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In a Bucolic Land
by Szilárd BorbélyA moving, posthumous collection of elegies and eclogues that meditate on nature, landscape, and history, by a great Hungarian poet.Szilárd Borbély spent his childhood in a tiny impoverished village in northeastern Hungary, where the archaic peasant world of Eastern Europe coexisted with the collectivist ideology of a new Communist state. Close to the Soviet border and far from any metropolitan center, the village was a world apart: life was harsh, monotonous, and often brutal, and the Borbélys, outsiders and &“class enemies,&” were shunned. In a Bucolic Land, Borbély&’s final, posthumously published book of poems, combines autobiography, ethnography, classical mythology, and pastoral idyll in a remarkable central poetic sequence about the starkly precarious and yet strangely numinous liminal zone of his youth. This is framed by elegies for a teacher in which the poet meditates on the nature of language and speech and on the adequacy of words to speak of and for the dead. Ottilie Mulzet&’s English translation conveys the full power of a writer of whom László Krasznahorkai has said, &“He was a poet—a great poet—who shatters us.&”
In a Few Minutes Before Later (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Brenda HillmanFinalist for the Four Quartets Prize, given by Poetry Society of America, 2023An iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry. During an enchantment in the lifeDo you love a living person absolutely? Tell them now.In a half-unwieldy life you made, underthe hyaline sky, while the dead drank from zigzag pools nearby,if they saved you in your wild incapacities, in timing of the world's harmin a little pettiness in your own heart while others took your madrigals in shreds to a tribunal, when others said you should feel grateful to be minimally adequate for the world'striple exposure or some tired committee... The ones who love us, how do theybreak through our defenses? We're tired today. Come back later.Their baffled voices melting our wax wallswith a candle, the ones who understandwhat being is—the glowing, the broken,the wheels, the brave ones— they have their courage,you have yours,,,; when you meet the one you love,it is so rare. When you meetthe one who loves you, it is extremely rare.
In a Landscape
by John GallaherFalling somewhere between a "diary-poem," a "daybook," "autobiography-in-verse," and an "essay-poem," In a Landscape is noted poet and critic John Gallaher's most personal, straightforward, and revealing book yet. In lyric-prose that continuously circles the questions it raises, Gallaher sloughs off the garb of "poet" to address life questions in a way that few poets of his generation have been willing to risk. Family, death, adoption, children, parents, high school, music . . . Gallaher's subjects carry weight because of their absolute commonness.John Gallaher is assistant professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University, and co-editor of the Laurel Review.
In a Language That You Know (African Poetry Book)
by Len VerweySouth Africa is a complicated, contradictory, and haunted place. Len Verwey captures the trajectory of life in such a place, dealing with childhood, war, marriage, divorce, and death. He explores the challenges posed by place and history, shared identities, deep embeddedness in the continent, and the legacies of violence and exclusion, as well as beauty. Verwey offers poems that speak of uncertainty, ask questions, and challenge simplistic and scapegoating narratives that become so tempting when living in a society undergoing intense social and economic pressure. Dealing less with factual or political explanations of war and more with the compulsion of war, in particular, “maleness” and violence, Verwey pulls the reader into another world, opening eyes to the “crisis of men,” the violence against women, children, and the foreign in a country where conflicts are again escalating. In a Language That You Know strives to understand the complexity of one of the most unequal, violent, yet most vibrant societies in the world.
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, 1955–2007 (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)
by X. J. Kennedy2008 American Library Association Notable Book in PoetryFor more than half a century, readers and listeners have taken special pleasure in the poetry of X. J. Kennedy. In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus is an ample gathering of his best work: memorable songs, startling lyrics, poems that tell poignant stories, character studies that vie with those of Edwin Arlington Robinson. A master of verbal music, Kennedy has long been praised for his wit and humor; as this collection reveals, many of his poems also reach surprising depths and heights. Donald Hall comments, "many of Kennedy's poems are wit itself. His wit is his way of understanding. No one else writing is capable of the effects in which Kennedy specializes."This book skims the cream from several slim volumes and six past collections including the prize-winning Nude Descending a Staircase, Cross Ties, and The Lords of Misrule. It restores to print over fifty poems unavailable for decades and adds more than two dozen new poems collected for the first time. Kennedy has long occupied a unique place in American poetry; In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus now offers the first comprehensive collection to span his entire career.
In a Time of Distance: and Other Poems
by Alexander McCall SmithFrom the beloved author of the No. 1 Ladies&’ Detective Agency series comes a beautiful and transporting volume of poems brimming with warmth and humanity.What matters most in life? For Alexander McCall Smith, it is friendship, love, and travel— the themes found throughout his work that have made him a cherished writer the world over. This first collection of McCall Smith&’s poems reflects on these topics with all his characteristic wit and charm. In this delightful work, McCall Smith takes us on a captivating journey from Africa to Greece, London, Canada, Mumbai, and back home to Scotland, celebrating people, places, animals, and books. There are moments of sweeping insight and soaring feeling, and moments that will have you laughing along as they subtly shift your worldview. This inimitable writer shares his distinctively astute and good-natured observations on life, love, and beauty, reminding us of the deep satisfaction that can be found when we open ourselves up to the world with our whole heart, and watch as it takes on a kinder and gentler shape.
In a Time of Distance: and Other Poems
by Alexander McCall SmithIn a beautiful and transporting volume of poems, the beloved author of the No. 1 Ladies&’ Detective Agency series takes us on a captivating journey from Africa to Greece, London to North America to Mumbai, and back home to Scotland, celebrating people, places, animals, and books.What matters most in life? For Alexander McCall Smith, it is friendship, love, and travel—the themes found throughout his work that have made him a cherished writer the world over. This first collection of McCall Smith&’s poems reflects on these topics with all his characteristic wit and charm. There are moments of sweeping insight and soaring feeling, and moments that will have you laughing along as they subtly shift your worldview. This inimitable writer shares his distinctively astute and good-natured observations on life, love, and beauty, reminding us of the deep satisfaction that can be found when we open ourselves up to the world with our whole heart, and watch as it takes on a kinder and gentler shape.
In a Time of Violence: Poems
by Eavan BolandThe publication of Eavan Boland's previous book, Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990, established Boland as a significant presence in the contemporary American poetry world. This, her seventh book, continues to mine what she has termed "the meeting place between womanhood and history."
In and Out the Window
by Jane YolenThe largest single anthology of Jane Yolen's poetry, containing more than one hundred poems for all occasions—with fun black-and-white art throughout.Our KitchenSmells of mornings,blueberry muffins,hot chocolate, tea.It smells of baconand of eggs.It smells of family.For the first time, legendary author Jane Yolen gathers the largest single anthology of her poetry celebrating childhood. At home or at school, playing sports or practicing music, enjoying the holidays or delighting in each season, Jane Yolen&’s masterful collection shows just how lively it is to be a kid. With whimsical artwork by Cathrin Peterslund, this collection of more than one hundred poems is a classic that children are sure to return to again and again.
In on the Great Joke
by Laura BroadbentIn a blend of essayistic poetics, Broadbent wields alchemy, translation and necromancy to bring readers In on the Great Joke. What do you get when you cross Lao Tzu and an application for a university teaching application? What do you get when you give W. G. Sebald and Clarice Lispector the ability to speak from the afterlife? What happens if a girl is stopped at a red light for an entire year? In on the Great Joke is a palace of hybridity, where film structure informs poetry, poetry alters the essay, and the essay recalibrates the joke. Broadbent has lent her ear to the dead, the living, the voiceless, to give us the punchline of what it means to be intellectually alive.
In on the Great Joke
by Laura BroadbentWhat do you get when you cross Lao Tzu and an application for a university teaching application? What do you get when you give W. G. Sebald and Clarice Lispector the ability to speak from the afterlife? What happens if a girl is stopped at a red light for an entire year? In on the Great Joke is a palace of hybridity, where film structure informs poetry, poetry alters the essay, the essay recalibrates the joke. Broadbent has lent her ear to the dead, the living, the voiceless, to give us the punchline of what it means to be intellectually alive.Laura Broadbent is the author of Oh There You Are I Can't See You Is It Raining?, which won the 2012 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She lives in Montreal, Queceb, where she is working on her PhD in Literature.
In on the Great Joke
by Laura BroadbentIn a blend of essayistic poetics, Broadbent wields alchemy, translation and necromancy to bring readers In on the Great Joke. What do you get when you cross Lao Tzu and an application for a university teaching application? What do you get when you give W. G. Sebald and Clarice Lispector the ability to speak from the afterlife? What happens if a girl is stopped at a red light for an entire year? In on the Great Joke is a palace of hybridity, where film structure informs poetry, poetry alters the essay, and the essay recalibrates the joke. Broadbent has lent her ear to the dead, the living, the voiceless, to give us the punchline of what it means to be intellectually alive. ‘Then there’s Laura Broadbent. She is, as are her poems, full of sultry verve and invective. Watch out. Her lines are dizzying and always on point.’ – Michael Nardone, Hobo Magazine Praise for Oh There You Are I Can't See You Is It Raining?: ‘Oh There You Are... succeeds because it is accessible. Intellectually rigorous and evasive, it also makes itself emotionally available.’ – Justin F. Ridgeway, Broken Pencil
In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi
by Anthony CaleshuThis first critical book of essays on the poetry of Peter Gizzi shows how his work extends the traditions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernism while also reclaiming the living presence of the "lyric" in its capacity to sing of the human predicament. Gizzi is author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including most recently Threshold Songs and Archeophonics, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2016. Lauded contributors, including Ben Lerner, Michael Snediker, Marjorie Perloff, and Charles Altieri, explore Gizzi's poetry for its embodiment of an American tradition—extending the poetics of Whitman, Dickinson, and Stevens, amongst others—while also exhibiting a twenty-first-century sensibility, perpetuating a new grammar and syntax to capture our place in the world today. Each essayist, in turn, works through close-readings of some of the most important poems of our times, enriching our understanding of a poetry of the mind which never loses track of what it means to feel.Hardcover is un-jacketed.
In the Beautiful Country
by Jane KuoFor fans of Jasmine Warga and Thanhhà Lại, this is a stunning novel in verse about a young Taiwanese immigrant to America who is confronted by the stark difference between dreams and reality.Anna can’t wait to move to the beautiful country—the Chinese name for America. Although she’s only ever known life in Taiwan, she can’t help but brag about the move to her family and friends.But the beautiful country isn’t anything like Anna pictured. Her family can only afford a cramped apartment, she’s bullied at school, and she struggles to understand a new language. On top of that, the restaurant that her parents poured their savings into is barely staying afloat. The version of America that Anna is experiencing is nothing like she imagined. How will she be able to make the beautiful country her home?This lyrical and heartfelt story, inspired by the author’s own experiences, is about resilience, courage, and the struggle to make a place for yourself in the world.
In the Black Window: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS
by Michael Van WalleghenThe title of Michael Van Walleghen's new collection evokes thematic preoccupations that have shadowed him throughout his long career. Appearing as a phrase in the poems themselves, In the Black Window more generally points to Van Walleghen's enduring interest in the intersection between inner and outer worlds of experience--those liminal moments in other worlds where we become aware of ourselves. We live at once in a strictly personal, material dimension but also in a distinctly spiritual one. Yet, when looking from a lighted kitchen into a night-black window on a winter evening, we might perhaps become suddenly aware not only of our own reflection, but also of our complicity in some deeper mystery altogether.
In the Blue Pharmacy
by Marianne BoruchCollected here are sixteen essays on poets and poetry, the writing life, and a host of fascinating topics that come into the wide range of Marianne Boruch's attention. She examines how the imagination works with mystery and surprise in a variety of poets from Elizabeth Bishop to Theodore Roethke, from Russell Edson to Larry Levis, from Walt Whitman to Eavan Boland. Combining a richly associative personal style with original insights on poetic texts and historical and cultural musing, Boruch considers how the atomic bomb changed William Carlos Williams's deepest ambition for poetry, and how Edison's listening, through his famous deafness, informs our sense of the poetic line. Other essays explore how the car-its danger and solitude-helps us understand American poetry or how Dvorak and Whitman shared darker things than their curious love for trains. Poetry transforms, changing over time in the work of individual poets as well as changing us as we read it or write it.Boruch's writing has a musical, incantatory style, creating a mood in which many of her subjects are immersed. Her approach isn't meant to fix or crystallize her ideas in any hard and fast light, but rather to present the music of her thinking.
In the Blue Pharmacy
by Marianne BoruchCollected here are sixteen essays on poets and poetry, the writing life, and a host of fascinating topics that come into the wide range of Marianne Boruch's attention. She examines how the imagination works with mystery and surprise in a variety of poets from Elizabeth Bishop to Theodore Roethke, from Russell Edson to Larry Levis, from Walt Whitman to Eavan Boland. Combining a richly associative personal style with original insights on poetic texts and historical and cultural musing, Boruch considers how the atomic bomb changed William Carlos Williams's deepest ambition for poetry, and how Edison's listening, through his famous deafness, informs our sense of the poetic line. Other essays explore how the car-its danger and solitude-helps us understand American poetry or how Dvorak and Whitman shared darker things than their curious love for trains. Poetry transforms, changing over time in the work of individual poets as well as changing us as we read it or write it.Boruch's writing has a musical, incantatory style, creating a mood in which many of her subjects are immersed. Her approach isn't meant to fix or crystallize her ideas in any hard and fast light, but rather to present the music of her thinking.
In the Boom Boom Room: A Play (Rabe, David Ser.)
by David RabeThis extensively revised version of David Rabe's 1973 play returns it to the two-act structure originally intended by the author, as it sharpens and focuses his searing portrait of a young dancer's descent into hell.
In the Company of Rilke
by Stephanie DowrickIn the Company of Rilke is a rare book about a rare poet. Rainer Maria Rilke was a giant of twentieth-century writing who remains a visionary voice for our own time, captivating readers not only with his brilliance but also his fearlessness about the "deepest things. " Speaking through his own contradictions and ambivalence, he offers readers a profound understanding of the complex beauty and depth of human existence. Here, as in Rilke's own writing, questions matter more than answers. Here, a poet can speak directly to God while also doubting God. Astonishingly, this is the first major study of Rilke from a spiritual perspective, even though the greatest of Rilke' s gifts was to show how inevitably life centres upon a profound mystery-to which we can freely open ourselves. Drawing on her deep understanding of the gifts of Rilke's writings, as well as her own personal spiritual seeking, Dr Stephanie Dowrick offers an intimate and accessible appreciation of this most exceptional poet and his transcendent work.
In the Creole Twilight: Poems and Songs from Louisiana Folklore
by Joshua Clegg CafferyMany of the recurring motifs found in south Louisiana's culture spring from the state's rich folklore. Influenced by settlers of European and African heritage, celebrated customs like the Courir de Mardi Gras and fabled creatures like the Loup-Garou grow out of the region's distinctive oral tradition. Joshua Clegg Caffery's In the Creole Twilight draws from this vibrant and diverse legacy to create an accessible reimagining of the state's traditional storytelling and songs.A scholar and Grammy-nominated musician, Caffery borrows from the syllabic structures, rhyme schemes, narratives, and settings that characterize Louisiana songs and tales to create new verse that is both well-researched and refreshingly inventive. Paired with original pen-and-ink illustrations as well as notes that clarify the origins of characters and themes, Caffery's compositions provide a link to the old worlds of southern Louisiana while constructing an entirely new one.
In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Abigail ChabitnoyIn the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful is a meditation on water, land, women, and violent environmental changes as they affect both the natural world and human migration. The poet reckons with the unsettling realities that women experience, questioning the cause and effect of events and asking why stories of oppression are so often simply accepted as the only stories. Alutiiq language is used throughout these poems that are in conversation with history, ancestors, and an uncertain future, in imagery that moves in waves, returning again and again to the ocean, and a deep visioning of the "current."Excerpt from IN THE FIELD They asked me if I was a citizen. They wanted to know what I had seen/I had heard/this was only a test: Look at the mark and tell them what you see.[...]
In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems
by Kathleen Norris Thomas Merton Lynn R. SzaboA new, broad, comprehensive view of the innovative poetry of the late, great Trappist monk and religious philosopher Thomas Merton. Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social criticthe late Thomas Merton was all these things. Until now, no selection from his great body of poetry has afforded a comprehensive view of his varied and largely innovative work. In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton is not only double the size of Merton's earlier Selected Poems (1967), it also arranges his poetry thematically and chronologically, so that readers can follow the poet's multifarious interrelated lines of thought as well as his poetic development over the decades, from his college days in the 1930s to his untimely accidental death in Bangkok in 1968 during his personal Eastern pilgrimage. The selections are grouped under eight thematic headings"Geography's Landscapes," "Poems from the Monastery," "Poems of the Sacred," "Songs of Contemplation," "History's Voices: Past and Present," "Engaging the World," "On Being Human," "Merton and Other Languages."
In the Flesh: Poems
by Adam O'Riordan“Precise and attentive. O’Riordan has the painter’s eye for detail and the pianist’s touch for sounding the right notes.”—Simon Armitage This startling debut from a young British poet traces the paths from past to present, the lost to the living, seeking familiarity in a world of “false trails and disappearing acts.” Here, relatives, friends, and other absences are coaxed into life and urgently pressed on the reader as they surface, in the flesh. At the heart of the collection lies the sonnet sequence “Home,” a slant look at the lives of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, intersected by more recent, sometimes unsettling, personal portraits. Clear-eyed and sensuous, these are poems linked by a strong sense of place and presence, of history captured in an irrevocable moment.
In the Lateness of the World: Poems
by Carolyn Forché&“An undisputed literary event.&” — NPRA new poetry collection of uncanny grace and moral force from one of our country's most celebrated poetsOver four decades, Carolyn Forché's visionary work has reinvigorated poetry's power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, inquiries, and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to each other. Her first new collection in seventeen years, In the Lateness of the World is a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death. The poems call to the reader from the end of the world where they are sifting through the aftermath of history. Forché envisions a place where "you could see everything at once ... every moment you have lived or place you have been." The world here seems to be steadily vanishing, but in the moments before the uncertain end, an illumination arrives and "there is nothing that cannot be seen." In the Lateness of the World is a revelation from one of the finest poets writing today.