- Table View
- List View
The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860--1930
by Meredith MartinWhy do we often teach English poetic meter by the Greek terms iamb and trochee? How is our understanding of English meter influenced by the history of England's sense of itself in the nineteenth century? Not an old-fashioned approach to poetry, but a dynamic, contested, and inherently nontraditional field, "English meter" concerned issues of personal and national identity, class, education, patriotism, militarism, and the development of English literature as a discipline. The Rise and Fall of Meter tells the unknown story of English meter from the late eighteenth century until just after World War I. Uncovering a vast and unexplored archive in the history of poetics, Meredith Martin shows that the history of prosody is tied to the ways Victorian England argued about its national identity. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Coventry Patmore, and Robert Bridges used meter to negotiate their relationship to England and the English language; George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold, and Henry Newbolt worried about the rise of one metrical model among multiple competitors. The pressure to conform to a stable model, however, produced reactionary misunderstandings of English meter and the culture it stood for. This unstable relationship to poetic form influenced the prose and poems of Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Alice Meynell. A significant intervention in literary history, this book argues that our contemporary understanding of the rise of modernist poetic form was crucially bound to narratives of English national culture.
The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and the Medical Humanities (Studies in World Literature #5)
by Johanna EmeneyIn this fascinating book, Johanna Emeney examines the global proliferation of new poetry related to illness and medical treatment from the perspective of doctors, patients, and carers in light of the growing popularity of the medical humanities. She provides a close analysis of poetry from New Zealand, the U.S., and the U.K. that deals with sociological and philosophical aspects of sickness, ailment, medical treatment, care, and recuperation.
The River Twice: Poems (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets #146)
by Kathleen GraberAn impressive new collection from a poet whose previous book was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle AwardTaking its title from Heraclitus's most famous fragment, The River Twice is an elegiac meditation on impermanence and change. The world presented in these poems is a fluid one in which so much—including space and time, the subterranean realm of dreams, and language itself—seems protean, as the speaker's previously familiar understanding of the self and the larger systems around it gives way. Kathleen Graber’s poems wander widely, from the epistolary to the essayistic, shuffling the remarkable and unremarkable flotsam of contemporary life. One thought, one memory, one bit of news flows into the next. Yet, in a century devoted to exponentially increasing speed, The River Twice unfolds at the slow pace of a river bend. While the warm light of ideas and things flashes upon the surface, that which endures remains elusive—something glimpsed only for an instant before it is gone.
The River at Wolf
by Jean Valentine"Jean Valentine has written a visionary book. If it is built with the brick and wood of this world, the light that pours through its windows is searing, healing."--Marie Howe
The River in Me: Verses of Transformation
by Sister Dang NghiemFind refuge and wisdom with a student of Thich Nhat Hanh in the pages of this poignant poetry collection that speaks to the heart of overcoming life&’s adversities, Zen styleThis profound poetry collection, written by a disciple of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, charts a journey from turmoil to tranquility. In this deeply personal work, Sister Dang Nghiem, known for her insightful and compassionate teachings, unveils a journey of transformation and healing that bridges two pivotal phases of her life: the years prior to her monastic ordination and the profound insights gained thereafter. This unique compilation, divided into two distinct parts, illustrates Sister Dang Nghiem's evolution not just as a poet but as a spiritual practitioner. The first half, spanning 1989-1999, offers a glimpse into her pre-monastic life, filled with yearnings for reconciliation and liberation yet entangled in suffering and attachments. The latter half, encompassing her writings from 2000 to 2023, reflects a stark transformation, imbued with the wisdom and tranquility of her Zen practice. Not just a display of poetic prowess, but also a testament to Sister Dang Nghiem's resilience and spiritual growth, these poems resonate with honesty and vulnerability, providing readers with a candid testament to the life-altering power of healing through mindfulness and deep community. The River in Me offers a path toward inner peace and wholeness for those navigating the complexities of life and is an essential read for anyone seeking solace and understanding.Includes 17 black and white photographs prior to and after monastic ordination.
The River in the Sky: A Poem
by Clive JamesIn this deracinated age appears a miraculous epic that pays homage to Dante and Camus. “Few people read Poetry any more, but I still wish to write its seedlings down, if only for the lull of gathering: no less a harvest season for being the last time,” writes Clive James in his epic poem, The River in the Sky. What emerges from this lamentation is a soaring epic of exceptional depth and overwhelming feeling, all the more extraordinary given its appearance in an age when the heroic poem seems to have disappeared from contemporary literature. Among James’s many talents is his uncanny ability to juxtapose references to early twentieth-century poets with “offbeat humor and flyaway cultural observations” (Dwight Garner, New York Times), or allusions to the adagio of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony contrasted with references to “YouTube’s vast cosmopolis.” Whether recalling his Australian childhood or his father’s “clean white headstone” in a Hong Kong cemetery, James’s autobiographical epic ultimately helps us define the meaning of life.
The River of Heaven: The Haiku of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki
by Robert AitkenKnown to many as the study of quiet stillness and introspection, Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself through brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. In River of Heaven these concepts and pillars lend themselves to an exploration of Haiku, one of the most delicate and interpretive poetic forms in the world. The haiku verse form, with its rigid structure and organic description is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought because its seventeen syllables impose a limitation that confines the poet to vital experience. In Haiku as in Buddhism, the silences are as expressive as the words.In this volume, American Senior Zen Roshi Robert Aitken gives new insight into Haiku by poetic masters Basho, Issa, Buson, and Shiki. In presenting themes from Haiku and from Zen literature, Aitken illuminates the relationship between the two. Readers are certain to find this an invaluable and enjoyable experience for the remarkable revelation it offers.
The Rivered Earth: From the author of A SUITABLE BOY
by Vikram SethThe Rivered Earth contains four libretti written by Vikram Seth to be set to music by Alec Roth - together with an account of the pleasures and pains of working with a composer.Entitled 'Songs in Time of War', 'Shared Ground', 'The Traveller' and 'Seven Elements', they take us all over the world - from Chinese and Indian poetry to the beauty and quietness of the Salisbury house where the poet George Herbert lived and died.Spanning centuries of creativity and humanity, these poems pulse with life, energy and inspired brilliance.They are accompanied by four pieces of calligraphy by the author.
The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out: Poems
by Karen SolieA profound new collection from one of poetry's rising stars"Introducing Karen Solie, I would adapt what Joseph Brodsky said some thirty years ago of the great Les Murray: ‘ . . . He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives.' . . . And, yes, as we embark on the third millennium of our so-called Common Era, she is indeed the one by whom the language lives." —Michael Hofmann, London Review of BooksA sublime singer of existential bewilderment, Karen Solie is one of contemporary poetry's most direct and haunting voices. A poet of the in-between places—the purgatory of wayside motels and junkyards, the abandoned Calgary ski jump and the eternal noon of Walmart—her poems stake out startlingly new territory and are songs for our emerging world, an age of uncertainty and melting icebergs. In Solie's new collection, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, she restlessly excavates our civilization, the moments of tough luck, casual violence, naked desire, and inchoate menace, pursuing "Beauty and terror / in equal measure" and fixing on the "Intrigue of a boarded-up building. / We want to get in there and find out what's the matter with it." Amplifying the elegant recklessness of her Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection Pigeon, these poems bear an uncanny poetic intelligence and unflinching vision.
The Road Not Taken
by David OrrA cultural "biography" of Robert Frost's beloved poem, arguably the most popular piece of literature written by an American"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . ." One hundred years after its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frost's immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the poem hopelessly wrong. David Orr's The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poem's enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poem's cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical place today as a true masterpiece of American literature. "The Road Not Taken" seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone remembers the traveler taking "the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference." But for a century readers and critics have fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception, where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later romanticizes the decision as life altering?What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in this, "The Road Not Taken" is distinctively American, for the United States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor.Published for the poem's centennial--along with a new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Frost's poems, edited and introduced by Orr himself--The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its own unforgettably poetic voice.
The Road Not Taken
by David OrrA cultural "biography" of Robert Frost's beloved poem, arguably the most popular piece of literature written by an American"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . ." One hundred years after its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frost's immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the poem hopelessly wrong. David Orr's The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poem's enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poem's cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical place today as a true masterpiece of American literature. "The Road Not Taken" seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone remembers the traveler taking "the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference." But for a century readers and critics have fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception, where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later romanticizes the decision as life altering?What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in this, "The Road Not Taken" is distinctively American, for the United States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor.Published for the poem's centennial--along with a new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Frost's poems, edited and introduced by Orr himself--The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its own unforgettably poetic voice.
The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
by Robert Frost David OrrA deluxe edition of Frost's early poems, selected by poet David Orr for the centennial of "The Road Not Taken" For one hundred years, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" has enchanted and challenged readers with its deceptively simple premise--a person reaches a fork in the road, facing a choice full of doubt and possibility. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems presents Frost's best-loved poem along with other works from his brilliant early years, including such poems as "After Apple-Picking," "The Oven Bird," and "Mending Wall." Award-winning poet and critic David Orr's introduction discusses why Frost remains so central (if often misunderstood) in American culture and how the beautiful intricacy of his poetry keeps inviting generation after generation to search for meaning in his work.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
by Robert Frost David OrrA deluxe edition of Frost's early poems, selected by poet David Orr for the centennial of "The Road Not Taken" For one hundred years, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" has enchanted and challenged readers with its deceptively simple premise--a person reaches a fork in the road, facing a choice full of doubt and possibility. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems presents Frost's best-loved poem along with other works from his brilliant early years, including such poems as "After Apple-Picking," "The Oven Bird," and "Mending Wall." Award-winning poet and critic David Orr's introduction discusses why Frost remains so central (if often misunderstood) in American culture and how the beautiful intricacy of his poetry keeps inviting generation after generation to search for meaning in his work.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Road Not Taken and Other Selected Poems
by Robert FrostRobert Frost is one of America's most beloved poets. He won four Pulitzer prizes for his poetry and was invited to read his poetry at John F. Kennedy's inauguration. His life was filled with personal tragedy which his poetry often reflected. Collected here are The Road Not Taken, The Death Of The Hired Man, The Mountain, Fire and Ice, The Generations Of Men, The Grindstone, The Witch of Coös, A Brook in the City, Design, House Fear, The Lockless Door, Storm Fear, and Snow Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.
The Road Not Taken: A Selection Of Robert Frost's Poems
by Robert FrostThis splendidly edited volume offers a brilliant array of Robert Frost's most famous and well-loved poems, selected to display the full range of the poet's accomplishments.
The Road to After
by Rebekah LowellThis poignant debut novel in verse is a portrait of healing, as a young girl rediscovers life and the soothing power of nature after being freed from her abusive father. For most of her life, Lacey has been a prisoner without even realizing it. Her dad rarely let her, her little sister, or her mama out of his sight. But their situation changes suddenly and dramatically the day her grandparents arrive to help them leave. It&’s the beginning of a different kind of life for Lacey, and at first she has a hard time letting go of her dad&’s rules. Gradually though, his hold on her lessens, and her days become filled with choices she&’s never had before. Now Lacey can take pleasure in sketching the world as she sees it in her nature journal. And as she spends more time outside making things grow and creating good memories with family and friends, she feels her world opening up and blossoming into something new and exciting.
The Rock: Poems (Counterpoints #4)
by Wallace StevensAn excellent introduction to “the best and most representative American poet” (Harold Bloom), this palm–sized, keepsake edition is the first separate publication of this remarkable collection of late poems.In 1955, shortly before his death, Wallace Stevens earned the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. The collection gathered most of his life’s work, and featured 25 previously unpublished poems. Stevens imagined that those poems would stand alone as their own volume—The Rock. Featuring some of his most memorable poems, including “Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself,” The Rock is a sublime selection of works from one of American’s most brilliant, beloved modernist.“After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could.” —Robert Fitzgerald“One might as well argue with the Evening Star and find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the worlds and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity.” —Randall Jarrell
The Rodent Not Taken
by Jennifer McCartneyA treasure trove of cat poetry, hidden from human eyes until now, reveals the humor and pathos of feline life. Curated by New York Times best-selling author Jennifer McCartney, this collection of poems—discovered at a cat cafe´ in Milan, Italy—showcases the breathtaking skill, witty intelligence, and breadth of knowledge possessed by the cat mind. McCartney knew she’d found something special as she translated the feline riffs on famous poems, beat poetry, rhyming verse, haikus, and limericks. From musings on a tardy dinner (“Feed Me”) to a trip to the vet (“A Cat’s Revenge”), the “clueless yammering” of sparrows in a birdbath to the pleasures of an empty box, these are special additions to the genre. Soon, in fact, the scribe was inspired to add some work of her own, as well as charming line drawings and photographs. This slim volume will entice anyone enamored of poesy and the fine arts—particularly cats, or people who like cats.
The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness
by BeroulOne of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul's French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king's Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king's barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul's work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people struggling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend.
The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan's Madness (Penguin Classics)
by Beroul Alan FedrickOne of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul’s French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king’s Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king’s barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul’s work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people struggling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend.
The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes
by Joseph J. DugganThis book has a double audience: the general reader interested in literature of the Middle Ages who is looking for an account of Chrétien de Troyes's romances set in the context of their period and the specialist in medieval French literature.
The Romantic Dogs: Poems
by Roberto Bolaño Laura HealyListed as a "2009 Indie Next List Poetry Top Ten" book by the American Booksellers Association: Roberto Bolano as he saw himself, in his own first calling as a poet. Roberto Bolano (1953-2003) has caught on like a house on fire, and The Romantic Dogs, a bilingual collection of forty-four poems, offers American readers their first chance to encounter this literary phenomenon as a poet: his own first and strongest literary persona. These poems, wide-ranging in forms and length, have appeared in magazines such as Harper's, Threepenny Review, The Believer, Boston Review, Soft Targets, Tin House, The Nation, Circumference, A Public Space, and Conduit. Bolano's poetic voice is like no other's: "At that time, I'd reached the age of twenty/and I was crazy. /I'd lost a country/but won a dream./Long as I had that dream/nothing else mattered...."
The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form
by Marjorie LevinsonThe fragment poem, long regarded as a peculiarly Romantic phenomenon, has never been examined outside the context of thematic and biographical criticism. By submitting the unfinished poems of the English Romantics to both a genetic investigation and a reception study, Marjorie Levinson defines the fragment's formal character at various moments in its historical career. She suggests that the formal determinancy of these works, hence their expressive or semantic affinities, is a function of historical conditions and projections.The English Romantic fragment poems share not so much a particular mode of production as a myth of production. Levinson pries apart these two dimensions and analyzes each independently to consider their relationship. By reconstructing the contemporary reception of such works as Wordsworth's "Nutting," Coleridge's "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan," Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo," and Keats's Hyperion fragments, and juxtaposing this model against dominant twentieth-century critical paradigms, Levinson discriminates layers, phases, and kinds of intentionality in the poems and considers the ideological implications of this diversity.This study is the first to investigate the English Romantic fragment poem by identifying the assumptions -- contemporary and belated -- that govern interpretative procedures. In a substantial summary chapter, Levinson reflects upon the meaning and effects of these assumptions with respect to the facts and fictions of literary production in the period and to the processes of canon formation.Originally published in 1986.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
The Romantic Imagination and Astronomy
by Dometa Wiegand BrothersThe Romantic Imagination and Astronomy is the first book to reconstruct the history of the science of astronomy and its importance to the Romantic imagination in exploration and colonization by imperial England. It examines how the science of astronomy in exploration and discovery, from Edmund Halley and William Herschel to Captain Cook, changed the world by tying the 'pure' science of astronomy to the practical, commercial, and martial aims of navigation for the maritime nation of England. It demonstrates that the same 'pure' science of astronomy also fueled the Romantic poetic imagination, influencing the evolution of form and content of poetry — from formation of the greater Romantic lyric of Barbauld and Coleridge, to the fantastic narratives of Keats and Shelley.
The Romantic Poets (Wordsworth Classics)
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge John Keats William Blake William Wordsworth Percy Bysshe Shelley George Gordon Lord ByronRomanticism gained traction in the late 1700s as writers moved away from the intellectualism of the Enlightenment and toward more emotional and natural themes. The major works of the movement’s five most famous poets--William Wordsworth, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats--are represented in this handsome Word Cloud Classics volume, The Romantic Poets. One of the largest and most influential artistic movements in history, Romanticism valued intuition and pastoralism, and its themes are well represented in the verse of its stars. Lexile code: NP