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Poetry
Cold missiles and a rain of embers accompany the men who slide like shadows into the city faces mud-smeared stones for teeth no eyes
who slit the throats of everyone they encounter until breaking down my door they drag me into the darkness that floods the corridor and lock me in an icy chamber --from "THE LAST HOURS OF LAÓDIKÊ, SISTER OF HEKTOR"
Willard Bohn s collection of Dada poetry is the most comprehensive ever compiled. Forty-two poets writing in seven different languages (French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and Dutch) are presented in a bilingual format, where appropriate, with the original text and its English translation on facing pages. The collection, which opens with a critical and historical introduction, spans the years from 1914 to 1923 and includes such poets as Walter Conrad Arensberg, Andre Breton, Malcolm Cowley, Max Ernst, Mina Loy, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and Tristan Tzara. Twelve works by ten Dada visual artists (six of whom are also represented by their poetry) illustrate the book.
Dada s overriding concern was libertysocial, moral, artistic, and intellectual. While rebelling against bourgeois values and all forms of authority, the Dadaists venerated scandalous behavior, spontaneity, and a general "joie de vivre. "Their adherents questioned the basic postulates of rationalism and humanism as few had done before. In trying to strip artistic expression down to its bare essentials, these writers often created works that were experiments in sound or typography."
Praise for The Dark Interval "Even though each of these letters of condolence is personalized with intimate detail, together they hammer home Rilke's remarkable truth about the death of another: that the pain of it can force us into a 'deeper . . . level of life' and render us more 'vibrant.' Here we have a great poet's reflections on our greatest mystery."--Billy Collins
"As we live our lives, it is possible to feel not sadness or melancholy but a rush of power as the life of others passes into us. This rhapsodic volume teaches us that death is not a negation but a deepening experience in the onslaught of existence. What a wise and victorious book!"--Henri Cole
Winner of the 2001 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.
Barot's mature linguistic skills really come down to a metaphorical and musical intelligence that refuses to value one element over another, that will not let the language or the longing take over.--From the Foreword by Stanley Plumly
This is a book of lyric wonders: wit that turns dark, darkness that blazes up again in music and story.--Eavan Boland Rick Barot is currently Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. He was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Wesleyan University, the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and Stanford, where he was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in Poetry.
Dictee tells the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha's mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. This dynamic autobiography:
The result is an enduringly powerful, beautiful, unparalleled work.
Jenny George's debut showcases an astonishing poetic talent, a new voice that is intensely focused, patient, and empathic. The Dream of Reason explores the paradoxical relationships between humans and the animals we imagine, keep, fear, and consume. Titled after Goya's grotesque bestiary, George's own dreamscape is populated by purring moths, bats that crawl like goblins, and livestock--especially pigs, whose spirit and slaughter inform a central series of portraits. The poems invite moments of stark realism into a spacious, lucid realm just outside of time--finding revelation in stillness, intimacy in violence, and vision in language that lifts from the dark.
From "Threshold Gods"
I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week
I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows
across the porch like a goblin.
It was early evening. I want to ask about death.
But first I want to ask about flying.
Jenny George lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a foundation for Buddhist-based social justice. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
The Lost Words of the Sufi Master and Father of Rumi
Bahauddin, Rumi's father, was not only a major force in the development of Islamic spirituality, but also a deeply influential force in his son's life. In this, the first ever substantial English version of a wonderful but virtually unknown book, Bahauddin proves to be a daring, spiritual genius. His voice comes through the delightful, passionate craft of Coleman Barks, who transforms the Persian translations of John Moyne into fresh spiritual literature.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
-from "The First Elegy"
Rainer Maria Rilke was one of Germany's most important poets. His influences include the paintings of the Worpswedders and the French Impressionists, the sculpture of Rodin (to whom he was both friend and secretary), and the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and other symbolists. His poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and entertainingly idiosyncratic. C.F. MacIntyre's translations are both true to the original and poetic in their own right, and in each book he includes an introduction and notes. German text faces the English translation.
Translator C. F. MacIntyre declares these works as among the great and unforgettable poetry of the world. His interpretations are both true to the originals and poetic in their own right. This dual-language edition features English translations on the pages facing the original German. Poetry lovers, students of German literature and language, and other readers will find this volume an accessible exploration of one of modern literature's most profound sequences of poetry.
Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies are one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century. Begun in 1912 while the poet was a guest at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea and completed in a final bout of feverish inspiration in 1922, the ten elegies survey the mysteries of consciousness, whether human or animal, earthly or divine. Poet and translator Alfred Corn brings us closer to Rilke's meaning than ever before and illuminates the elegies' celebration of life and love. Also included are a critical introduction exploring the nuances of the translation, several thematically linked lyrics, and two of the "Letters to a Young Poet" to complete the volume.
Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, E. E. Cummings, together with Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. Today Cummings is recognized as the author of some of the most sensuous lyric poems in the English language, as well as one of the most inventive American poets of his time. Formally fractured and yet gleefully alive and whole, at once cubistic and figurative, Cummings's work expanded the boundaries of what language is and can do.
With a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, this redesigned, newly corrected, and fully reset edition of Complete Poems collects and presents all the poems published or designated for publication by E. E. Cummings in his lifetime. It includes 36 poems that were first collected in the 1991 edition and 164 unpublished poems issued in 1983 under the title Etcetera. It spans his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up through his last valedictory sonnets.
In the words of Randall Jarrell, "No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to the general and special reader."