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The Nature of Things
by Stallings LucretiusLucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them.
The Nature of the Page: Poetry, Papermaking, and the Ecology of Texts in Renaissance England (Material Texts)
by Joshua CalhounIn The Nature of the Page, Joshua Calhoun tells the story of handmade paper in Renaissance England and beyond. For most of the history of printing, paper was made primarily from recycled rags, so this is a story about using old clothes to tell new stories, about plants used to make clothes, and about plants that frustrated papermakers' best attempts to replace scarce natural resources with abundant ones. Because plants, like humans, are susceptible to the ravages of time, it is also a story of corruption and the hope that we can preserve the things we love from decay.Combining environmental and bibliographical research with deft literary analysis, Calhoun reveals how much we have left to discover in familiar texts. He describes the transformation of plant material into a sheet of paper, details how ecological availability or scarcity influenced literary output in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and examines the impact of the various colors and qualities of paper on early modern reading practices. Through a discussion of sizing—the mixture used to coat the surface of paper so that ink would not blot into its fibers—he reveals a surprising textual interaction between animals and readers. He shows how we might read an indistinct stain on the page of an early modern book to better understand the mixed media surfaces on which readers, writers, and printers recorded and revised history. Lastly, Calhoun considers how early modern writers imagined paper decay and how modern scholars grapple with biodeterioration today.Exploring the poetic interplay between human ideas and the plant, animal, and mineral forms through which they are mediated, The Nature of the Page prompts readers to reconsider the role of the natural world in everything from old books to new smartphones.
The Navy's Night Before Christmas: Read & Listen Edition
by Christine Ford Trish HollandThis story, written for military families, is about a visit from &“the Santa of Sailors&” to those who can&’t be home for Christmas. &’Twas the night before Christmas, when way out to sea Not a creature was stirring to windward or lee. The sailors were nestled all snug in their racks Like orders of pancakes, so tight were the stacks. One Christmas Eve out at sea, some homesick sailors are paid a visit by Master Chief Claus, the Santa of Sailors. This lively and poignant tale was inspired by Clement C. Moore&’s classic yuletide poem.This Read & Listen edition contains audio narration.
The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults
by Joyelle McsweeneyIn The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, poet Joyelle McSweeney presents an ecopoetics and a theory of Art that reflect such biological principles as degradation, proliferation, contamination, and decay. In these ambitious, bustling essays, McSweeney resituates poetry as a medium amid media; hosts "strange meetings" of authors, texts, and artworks across the boundaries of genre, period, and nation; and examines such epiphenomena as translation, anachronism, and violence. Through readings of artists as diverse as Wilfred Owen, Andy Warhol, Harryette Mullen, Roberto Bolaño, Aimé Césaire, and Georges Bataille, The Necropastoral shows by what strategies Art persists amid lethal conditions as a spectacular, uncanny force.
The Need To Hold Still: Poems
by Lisel MuellerWinner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 1981.
The Needle
by Jennifer GrotzFollowing her debut collection, Cusp, chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa to win the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize, the composed, observed quality of Jennifer Grotz's The Needle will remind readers of the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Ellen Bryant Voigt. Whether she is describing a town square in Kraków, where many of these poems are set, the ponies of Ocracoke Island, a boy playing a violin, or clouds, she finds the lyrical details that release an atmosphere of heightened, transcendent attention in which the things of the world become the World, what Zbigniew Herbert called "royal silence."
The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth
by Fanny HoweA meditation on time, violence, and chance by "one of America's most dazzling poets" (O, The Oprah Magazine)Fanny Howe's The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth is a sequence of essays, short tales, and lyrics that are intertwined by an inner visual logic. The book contains filmic images that subvert the usual narrative chronology; it is focused on the theme of youth, doomed or saved. A fourteenth-century folktale of two boys who set out to find happiness, the story of Francis and Clare with their revolutionary visions, the Tsarnaev brothers of Boston, the poet George Oppen and the philosopher Simone Weil, two strangers who loved but remain strange, and the wild-child Brigid of Ireland: all these emerge "from multiple directions, but always finally from the eye at the end." As the philosopher Richard Kearney writes, "Howe's ruminations and aesthetics are those of the fragmentary, but are unified by world thinkers like Arendt, Weil, Agamben, and Yeats." The Needle's Eye is a brilliant and deeply felt exploration of faith and terror, coincidence and perception, by a literary artist of profound moral intelligence, "recognized as one of the country's least compromising yet most readable experimentalist writers" (The Boston Globe).
The Neglected Shelley (The Nineteenth Century Series)
by Timothy Webb Alan M. WeinbergNew editions and facsimiles of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works are changing the landscape of Shelley studies by making complete compositions and fragments that have received only limited critical attention readily available to scholars. Building on the work begun in Weinberg and Webb's 2009 volume, The Unfamiliar Shelley, The Neglected Shelley sheds light on the breadth and depth of Shelley's oeuvre, including the poet's earliest work, written when he was not yet twenty and was experimenting with gothic romances, and other striking forms of literary expression, such as two collections of provocative verse. There are discussions of Shelley's collaboration with Mary Shelley in the composition of Frankenstein, and his skill as a translator of Greek poetry and drama, reflecting his urgent concern with Greek culture. His contributions to prose are the focus of essays on his letters, the subversive notes to Queen Mab, and his complex engagement with Jewish culture. Shelley's considerable corpus of fragments is well-represented in contributions on the later narrative fiction, 'Athanase'/'Prince Athanase', and the significant group of unfinished poems, including 'Mazenghi', 'Fiordispina', 'Ginevra' and 'The Boat on the Serchio', that treat Italian topics. Finally, there are explorations of subtle though neglected or underestimated works such as Rosalind and Helen, The Sensitive-Plant, and the verse-drama Hellas. The Neglected Shelley shows that even the poet's apparently slighter works are important in their own right and are richly instructive as expressions of Shelley's developing art of composition and the diverse interests he pursued throughout his career.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston HughesHughes has long been acknowledged as the voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and this poem is considered the movement's song. Artist Lewis acts as interpreter and visionary, using watercolor to pay tribute to Hughes's timeless anthem, a poem that every child deserves to know.
The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Sylvie KandéSylvie Kandé's neo-epic in three cantos is a double narrative combining today's tales of African migration to Europe on the one hand, with the legend of Abubakar II on the other: Abubakar, emperor of 14th-Century Mali, sailed West toward the new world, never to return. Kandé's language deftly weaves a dialogue between these two narratives and between the epic traditions of the globe. Dazzling in its scope, the poem swings between epic stylization, griot storytelling, and colloquial banter, capturing an astonishing range of human experience. Kandé makes of the migrant a new hero, a future hero whose destiny has not yet taken shape, whose stories are still waiting to be told in their fullness and grandeur: the neverending quest has only just begun. Country folk who made themselves belated marinerstheir bodies cadence themto cleave with the oar's tainted tipthe purple mounds of the great salt savannahwhich no furrow markswhere no seed takes root (But to say the seaearthly words are little suited)At the point of the dreamthey were a myriadno less and no moreto cross the coral barrier in laughter with its vermilion flowers:there remain but three barks adriftfull so full to the point of capsizing
The New American Poetry and Cold War Nationalism (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics)
by Stephan DelbosThis book examines Donald M. Allen’s crucially influential poetry anthology The New American Poetry, 1945–1960 from the perspectives of American Cold War nationalism and literary transnationalism, considering how the anthology expresses and challenges Cold War norms, claiming post-war Anglophone poetic innovation for the United States and reflecting the conservative American society of the 1950s. Examining the crossroads of politics, social life, and literature during the Cold War, this book puts Allen’s anthology into its historical context and reveals how the editor was influenced by the volatile climate of nationalism and politics that pervaded every aspect of American life during the Cold War. Reconsidering the dramatic influence that Allen’s anthology has had on the way we think about and anthologize American poetry, and recontextualizing The New American Poetry as a document of the Cold War, this study not only helps us come to a more accurate understanding of how the anthology came into being, but also encourages new ways of thinking about all of Anglophone poetry, from the twentieth century and today.
The New American Poetry, 1945-1960
by Donald AllenWith more than 100,000 copies sold, The New American Poetry has become one of the most influential anthologies published in the United States since World War II. As one of the first counter-cultural collections of American verse, this volume fits in Robert Lowell's famous definition of the raw in American poetry. Many of the contributors once derided in the mainstream press of the period are now part of the postmodern canon: Olson, Duncan, Creeley, Guest, Ashbery, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Levertov, O'Hara, Snyder, Schuyler, and others. Donald Allen's The New American Poetry delivered the first taste of these remarkable poets, and the book has since become an invaluable historical and cultural record, now available again for a new generation of readers.
The New Anthology of American Poetry, Volume Two: Modernisms: 1900-1950
by Thomas Travisano Steven Axelrod Camille RomanBringing together fifty years of exciting modernisms, The New Anthology of American Poetry, Volume 2 includes over 600 poems by sixty-five American poets writing in the period between 1900 and 1950. The most recognized poets of the era, such as William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, H. D., Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes are represented, along with many other Harlem Renaissance poets, women poets, immigrant and working-class poets, imagists, and objectivists. It is also the first modernist anthology to include poems and songs from popular culture.
The New Arcadia: Poems
by John KinsellaOne of Australia's best poets conjures the Australian countryside in this brilliant epic, inspired by Philip Sidney's classic pastoral "Arcadia." "Astonishingly fecund and inventive. The New Arcadia revitalizes pastoral traditions, but more in the mode of lamentation than celebration. Like Frost's New Hampshire and Vermont, Kinsella's Western Australia is eroded, a last act salted with the ruins of our age, and yet yielding permanent poems."--Harold Bloom
The New Book: Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Things
by Nikki GiovanniNikki Giovanni’s extraordinary final collection—a landmark of American literature which speaks to the fury and upheaval of our time, as well as the triumphs and delights of her remarkable creative life.For decades, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has been at the forefront of American culture. The New Book is a towering work of protest against the divisions of our time, leavened with moments of joy and reflection about her indelible legacy, her family history, and the small pleasures of her richly lived life.In The New Book, Nikki Giovanni slashes at the ridiculousness of our cultural and political climate: “We have no secrets/since the world shrunk/and the icebergs melted/and all the year books/are digitized./… and we press Like/or No Like/as if it mattered.”She remembers 2020 and its cataclysmic reckoning with police brutality and white supremacy: “I do understand that republicans/Are cowards and so are those nazis/Cheering/And those kkk we now call police killing/Not to mention father and sons chasing unarmed Black men/and running their cars into crowds/Pretending they are brave or something/They are not only cowards/And nazis but evil fools/And who go to bed white/Wake up American/And hate themselves for having/To share this earth/They will not overcome/And we will not love them.”But also in the same poem: “But what does 2020 mean to me/A chance to learn to open oysters/Talk to my friends/Catch up on my reading/Tell myself I am going to dust the house/Lie about it/...Enjoy my own company not to mention football/And remember there will be tomorrow/Because there will be/And evil will go and good will come/I am Black/We have seen much worse.”With this collection, which includes brief letters and short prose from her life as well as poetry, Giovanni reaffirms her place as a giant of literature, a canny truth-teller, an indispensable radical orator, and one of America’s preeminent cultural critics. It is a book to be savored, and shared."If there was a need for poetry that galvanized and inspired, there was also a demand for poetry that comforted and unified — and Ms. Giovanni provided on both counts." — The Washington Post
The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature (Routledge Revivals)
by Laura Brown Felicity NussbaumFirst published in 1987, The New Eighteenth Century (now with a new preface by Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown) examines eighteenth century English literature’s resistance to the application of new theoretical approaches and presents new work by leading scholars which both challenges this resistance and demonstrates the usefulness of feminist, Marxist, new-historicist, and psychoanalytic approaches to the analysis of eighteenth-century texts.This book reinterprets and resituates canonical works (by such writers as Fielding, Goldsmith, and Sterne) but also explores areas and figures increasingly important to eighteenth-century study. It opens questions about the canon and about the nature of "canonicity" itself as it considers texts by women, working-class literature, guidebooks for bourgeois tourists, and aspects of the cultural and social terrain including problems of race and colonialism, capitalism, and penal institutions.The New Eighteenth Century not only provides new ways of looking at the literature of the period but serves as a model for future work in eighteenth-century studies.
The New Italian Poetry, 1945 to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology
by Lawrence R. SmithPostwar Italian poetry carries on the legacy of one of the world's richest literary traditions, a tradition in which conflict and diversity are important parts. It is a poetry that reflects, with extraordinary intensity, the social, psychological, and moral turmoil of the modern world. Substantial selections fromt ehw orks of twenty-one of Italy's most influential contemporary poets make up this anthology, which will make this largely unknown poetic territory more familiar to the English-speaking world. The introductory essay discusses the unique Italian talent for fusing cultural and political struggle into literary form and Italian poetry's important impact on developments in European poetry throughout the twentieth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.
The New Milton Criticism
by Peter C. Herman Elizabeth SauerThe New Milton Criticism seeks to emphasize ambivalence and discontinuity in Milton's work and interrogate the assumptions and certainties in previous Milton scholarship. Contributors to the volume move Milton's open-ended poetics to the centre of Milton studies by showing how analysing irresolvable questions – religious, philosophical and literary critical – transforms interpretation and enriches appreciation of his work. The New Milton Criticism encourages scholars to embrace uncertainties in his writings rather than attempt to explain them away. Twelve critics from a range of countries, approaches and methodologies explore these questions in these new readings of Paradise Lost and other works. Sure to become a focus of debate and controversy in the field, this volume is a truly original contribution to early modern studies.
The New Negro: An Interpretation (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Alain LockeEdited by the first African American Rhodes Scholar, this landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, essays, drama, music, and illustration is widely regarded as the key text of the Harlem Renaissance. Exploring social, political, and artistic change, the works include Locke's titular tract, as well as contributions by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, and other luminaries.
The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (American Negro)
by Alain LockeA portrait of the vibrant world of 1920s Harlem, with writings by Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Walter White, and more. The Harlem Renaissance was a landmark period in African American history—a time when black poets, musicians, intellectuals, civil rights activists, and others changed the social and cultural landscape in enduring ways. Its influence went far beyond the confines of uptown New York City, as it incorporated voices from the Great Migration, in which African Americans moved north in vast numbers; and elevated artists and thinkers who would become iconic figures in not only Black history, but also American history. Now considered the definitive work of the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro features fiction, poetry, and essays that shaped the era. &“A book of unusual interest and value.&” —The New York Times &“[Locke was] the godfather of the Harlem Renaissance.&” —Publishers Weekly &“Alain Locke is a critical—and complex—figure in any discussion of African-American intellectual history.&” —Kirkus Reviews
The New Nudity
by Hadara Bar-NadavHadara Bar-Nadav’s radiant new collection of poetry The New Nudity shocks everyday objects to life. In these chiseled, electrically-charged poems, a ladder, wineglass, and spine ignite into being. With a nod to Francis Ponge, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Neruda, Bar-Nadav’s poems have a heartbeat all their own, small miracles that haunt and heave.
The New Oxford Book of Childrens Verse (Oxford Books of Verse)
by Neil PhilipThe world of children's poetry is as diverse and as miraculous as the human imagination itself, a land where owls and pussy-cats set to sea in beautiful pea-green boats, and tigers burn bright in the forests of the night. It embraces word play, parody, nonsense, lullaby, and elegy, and ranges from brief nursery rhymes to long narratives. It can be utterly silly, but it also recognizes that if children's lives are full of wonder and delight, they are also fraught with worries, disappointments, and moments of sadness. The best children's poets come to terms with grief as well as joy. Now, in The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse, Neil Philip has surveyed and mapped this delightfully protean landscape, in a book that spans some two hundred and fifty years, from Isaac Watts, the first true children's poet, to such classic figures as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and A. A. Milne, to scores of contemporary writers, such as Richard Wilbur, Sandra Cisneros, and Jack Prelutsky.
The New Testament
by Jericho BrownHonored as a "Best Book of 2014" by Library Journal <P>In his second collection, The New Testament, Brown treats disease and love and lust between men, with a gentle touch, returning again and again to the stories of the Bible, which confirm or dispute his vision of real life. <P>In the world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing--and the truth is coming on fast. <P>ericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. He currently teaches at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, And Loqueras For The End Of The Century
by Guillermo Gómez-PeñaHero of a thousand syncretic faces--intercultural intepreter, reverse anthropologist, experimental linguist, and political artist of the first order- Guillermo Gómez-Peña has won international acclaim for his efforts to create a hybrid culture and to articulate a borderless ethos.