Banner Message
The Bookstore will be closed until sometime in late June as we relocate to a temporary space. The Pritzker Student Center is undergoing major renovations, and we will not be shipping or processing any online orders until we are fully set up in our temporary location.
Poetry
In Rice, her second volume of poetry, Nikky Finney explores the complexity of rice as central to the culture, economy, and mystique of the coastal South Carolina region where she was born and raised. The prized Carolina Gold rice paradoxically made South Carolina one of the most oppressive states for slaves and also created the remarkable Gullah culture on the coastal islands. The poems in Rice compose a profound and unflinching journey connecting family and the paradoxes of American history, from the tragic times when African slaves disembarked on the South Carolina coast to the triumphant day when Judge Ernest A. Finney Jr., Nikky's father, was sworn in as South Carolina's first African American chief justice. Images from the Finney family archive illustrate and punctuate this collection. Rice showcases Finney's hungry intellect, her regional awareness and pride, and her sensitivity to how cultures are built and threatened.
This volume includes the celebrated works Medieval Scenes and The Venice Poem, all of Duncan's long unavailable major ventures into drama, his extensive "imitations" of Gertrude Stein, and the remarkable poems written in Majorca as responses to a series of collaged paste-ups by Duncan's life-long partner, the painter Jess. Books appear in chronological order of publication, with uncollected periodical and other publications arranged chronologically, following each book. The introduction includes a biographical commentary on Duncan's early life and works, and clears an initial path through the textual complexities of his early writing. Notes offer brief commentaries on each book and on many of the poems.
The volume to follow, The Collected Later Poetry and Plays, will include The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), Bending the Bow (1968), Ground Work (1984), and Ground Work II (1987).
In her first book of poetry since 1993's groundbreaking The Book of Medicines, Linda Hogan locates the intimate connections between all living things and uncovers the layers that both protect and disguise our affinities.
like the tree I can lose myself
layer after layer
all the way down to infinity
and that's when the world has eyes and sees.
The whole world
loves the unlayered human.
Hogan's wisdom, gleaned from a lifelong commitment to caring for wildlife and the environment, has been deepened by the hard-won, humbling revelations of illness. With soaring imagery, clear lyrics, and entrancing rhythm, her poetry becomes a visionary instrument singing to and for humanity. From the microscopic creatures of the sea to the powerful beauty of horses, from the beating heart of her unborn grandson to the vast, uncovered expanses of the universe, Hogan reminds us that, "Between the human and all the rest / lies only an eyelid."
A Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, teacher, and activist, Linda Hogan has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Colorado. A volunteer and consultant for wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species programs, Hogan has published essays for the Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club, and her books have received numerous awards, including nominations from the Pulitzer Prize Board and National Book Critics Circle.
Here are Anselm Hollo's notes on rue Wilson Monday
"When I was invited to spend five months in France, in an old hotel long frequented by artists and writers, I decided to write something that would NOT be your typical 'sabbatical poem'--that familiar rumination, by the U.S. American academic (temporary) expatriate, 'on' the Mona Lisa, Baudelaire's grave, or 'how different all this is from back home in Missoula Montana!'
"I believe that rue Wilson Monday turned out to be something possibly more interesting: a hybrid of day book, informal sonnet sequence, and extended, 'laminated' essay-poem, with an aesthetic (dare I say lyricism?) perhaps better understood by our younger generation of poets than by their predecessors, those mid-twentieth-century traveloguists. Works I found particularly inspiring in my endeavor were Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets and Edward Dorn's Abhorrences--books that will make me chuckle and weep to the end of my days.
"The book received its title from French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's 1913 poem 'Lundi rue Christine' (Monday rue Christine), a Cubist work composed almost entirely out of verbatim speech from various conversations in a cafe.M
"In rue Wilson Monday, similar conversations take place in and around my head during that stay (August 1998/January 1999) at the Hotel Chevillon, an artists' and writers' retreat in the small town of Grez-sur-Loing. Back in 1876, Robert Louis Stevenson came to visit his cousin Robert at this hotel, whose present street address is 114 rue Wilson, "La Rue Grande" (Main Street) back then.
"To invite the reader to participate in my often elliptical conversations with these folks, I have provided footnotes, and these too are an integral part of the poem and the conversation."
A seminal collection of poetry from the medieval Sufi mystic--the most popular poet in America--and his "soul friend," Shams Tabriz, which illuminate the evocative and deeply spiritual dimensions of friendship and love, compiled by the foremost Rumi translator and author of The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks.
In this stunning translation, Coleman Barks brings to light Rumi's theme of "love as religion"--that to reach its most profound depths requires mindful practice--as well as love in its most meaningful form: soul friendship. These short poems by both Rumi and Shams Tabriz, rich in beauty and spiritual insight, capture the delight and the impermanence of these bonds that pierce deep into the human mind, heart, and soul.
Rumi's poetry is honored and enjoyed by many traditions and cultures. Today, many people from all walks of life have moved beyond traditional notions of spirituality, embracing a sense of the sacred that transcends a singular religion, belief, or text. Rumi's poetry speaks to them and nourishes their divine yearnings. Joyous and contemplative, provocative and playful, Rumi: Soul Fury is a sterling addition to the modern Rumi oeuvre, and is sure to be embraced by his wide and devoted readership.
A selection of poems spanning the career of a poet of the uncanny
Filled with haunting and visionary poems, Sailing the Forest is a selection of the finest work from an essential voice in contemporary poetry. Robin Robertson's deceptively spare and mythically charged work is beautifully brutal, ancient and immediate, and capable of instilling menace and awe into our everyday landscape. These are poems drawn in shadow, tinged with salt and blood, that disarm the reader with their precise language and dreamlike illuminations. Robertson's unique world is a place of forked storms where "Rain . . . is silence turned up high" and we can see "the hay marry the fire / and the fire walk."
Through five extraordinary collections, Robertson has captured the intangible, illusory world in razor-sharp language. "The genius of this Scots poet is for finding the sensually charged moment--in a raked northern seascape, in a sexual or gustatory encounter--and depicting it in language that is simultaneously spare and ample, and reminiscent of early Heaney or Hughes" (The New Yorker). Sailing the Forest reveals a wild-hearted poet at the height of his talents.
Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, The Sea and the Mirror is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is really about the Christian conception of art and it is my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to be Shakespeare's. This is the first critical edition. Arthur Kirsch's introduction and notes make the poem newly accessible to readers of Auden, readers of Shakespeare, and all those interested in the relation of life and literature--those two classic themes alluded to in its title.
The poem begins in a theater after a performance of The Tempest has ended. It includes a moving speech in verse by Prospero bidding farewell to Ariel, a section in which the supporting characters speak in a dazzling variety of verse forms about their experiences on the island, and an extravagantly inventive section in prose that sees the uncivilized Caliban address the audience on art--an unalloyed example of what Auden's friend Oliver Sachs has called his wild, extraordinary and demonic imagination. Besides annotating Auden's allusions and sources (in notes after the text), Kirsch provides extensive quotations from his manuscript drafts, permitting the reader to follow the poem's genesis in Auden's imagination. This book, which incorporates for the first time previously ignored corrections that Auden made on the galleys of the first edition, also provides an unusual opportunity to see the effect of one literary genius upon another.
The selected poems of one of the most important nineteenth-century French writers, masterfully translated
In his ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound begins his short list of nineteenth-century French poets to be studied with Théophile Gautier. Widely esteemed by figures as diverse as Charles Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Gustave Flaubert, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and T. S. Eliot, Gautier was one of the nineteenth century's most prominent French writers, famous for his virtuosity, his inventive textures, and his motto "Art for art's sake." His work is often considered a crucial hinge between High Romanticism--idealistic, sentimental, grandiloquent--and the beginnings of "Parnasse," with its emotional detachment, plasticity, and irresistible surfaces.His large body of verse, however, is little known outside France. This generous sampling, anchored by the complete Émaux et Camées, perhaps Gautier's supreme poetic achievement, and including poems from the vigorously exotic España and several early collections, not only succeeds in bringing these poems into English but also rediscovers them, renewing them in the process of translation. Norman Shapiro's translations have been widely praised for their formal integrity, sonic acuity, tonal sensitivities, and overall poetic qualities, and he employs all these gifts in this collection. Mining one of the crucial treasures of the French tradition, Shapiro makes a major contribution to world letters.
Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more--including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled Remembering Gwen.
By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks's Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.
This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage--including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.