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Winter Stranger: Poems
by Jackson HolbertWinner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Jackson Holbert’s Winter Stranger is a solemn record of addiction and the divided affections we hold for the landscapes that shape us.In the cold, seminal countryside of eastern Washington, a boy puts a bullet through his skull in a high school parking lot. An uncle crushes oxycodone into “a thousand red granules.” Hawks wheel above a dark, indifferent river. “I left that town / forever,” Holbert writes, but its bruises appear everywhere, in dreams of violent men and small stars, the ghosts of friends and pills. These poemsincite a complex emotional discourse on what it means to leave—if it’s ever actually possible, or if our roots only grow longer to accommodate the distance.Punctuated by recollections of loved ones consumed by their addictions, Winter Stranger also questions the capricious nature of memory, and poetry’s power to tame it. “I can make it all sound so beautiful. / You’ll barely notice that underneath / this poem there is a body / decaying into the American ground.” Meanwhile, the precious realities vanish—“your hair, your ears, your hands.”—leaving behind “the fucked up / trees,” the “long, cold river.” In verse both bleak and wishful, Holbert strikes a fine balance between his poetic sensibilities and the endemic cynicism of modern life.“It is clear now that there are no ends,” Holbert writes, “Just winters.” Though his poems bloom from hills heavy with springtime snow, his voice cuts through the cold, rich with dearly familiar longings: to not be alone, to honor our origins, to survive them.
The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki (Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture)
by Donald KeeneRather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) instead incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku Japan's most influential modern cultural export.Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene charts Shiki's revolutionary (and often contradictory) experiments with haiku and tanka, a dynamic process that made the survival of these traditional genres possible in a globalizing world. Keene particularly highlights random incidents and encounters in his impressionistic portrait of this tragically young life, moments that elicited significant shifts and discoveries in Shiki's work. The push and pull of a profoundly changing society is vividly felt in Keene's narrative, which also includes sharp observations of other recognizable characters, such as the famous novelist and critic Natsume Soseki. In addition, Keene reflects on his own personal relationship with Shiki's work, further developing the nuanced, deeply felt dimensions of its power.
Winter, Winter, Cold and Snow
by Sharon Gibson PalermoA gentle, repetitive story about forest creatures on a cold winter's day and night. With colorful, child-friendly illustrations this is a sweet pick for cozy storytimes by the fire.
Winterberries and Apple Blossoms: Reflections and Flavors of a Mennonite Year
by Nan ForlerWith an evocative poem for every month of the year, young Naomi introduces us to her family and hosts a journey through the seasonal rhythms of her rural Mennonite community.In the winter there&’s a quilting bee with chattering, friendly women to warm the frigid night, visits to a general store with all its treasures, and the awakening of the sap in the sugar bush. Spring months bring the hard work of clearing the fields and the sweet reward of shoofly pies. Under the hot summer sun there&’s home-made ice cream, baseball to play, and a horse-drawn buggy to drive. Then it&’s autumn when the shy narrator must help sell produce at the road-ide stand, while she thinks of the snows to come. And all year long there are delicious, child-friendly recipes to make and sample.The poems and recipes are perfectly complemented by Peter Etril Snyder&’s lovely paintings. Winterberries and Apple Blossoms is a beautifully produced book, perfect for gift-giving, or sharing with anyone who appreciates simple, enduring values.
Winter's Journey
by Stephen Dobyns"[Dobyns' poetry] has a somber, eccentric beauty not quite like anything else around these days."-The New York Times Book Review"[Dobyns] blends philosophical musings with daft, deft metaphors and a cheeky vernacular."-PoetryPoet and best-selling novelist Stephen Dobyns employs everything from Atlantic seascapes to werewolf dreams to explore issues public and private. By turns tough and tender, Dobyns' plainspoken poems create and reflect a worldview full of possibilities. He contrasts the quotidian with the exalted, always delivered in a precise, familiar voice. Daily walks become meditations on politics, philosophy, literature, and the larger considerations of existence and being.Stephen Dobyns is the author of twenty-one books of fiction, including the popular Saratoga crime series, twelve books of poetry, and a collection of nonfiction. Dobyns has worked as a reporter for The Detroit News and has taught at the University of Iowa, Sarah Lawrence College, Warren Wilson College, Syracuse University, and Boston University. He lives in Rhode Island.
The Winter's Tale: A Commentary on the Structure
by Fitzroy PyleFirst published in 1969. Critics have in the past described The Winter's Tale as a work of "haphazard structure". More recent criticism has defended the structure of the play and this work shows that the evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare took infinite pains with the choice and disposition of the materials of The Winter's Tale. The scene-by-scene commentary considers The Winter's Tale in isolation, but prologue, epilogue and appendix place it in the context of related plays, and discuss, among others, the problem of genre as it affects the play.
Winthropos: Poems
by George KalogerisWinthropos, the title of George Kalogeris’s new poetry collection, comes from the “Greek-ified” name his father, an immigrant from Greece, gave to the blue-collar New England town where the family lived. Following in the spirit of his acclaimed Guide to Greece, Kalogeris conjures Winthrop, Massachusetts, as a central locus of lyric and elegiac memory. While the poems in Winthropos reach back into the Hellenic past for imagery and inspiration, they often reside in the American present of their conception, forging childhood memory and local custom into a work of meditative power and evocative beauty.
Wires that Sputter: Poems
by Britta BadourA powerful debut collection from an award-winning artist, public speaker, and poet.With propulsive, intimate stylings and an eye toward Black liberations, pop culture, sports, and familial fractures, Wires that Sputter meets the world with the posture of a portraitist and the deftness of a poet-as-acrobat, as seeker. Here in these wondrous poems is an attentiveness toward that which harrows as well as that which heals, toward the power of space-giving and fragmentation. Rupture and recovery, tribute and tribulation, a revivifying musicality, and room to breathe—all dapple these pages, where electricity manifests in every line.
The Wisdom of Omar Khayyam (Wisdom)
by The Wisdom SeriesA Persian poet&’s masterpiece While better known in his time for his mathematical and astronomical works, eleventh-century Persian philosopher and poet Omar Khayyam is best known today for his romantic poetry collected in the Rubaiyat. This selection presents 365 of the approximately 1,000 quatrains, translated from the original Persian. Khayyam&’s poetry draws readers in with its lush imagery and timeless observations on the human experience and the metaphysical mysteries of our world. As wise and intriguing as they are beautifully crafted, Khayyam&’s verse has inspired much Western art and literature.
Wisdom of the Body
by Judith RocheWisdom of the Body is a meditation in poetry on the "bodiness,"the physicality of all things: our bodies and how they change, the salmon and their life cycle, trees, flowers, the earth, everything caught in the mystery of time. The book contains a series of poems on the life cycle of Pacific Northwest salmon that was a City of Seattle public arts project, and poems from the libretto of a musical piece by noted composer Janice Gitech, "Navigating the Light."
The Wisdom of Trees: How Trees Work Together to Form a Natural Kingdom
by Lita JudgeWith lush illustrations, poems, and accessible scientific information, The Wisdom of Trees by Lita Judge is a fascinating exploration of the hidden communities trees create to strengthen themselves and others.We clean the air and seed the clouds, we drench the thirsty land with rain. We are like wizards.The story of a tree is a story of community, communication, and cooperation. Although trees may seem like silent, independent organisms, they form a network buzzing with life: they talk, share food, raise their young, and offer protection. Trees thrive on diversity, learn from their ancestors, and give back to their communities. Trees not only sustain life on our planet—they can also teach us important lessons about patience, survival, and teamwork.A New York Public Library Best Book of 2021A New York Public Library Top Ten Book for KidsGreen Earth Book Award LonglistAn ALA SustainRT Top 10 Sustainability-Themed Children’s Books 2022
Wisdom Teeth (Busboys and Poets)
by Derrick Weston BrownThis debut poetry collection reveals the ongoing internal and external reconstruction of an artist's life and environment, as told through a litany of forms and myriad voices. The poems represent the quintessence of urban DC life and redefine personal relationships, masculinity, race, and history. A readjustment of bite, humor, and perspective, this work channels everything from hip-hop and Toni Morrison to Snagglepuss and red giants to make way for a poetic eruption of wisdom.
The Wish Book: Poems
by Alex Lemon"To read this book is to meet a man who would climb the sky." —BOB HICOKIn his follow-up to Fancy Beasts, a book that &“slice[d] straight through nerve and marrow on its way to the heart and mind of the matter&” (Tracy K. Smith), Alex Lemon dazzles with his exuberance and candor. Whether in unrestrained descriptions of sensory overload or tender meditations on fatherhood and mortality, Lemon blurs the nebulous line between the personal and the pop-cultural. These poems are full of frenetic energy and images pleasantly, strangely colliding: jigsaws and bathtubs and kung-fu and X-rays. A carnival barker calls. A jellyfish celebrates a shaky adulthood. A sliding door shatters with the passing through of a body. And a heart is &“ecstatically / Torn apart like Twizzlers.&”Lean and muscular, The Wish Book is a collection of fireworks and wild emotion, defined by Lemon&’s distinct brand of poetic edginess.
The Wit In The Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt
by Anthony HoldenHe was born in the year Dr Johnson died, and died in the year A.E. Houseman and Conan Doyle were born. The 75 years of Leigh Hunt's life uniquely span two distinct eras of English life and literature. A major player in the Romantic movement, the intimate and first publisher of Keats and Shelley, friend of Byron, Hazlitt and Lamb, Hunt lived on to become an elder statesman of Victorianism, the friend and chamption of Tennyson and Dickens, awarded a sate pension by Queen Victoria. Jailed in his twenties for insulting the Prince of Wales, Hunt ended his long, productive life vainly seeking the Poet Laureatship with fawning poems to Victoria. A tirelessly prolific poet, essayist, editor and critic, he has been described as having no rival in the history of English criticism. Yet Hunt's remarkable life story has never been fully told.Anthony Holden's deeply researched and vibrantly written biography gives full due to this minor poet - but major influence on his great Romantic contempories.
Witches (Abradale Bks.)
by Erica JongThe New York Times–bestselling author of Fear of Flying celebrates witches in a gorgeously illustrated brew of witchcraft lore, potions, secrets, and myth. With a mix of genuine fascination, passionate enthusiasm, and keen feminist insight, Erica Jong wades through a bog of myths, misinformation, historical hysteria, and contemporary Halloween costumes to offer a generous exploration and celebration of witches. From their origins as descendants of ancient goddesses to contemporary practitioners of the craft, the evolution of the concept of &“witch&” has been as changeable as the centuries themselves. From evil crone to sexual seductress, they are the embodiment of both light and dark, fertility and death, divinity and paganism, baleful curses and healing cures. They have been scapegoated as the object of men&’s worst fears and embraced as heroines of female empowerment. As muses, they have influenced popular culture from Shakespeare and Yeats to Anne Sexton and Ken Russell. With reverence and a hint of mischief, Jong reveals witches&’ rites, rituals, and magical recipes, including authentic spells and incantations. &“A steaming cauldron of beautifully illustrated prose, poetry, love potions and flying lotions&” (Glamour) from the renowned author of Fanny, Witches is &“nothing less than a complete transformation of our concept of witches . . . accomplishe[d] with panache in this sumptuously and provocatively illustrated book" (Publishers Weekly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erica Jong, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author&’s personal collection.
With a Moon in Transit (Grove Press Poetry Series)
by Jacqueline Osherow“A collection that is down-to-earth and sparkling in its self-deprecating wit . . . Osherow’s poems cast a magical light on whatever she beholds.” —Library JournalIn With a Moon in Transit, Jacqueline Osherow has given us her most accomplished poetry to date. Integrating the strengths of her earlier work—humor, honesty, artifice, testimony—into compelling poems of great vigor and charm, she combines the often antithetical impulses of lyric and narrative verse. The result is an aesthetic largely her own, one that permits Osherow to treat emotionally charged events and elaborate ideas with remarkable control.Osherow’s observations are by turns gossipy, grand, sober, and hilarious. She sustains a disarming tone and manages to assimilate elements of both high and popular culture without apparent strain. While firmly rooted in the Hebrew Bible, her verse is also informed by authors as various as Dante and Dickinson. Yet for all that these poems are alive to the literary past, they remain sensitive to the rhythms of conversation and the tones of everyday speech. Osherow’s poems are composed with great clarity and rigor, but they never cease to sound casually spoken.“Marked by an inimitable anecdotal expansiveness and uncompromising control, Jacqueline Osherow’s poems are among the most ambitious being written.” —Mark Strand, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet“Abundant in whimsy, philosophical speculation, and earthly affections, Jacqueline Osherow’s poems inhabit their forms with insouciance and wit . . . Whether in mourning or celebration, hers is a voice of dazzling confidence, and humane and generous wisdom.” —Rosanna Warren, author of So Forth: Poems
With a Star in My Hand: Rubén Darío, Poetry Hero
by Margarita EngleFrom acclaimed author Margarita Engle comes a gorgeous new novel in verse about Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan poet and folk hero who initiated the literary movement of Modernismo.As a little boy, Rubén Darío loved to listen to his great uncle, a man who told tall tales in a booming, larger-than-life voice. Rubén quickly learned the magic of storytelling, and discovered the rapture and beauty of verse. A restless and romantic soul, Rubén traveled across Central and South America seeking adventure and connection. As he discovered new places and new loves, he wrote poems to express his wild storm of feelings. But the traditional forms felt too restrictive. He began to improvise his own poetic forms so he could capture the entire world in his words. At the age of twenty-one, he published his first book Azul, which heralded a vibrant new literary movement called Modernismo that blended poetry and prose into something magical. In gorgeous poems of her own, Margarita Engle tells the story of this passionate young man who revolutionized world literature.
With My Back to the World: Poems
by null Victoria ChangWinner of the Forward Prize for Best CollectionFinalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry AwardNamed a Best Book of the Year by NPRNamed One of the Best Poetry Collections of the Year by The Guardian, Literary Hub, and Electric Literature A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit. Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang’s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.
With My Back to the World
by Victoria Chang'Chang has liberated the Ekphrastic form to new lyric heights and depths. Inventive, meditative, audacious, strange and soulful. A marvel of a collection that engages the eye and mind as much as the ear and heart' Raymond AntrobusYesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract modern artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang's new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.
With My Five Senses I've Fallen
by Antonio Jofre“With All My Five Sense I’ve Fallen” is a book where Angentine Antonio Jofré immerses us in an oasis of feelings through his poetry, in which the inspiration that love gives him overturns in each one. Through poetry that explores love in all its facets, the author takes us to a world where being in love is the only way of living.
With My Hands: Poems About Making Things
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater&“From birdhouses to shadow puppets, the variety of projects included are delightful . . . An effective medley of concept, poetry, and artwork.&”—School Library Journal For young makers and artists, brief, lively poems illustrated by a New York Times bestselling duo celebrate the pleasures of working with your hands. Building, baking, folding, drawing, shaping . . . making something with your own hands is a special, personal experience. Taking an idea from your imagination and turning it into something real is satisfying and makes the maker proud. With My Hands is an inspiring invitation to tap into creativity and enjoy the hands-on energy that comes from making things. &“Poetry sparks an irresistible, primal urge to twist, cut, paint, draw, glue, carve, whittle, daub, tie, hammer, to simply make.&”—Kirkus Reviews &“A cheery reminder of the pride of creating something and the many forms art can take.&”—Publishers Weekly &“Whether invoking cooking, sewing, tying knots, or other undertakings, this provides an enjoyable springboard for aspiring makers.&”—Booklist
With My Shadow: The Poems of Hilde Domin, A Bilingual Selection
by Hilde Domin“These translations and poems are full of the refugee’s loss and longing, made infinitely richer by Kafatou’s love for the poet and poems. This is a deeply loving, compassionate collection of poems, remaining anchored, ultimately, in the exile’s intertwined desire and nostalgia for home.” —The Massachusetts Review Not to tire / but to hold out your hand / gently / as to a bird / to the miracle This bilingual edition of the poems of Hilde Domin, an outstanding lyric poet of exile and return, brings her work to English-speaking readers for the first time. Hilde Domin fled Nazi Germany when, as a Jew, she was no longer safe there. For many years she lived in Italy and the Dominican Republic, where she encountered modernist currents in Italian and Spanish poetry. Returning permanently to Germany in the mid-1950s, she quickly found recognition as a poet of memory and reconciliation. For the rest of her long life she wrote and spoke in a tone poised between vulnerability and trust, on behalf of moral and civic values worth living for. <p><p>As Sarah Kafatou writes in her Introduction, Domin “is always frugal: she reworks and transforms her repertoire of metaphors, images, themes, and ideas again and again, extending and refining, never explaining too much. Her lyric sensibility is concise, her syntax and vocabulary are simple and apt, her short lines break on the phrase, and she has an uncanny ability to hit the right note at exactly the right moment, according to the rhythm of the breath.” Domin writes of “people like us we among them,” providing a voice for victims of persecution everywhere. Today, with refugee populations on the move throughout the world and with rising intolerance and polarization, these poems of conscience, and courage discovered in desperation, will speak directly to every reader.
with their eyes: September 11th
by Annie ThomsA deeply moving play remembering September 11, 2001, written by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age“Profound.” —Booklist“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library JournalTuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.This powerful play by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget. This collection helped shape the HBO documentary In the Shadow of the Towers: Stuyvesant High on 9/11.For dramatic rights, please visit http://permissions.harpercollins.com/.
Without: Poems
by Donald HallYou might expect the fact of dying--the dying of a beloved wife and fellow poet--to make for a bleak and lonely tale. But Donald Hall's poignant and courageous poetry, facing that dread fact, involves us all: the magnificent, humorous, and gifted woman, Jane Kenyon, who suffered and died; the doctors and nurses who tried but failed to save her; the neighbors, friends, and relatives who grieved for her; the husband who sat by her while she lived and afterward sat in their house alone with his pain, self-pity, and fury; and those of us who till now had nothing to do with it. As Donald Hall writes, "Remembered happiness is agony; so is remembered agony." Without will touch every feeling reader, for everyone has suffered loss and requires the fellowship of elegy. In the earth's oldest poem, when Gilgamesh howls of the death of Enkidu, a grieving reader of our own time may feel a kinship, across the abyss of four thousand years, with a Sumerian king. In Without Donald Hall speaks to us all of grief, as a poet lamenting the death of a poet, as a husband mourning the loss of a wife. Without is Hall's greatest and most honorable achievement -- his give and testimony, his lament and his celebration of loss and of love.