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Poetry
In Visiting Frost, Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro capture the conversations between contemporary poets and a legend whose voice endures.
"I am incapable of succinctly praising this poet's immense talent." --TERRANCE HAYES
Often the most recognized, even brutal, events in American history are segregated by a politicized, racially divided "Color Line." But how do we privately experience the most troubling features of American civilization? Where is the Color Line in the mind, in the body, between bodies, between human beings?
Selected for the National Poetry Series by Dan Beachy-Quick, Ed Pavlic's Visiting Hours at the Color Line attempts to complicate this black and white, straight-line feature of our collective imagination, and to map its nonlinear, deeply colored timbres and hues. From daring prose poems to powerful free verse, Pavlic's lines are musically infused, bearing tones of soul, R & B, and jazz. They link the influence of James Baldwin with a postmodern consciousness descended from Samuel Beckett, tracking the experiences of American characters through situations both mundane and momentous. The resulting poems are intense, ambitious, and psychological, making Visiting Hours at the Color Line a poetic tour de force.
The poetry of Wallace Stevens has inspired generations of poets of every school. Here, for the first time, is assembled an astonishing variety of poems, by a full range of poets, inspired by Stevens's life and work. In its own way, each poem exhibits the torque and feel of his poetry, yet each also is deeply personal and conveys how meaningful Stevens was and remains for poets and poetry. Whether whimsical or serious, solemn or light, the poems in Dennis Barone and James Finnegan's Visiting Wallace are sure to inspire delight and thought. Alan Filreis's brilliant foreword asks us to consider whether there is another modern poet who means as much to contemporary verse as Stevens: "seventy-six poems giving us seventy-six distinct Stevenses to follow and succeed."
A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary.
The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their first meeting at a May Day party in her father's house, through Dante's sufferings and his attempts to conceal the true object of his devotion by the use of 'screen-loves', to his overwhelming grief ather death, ending with the transformative vision of her in heaven. These are some of the richest love poems in literature and the movement from self-pitying lament to praise for the beloved's beauty and virtue, illustrate the elevating power of love.
Poetry. African American Studies. THE VITAL SYSTEM is the first published book by a poet already setting off sparks among readers across the globe. In these poems, the body is always at stake--vulnerable--and the poet dares to try and illuminate what she has called the protective capability of violence. Burroughs's compression of phrasing, subverted syntax, and ability to release a story through cinematically sequenced images allow her to expose particular tensions that are gendered and racial as well as essentially human.
With gorgeous horror, Burroughs's debut thrusts the body forward as an intelligence, a syntax, a theater. The narrator of these poems seems to come apart before my eyes; yet she never disintegrates--she teems. Here is vivid grief, livid vulnerability and bristling sensuality. Here is terrible resilience and dangerous vitality.--Douglas Kearney
There is no doubt, CM Burroughs is one of those few beings who are hewn out of the living body of Poetry. But the poem speaks, says Celan. The poem, that is to say, this body which is at one with language, which breathes, swallows, revels in its house of words. How does one recognize a poem? By the fact that, when one reads it, one can feel this living thing caressing us inwardly, licking our hearts, weeping tears into our blood. A poem drips through to us. In an injection of luminous sentences. There is no doubt, each thought of CM Burroughs's is a poem. The reunion of the self with its primeval worlds. CM Burroughs delves into the ultra-sensitive roots of being; where sufferings and desires take shape, she gathers each breath as yet unheard and leads it to speech.--Hélène Cixous
With gorgeous horror, Burroughs's debut thrusts the body forward as an intelligence, a syntax, a theater. The narrator of these poems seems to come apart before my eyes; yet she never disintegrates--she teems. Here is vivid grief, livid vulnerability and bristling sensuality. Here is terrible resilience and dangerous vitality.--Douglas Kearney
There is no doubt, CM Burroughs is one of those few beings who are hewn out of the living body of Poetry. But the poem speaks, says Celan. The poem, that is to say, this body which is at one with language, which breathes, swallows, revels in its house of words. How does one recognize a poem? By the fact that, when one reads it, one can feel this living thing caressing us inwardly, licking our hearts, weeping tears into our blood. A poem drips through to us. In an injection of luminous sentences. There is no doubt, each thought of CM Burroughs's is a poem. The reunion of the self with its primeval worlds. CM Burroughs delves into the ultra-sensitive roots of being; where sufferings and desires take shape, she gathers each breath as yet unheard and leads it to speech.--Hélène Cixous
Winner of the Del Sol Press 2005 Poetry Prize, David Ray Vance's poetry collection combines science and art gloriously. Mary Jo Bang, the Prize Judge, has this to say about VITREOUS: "Part rewritten 1934 medical text, part Keatsian reflection, this is the logical offspring of the long-awaited meeting of science and art; a marriage of equals where each half maintains its primary allegiance: the poetic to the common lyrical language of emotion and memory, the medical to its narrowly appropriated lexicon of intraocular, cornea, and Placido's disc. Mr. Vance has woven these two competing word streams into a meditation on sight and risk. Think of it as an item in the cupboard of the scientifically sublime. Think of Ronald Johnson's ARK. VITREOUS is utterly fascinating in its reach, and exquisitely tender. And important, because it answers again today's recurrent question, Can form be further broken and still be a poem? The answer (of course) is yes." * "The Korean character for "citizen" is based upon the image of an eye pierced by an arrow. The citizen, thus, is one whose vision has been wounded by the state; how can we see clearly when we're in the midst, in the thick of things? David Ray Vance's startling and rewarding debut is a kind of exhibition--a virtual museum of poetic and found texts--concerned with the vulnerability of the eye, the I's aperture, the world's window, the self's permeable edge." --Mark Doty "VITREOUS dazzles in the way the first pictures of the earth must have dazzled. This amazing collection exists in the vast distance between the body and the body perceived. Each poem makes alien both the form and function of our most essential organs through its innate understanding that we will succumb as easily to pollutants as we do to that caressing hand on our cheek. David Ray Vance, in this stunning book, offers a clinical yet intimate look at our modes of perceiving our haunting and vulnerable physicality." --Claudia Rankine
First published in 1931, ViVa contains four of E. E. Cummings' most experimental poems as well as some of his most memorable. The volume includes such no-famous celebrations as i sing of Olaf glad and big and if there are any heavens my mother will (all be herself) have, along with such favorites as Space being (don't forget to remember) Curved, a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon, and somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond.
Though we know Vladimir Nabokov as a brilliant novelist, his first love was poetry. This landmark collection brings together the best of his verse, including many pieces that have never before appeared in English. These poems span the whole of Nabokov's career, from the newly discovered "Music," written in 1914, to the short, playful "To Véra," composed in 1974. Many are newly translated by Dmitri Nabokov, including The University Poem, a sparkling novel in verse modeled on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin that constitutes a significant new addition to Nabokov's oeuvre. Included too are such poems as "Lilith", an early work which broaches the taboo theme revisited nearly forty years later in Lolita, and "An Evening of Russian Poetry", a masterpiece in which Nabokov movingly mourns his lost language in the guise of a versified lecture on Russian delivered to college girls. The subjects range from the Russian Revolution to the American refrigerator, taking in on the way motel rooms, butterflies, ice-skating, love, desire, exile, loneliness, language, and poetry itself; and the poet whirls swiftly between the brilliantly painted facets of his genius, wearing masks that are, by turns, tender, demonic, sincere, self-parodying, shamanic, visionary, and ingeniously domestic.
Featuring rare archival recordings of the featured poet reading his own work, each program in this series is accompanied by a book containing the text of the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy. Unabridged. 1 CD.
Featuring rare archival recordings of the featured poet reading his own work, each program in this series is accompanied by a book containing the text of the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy.
Ginsberg reads from his own works in this rare archival recording. 1 CD.
A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliograohy, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of "The Yale Review,"
"To hear a poem spoken in the voice of the person who wrote it is not only to witness the rising of words off the page and into the air, but to experience an aural reenactment of exactly what the poet must have heard, if only internally, during the act of composition. THE VOICE OF THE POET recordings deliver these pleasures as they broadcast the pitch and timbre of many of the major voices in twentieth-century poetry."--Billy Collins, U.S, . Poet Lauerate.
"To hear a poem spoken in the voice of the person who wrote it is not only to witness the rising of words off the page and into the air, but to experience an aural reenactment of exactly what the poet must have heard, if only internally, during the act of composition. THE VOICE OF THE POET recordings deliver these pleasures as they broadcast the pitch and timbre of many of the major voices in twentieth-century poetry."--Billy Collins, U.S, . Poet Lauerate.
THE VOICE OF THE POET
A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of "The Yale Review."
"Hearing poetry spoken by the poet is always a unique illumination. This series opens our ears to some of the most passionate utterances and enthralling performances ever recorded."--Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winner, Poetry
"There has been a great need for a well-edited audio series for poetry, with high literary and technical quality. J. D. McClatchy has filled this need with great style."--Robert Pinsky
A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of "The Yale Review."
"Hearing poetry spoken by the poet is always a unique illumination. This series opens our ears to some of the most passionate utterances and enthralling performances ever recorded."--Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winner, Poetry
"There has been a great need for a well-edited audio series for poetry, with high literary and technical quality. J. D. McClatchy has filled this need with great style."--Robert Pinsky
Some of the most enduring poetry of the twentieth century, read by the legendary Auden himself. This collection features such favorites as "As I Walked Out One Evening," "Musee des Beaux Arts" and "The Shield of Achilles," among many others.
A companion book is included with these never-before-released recordings.
A companion book is included with these never-before-released recordings.
This National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a powerfully evocative (The New York Review of Books) meditation on the black female figure through time.
Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems meditating on the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. In the center of the collection is the title poem, Voyage of the Sable Venus, an amazing narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's own autobiographical poems, Voyage is a tender and shocking meditation on the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, juxtaposing our names for things with what we actually see and know. A new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin--five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role did art play in this ancient, often heinous story? Here we meet a poet who adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire--how they define us all, including her own sometimes painful history. Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race--a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A stunning poetry debut: this meditation on the black female figure throughout time introduces us to a brave and penetrating new voice. Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. The central panel is the title poem, "Voyage of the Sable Venus," a riveting narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's autobiographical poems, "Voyage" is a tender and shocking study of the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, as it juxtaposes our names for things with what we actually see and know. Offering a new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin--five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role has art played in this ancient, often heinous story? From the "Young Black Female Carrying / a Perfume Vase" to a "Little Brown Girl / Girl Standing in a Tree / First Day of Voluntary / School Integration," this poet adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire and how they define us all, including herself, as she explores her own sometimes painful history. Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race--a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.
Srikanth Reddy's second book of poetry probes this world's cosmological relation to the plurality of all possible worlds. Drawing its name from the spacecraft currently departing our solar system on an embassy to the beyond, Voyager unfolds as three books within a book and culminates in a chilling Dantean allegory of leadership and its failure in the cause of humanity. At the heart of this volume lies the historical figure of Kurt Waldheim--Secretary-General of the U.N. from 1972-81 and former intelligence officer in Hitler's Wehrmacht--who once served as a spokesman for humanity while remaining silent about his role in the collective atrocities of our era. Resurrecting this complex figure, Reddy's universal voyager explores the garden of forking paths hidden within every totalizing dream of identity.