent’s sublunary dance with daily-ness and time, set in the moon’s Valley of Lost Things.
Lilah Tov Good Night
by Ben Gundersheimer (Mister G)A soothing Hebrew lullaby takes on added meaning for a refugee family in this visually stunning debut.As the moon rises, a family steps into the night on a journey toward a new beginning. Along the way, their little girl delights in the wonders of nature, saying good night--lilah tov--to the creatures and landscapes they pass. Wherever she looks--on land, in the sky above and even, eventually, in the water below her boat--there are marvels to behold. "Lilah tov to the birds in the trees, lilah tov to the fish in the sea." Then, when their travels are finally over, her parents tuck her in tight, safe and ready for dreams in their new home.This lyrical lullaby celebrates the beauty of our world and the spirit of resilience in a refugee family.
Lilies Without
by Laura Kasischke"She has, like all good poets, created a music of her own, one suited to her concerns. When denizens of the 22nd century, if we get there, look back on our era and ask how we lived, they will take an interest both in the strangest personalities who gave their concerns verbal form, and in the most representative. The future will not--should not--see us by one poet alone. But if there is any justice in that future, Kasischke is one of the poets it will choose." --Boston Review"Kasichke's poems are powered by a skillful use of imagery and the subtle, ingenious way she turns a phrase." --Austin American-Statesman Laura Kasischke in her own words: "I realized while ordering and selecting the poems for this collection that much of my more recent work concerns body parts, dresses, and beauty queens. These weren't conscious decisions, just the things that found their way into my poems at this particular point in my life, and which seem to have attached to them a kind of prophetic potential. The beauty queens especially seemed to crowd in on me, in all their feminine loveliness and distress, wearing their physical and psychological finery, bearing what body parts had been allotted to them. For some time, I had been thinking about beauty queens like Miss Michigan, but also the Rhubarb Queen, and the Beauty Queens of abstraction--congeniality. And then--Brevity, Consolation for Emotional Damages, Estrogen--all these feminine possibilities to which I thought a voice needed to be given."Laura Kasischke is the author of six books of poetry, including Gardening in the Dark (Ausable Press, 2004) and Dance and Disappear (winner of the 2002 Juniper Prize), and four novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Limen
by Susan HawthorneWhen two women and a dog set off on a holiday, they have no inkling of what's to come. They wake to find the river has crept up silently during the night. Trapped by floodwater, they devise escape routes only to be faced with more obstacles at every turn. Only the dog remains calm. This poetic novella grips you with its language, its pace, and its anxieties. The word limen is defined as "a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived." In Susan's Hawthorne's verse novel, there is the threat of the rising waters--the women's safety is above the threshold of perception. This definition feeds the suspense and tension of this book. However, the word also suggests a transition, a state, a threshold between earth and sky, between day and night, between water and heat, survival and drowning--and it is these paired states, together with many more that also drive narrative.
Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry (New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature)
by Daniela TheinováLimits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women’s Poetry examines the transactions between the two main languages of Irish literature, English and Irish, and their formative role in contemporary poetry by Irish women. Daniela Theinová explores the works of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson and Medbh McGuckian, combining for the first time a critical analysis of the language issue with a focus on the historical marginality of women in the Irish literary tradition. Acutely alert to the textures of individual poems even as she reads these against broader critical-theoretical horizons, Theinová engages directly with texts in both Irish and English. By highlighting these writers’ uneasy poetic and linguistic identity, and by introducing into this wider context some more recent poets—including Vona Groarke, Caitríona O’Reilly, Sinéad Morrissey, Ailbhe Darcy and Aifric Mac Aodha—this book proposes a fundamental critical reconsideration of major late-twentieth-century Irish women poets, and, by extension, the nation’s canon.
Lincoln and Whitman
by Daniel Mark EpsteinIt was more than coincidence--indeed, it was all but fate--that the lives and thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman should converge during the terrible years of the Civil War. Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position and circumstance, Lincoln and Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character that sprang from the deepest part of their being. They had read or listened to each other's words at crucial turning points in their lives. Both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the war. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.Drawing on the rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts, diary records, and lore that has accumulated around both the president and the poet, Epstein structures his double portrait in a series of dramatic, atmospheric scenes. Whitman, though initially skeptical of the Illinois Republican, became enthralled when Lincoln stopped in New York on the way to his first inauguration. During the war years, after Whitman moved to Washington to minister to wounded soldiers, the poet's devotion to the president developed into a passion bordering on obsession. "Lincoln is particularly my man, and by the same token, I am Lincoln's man." As Epstein shows, the influence and reverence flowed both ways. Lincoln had been deeply immersed in Whitman's verse when he wrote his incendiary "House Divided" speech, and Whitman remained an influence during the darkest years of the war. But their mutual impact went beyond the intellectual. Epstein brings to life the many friends and contacts his heroes shared--Lincoln's debonair private secretary John Hay, the fiery abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, the mysterious and possibly dangerous Polish Count Gurowski--as he unfolds the story of their legendary encounters in New York City and especially Washington during the war years. Blending history, biography, and a deeply informed appreciation of Whitman's verse and Lincoln's rhetoric, Epstein has written a masterful and original portrait of two great men and the era they shaped through the vision they held in common.From the Hardcover edition.
Line Up!: Animals in Remarkable Rows
by Susan StockdaleLine up for this fascinating exploration of animal behavior from an award-winning author-illustrator!Much like humans, many animals line up for a variety of reasons. Rather than forming lines for the school bus or recess, the animals featured in Susan Stockdale&’s book form lines forsafety: baby Mallard ducklings follow their mother to the water for their first swimwarmth: turtles climb into a stacked line for a better share of the sun&’s raysnavigation: Arctic wolves follow the prints in the snow left by the pack leaderfood: ants line up to follow the scent of their leader to food and safetytravel: pink flamingos form a line to reduce wind resistance and fly more efficiently Featuring birds, crustaceans, fish, insects, mammals, and reptiles from around the world, Line Up is a cozy and comforting book that reminds us of our similarities while illuminating some specific, distinctive behaviors.
Line and Light: Poems
by Jeffrey YangA multifaceted collection by Jeffrey Yang, whose poetry is “flexible, expansive, sonorously clever” (The Millions).In Jeffrey Yang’s vision for this brilliant new collection, the essence of poetry can be broken down into line and light. Dispersed across these poems are luminous centers, points of a constellation tracing lines of energy through art, myth, and history. These interconnections create vast and dynamic reverberations. As Yang asks in one poem, “What vitality binds a universe?” One long series explores through shadow and play the ancient Malay kingdom of Langkasuka, a legendary nexus of creativity, commerce, and spiritual life, threatened over time by violence, climate, and environmental degradation. The title poem is a study of time, night turning to dawn, revealing the lines and lights of an art installation on an island in the Hudson River, flowing into another poem about Grand Central Terminal’s atrium of stars, flowing upriver into a poem that describes a cemetery for a state prison. Another extended sequence is a collaboration investigating memory and loss, composed of Yang’s poems, Japanese translations by Hiroaki Sato, and drawings made with ink derived from tea leaves by the artist Kazumi Tanaka. The collection ends with moving elegies for poets, translators, and artists whose works have informed this one. Altogether, Line and Light illuminates the ways that ancestry holds and makes possible the act of making art.
Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song
by Matt BaileySheaAn introduction to poetry geared toward the study of song &“Fusing an approach that engages both lyrics and musical content of English-language songs in a wide swath of genres, Lines and Lyrics gives readers the tools and concepts to help them better interpret songs, in an accessible and enjoyable format.&”—Victoria Malawey, author of A Blaze of Light In Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice &“I can think of no other book that juxtaposes art song and pop song so effectively, in a way that doesn&’t privilege one over the other. This is a real achievement, and a must-have for anyone who loves words and songs.&”—Stephen Rodgers, University of Oregon Bruce Springsteen, Benjamin Britten, Kendrick Lamar, Sylvia Plath, Outkast, and Anne Sexton collide in this inventive study of poetry and song. Drawing on literary poetry, rock, rap, musical theater, and art songs from the Elizabethan period to the present, Matt BaileyShea reveals how every issue in poetry has an important corresponding status in song, but one that is always transformed. Beginning with a discussion of essential features such as diction, meter, and rhyme, the book progresses into the realms of lineation, syntax, form, and address, and culminates in an analysis of two complete songs. Throughout, BaileyShea places classical composers and poets in conversations with contemporary songwriters and musicians (T. S. Eliot and Johnny Cash, Aaron Copland and Pink Floyd) so that readers can make close connections across time, genres, and fields, but also recognize inherent differences. To aid the reader, the author has created a Spotify playlist of all the music discussed in this book and provides time cues throughout, enabling readers to listen to the music as they read.
Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present
by David C. Ward Frank H. Goodyear IIILines in Long Array demonstrates the enduring impact of the Civil War on American culture by presenting poems and photographs from both the past and present, including 12 wholly new poems by contemporary poets created especially for this volume.Includes previously unpublished poetry by Eavan Boland, Geoffrey Brock, Nikki Giovanni, Jorie Graham, John Koethe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Paul Muldoon, Steve Scafidi, Jr., Michael Schmidt, Dave Smith, Tracy K. Smith, and C. D. Wright. Also includes historic poems by Ethel Lynn Beers, Ambrose Bierce, George H. Boker, Emily Dickinson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Julia Ward Howe, Herman Melville, Francis Orray Ticknor, Henry Timrod, Walt Whitman, and John Greenleaf Whittier.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Lines of Defense: Poems
by Stephen Dunn"[Stephen Dunn] has taken his place among our major, indispensable poets."--Miami Herald In his seventeenth collection of poetry, Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn confronts the lines we fight against and the ones we draw for ourselves. Lines of Defense poignantly captures the absurdities of modern life, expectations derailed, the lived life juxtaposed to the imagined life, and the defenses we don to make do. The poems in Lines of Defense are wry and elegiac, precisely observed and wide-reaching. As with the best of Dunn's work, they take stock of the quotidian aspects of life, of the essential comedy of getting through the day: finding a lost cat; not being invited to a party; taking a granddaughter to a carnival. The lines of defense are the lines of the verse itself, as poetry forms a stronghold against mortality. This essential volume showcases a poet writing at the height of his powers. From "Before We Leave": Where are we going? It's not an issue of here or there. And if you ever feel you can't take another step, imagine how you might feel to arrive, if not wiser, a little more aware how to inhabit the middle ground between misery and joy.
Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words
by Margarita EngleIn a haunting yet hopeful novel in verse, award-winning author Margarita Engle tells the story of Antonio Chuffat, a young man of African, Chinese, and Cuban descent who became a champion of civil rights.Asia, Africa, Europe--Antonio Chuffat's ancestors clashed and blended on the beautiful island of Cuba. Yet for most Cubans in the nineteenth century, life is anything but beautiful. The country is fighting for freedom from Spain. Enslaved Africans and nearly-enslaved Chinese indentured servants are forced to work long, backbreaking hours in the fields. So Antonio feels lucky to have found a good job as a messenger, where his richly blended cultural background is an asset. Through his work he meets Wing, a young Chinese fruit seller who barely escaped the anti-Asian riots in San Francisco, and his sister Fan, a talented singer. With injustice all around them, the three friends are determined that violence will not be the only way to gain liberty.
Lion of the Sky
by Ritu HemnaniAn evocative historical novel in verse about a boy and his family who are forced to flee their home and become refugees after the British Partition of India. Perfect for fans of Other Words for Home. Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence.But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.Forced to flee and become refugees, Raj’s family is left to start over in a new country. After suffering devastating losses, Raj must summon the courage to survive the brutal upheaval of both his country and his heart.Inspired by the author’s true family history, Lion of the Sky is a deeply moving coming-of-age tale about identity, belonging, and the power of hope.