Book by Seidel, Frederick

The second book of an extravagant work in progressWhat's JoelGot to do but let the jewelHatchThe light and hookIt to the fleshIt will outlastAnd point the staring womanAt a mirror? --from "The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal"Dante's Divine Comedy begins with a journey through Hell and ends in Heaven. Frederick Seidel's Cosmos Poems trilogy begins in the heavens, with The Cosmos Poems, and descends.Life on Earth is the second book in this trilogy. It includes natural and human history, which are the history of the self, and biography, which is the history of everything else, told in vignettes of beauty, sublimity, horror, and regret.

Area Code 212 is the journey's end in ice and flames of Seidel's brilliant Cosmos Poems trilogy. Reversing the order and outlook of Dante's Divine Comedy , Seidel's three-book series begins in the heavens (with The Cosmos Poems ) and then descends steeply--through the Purgatory of Life on Earth , the second volume--to at last arrive at home, in Manhattan, with its famous area code.

Here is the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Erica Jong's very first book: a surrealistic, funny, gastronomic, erotic, serious look at being human and female and American. Erica Jong, the best-selling author of Fear of Flying, and more recently, Fear of Fifty, began her literary life as a poet. Fruits & Vegetables, originally published in 1971, offers a glimpse into the daring, erotic imagination of a young author of great promise. Here is a writer who puts metaphors in her oven, fruits and vegetables in her bed. In her tide poem, Jong considers the character of the onion: "Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away . . ." Throughout her debut collection, Erica Jong demonstrates a remarkable adventurousness, erudition, lyricism, and command of the poetic form. At the same time, she examines many of the themes she will pursue in years to come. On the subject of desire, she writes: "The corruption begins with the eyes, / the page, the hunger. / It hangs on the first hook / of the first comma.... The corruption begins with the mouth, / the tongue, the wanting. / The first poem in the world / is I want to eat. For the many fans who have yet to discover-or rediscover-where the literary career of Erica Jong began, this special anniversary edition of Fruits & Vegetables, complete with a new preface by the author, is a must.

"The poems of Elizabeth Brewster demonstrate a sense of isolation, a quest for selfhood, a desire to understand and to be understood. Often conversational in tone, her poems are direct and characterized by a deliberate economy of language and freedom from the restrictions of traditional form. Selected by writer and poet Ingrid Ruthig."--

"She is a shimmering, melancholy angel, flown from Paradise to save him from the suburbs of hell. He an accountant, dreaming of a white Christmas, a little garden and someone to love. A storm of romance and slapstick, of heavenly and earthly delights, in this dystopian philosophical poem about individual freedom and the search for the good life."--Back cover

'In the later twentieth century Robert Burns was sorely in need of commentators to provide fuller analysis of a figure whose cultural reputation too often overshadowed his literary achievement. The brilliance of David Daiches as a literary critic filled much of the gap. His readings are a cornerstone of modern Burns studies.' Gerry Carruthers, Director, Centre for Robert Burns Studies, University of Glasgow An Edinburgh graduate in the 1930s, the early part of David Daiches' long and distinguished academic career was spent in the United States. However, after spells at Chicago and Cornell Universities, in 1951 he returned to Cambridge as a Lecturer in English. Ten years later he chose to leave Cambridge for the new University of Sussex where he was the first Professor and Dean in the School of English Studies. Retiring in 1977, he returned to Edinburgh where he continued to play an exceptionally active role in Scotland's intellectual and cultural life until his death in 2005. A polymath of English letters, Daiches' scholarly interests ranged extremely widely, but in no field is his influence more creative and enduring than in that of Scottish Literature. Our understanding of Scotland's literary culture in the eighteenth century, of Burns, of Scott, of Stevenson and McDiarmid, was transformed by his work. Originally published in 1951, his Robert Burns is a brilliant example of his ground-breaking scholarship and criticism at its most illuminating.

An illustrated collection of short poems about bedtime, rivers, seasons, and other topics.

In hilarious verse, Boris Johnson casts a satirical eye over the phenomena of 'pushy parents', and shows that if you push your children far enough they might just push back!