Poetry

A stylistic tour de force, EIMI is a mélange of styles and tones, the prose containing many abbreviations, grammatical and syntactical shifts, typographical devices, compounds, and word coinages. This is Cummings's invigorating and unique voice at its finest, and EIMI is without question one of his most substantial accomplishments.

NOW

When I spoke
they said I was mute;
when I wrote
they said I was blind;
when I left them
they said I was lame.
When they were calling me back
they found out I was deaf.
They turned my senses upside-down
and came to the conclusion I was crazy.
Now I am happy.

This bilingual collection of Neruda's most essential poems is indispensable.

Selected by a team of poets and prominent Neruda scholars in both Chile and the U.S., this is a definitive selection that draws from the entire breadth and width of Neruda's various styles and themes.

An impressive group of translators that includes Alistair Reid, Stephen Mitchell, Robert Hass, Stephen Kessler and Jack Hirschman, have come together to revisit or completely retranslate the poems; and a handful of previously untranslated works are included as well.

This selection sets the standard for a general, high-quality introduction to Neruda's complete oeuvre.

...The Essential Neruda will prove to be, for most readers, the best introduction to Neruda available in English. In fact, I can think of few other books that have given me so much delight so easily. --The Austin Chronicle

This book is a must-have for any reader interested in a definitive sampling of the most essential poems by one whom many consider one of the best poets of the 20th century.--Mike Nobles, Tulsa World

A splendid way to begin a love affair with our Pablo or, having already succumbed to his infinite charms, revisit him passionately again and again and yet again.--Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden

The editors and translators know how to extract gold from a lifetime of prolific writing. If you want a handy Neruda companion and don't know where to begin, this is it.--The Bloomsbury Review

"The Essential W.S. Merwin beautifully demonstrates why Merwin has been one of America's most decorated and important poets for more than 60 years."--The Washington Post

"Merwin is one of the great poets of our age."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Merwin has become instantly recognizable on the page; he has made for himself that most difficult of all creations, an accomplished style."--Helen Vendler, New York Review of Books

"It is gratifying to read poetry that is this ambitious, that cares about vision and the possibilities of poetry, by a poet who is capable of so much change."--The Nation

Noah's Raven

Why should I have returned?

My knowledge would not fit into theirs.

I found untouched the desert of the unknown,

Big enough for my feet. It is my home.

It is always beyond them. The future

Splits the present with the echo of my voice.

Hoarse with fulfillment. I never made promises.

Since launching his career by winning the Yale Younger Poets Award 1952, W. S. Merwin has authored dozens of books of poetry, prose, and translation. A beloved voice in American literature, Merwin is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Hawaii, within the palm forest where he wrote, "On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree."

William Blake, overlooked in his time, remains an enigmatic figure to contemporary readers despite his near canonical status. Out of a wounding sense of alienation and dividedness he created a profoundly original symbolic language, in which words and images unite in a unique interpretation of self and society. He was a counterculture prophet whose art still challenges us to think afresh about almost every aspect of experience--social, political, philosophical, religious, erotic, and aesthetic. He believed that we live in the midst of Eternity here and now, and that if we could open our consciousness to the fullness of being, it would be like experiencing a sunrise that never ends.

Following Blake's life from beginning to end, acclaimed biographer Leo Damrosch draws extensively on Blake's poems, his paintings, and his etchings and engravings to offer this generously illustrated account of Blake the man and his vision of our world. The author's goal is to inspire the reader with the passion he has for his subject, achieving the imaginative response that Blake himself sought to excite. The book is an invitation to understanding and enjoyment, an invitation to appreciate Blake's imaginative world and, in so doing, to open the doors of our perception.

"These poems shine with a Taoist sensibility and the wisdom and simplicity of self. John Brandi, as a traveler throughout Asia and the Americas, gives us the artist's heightened sensitivity and clarity of detail; and poems of rare precision, charm and truth."--Joanne Kyger, author of About Now

From the Himalayas, Angkor Wat, the barrios of Old Havana, the highlands of Chiapas, and the streets of New York, John Brandi's poems lead us toward rapport with the natural world and our own inner landscapes.

John Brandi is a poet, writer, and artist. He is the author of thirty-eight books of poetry and nonfiction.

If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger, Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in her stunning new collection, Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these poems, she describes--with joy--the strangeness and wonder of human connection. As in Blue Horses, Dog Songs, and A Thousand Mornings, with Felicity Oliver honors love, life, and beauty.

Figurehead, a lively, varied, and technically dazzling book, confirms the statement made by Henry Taylor in the Washington Times: "John Hollander revels in technical challenges of unusual severity and complexity, yet most of his poems also have the emotional heft of something worth pausing over and remembering."

One of the most gifted of W. H. Auden's choices for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Hollander has pursued the wide range and metrical brilliance of Auden's own poetry, so that this new book exhibits both a large compass of subject matter (from philosophical matters to personal narrative) and, as usual, some astonishing meditations on paintings--here, by Charles Sheeler, Rene Magritte, and Edward Hopper. By turns witty, touching, profound, mocking, ingenious, and always clever, Hollander's poems are a joy for the reader.

He is a modern master.

The Yale Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award in the United States. Its winners include some of the most influential voices in American poetry, including Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Margaret Walker, Carolyn Forché, and Robert Hass.

In celebration of the prize's centennial, this collection presents three selections from each Younger Poets volume. It serves as both a testament to the enduring power and significance of poetic expression and an exploration of the ways poetry has evolved over the past century. In addition to judiciously assembling this wide-ranging anthology, Carl Phillips provides an introduction to the history and impact of the Yale Younger Poets prize and its winners in the wider context of American poetry, including the evolving roles of race, gender, and sexual orientation.