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The Orchard
by Brigit Pegeen KellyRichly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly's The Orchard evoke elements of myth in distinctive aural and rhythmic patterns. Her poetic strength lies in her ability to cast poems as modern myths and allegories. Propelled by patterned repetitions and lush cadences, the poems move the reader through a landscape where waking and dream consciousness fuse.Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are Song (BOA Editions), the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.
The Orchard: Song And The Orchard (American Poets Continuum #82.00)
by Brigit Pegeen KellyRichly allusive, the poems in Brigit Pegeen Kelly&’s The Orchard evoke elements of myth in distinctive aural and rhythmic patterns. Her poetic strength lies in her ability to cast poems as modern myths and allegories. Propelled by patterned repetitions and lush cadences, the poems move the reader through a landscape where waking and dream consciousness fuse.Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are Song (BOA Editions), the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Award, and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize.
The Orchestra of Wind Chimes (Made in Michigan Writers Series)
by Geoffrey JacquesThis powerful collection of poems draws on American and African- American experimental lyric traditions, pushing language and form to their limits. Geoffrey Jacques’s poetry inspires deep thought, taking up themes of music, psychology, and literature. This work embodies the potential of poetry to forge new connections between aesthetic expression and the often onerous facts of human existence. Poems such as "Still Life" and "Detour Ahead" produce a juxtaposition of inspired poetic form and rich, complex realities of life, addressing topics of joy and love, race, class, politics, and the aesthetics of the everyday. With a contemporary and sophisticated tenor, Jacques lends his uniquely moving and provocative perspective to advancing discourse in these critical topics. For all of the social themes they address, these poems equally serve to investigate modes of producing poetry in general. "Ars Poetica," "The Problem of Speech Genres," "The Subject of the Poem," and many others directly challenge traditional notions of form through intentional and intricate reflexive commentary. Through these poems, Jacques has achieved a balance between form and function, allowing readers to embark on a rhythmic journey of expression, language, and human existence.
The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle
by Madeleine L'Engle"In a brilliant marriage of myth and manner, histories sacred and profane, prayers of petition and of praise, these poems both articulate and illumine the trouble in the gap in which we live--the gap between human affections and Divine Love. L'Engle is unfailing in her willingness to see through--not around--human suffering, and in so doing announces no final severing of spirit and flesh but an enduring vision of resurrection in that crux, in the cross, in the One in Whom all things meet, continuing." -Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim and Philokalia: New and Selected Poems. "I love L'Engle's poetry for the way it incarnates not only the great Truths of the faith, but all the little truths of our ordinary existence--our working and playing and loving and fighting and dreaming and idling and all the rest of it--and for the way it shows us that those big and little truths should not, cannot, be separated." -Carolyn Arends, recording artist and author. "Why is L'Engle one of the defining poets of our time? Because when life hurts, she does not shrink from the wounds. She clarifies the murk with hope as we feel the lift of grace." -Calvin Miller, Beeson Divinity School Birmingham, Alabama. "We are, all of us, the richer for this carefully crafted and prayerfully rendered collection." -Phyllis Tickle, Author, The Divine Hours. "Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared." -Madeleine L'Engle. Madeleine L'Engle's writing has always translated the invisible and intricate qualities of love into the patterns and rhythms of visible life. Now, with compelling language and open-hearted vulnerability, The Ordering of Love brings together the exhaustive collection of L'Engle's poetry for the first time. This volume collects nearly 200 of L'Engle's original poems, including eighteen that have never before been published. Reflecting on themes of love, loss, faith, and beauty, The Ordering of Love gives vivid and compelling insight into the language of the heart.
The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle
by Madeleine L'EnglePraise for The Ordering of LoveBy Madeleine L'Engle"In a brilliant marriage of myth and manner, histories sacred and profane, prayers of petition and of praise, these poems both articulate and illumine the trouble in the gap in which we live-the gap between human affections and Divine Love. L'Engle is unfailing in her willingness to see through-not around-human suffering, and in so doing announces no final severing of spirit and flesh but an enduring vision of resurrection in that crux, in the cross, in the One in Whom all things meet, continuing." -Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim and Philokalia: New and Selected Poems"I love L'Engle's poetry for the way it incarnates not only the great Truths of the faith, but all the little truths of our ordinary existence-our working and playing and loving and fighting and dreaming and idling and all the rest of it-and for the way it shows us that those big and little truths should not, cannot, be separated."-Carolyn Arends, recording artist and author"Why is L'Engle one of the defining poets of our time? Because when life hurts, she does not shrink from the wounds. She clarifies the murk with hope as we feel the lift of grace."-Calvin Miller, Beeson Divinity SchoolBirmingham, Alabama"We are, all of us, the richer for this carefully crafted and prayerfully rendered collection."-Phyllis Tickle, Author, The Divine Hours"Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared."-Madeleine L'EngleMadeleine L'Engle's writing has always translated the invisible and intricate qualities of love into the patterns and rhythms of visible life. Now, with compelling language and open-hearted vulnerability, The Ordering of Love brings together the exhaustive collection of L'Engle's poetry for the first time. This volume collects nearly 200 of L'Engle's original poems, including eighteen that have never before been published. Reflecting on themes of love, loss, faith, and beauty, The Ordering of Love gives vivid and compelling insight into the language of the heart.From the Hardcover edition.
The Orient and the Young Romantics
by Andrew WarrenThrough close readings of major poems, this book examines why the second-generation Romantic poets - Byron, Shelley, and Keats - stage so much of their poetry in Eastern or Orientalized settings. It argues that they do so not only to interrogate their own imaginations, but also as a way of criticizing Europe's growing imperialism. For them the Orient is a projection of Europe's own fears and desires. It is therefore a charged setting in which to explore and contest the limits of the age's aesthetics, politics and culture. Being nearly always self-conscious and ironic, the poets' treatment of the Orient becomes itself a twinned criticism of 'Romantic' egotism and the Orientalism practised by earlier generations. The book goes further to claim that poems like Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Byron's 'Eastern' Tales, or even Keats's Lamia anticipate key issues at stake in postcolonial studies more generally.
The Orient of Style: Modernist Allegories of Conversion
by Beryl SchlossmanIn this study of modernist aesthetics, Beryl Schlossman reveals how for such writers as Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Charles Baudelaire, the Orient came to symbolize the highest aspirations of literary representation. She demonstrates that through allegory, modernism became a style itself, a style that married the ancient and the modern and that emerged as both a cause and an effect, both an ideal construct and an textual materiality, all symbolized by the Orient--land of style, place of plurality, and site of the coexistence of holy lands. Toward the end of Remembrance of Things Past, the narrator describes the act of creating a work of art as a conversion of sensation into a spiritual equivalent. By means of such allegories of "conversion," Schlossman shows, the modernist artist disappeared within the work of art and left behind the trace of his sublime vocation, a vocation in which he was transformed, in Schlossman's words, "into a kind of priest kneeling at the altar of beauty before the masked divinity of representation. " The author shows how allegory--the representation of the symbolic as something real--was adapted by modernist writers to reflect subjectivity while masking an authorial origin. She reveals how modernist allegory arose, as Walter Benjamin suggests, at the crossroads of history, sociology, economics, urban architecture, and art--providing a kind of map of capitalism--and was produced through the eyes of a melancholic gazing at a "monument of absence. "
The Origin of Sin
by Prudentius Martha A. MalamudAurelius Prudentius Clemens (348–ca. 406) is one of the great Christian Latin writers of late antiquity. Born in northeastern Spain during an era of momentous change for both the Empire and the Christian religion, he was well educated, well connected, and a successful member of the late Roman elite, a man fully engaged with the politics and culture of his times. Prudentius wrote poetry that was deeply influenced by classical writers and in the process he revived the ethical, historical, and political functions of poetry. This aspect of his work was especially valued in the Middle Ages by Christian writers who found themselves similarly drawn to the Classical tradition. Prudentius's Hamartigenia, consisting of a 63-line preface followed by 1,290 lines of dactylic hexameter verse, considers the origin of sin in the universe and its consequences, culminating with a vision of judgment day: the damned are condemned to torture, worms, and flames, while the saved return to a heaven filled with delights, one of which is the pleasure of watching the torments of the damned. As Martha A. Malamud shows in the interpretive essay that accompanies her lapidary translation, the first new English translation in more than forty years, Hamartigenia is critical for understanding late antique ideas about sin, justice, gender, violence, and the afterlife. Its radical exploration of and experimentation with language have inspired generations of thinkers and poets since-most notably John Milton, whose Paradise Lost owes much of its conception of language and its strikingly visual imagery to Prudentius's poem.
The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land: Bilingual Edition (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Clayton Eshleman James Arnold Aime CesaireAime Cesaire's masterpiece, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. This long poem was the beginning of Cesaire's quest for negritude, and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. Commentary on Cesaire's work has often focused on its Cold War and anti-colonialist rhetoric material that Cesaire only added in 1956. The original 1939 version of the poem, given here in French, and in its first English translation, reveals a work that is both spiritual and cultural in structure, tone, and thrust. This Wesleyan edition includes the original illustrations by Wifredo Lam, and an introduction, notes, and chronology by A. James Arnold.
The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece
by Andrew FordBy "literary criticism" we usually mean a self-conscious act involving the technical and aesthetic appraisal, by individuals, of autonomous works of art. Aristotle and Plato come to mind. The word "social" does not. Yet, as this book shows, it should--if, that is, we wish to understand where literary criticism as we think of it today came from. Andrew Ford offers a new understanding of the development of criticism, demonstrating that its roots stretch back long before the sophists to public commentary on the performance of songs and poems in the preliterary era of ancient Greece. He pinpoints when and how, later in the Greek tradition than is usually assumed, poetry was studied as a discipline with its own principles and methods. The Origins of Criticism complements the usual, history-of-ideas approach to the topic precisely by treating criticism as a social as well as a theoretical activity. With unprecedented and penetrating detail, Ford considers varying scholarly interpretations of the key texts discussed. Examining Greek discussions of poetry from the late sixth century B.C. through the rise of poetics in the late fourth, he asks when we first can recognize anything like the modern notions of literature as imaginative writing and of literary criticism as a special knowledge of such writing. Serving as a monumental preface to Aristotle's Poetics, this book allows readers to discern the emergence, within the manifold activities that might be called criticism, of the historically specific discourse on poetry that has shaped subsequent Western approaches to literature.
The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History
by Elizabeth SewellA wondrously written book of literary criticism and philosophy that maps the relationship between poetry and natural history, connecting verse from poets such as Shakespeare and Rainer Maria Rilke to the work of scientists and theorists like Francis Bacon and Michael Polanyi.Taking its bearings from the Greek myth of Orpheus, whose singing had the power to move the rocks and trees and to quiet the animals, Elizabeth Sewell&’s The Orphic Voice transforms our understanding of the relationship between mind and nature. Myth, Sewell argues, is not mere fable but an ancient and vital form of reflection that unites poetry, philosophy, and natural science: Shakespeare with Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico; Wordsworth and Rilke with Michael Polanyi. All these members of the Orphic company share a common perception that &“discovery, in science and poetry, is a mythological situation in which the mind unites with a figure of its own devising as a means toward understanding the world.&” Sewell&’s visionary book, first published in 1960, presents brilliantly illuminating readings of A Midsummer Night&’s Dream and Rilke&’s Sonnets to Orpheus, among other masterpieces, while deepening our understanding not only of poetry and the history of ideas but of the biological reach of the mind.
The Other Love: Poems
by Henri ColeHenri Cole pins the complexities of aging and the mystery of the passage of time to the page.The Other Love is most of all a reflection on aging and the passing of time. It is here that the struggle between form and chaos is most poignantly palpable in Henri Cole's ravishing new book. The Other Love is also a way of seeing the world, an attitude more than an emotion, a love of things and people as they are, and of being open to the beauty and mysteries of the world, despite a constant awareness of violence, particularly an American violence. As the Nobel laureate Louise Glück wrote, “Here indeed is a triumphant achievement from a consummate artist.”
The Other Orpheus: A Poetics of Modern Homosexuality (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)
by Merrill ColeFirst published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Other Side of the Door
by Jeff MossA wise and whimsical collection of poems by Jeff Moss about a variety of subjects both real and imaginary.NOTE: This version does not include illustrations.
The Other Side of the Poet
by J. Félix H. F. Gilberto SantosWho has never allowed themselves to think good and bad, be beautiful and ugly, even if everything costs a price, this book comes to show that we have both sides, even when we don’t want to, the thoughts of the other side of the poet, an anthology of life, the life in the book.
The Other Side: Shorter Poems
by Angela JohnsonSeries of poems about the author's memories of Shorter, Alabama, a small Southern town that was torn down after the author had grown and moved away. But her memories of the town linger. The poems are poignant, vivid snapshots of a Southern, simple, rural, hard, and hard-loving way of life with topics from race relations to remembering Grandmama.
The Other-Conscious Ethics of Innovative Black Poetry (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics)
by Grant Matthew JenkinsThis monograph identifies and investigates the ‘other-conscious’ ethics in black avant-garde poetry since the 1980s. Drawing on a long tradition in the African Diaspora of ethical writings that put the Other first, this work shows how black poets writing in an avant garde or experimental vein in the United States push language to its limits to reveal how poetry can address and exemplify ethical postures towards other people. This other-centered vantage allows the poets to incisively comment on some of this period’s most pressing ethical issues, including postcolonial and racialized violence, the history of slavery and segregation in America, and the expansion of human consciousness. The writers involved in this study include Nathaniel Mackey, Erica Hunt, Will Alexander, Harryette Mullen, and Mark McMorris.
The Overhaul: Poems
by Kathleen JamieWinner of the 2012 Costa Poetry Award, the latest collection by Kathleen Jamie, "the leading Scottish poet of her generation" (The Sunday Times)See when it all unravels—the entire projectreduced to threads of moss fleeing a nor'wester;d'you ever imagine chasing just one strand, letting it lead youto an unsung cleft in a rock, a place you could take to,dig yourself in—but what are the chances of that? Of the birds,few remain all winter; half a dozen wadersmediate between sea and shore, that space confirmed—don't laugh—by your own work. —from "Materials"The Overhaul continues Kathleen Jamie's lyric inquiry into the aspects of the world our rushing lives elide, and even threaten. Whether she is addressing birds or rivers, or the need to accept loss, or, sometimes, the desire to escape our own lives, her poetry is earthy and rigorous, her language at once elemental and tender. The Overhaul is a midlife book of repair, restitution, and ultimately hope—of the wisest and most worldly kind.
The Ovidian Vogue
by Daniel D. MossThe Roman poet Ovid was one of the most-imitated classical writers of the Elizabethan age and a touchstone for generations of English writers. In The Ovidian Vogue, Daniel Moss argues that poets appropriated Ovid not just to connect with the ancient past but also to communicate and compete within late Elizabethan literary culture.Moss explains how in the 1590s rising stars like Thomas Nashe and William Shakespeare adopted Ovidian language to introduce themselves to patrons and rivals, while established figures like Edmund Spenser and Michael Drayton alluded to Ovid's works as a way to map their own poetic development. Even poets such as George Chapman, John Donne, and Ben Jonson, whose early work pointedly abandoned Ovid as cliché, could not escape his influence. Moss's research exposes the literary impulses at work in the flourishing of poetry that grappled with Ovid's cultural authority.
The Owl and the Nightingale: A New Verse Translation (The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation #134)
by Simon ArmitageFrom the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a complete verse translation of a spirited and humorous medieval English poemThe Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest literary works in Middle English, is a lively, anonymous comic poem about two birds who embark on a war of words in a wood, with a nearby poet reporting their argument in rhyming couplets, line by line and blow by blow. In this engaging and energetic verse translation, Simon Armitage captures the verve and humor of this dramatic tale with all the cut and thrust of the original.In an agile iambic tetrameter that skillfully amplifies the prosody and rhythm of the original, Armitage’s translation moves entertainingly from the eloquent and philosophical to the ribald and ridiculous. Sounding at times like antagonists in a Twitter feud, the owl and the nightingale quarrel about a host of subjects that still resonate today—including love, marriage, identity, cultural background, class distinctions, and the right to be heard. Adding to the playful, raucous mood of the barb-trading birds is Armitage, who at one point inserts himself into the poem as a “magistrate . . . to adjudicate”—one who is “skilled with words & worldly wise / & frowns on every form of vice.”Featuring the Middle English text on facing pages and an introduction by Armitage, this volume will delight readers of all ages.
The Owl and the Nightingale: The Poems and Its Critics
by Kathryn HumeThe Owl and the Nightingale is clearly one of the few major Middle English poems. Despite the clarity and simplicity of its text, however, the poem has occasioned bitter and still unresolved interpretative controversy. Is the key to its meaning to be found in bird lore? the debate form? Is the poem a political or religious allegory? Despite the radical contradictions in the conclusions of previous critics, most of them have implicitly claimed a unique and exclusive validity. Kathryn Hume's purpose in writing this book is to offer a new account of the poem, one based on a systematic attempt to assess the validity and usefulness of various possible approaches to the work. She shows saneness, balance, and humour both in her criticism of previous interpretations and in her own conclusions. We need, she insists, to understand the nature of the poem before we erect elaborate theories about its meaning. The contradictoriness of the relevant avian traditions, the birds' complete incompetence as debaters, the poem's curiously indeterminate ending, and the critics' inability to agree even on the subject of the controversy, she argues, makes it difficult to see the work as a serious debate about anything. Attempts to find an extrinsic or allegorical meaning have proven radically contradictory and have all neglected large portions of the poem. But since no serious issue is present in the bird's dialogue, the meaning of the poem must indeed be sought elsewhere. Analysis of The Owl and the Nightingale's sequential impact and its manipulation of audience response emphasize the debate's lack of direction, its bitterness, and also – from the reader's point of view – its humour. Kathryn Hume argues that a great deal is clarified and made comprehensible if we regard the poem as a burlesque-satire on human contentiousness. The birds' illogic, the wandering arguments, the unsystematic introduction of various human concerns, and the inconclusive ending are all consistent with the idea that the poem was written as a witty caricature of petty but vicious human quarrelling. Both for its sane reinterpretation of what is widely considered one of the masterpieces of Middle English literature and for the interpretative methodology it employs, The Owl and the Nightingle: The Poem and Its Critics should be of lasting value to medievalists.
The Owl and the Pussycat
by Edward LearRealistic portrayals of sea creatures abound, and honeybees with exactingly delineated wings swoop above a fanciful beehive. Waves swell and swirl around the pea-green boat, the owl holds his guitar with large outstretched feathers and looks appropriately lovelorn.
The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001 (American Poets Continuum)
by Louis SimpsonFew poets have so artfully confronted American life as Louis Simpson. Persona speakers struggle with everyday issues against a backdrop of larger forces, the individual&’s maladjustment to a culture of materialism and brutal competition, the failure of marriage under the pressures of such a society, the failure of the American dream. Simpson wages a lover&’s quarrel with the world."Louis Simpson has perfect pitch. His poems win us first by their drama, their ways of voicing our ways . . . of making do with our lives. Then his intelligence cajoles us to the brink of a cliff of solitude and we step over into the buoyant element of true poetry."—Seamus HeaneyEducated at Munro College (West Indies) and at Columbia University, Louis Simpson has taught widely, most recently at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seventeen books of poetry and ten works of prose. He has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poetry, the Hudson Review, the Guggenheim Foundation, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry
by Arnold Rampersad Hilary HerboldFor over two centuries, black poets have created verse that reflects the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their variety of visions and styles, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry aims to offer nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people.
The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America
by Donald HallIn the tradition of Iona and Peter Opie's Oxford Book of Children's Verse comes this anthology by the award-winning poet and children's book author Donald Hall. Bringing together "poems written for children and also poems written for anybody which children have enjoyed," the book includes anonymous works, ballads, and recitation pieces, beginning with the Calvinist verses of the seventeenth century. Hall has collected poems from Sunday School magazines, Christmas annuals for children, and children's periodicals such as St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion. Many marvelous writers, some no longer remembered, wrote almost every month for these nineteenth and twentieth century publications. In addition to the expected names of Longfellow and Whittier, we find Sarah Josepha Hale ("Mary Had a Little Lamb"), Mary Mapes Dodge (creator of Hans Brinker), and Palmer Cox (with his marvelous Brownies). Twentieth century authors abound: Ogden Nash, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Theodore Roethke, to name just a few. The book concludes with the fabulous nonsense of present-day writers like Shel Silverstein and Nancy Willard.