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The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, H.D. and The Imagists
by Helen CarrThe Verse Revolutionaries tells the story of the Imagists, a turbulent and colourful group of poets, who came together in London in the years before the First World War. As T. S. Eliot was to say, appropriately re-invoking the Imagist habit of turning anything they admired into French, the imagist movement was modern poetry's point de repère, the landmark venture that inaugurated Anglo-American literary modernism. A disparate, stormy group, who had dispersed before the twenties began, these 'verse revolutionaries' received both abuse and acclaim, but their poetry, fragmented, pared-down, elliptical yet direct, exerted a powerful influence on modernist writers, and contributed vitally to the transformation of American and British cultural life in those crucial years.Among those involved were the Americans Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell and John Gould Fletcher, and the British T.E. Hulme, F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington and D.H. Lawrence. On the edges of the story are figures such as W.B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis and T. S. Eliot. They came from very different class backgrounds, a heterogeneous mélange then only possible in a great metropolis like London. The Verse Revolutionaries traces the passionate interactions, love affairs and bitter quarrels of these aspiring poets from 1905 to 1917. Helen Carr unpicks the story of how they came together, what they gained from each other in the heady excitement of those early days, and what were the fissures that eventually broke up the movement and their friendships in the dark days of the Great War. Her compelling account challenges the conventional view of Imagism, and offers an acute analysis of the poetry, of the psychology of the individuals involved, and of the evolution and emergence of a transformative cultural movement.
War Bird (Phoenix Poets)
by David GewanterFrom Three at 4:43 And here comes my friend, limping on his heavy boot, the heel come off. A cobbler's shop appears, and I buy the black nails, the dwarf's hammer, glue and strapping. I work hard on it, bending there until he speaks and walks on. But as he is dead, his voice and step make no sound. In his third book of poems, David Gewanter takes on wartime America, showing our personal costs and inextricable complicities. The constructs of our social lives, the conventions of our political values, the ambitions of our private fantasies—all these collide comically and tragically. Here, the far right marries the far left, and the sacred is undone by the profane. Gewanter's ironic vision pulls together details from science, history, philosophy, the disappearing dailies, and the emotional life of an engaged and singular mind into poems on the move with tense rhythms, rich correspondences, and daring hairpin turns. War Bird gives the lie to the shining moral complacencies of the homefront. Unsettling yet radiant, this collection is a book for troubled times, for what Whitman called, in “1861,” our “hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.”
War Bird (Phoenix Poets)
by David GewanterFrom Three at 4:43 And here comes my friend, limping on his heavy boot, the heel come off. A cobbler's shop appears, and I buy the black nails, the dwarf's hammer, glue and strapping. I work hard on it, bending there until he speaks and walks on. But as he is dead, his voice and step make no sound. In his third book of poems, David Gewanter takes on wartime America, showing our personal costs and inextricable complicities. The constructs of our social lives, the conventions of our political values, the ambitions of our private fantasies—all these collide comically and tragically. Here, the far right marries the far left, and the sacred is undone by the profane. Gewanter's ironic vision pulls together details from science, history, philosophy, the disappearing dailies, and the emotional life of an engaged and singular mind into poems on the move with tense rhythms, rich correspondences, and daring hairpin turns. War Bird gives the lie to the shining moral complacencies of the homefront. Unsettling yet radiant, this collection is a book for troubled times, for what Whitman called, in “1861,” our “hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.”
Watch (Phoenix Poets)
by Greg MillerStrasbourg The yellow and green rose, and the pink rock, The chestnuts blooming, the cobblestone square, Our Lady’s tower rising everywhere, Dark timbered fronts; the mechanical clock Whose rooster crows three times for Peter’s flock, The Apostles, the old man’s and the child’s share Of time—aspire I’d say to make me stare And stop. I praise what I might otherwise mock, The locked contingencies, the stock of losses, Bright liquidity everywhere channeled, A storied cityscape of destinies Averted as when, turning, a young Turk tosses His hands in the air and my chest’s pummeled, “My brother, forgive me!” and my thoughts freeze. In Watch, Greg Miller describes a fresh purposefulness in his life and achieves a new level of poetic thinking and composition in his writing. Artfully combining the religious and secular worldviews in his own sense of human culture, Miller complicates our understanding of all three. The poems in Watch sift layers of natural and human history across several continents, observing paintings, archeological digs, cityscapes, seascapes, landscapes—all in an attempt to envision a clear, grounded spiritual life. Employing an impressive array of traditional meters and various kinds of free verse, Miller’s poems celebrate communities both invented and real. Praise for Iron Wheel “Miller demonstrates that what Eliot said about reading a poem may be equally true of writing them: the best thing ‘is to be very, very intelligent’ and intelligence is not the same as erudition. Whether the world is made, found, or named, Miller offers an engaging portrait of things as they are.’’—David Orr, Poetry
Watch (Phoenix Poets)
by Greg MillerStrasbourg The yellow and green rose, and the pink rock, The chestnuts blooming, the cobblestone square, Our Lady’s tower rising everywhere, Dark timbered fronts; the mechanical clock Whose rooster crows three times for Peter’s flock, The Apostles, the old man’s and the child’s share Of time—aspire I’d say to make me stare And stop. I praise what I might otherwise mock, The locked contingencies, the stock of losses, Bright liquidity everywhere channeled, A storied cityscape of destinies Averted as when, turning, a young Turk tosses His hands in the air and my chest’s pummeled, “My brother, forgive me!” and my thoughts freeze. In Watch, Greg Miller describes a fresh purposefulness in his life and achieves a new level of poetic thinking and composition in his writing. Artfully combining the religious and secular worldviews in his own sense of human culture, Miller complicates our understanding of all three. The poems in Watch sift layers of natural and human history across several continents, observing paintings, archeological digs, cityscapes, seascapes, landscapes—all in an attempt to envision a clear, grounded spiritual life. Employing an impressive array of traditional meters and various kinds of free verse, Miller’s poems celebrate communities both invented and real. Praise for Iron Wheel “Miller demonstrates that what Eliot said about reading a poem may be equally true of writing them: the best thing ‘is to be very, very intelligent’ and intelligence is not the same as erudition. Whether the world is made, found, or named, Miller offers an engaging portrait of things as they are.’’—David Orr, Poetry
Weeds and Wild Flowers
by Alice OswaldWeeds and Wild Flowers is a magical meeting of the poems of Alice Oswald and the etchings of Jessica Greenman. Within its pages everyday flora take on an extraordinary life, jostling tragically at times, at times comically, for a foothold in a busying world. Stunningly visualised and skilfully animated, this imaginative collaboration beckons us toward a landscape of botanical characters, and invites us to see ourselves among them.
West End Final
by Hugo WilliamsHugo Williams's new collection summons the poet's past selves in order of appearance, as in an autobiography, showing in poems as clear as rock pools that the plain truth is only as plain as the props and make-up needed to stage it. Childhood and school time offer up the amateur theatricals of themselves, in poems of vertiginous retrospect; other poems itemize the professional selves of the poet's actor-father Hugh Williams (by now as familiar and frequently depicted as Cezanne's mountain), while the narrator - 'waiting to step into my father's shoes as myself' - teases out the paradoxes of identity and inheritance After this searching portraiture of the poet's parents, the chronology opens onto the broad secular thoroughfares of adulthood, including a limpid arrangement of pillow poems which tell the same erotic bedtime story in twelve different ways. Other poems strike out decisively along roads not taken: meticulous misremembering, sinister and fecklessly unfinished narratives about the parallel lives of desire, re-enacting lost futures and accommodating the irrepressible past as it keeps bouncing back onstage. In these fastidious and sardonic investigations of the fault-line between voice and projection, we admire once more the droll fearlessness, the art of candour as practised by Hugo Williams in this, his tenth collection of poems.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Kids' Favorite Funny Summer Vacation Poems (Giggle Poetry)
by Bruce Lansky Stephen CarpenterSummer days are here again!Here are over forty sidesplitting poems about summer vacation, covering everything from the much-anticipated last day of school to family road trips, wacky days at summer camp, learning how to swim, dizzying roller coaster rides, fun-filled days at the beach, and finally, the dreaded first day of the new school year.Summer days are here again!Here are over forty sidesplitting poems about summer vacation, covering everything from the much-anticipated last day of school to family road trips, wacky days at summer camp, learning how to swim, dizzying roller coaster rides, fun-filled days at the beach, and finally, the dreaded first day of the new school year. These hilarious poems written by Bruce Lansky, Kenn Nesbitt, Robert Pottle, Eric Ode, and Neal Levin, and the rest of the all-star gang of Giggle Poets are sure to make you count the days until summer vacation begins!Beach Book Festival Award (Honorable Mention Finalist: Children's Books), USA Book News (Best Books Award Finalist), Moonbeam Children's Book Awards (Children's Poetry Gold Award).
When Art Touches Life
by Asif AliWhen art touches life we are left with questions and very few concrete answers. Why do we live? Why do we die? Why do we invent? Why is the world as it is? What would our lives be like in an ideal world? For years, poets, artists and great thinkers have pontificated on these questions and others, and this rich, vivid collection of poetry offers fresh considerations of the myriad possible answers.
When the World Is Ready for Bed
by Gillian ShieldsA family of rabbits go through their end-of-day routine, from having their tea to brushing their teeth, sharing a story and being tucked up in bed, until they peek out of the window and see something that's a change from their usual routine in this classic picture book.With delectable art and warm, lyrical text, this is a thoroughly modern picture book with strong echoes of books such as The Velveteen Rabbit and the works of Beatrix Potter.
The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal
by Hugo Von Hofmannsthal J. D. McClatchyHugo von Hofmannsthal is one of the modern era's most important writers, but his fame as Richard Strauss's pioneering collaborator on such operas as Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten has obscured his other remarkable writings: his precocious lyric poetry, inventive short fiction, keen essays, and visionary plays. The Whole Difference, which includes new translations as well as classic ones long out of print, is a fresh introduction to the enormous range of this extraordinary artist, and the most comprehensive collection of Hofmannsthal's writings in English. Selected and edited by the poet and librettist J. D. McClatchy, this collection includes early lyric poems; short prose works, including "The Tale of Night Six Hundred and Seventy-Two," "A Tale of the Cavalry," and the famous "Letter of Lord Chandos"; two full-length plays, The Difficult Man and The Tower; as well as the first act of The Cavalier of the Rose. From the glittering salons of imperial Vienna to the bloodied ruins of Europe after the Great War, the landscape of Hofmannsthal's world stretches across the extremes of experience. This collection reflects those extremes, including both the sparkling social comedy of "the difficult man" Hans Karl, so sensitive that he cannot choose between the two women he loves, and the haunting fictional letter to Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he can no longer write. Complete with an introduction by McClatchy, this collection reveals an artist whose unusual subtlety and depth will enthrall readers.
Wilfred Owen - Selected Poems and Letters
by Wilfred Owen Helen CrossOne of a series designed to provide a new, accessible approach to the works of great poets and playwrights. Each text includes general notes on the text; discussion of themes, issues and context; and suggestions for further reading.
Women Writers in Renaissance England: An Annotated Anthology
by Randall MartinOf all the new developments in literary theory, feminism has proved to be the most widely influential, leading to an expansion of the traditional English canon in all periods of study. This book aims to make the work of Renaissance women writers in English better known to general and academic readers so as to strengthen the case for their future inclusion in the Renaissance literary canon. This lively book surveys women writers in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries. Its selection is vast, historically representative, and original, taking examples from twenty different, relatively unknown authors in all genres of writing, including poetry, fiction, religious works, letters and journals, translation, and books on childcare. It establishes new contexts for the debate about women as writers within the period and suggests potential intertextual connections with works by well-known male authors of the same time. Individual authors and works are given concise introductions, with both modern and historical critical analysis, setting them in a theoretical and historicised context. All texts are made readily accessible through modern spelling and punctuation, on-the-page annotation and headnotes. The substantial, up-to-date bibliography provides a source for further study and research.
Women Writers in Renaissance England: An Annotated Anthology
by Randall MartinOf all the new developments in literary theory, feminism has proved to be the most widely influential, leading to an expansion of the traditional English canon in all periods of study. This book aims to make the work of Renaissance women writers in English better known to general and academic readers so as to strengthen the case for their future inclusion in the Renaissance literary canon. This lively book surveys women writers in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries. Its selection is vast, historically representative, and original, taking examples from twenty different, relatively unknown authors in all genres of writing, including poetry, fiction, religious works, letters and journals, translation, and books on childcare. It establishes new contexts for the debate about women as writers within the period and suggests potential intertextual connections with works by well-known male authors of the same time. Individual authors and works are given concise introductions, with both modern and historical critical analysis, setting them in a theoretical and historicised context. All texts are made readily accessible through modern spelling and punctuation, on-the-page annotation and headnotes. The substantial, up-to-date bibliography provides a source for further study and research.
The Works of Mary Robinson, Part I Vol 1
by William D Brewer Daniel Robinson Sharon M Setzer Orianne SmithRegularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.
The Works of Mary Robinson, Part I Vol 1
by William D Brewer Daniel Robinson Sharon M Setzer Orianne SmithRegularly the subject of cartoonists and satirical novelists, Mary Robinson achieved public notoriety as the mistress of the young Prince of Wales (George IV). Her association with figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and comparisons with Charlotte Smith, make her a serious figure for scholarly research.
Writing Plural Worlds in Contemporary U.S. Poetry: Innovative Identities
by J. KellerThis book reveals how poets within the U.S. multi-ethnic avant-garde give up the goal of narrating one comprehensive, rooted view of cultural reality in favour of constructing coherent accounts of relational, local selves and worlds.
The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse: Reissue (Oxford Books of Prose & Verse)
No previous anthology has succeeded in illustrating so thoroughly the kinds of verse actually written in the eighteenth century. The familiar tradition is fully represented by selections from such poets as Pope, Swift, Tomson, Gray, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, and Blake. In addition, the anthology includes verse by many forgotten writers, both men and women, from all levels of society. Although they have never figured in conventional literary history, they wrote humorous, idiosyncratic, and graphic verse about their personal experience and the world around them, in a way that should challenge received ideas about the period's restraints and inhibitions.
Life At Grasmere
by Dorothy WordsworthThe beautiful and peaceful heart of the Lake District, Grasmere was an inspiration to both Dorothy and William Wordsworth. Hills, lakes and orchards, letter writing, walks and welcome visitors (including fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) provoked in Dorothy's journal great, lyrical prose, which in turn influenced her brother's unsurpassed poetry. The two - journal entries and poems - are here set side by side, a glorious celebration of life and nature around Dove Cottage, over the first year they called it home.Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).
Revolution on Canvas, Volume 2: Poetry from the Indie Music Scene
by Rich BallingIndie rock music burst onto the scene in the early '80s with bands like Sonic Youth. A decade later, the music of Pavement, Guided By Voices, and Radiohead brought tons of new converts. Today, indie rock has exploded across all media, from popular TV shows such as The O.C. to numerous commercials and sold-out stadium tours. The poetry and stories in REVOLUTION ON CANVAS, VOLUME 2 range from the hysterically funny to the achingly sad and are written by the biggest names in indie rock today. The Deftones, Fall Out Boy, Armor for Sleep, Motion City Soundtrack, Atreyu, and A Static Lullaby are just some of the bands included in the second installment of this extraordinary and fascinating series.
Afro-Caribbean Poetry and Ritual
by P. GriffithFocusing on orally transmitted cultural forms in the Caribbean, this book reaffirms the importance of myth and symbol in folk consciousness as a mode of imaginative conceptualization. Paul A. Griffith cross-references Kamau Brathwaite and Derek Walcott s postcolonial debates with issues at seminal sites where Caribbean imaginary insurgencies took root. This book demonstrates the ways residually oral forms distilled history, society, and culture to cleverly resist aggressions authored through colonialist presumptions. In an analysis of the archetypal patterns in the oral tradition - both literary and nonliterary, this impressive book gives insight into the way in which people think about the world and represent themselves in it.
Andrew Marvell
by Sean O'BrienIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature.Andrew Marvell was born in Yorkshire in 1624 and was educated in Hull and Cambridge. He became the unofficial laureate to Cromwell and in 1657 he took over from Milton as the Latin Secretary to the Council of State. Famed as a satirist during his lifetime Marvell was a virtually unknown lyric poet until rediscovered in the nineteenth century. However, it was only after the First World War that his poetry gained popularity thanks to the efforts of T. S. Eliot and Sir Herbert Grierson. Marvell died in 1678.
Angina Days: Selected Poems
by Günter Eich Michael HofmannThis is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of Günter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages. As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent." Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
Angina Days: Selected Poems (PDF)
by Günter Eich Michael HofmannThis is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of Günter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages. As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent." Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination
by Mark PayneHow can literary imagination help us engage with the lives of other animals? The question represents one of the liveliest areas of inquiry in the humanities, and Mark Payne seeks to answer it by exploring the relationship between human beings and other animals in writings from antiquity to the present. Ranging from ancient Greek poets to modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Payne considers how writers have used verse to communicate the experience of animal suffering, created analogies between human and animal societies, and imagined the kind of knowledge that would be possible if human beings could see themselves as animals see them. The Animal Part also makes substantial contributions to the emerging discourse of the posthumanities. Payne offers detailed accounts of the tenuousness of the idea of the human in ancient literature and philosophy and then goes on to argue that close reading must remain a central practice of literary study if posthumanism is to articulate its own prehistory. For it is only through fine-grained literary interpretation that we can recover the poetic thinking about animals that has always existed alongside philosophical constructions of the human. In sum, The Animal Part marks a breakthrough in animal studies and offers a significant contribution to comparative poetics.