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Poets on the Psalms
by Lynn DominaReverential, celebratory, antagonistic, and even erotic, this remarkable collection of essays interprets the Psalms as a collection of poetry. Written by 14 acclaimed poets, the essays approach the Psalms from a personal, often autobiographical perspective, demonstrating how relevant they remain for today's readers. Alicia Ostriker examines the Psalms' glory and their terror in a moving essay that revels in their moods of joy while acknowledging the brutality they invoke, linking their violence to events such as 9/11, the Palestinian uprisings, and the Rwandan massacres. Weaving autobiographical anecdotes with scholarly introspection, Enid Dame provides a Jewish explanation of Psalm 22, while editor Lynn Domina contemplates the pastoral life as she connects the everyday with phrases from the Psalms. From a former nun to a self-described left-wing Jew, from a Midrashic scholar to a Texas rancher, the contributors mirror the wide swath of humanity interested in, and affected by, the Psalms.
Poets on the Road
by Maureen Owen Barbara HenningCalling to mind Basho¯&’s late life journeys through the backcountry of Japan, two women poets in a well-worn Honda hit the road for a legendary pilgrimage in a far-flung (pre-pandemic) landscape of American poetry.Although a road trip across North American calls to mind Jack Kerouac&’s youthful meanderings of self-discovery, this reading tour was more in the manner of Basho¯&’s late life journeys through the backcountry of Japan. . . . The road trip was in a sense a pilgrimage of reengagement with their calling as poets, and a chance to reacquaint with like-minded friends, old and new, in a far-flung landscape of American poetry. Venues would include upscale bookstores, coffee houses, museums, legendary used bookstores, botanical gardens, university classrooms, art centers, and artist coops—in short, a unique sampling of poetry environments tracing an arc across the Southern States, the Southwest, and up the West Coast before hooking back to the Rockies. Framed as a personal challenge, the poets hit the road much in the manner of itinerant preachers and musicians, lodging at discount motels, funky hostels, Airbnbs, and with friends along the way. Adding a social media touch, Maureen and Barbara created a blog of their tour so that friends, family, hosts, and fellow poets might also share in their adventure. —from the Introduction by Pat Nolan
Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France
by Cynthia J. BrownCynthia J. Brown explains why the advent of print in the late medieval period brought about changes in relationships among poets, patrons, and printers which led to a new conception of authorship.Examining such paratextual elements of manuscripts as title pages, colophons, and illustrations as well as such literary strategies as experimentation with narrative voice, Brown traces authors' attempts to underscore their narrative presence in their works and to displace patrons from their role as sponsors and protectors of the book. Her accounts of the struggles of poets, including Jean Lemaire, Jean Bouchet, Jean Molinet, and Pierre Gringore, over the design, printing, and sale of their books demonstrate how authors secured the status of literary proprietor during the transition from the culture of script and courtly patronage to that of print capitalism.
A Poet's Revolution
by Donna HollenbergThis first full-length biography of Anglo- American poet and activist Denise Levertov (1923-1997) brings to life one of the major voices of the second half of the twentieth century, when American poetry was a powerful influence worldwide. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and interviews with 75 friends of Levertov, as well as on Levertov's entire opus, Donna Krolik Hollenberg's authoritative biography captures the full complexity of Levertov as both woman and artist, and the dynamic world she inhabited. She charts Levertov's early life in England as the daughter of a Russian Hasidic father and a Welsh mother, her experience as a nurse in London during WWII, her marriage to an American after the war, and her move to New York City where she became a major figure in the American poetry scene. The author chronicles Levertov's role as a passionate social activist in volatile times and her importance as a teacher of writing. Finally, Hollenberg shows how the spiritual dimension of Levertov's poetry deepened toward the end of her life, so that her final volumes link lyric perception with political and religious commitment.
Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats
by Helen VendlerPoetry has often been considered an irrational genre, more expressive than logical, more meditative than given to coherent argument. And yet, in each of the four very different poets she considers here, Helen Vendler reveals a style of thinking in operation; although they may prefer different means, she argues, all poets of any value are thinkers. The four poets taken up in this volume--Alexander Pope, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats--come from three centuries and three nations, and their styles of thinking are characteristically idiosyncratic. Vendler shows us Pope performing as a satiric miniaturizer, remaking in verse the form of the essay, Whitman writing as a poet of repetitive insistence for whom thinking must be followed by rethinking, Dickinson experimenting with plot to characterize life's unfolding, and Yeats thinking in images, using montage in lieu of argument. With customary lucidity and spirit, Vendler traces through these poets' lines to find evidence of thought in lyric, the silent stylistic measures representing changes of mind, the condensed power of poetic thinking. Her work argues against the reduction of poetry to its (frequently well-worn) themes and demonstrates, instead, that there is always in admirable poetry a strenuous process of thinking, evident in an evolving style--however ancient the theme--that is powerful and original.
The Point Alma Venus Manuscripts
by Robinson JeffersThe years 1921 to 1927 were the most productive of Robinson Jeffers's career. During this period, he wrote not only many of his most well-known lyric poems but also Tamar, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, Roan Stallion, and The Women at Point Sur—the long poems that first established his reputation as a major American poet. Including an introduction, chronology, and critical afterword, the Point Alma Venus manuscripts presented here gather Jeffers's four unfinished but substantial preliminary attempts at what became The Women at Point Sur, which Jeffers believed was the "most inclusive, and poetically the most intense" of his narrative poems. The Point Alma Venus fragments and versions shed important light on the composition and themes of The Women at Point Sur. Further, they likely predate other key work from this crucial period, making them a necessary context for those who wish to clarify Jeffers's poetic development and to reinterpret his practice of narrative poetry. Ultimately, they call on general and scholarly readers alike to reconsider Jeffers's place in the canon of modern American poetry.
Point No Point: Poems
by Jane MunroPoint No Point’s title comes from a landform — an actual point on the west coast of Vancouver Island, which seems, when approached from the other side, to be no point at all — and it alerts us to the fact that Jane Munro’s poems are situated in a deep sense. They live in situ in the way they inhabit their native place, intimate with its mists, its mosses and lichens, with the salmonberry and false lily-of-the-valley of their ecosystem. They are also situated temporally, evoking sharply etched memories, visions, and dreams: a real-time visit to her father’s boatyard, a dream visit with her mother from a time before the poet was conceived, a flashback to the sixties rendered in extreme close-up. By their musical attunement and the acuity of the focus, they demonstrate how such deep situation may come about, how we might bring language to the task of living in a way which is fully present. In the long culminating poem, “Moving to a Colder Climate,” Munro brings all these elements into play, summoning her father’s bold obstreperous ghost to be present as a new house is built — situated — in this language. Her gifts as a poet — acuity, candour, musicality — make Point No Point a work of unforgettable witness.
Points for a Compass Rose
by Evan Connell"We have here on the planet with us a man of such courage and strength of spirit that he has not lost what Alfred Adler calls 'the nerve for excellence.' He has kept it despite the burden of an awareness not only of the enormity of his project and of the limitations of his own human understanding, but also of the abject ignorance and indifference of his audience..."Somehow Connell makes you care. Many modern poets demand a good deal of work; Connell excites it. Sometimes the note-taker's [narrator] tone is hectoring, even belligerent; if you have any competitive spirit at all, you seize a thread-any thread-follow it, and lo, it traces a pattern... you understand at last that these notes are not tentative explorations, and far less are they 'expression:' they are instead the magnificent artifices of a giant intellect..."These poems are masterpieces. You could bend a lifetime of energy to their study, and have lived well. The fabric of their meaning is seamless, inexhaustible... their language is steely and bladelike; from both of its surfaces flickering lights gleam. Each page sheds insight on every other page; understanding snaps back and forth, tacking like a sloop up the long fjord of mystery."-Annie Dillard, Harper
A Poison Tree and Other Poems
by Mercer MayerMercer has brought together twenty poems which give voice to the many moods of childhood. Some of the poems printed on these forty-six pages include: "A Small Discovery," "Spider Web," "Those Winter Sundays," "My Papa's Waltz," and "Thumbprint." No poem is too long, and the book is generously illustrated. A nice collection.
A Poison Tree and Other Poems
by Mercer MayerTwenty poems for children about such emotions as fear, hate, love, delight, and guilt by a variety of English and American poets.
Poisoned Apples
by Christine HeppermannEvery little girl goes through her princess phase, whether she wants to be Snow White or Cinderella, Belle or Ariel. But then we grow up. And life is not a fairy tale.Christine Heppermann's collection of fifty poems puts the ideals of fairy tales right beside the life of the modern teenage girl. With piercing truths reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins, this is a powerful and provocative book for every young woman. E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars, calls it "a bloody poetic attack on the beauty myth that's caustic, funny, and heartbreaking."Cruelties come not just from wicked stepmothers, but also from ourselves. There are expectations, pressures, judgment, and criticism. Self-doubt and self-confidence. But there are also friends, and sisters, and a whole hell of a lot of power there for the taking. In fifty poems, Christine Heppermann confronts society head on. Using fairy tale characters and tropes, Poisoned Apples explores how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, and their friends. The poems range from contemporary retellings to first-person accounts set within the original tales, and from deadly funny to deadly serious. Complemented throughout with black-and-white photographs from up-and-coming artists, this is a stunning and sophisticated book to be treasured, shared, and paged through again and again.
A Poke in the I
by Paul B. JaneczkoEven kids who don't know they like poetry will love this playful, visually accessible collection of thirty concrete poems. Concrete poems startle and delight the eye and mind.
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? (My First Reader)
by Bill Martin<p>What will you hear when you read this book to a preschool child? <p>Lots of noise! <p>Children will chant the rhythmic words. They'll make the sounds the animals make. And they'll pretend to be the zoo animals featured in the book-- look at the last page! <p>Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle are two of the most respected names in children's education and children's illustrations. This collaboration, their first since the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (published more than thirty years ago and still a best-seller) shows two masters at their best.</p>
Polishing the Glass Storm: A Sequence
by Katherine SoniatWith Polishing the Glass Storm, Katherine Soniat constructs a riveting sequence of verse that explores how archetype can expand both personal vision and narrative perspective as we hone our experiences into an understanding of shared commonality. In poems that weave a linguistic web between the metaphysical and material realms, Soniat reminds us of the many ways in which language can reinforce otherwise frail connections between vision and experience.
The Political Poetess: Victorian Femininity, Race, and the Legacy of Separate Spheres
by Tricia LootensThe Political Poetess challenges familiar accounts of the figure of the nineteenth-century Poetess, offering new readings of Poetess performance and criticism. In performing the Poetry of Woman, the mythic Poetess has long staked her claims as a creature of “separate spheres”—one exempt from emerging readings of nineteenth-century women’s political poetics. Turning such assumptions on their heads, Tricia Lootens models a nineteenth-century domestic or private sphere whose imaginary, apolitical heart is also the heart of nation and empire, and, as revisionist histories increasingly attest, is traumatized and haunted by histories of slavery. Setting aside late Victorian attempts to forget the unfulfilled, sentimental promises of early antislavery victories, The Political Poetess restores Poetess performances like Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” to view—and with them, the vitality of the Black Poetess within African-American public life. Crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline to “connect the dots” of Poetess performance, Lootens demonstrates how new histories and ways of reading position poetic texts by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dinah Mulock Craik, George Eliot, and Frances E. W. Harper as convergence points for larger engagements ranging from Germaine de Staël to G.W.F. Hegel, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, Alice Walker, and beyond.
Politics and Public Space in Contemporary Argentine Poetry
by Ben BolligThis book addresses the connection between political themes and literary form in the most recent Argentine poetry. Ben Bollig uses the concepts of "lyric" and "state" as twin coordinates for both an assessment of how Argentinian poets have conceived a political role for their work and how poems come to speak to us about politics. Drawing on concepts from contemporary literary theory, this striking study combines textual analysis with historical research to shed light on the ways in which new modes of circulation help to shape poetry today.
The Politics of Knives
by Jonathan BallIf David Lynch crashed into Franz Kafka in a dark alley, the result might look like The Politics of Knives. Moving from shattered surrealism to disembowelled films, these poems land us in a limbo between the intellectual and the visceral, between speaking and screaming. Finding the language of violence and the violence in language, Jonathan Ball becomes the Stephen King of verse.
The Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry: Local Tongues in Heaney, Brooks, Harrison, and Clifton (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics)
by William FogartyThe Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry: Local Tongues in Heaney, Brooks, Harrison, and Clifton argues that local speech became a central facet of English-language poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It is based on a key observation about four major poets from both sides of the Atlantic: Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton all respond to societal crises by arranging, reproducing, and reconceiving their particular versions of local speech in poetic form. The book’s overarching claim is that “local tongues” in poetry have the capacity to bridge aesthetic and sociopolitical realms because nonstandard local speech declares its distinction from the status quo and binds people who have been subordinated by hierarchical social conditions, while harnessing those versions of speech into poetic structures can actively counter the very hierarchies that would degrade those languages. The diverse local tongues of these four poets marshaled into the forms of poetry situate them at once in literary tradition, in local contexts, and in prevailing social constructs.
Pólvora en las alas
by Federico Moreno Fernández«Tanto invento del corazón, tanto descubrimiento en su herrumbre...»Federico Moreno Con Pólvora en las alas, Federico Moreno mantiene una honda mirada hacia el ser humano y a su quebradiza naturaleza, a sus equívocos, a las cloacas a las que conducen sus barros. Las biografías sin homenaje de la gente oculta, la fugacidad del amor y la orfandad ante el abismo que nos presenta la vida son las tres partes que estructuran este intenso libro, construyendo un personaly estilizado espacio lingüístico donde se alojan, con algo de luz, familiares desencuentros.
Polyvocal Bob Dylan: Music, Performance, Literature (Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature)
by Nduka Otiono Josh TothPolyvocal Bob Dylan brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholarly voices to explore the cultural and aesthetic impact of Dylan’s musical and literary production. Significantly distinct in approach, each chapter draws attention to the function and implications of certain aspects of Dylan's work—his tendency to confuse, question, and subvert literary, musical, and performative traditions. Polyvocal Bob Dylan places Dylan’s textual and performative art within and against a larger context of cultural and literary studies. In doing so, it invites readers to reassess how Dylan’s Nobel Prize–winning work fits into and challenges traditional conceptions of literature.
The Pomegranates of Kandahar
by Sarah MaguireSarah Maguire's rich and lyrical poems have been highly praised for the ease with which they ground precise, sensual detail within the wider context of world events. In this remarkable new collection, her poems travel greater distances than ever before. The title poem laments the devastation visited upon Afghanistan following decades of war. Other poems consider the casualties of political unrest: would-be migrants in Tangiers gazing northwards at the longed-for phantasmagoria of 'Europe'; and packs of wolves on the loose in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. But there are intimate poems too, often using scientific vocabularies to offset a personal moment, as in 'Landscape, with Dead Sea' where the erosion of the poet's skin is connected to geological transformations at the earth's core.
Pomes All Sizes
by Jack KerouacThe original manuscript of this book, written between 1954 and 1965, has been in the safekeeping of City Lights all the years since Kerouac's death in 1969. Reaching beyond the scope of his Mexico City Blues, here are poems about Mexico and Tangier, Berkeley and the Bowery. Mid-fifties road poems, hymns and songs of God, drug poems, wine poems, dharma poems and Buddhist meditations. Poems to Beat friends, goofball poems, quirky haiku, and a fine, long elegy in "Canuckian Child Patoi Probably Medieval... an English blues." But more than a quarter of a century after it was written, "Pomes All Sizes" today would seem to be more than a sum of it parts, revealing a questing Kerouac grown beyond the popular image of himself as a Beat on the Road.
A Pond Full of Ink
by Annie M. G. SchmidtTwelve amusing poems by the &“queen of Dutch children&’s literature,&” paired with charming illustrations of reindeer houseguests, mischievous little girls, ever-singing tea kettles, and more.This delightful poetry collection offers children and the young at heart a refreshing, inventive look at the world from the well-known Dutch author Annie Schmidt. The rollicking poems tell the stories of such intriguing characters as Aunt Sue and Uncle Steve who nest up in a tree, animated furniture that comes to life when no one is home, and three elderly otters who long to go boating but find themselves biking instead!Much like the work of Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky, Annie M.G. Schmidt&’s poetry can transform ordinary events and places into extraordinary adventures full of imagination. Accompanying the poems is bold and expressive artwork that makes this book too charming to resist.
Poo or False?: A completely crappy quiz book, perfect for secret santa!
by HeadlineFirst there was HOW TO POO AT WORK, then there was 52 Things to Do While You Poo, and now there's POO OR FALSE? A cavalcade of crappy curiosities and fascinating faecal facts... in quiz form!Think you know your sh*t...? Which of these are 'true poos' and which are simply fake poos?King George III had an illness that turned his poo purpleIn 1938 a man called Boon Wallace was arrested for hurling turds off the Empire State BuildingNeil Armstrong dumped four bags of poo on the moonSloths only poo once a week, something scientists call 'the poo dance'The phrase 'do bears shit in the woods?' was invented by Charles DarwinThere is a road in the Northumberland town of Berwick-upon-Tweed called Poobum Lane Want to know the answers? Well stop stooling for time! Read on and prepare for some close encounters of the turd kind...'I'd give it five minutes if I were you.'- Florence Nightingale
Pope (Longman Critical Readers)
by Brean S. HammondThis collection of essays represents some of the best critical thinking on Pope in recent years. Professor Hammond examines the main issues in the debate, in particular why Pope's writing has been so resistant to modern methodologies, such as deconstruction.The essays focus on particular poems or themes and exemplify different theoretical perspectives, both traditional and modern. The editor's notes clarify the differences that exist, and what those differences can teach the student about theory in practice.