Trenchant, occasionally splenetic, and always brutally funny, Romanian-born Codrescu confronts the convulsions of our post-ideological world at a time when "the advent of cyberspace and the caffeinating of America has occurred simultaneously." With these newest essays from 1994 and 1995 - some that are straight off the NPR airwaves and some that have served as magazine pieces or speeches - Codrescu takes us on a roller-coaster tour through our own dramatically changing country. Making stops along the way to observe the shifting American landscape, our incisive guide confronts, among other curiosities: the ever-increasing illusion of democracy; the Internet and sex in the cyber age; the rise and rerise of the religious Right; the grotesquerie born out of the cooling shards of post-Communism; the transformation of the American palate; the ascendance of vampirism; and the new millennial contagion. Andrei Codrescu has been keeping his audience abreast of the absurdities of American culture for over ten years, and his trademark irony, buoyant paranoia, and mystical cynicism are once again in ample evidence in this collection. Along for the ride are all of his familiar characters, including puppets, fascists, airplanes, and Greyhound buses, but now his menagerie has expanded to include one electronically adjusted dog, Miss America, and an alligator god.

Offers profiles of ancient Greek writers, including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, and traces the development of Greek literature.

"Paul Celan is one of the essential poets--not just of the twentieth century, but of all time. Pierre Joris's selections from the remarkable, heart-shattering work provide what is surely the best one-volume introduction to Celan ever published in English."--Paul Auster "No twentieth-century poet pierces the heart of language with such an exquisite blade as Paul Celan. With Pierre Joris & company's translations of key poems, poetics, letters, and exemplary commentary, it is as if we are reading Celan for the last time, once again."--Charles Bernstein, author of With Strings "Joris has dwelled during the better part of his life in Celan's words and silences and, as his brilliant introduction demonstrates, he has journeyed through the work's intricacies like very few others."--Michael Palmer, author of The Promises of Glass "A beautiful--and necessary--book. Celan's charred radiance shines through every page."--Richard Sieburth, translator of Hymns and Fragments

What can reading for the gender of signature tell us about the act of reading as a poetics and politics? In Subject to Change Miller demonstrates the textual effects of female authorship in the production, reception, and circulation of women's writing. In the wake of Roland Barthes's famously Dead Author, Miller argues for the cultural vitality of feminist writing subjects.

Written between 1947 and 1960 and first published in 1963, the prose work in the first of these two volumes reflects Louis Zukofsky's ongoing obsession with Shakespeare-whose plays he had first seen performed in Yiddish-and is central to understanding Zukofsky's work. Tracing the themes of knowledge, love and physical vision ("the eyes have it") through both Shakespeare's plays and the poetry, Bottom: On Shakespeare is more than a compendious act of homage by one poet to another. In effect, it lays out Zukofsky's poetics and theory of knowledge on a grand scale, tracing his themes through the whole of Western culture, from the Classical Greeks through William Carlos Williams. The second volume of Bottom: On Shakespeare consists of Celia Thaew Zukofsky's spare operatic setting of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a play in which Zukofsky saw Shakespeare rewriting the classic plots and tropes of the Odyssey. The Wesleyan edition features a new foreword by Bob Perelman.

The author discusses his life and career as a poet, examines the work of Whitman, Wordsworth, William Carlos Williams, Conrad, and V.S. Naipaul, and explores aspects of writing

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Lyrical works by the New England writer probe aspects of the scholarly life, contemporary America, and nature

In this lively and intellectually engaging book, Galit Hasan-Rokem shows that religion is shaped not only in the halls of theological disputation and institutions of divine study, but also in ordinary events of everyday life. Common aspects of human relations offer a major source for the symbols of religious texts and rituals of late antique Judaism as well as its partner in narrative dialogues, early Christianity, Hasan-Rokem argues. Focusing on the "neighborhood" of the Galilee that is the birthplace of many major religious and cultural developments, this book brings to life the riddles, parables, and folktales passed down in Rabbinic stories from the first half of the first millennium of the Common Era.

Elana Sztokman arrived in Israel in 1993 as a young religious mother wearing a long skirt and a hat covering her hair. Today, nearly 30 years later, after spending years fighting for women's rights in Orthodoxy, writing books about gender in religion, and eventually leaving that world behind, she confronts the personal struggles behind the public persona, revealing the traumas from her past that affected her entire relationship with her body. From two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Council Award comes a refreshing and very personal exploration of cultures of the female body in Jewish life. This collection of essays - marking the 25-year anniversary of her feminist awakening and spanning a diverse career of research, writing, and advocacy around Jewish women's experiences - offers political and personal insights and retrospectives on some of the most burning issues today. Topics include: sexuality, relationships, body-image, body-cover, ritual immersion, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. Elana brings her characteristic honesty, courage, wit, and profound insight into her writing, and shares some of her own traumas that set her on a sometimes tortuous life path.

Originally published in 1959, the basis of this book was a course of lectures given at Cambridge University entitled Three Traditions of Moral Thought: Platonic-Christian; Utilitarian; Humanist. Designed chiefly for students of literature, and maintaining the accessible structure of the original lectures, it was intended to provide an introduction to English moral thought and the problems of moral philosophy. Whilst this approach necessarily involved an avoidance of a 'pure' philosophical method, it was enriched by fresh perspectives derived from literary criticism and a direct, non-technical style. This is an informative volume that will be of value to anyone with an interest in moral philosophy, literary criticism, and the relationship between the two.

An exhaustive index in Yiddish and English to Yiddish-language periodicals and collective volumes of linguistic interest which were published in Europe and the US between 1913 and 1958. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Content's Essays, 1975-1984 is the celebrated introduction to language poetry by one of its leading practitioners, Charles Bernstein. First published in 1986, and now a classic study of the poetry and poetics of late-twentieth-century America, this collection of essays conducts us with wit, intelligence, and consummate style through the elaborate relations between language and culture. Bernstein considers verbal, pictorial, and filmic language to understand why writing is never the unmediated expression of personal feeling but always charged with latent meaning.Addressing a wide range of arts, Bernstein's essays move gracefully from discussions of Mad Max, Stan Brakhage, and Arakawa, to William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukovsky and Jackson Mac Low. Rather than propose grand theories, Bernstein synthesizes the many sets of ideas that are necessary for a practical understanding of contemporary culture. Reading a variety of texts and expanding on his own thinking and method, Bernstein provides a brilliant introduction not only to language writing but to all avant-garde literary ambitions of the last two decades of the century.At once irreverent and deeply serious, as indebted to Groucho Marx as it is to Stanley Cavell, Content's Dream stakes out a clear cultural and aesthetic position for one extraordinary poet, for language poetry, and for our time.

Kenneth Goldsmith's Theory offers an unprecedented reading of the contemporary world: 500 texts – from poems and musings to short stories – printed on 500 pages assembled in the form of a ream of paper. Curated by the author-poet, this unique collection maps out the various issues and trends in contemporary literature in a world currently being shaken up by everything online and digital,and calls for the reinvention of creative forms.

fiction

This collection of accessible, idiosyncratic essays explores such enduring literary concepts as character, style, tone, and genre. All have their origin in Howe's passion, moral striving, and abiding faith in the common reader. Edited and with an Introduction by Nicholas Howe.

Text: English, Italian (translation)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.