"Why do we spend time reading and discussing books which tell of events which never in fact occurred?" The question is elementary - and yet, as David Daiches suggests in this provocative study, it is the elementary questions that are never answered. Although literary criticism today is more concerned with technique than with the basic question of value, the question of value underlies all the others. Professor Daiches therefore directs this book to the search for the basic function and purpose of imaginative prose and poetry. A Study of Literature is not, however, an obscure book of literary theory; it contains abundant and pungent examples and critical analyses - of prose fiction, of modern writing, and of the nature of poetry. "It's main purpose," as Professor Daiches says, "is to help the reader of works of imaginative literature to see what he is reading, to understand just what it is that he gets from different kinds of reading, and to discriminate between those different kinds."

"Biespiel’s supple memoir of becoming a poet will surely inspire other writers to embrace the bodily character of writing and feel the power and, sometimes, the emptiness of the act of writing poetry." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Education of a Young Poet is David Biespiel’s moving account of his awakening to writing and the language that can shape a life. Exploring the original source of his creative impulse—a great–grandfather who traveled alone from Ukraine to America in 1910, eventually settling as a rag peddler in the tiny town of Elma, Iowa—through the generations that followed, Biespiel tracks his childhood in Texas and his university days in the northeast, led along by the ""pattern and random bursts that make up a life." His book offers an intimate recollection of how one person forges a life as a writer during extraordinary times. From the Jewish quarter of Houston in the 1970s to bohemian Boston in the 1980s, from Russia’s Pale of Settlement to a farming village in Vermont, Biespiel remains alert to the magic of possibilities—ancestral journeys, hash parties, political rallies, family connections, uncertain loves, the thrill of sex, and lasting friendships. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft coupled with a classic coming–of–age tale that does for Boston in the 1980s what Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s and Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage did for Greenwich Village in the 1950s. Restless with curiosity and enthusiasm, The Education of a Young Poet is a singular and universal bildungsroman that movingly demonstrates, "in telling the story of one’s coming into consciousness, all languages are more or less the same."

Whether you're a savvy mom of teens or a new mom trying to get baby to sleep, this book is for you. A must read for every mom who ever said: "Stop rocking on the chair!" Not your average poetry book, Ode to Chores is a clever and entertaining view of parenting, motherhood, children, pets, and the life and times of moms on call 24/7. ------------------ The Inspiration For This Book The whole thing started because I was lonely. I spent hours every day with my little kids, which I really loved for a while, but my husband was gone A LOT, and when he came home, he was all talked out. He just wanted to spend a little time with his two boys roughhousing and eating Oreo Thins. Plans with friends were few and far between because we were all busy shuffling kids to school and activities when we weren't working jobs, or doing house projects, or stumping for our chosen elected officials, or reconnecting with our significant others. In the meantime, exhausted at the end of every day, I still wanted to be an artist, a writer, and a musician. I'd been on stage for 25 years and suddenly the only singing I was doing was lullabies at 3 AM in a rocking chair trying to get my little muffin to sleep. . . just for a little while. . . sleep muffin, sleep. Somewhere along the way, I put down my pen and found myself deep in the stuff of kids. Then, one evening after an especially frustrating dinner with the boys, I sent everyone off to their rooms, flipped over an envelope lying in the mess on the dining room table, and wrote the poem Stop Rocking on the Chair. I was surprised at how satisfying it was to say it on the page. From there I started writing these "mom poems" all the time. As I did, I felt less and less alone. I was not only writing about my experience but a thread of experience that connected to moms all over the world and through time. The common language of motherhood reconnected me to my creativity and other people at the same time. I first thought I wrote this book for myself, but it turns out I wrote this book for you. I hope it brings you joy and even makes you cry. I hope it brings mothers together and inspires you to make some art and put it out into the world, so we can all have a moment of connection together. Call me. We'll have coffee. ------------------ About the Author Brenda Kahn is a poet, memoirist and an international recording artist who has shared the stage with Bob Dylan, David Byrne, and Jeff Buckley. She has expertise in changing both guitar strings and diapers. She is a writer of songs, poetry, memoir, and excuse notes for sick kids. She can paint and spackle like nobody's business and will also perform a cover of Bessie Smith's Ain't Nobody's Business if you request it at a live show. She lives in South Salem, NY with her husband and two boys, her golden retriever (Barley Patches), her two cats (Fluffy and Colby) and Ekko the crested gecko. Learn more about Bren at www.brendakahn.com Stay connected and support her work at www.BrendaKahn.com/Patreon

How do we imagine the unimaginable? If we're asked to think of an object - say, a yellow tulip - a picture immediately forms in our mind's eye. But what if we try to imagine a concept such as the square root of a negative number? It sounds impossible, yet as this enchanting, quizzical and evocative book shows, the art of mathematical imagining is not as mysterious as it seems. Drawing on poetry, literature and philosophy, Barry Mazur shows how we can all make the leap of imagination in order to start visualizing the enigmatic 'imaginary numbers' that first baffled mathematicians in the sixteenth century - and are now seen as the bedrock of the universe.

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries.This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments.

For years scholars of biblical poetry have defined parallelism as the simple correspondence of one verse, phrase, or word with another. In this book, Adele Berlin approaches biblical parallelism as a linguistic phenome non, as a complex interplay among all aspects of language. Her goal is to get at the basics of what biblical parallelism is and how it works. Berlin's examination of the grammatical, lexical, semantic, phonetic, structural, and psychological aspects of parallelism yields an elegantly simple model that reveals the complex workings of this phenomenon. Her book will be a valuable guide for both scholars and students of biblical poetry.

Written soon after the founding of the state of Israel, "The Second Scroll" is A.M. Klein's most innovative and visionary work. The five "books" of the novel are a modern testament of Jewish experience to which are appended "glosses" or commentaries in the form of drama, epistle, poetry, and psalm. The action centres on a young writer from Montreal, whose search for his legendary Uncle Melech becomes a journey of revelation through Italy, Morocco, and the Holy Land. Dissident and exile, reformer and scholar, Melech is a messianic figure who enacts the destiny of his people and embodies the spiritual yearnings of everyman. "The Second Scroll," Klein's only novel, combines the lyric genius of his poetic works with compelling reportage to create one of the most eloquent and original works in Canadian fiction.

Written soon after the founding of the state of Israel, The Second Scroll is A.M. Klein’s most innovative and visionary work. The five “books” of the novel are a modern testament of Jewish experience to which are appended “glosses” or commentaries in the form of drama, epistle, poetry, and psalm. The action centres on a young writer from Montreal, whose search for his legendary Uncle Melech becomes a journey of revelation through Italy, Morocco, and the Holy Land. Dissident and exile, reformer and scholar, Melech is a messianic figure who enacts the destiny of his people and embodies the spiritual yearnings of everyman. The Second Scroll, Klein’s only novel, combines the lyric genius of his poetic works with compelling reportage to create one of the most eloquent and original works in Canadian fiction.

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

"The first trade edition of new poems by punk progenitor and acclaimed writer Richard Hell since he largely abandoned poetry at the age of 22 includes also a valedictory essay, "Falling Asleep," and a "list" of recent notebook writings, and art by Christopher Wool. Richard Hell dropped out of high school shortly after turning 17 to move to New York and become a poet, 1967. He succeeded at that but by 1973 had forsaken poetry writing for the composition of aggressive, lyrical songs that would soon be scorned and hailed as punk. After 10 years as a professional musician, in 1984 he switched again, leaving music and resuming writing but now prose-fiction and essays mostly. Come 2020, pandemic time, Hell, at the age of 70, found himself gratified, in lockdown isolation, to finally become a poet, a working poet without distractions or competing intentions, content(ish) to struggle the days into mediums for poems. The result comprises one half of this volume. The second half of the book consists of an essay called "Falling Asleep" and a list of note(book) entries called "Chronicle." "Falling Asleep," from 2019, is Hell's equivalent to Poe's late-life summing up of his conception of the universe, "Eureka" (but better). "Chronicle," compiled in 2021 at the behest of Adam Marnie for his F Publications pamphlet series, captures in 88 numbered entries Richard's view and experience of recent years"--

An “exquisite . . . spot on” ( The Hudson Review ) collection of poems from one of our best-loved and best-selling poets that is both personal, with poetry about love, nature and reflections on the stages of life, and political, ranging from the war in Iraq and Katrina to concerns such as women’s rights and the poet’s childhood in Detroit.

"Another winning collection from one of our most read and enjoyed poets: a bountiful group of poems that reflect on language, nature, old age, young love, Judaism, and our current politics--all in her usual direct and mind-tingling fashion. "Words are my business," Marge Piercy begins her twentieth collection of poetry, a glance back at a lifetime of learning, loving, grieving, and fighting for the disenfranchised; and a look forward at what the future holds for herself, her family and friends, and her embattled country. In the opening pages, Piercy tells of her childhood in Detroit, with its vacant lots and scrappy children, the bike that gave her wings, her ambition at fourteen to "gobble" down all knowledge, a too early marriage ("I put on my first marriage / like a girdle my skinny body / didn't need.") We then leap into the Twilight Zone "after the knee has been replaced," where she is "learning to be quiet," learning to give praise despite it all. There are funny poems about medicine ads with their dire warnings, and some possible plusses about being dead: "I will never have to do another load of laundry . . ." There is "comfort in old bodies coming together," in a partner's warmth--"You're always warm: warm hands / smooth back sleek as a Burmese cat./ Sunny weather outside and in." Piercy has long been known for her political poems and her love of cats, and here there are plenty of both. Illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, President-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language--it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life"--

Jerome Rothenberg is one of the major poets of his generation. His work in ethnopoetics, Native American and tribal poetics, Jewish identities, avant-garde poetry, and experimental translation is vital to contemporary poetry and literary studies. Writing Through couples Rothenberg's translations from a variety of non-English sources with his thought-provoking commentary. It also includes a selection of his poetry ("Otherings & Variations") in which the language of significant others forms the basis of original compositions. The result is a lively and unique anthology which illustrates how poetry, like translation, can be viewed as an act of "writing through" the words of others. Translated poets in Writing Through include Celan, Lorca, Nezval, Schwitters, Picasso and Gomringer. The book also includes Rothenberg's radical translations from oral poetries, "variations" derived from the vocabularies of translated poems, and a series of "gematria poems" employing a traditional form of Jewish numerology. In addition to Rothenberg's groundbreaking essay on "total translation," the book is interspersed with his helpful commentaries and notes, which illuminate a major aspect of his total poetics.

"You Can't Like Seidel's Poems--They're Deliberately Virulent; You Can Only Gasp At Their Skill And Daring, Their Sickening Warp, Their Mercilessness."* Frederick Seidel's highly acclaimed Cosmos Trilogy is a triple thunderclap of darkness from the poet whom Richard Poirier has recently called "the true heir of Walt Whitman" and of whose first book Robert Lowell wrote "[I] suspect the possibilities of modern poetry have been changed. Here is power that strikes." Reversing the course of Dante's Divine Comedy , Seidel's trilogy begins in the heavens, with The Cosmos Poems , and descends, passing through the Purgatorio of Life on Earth to arrive in Manhattan in Area Code 212 .

Opening with a powerful cycle of elegies for her long-distant, half-brother, this major new collection by one of our bestselling poets then goes on to include both serious and funny poems about women and poems about the precarious balance of nature, ending with the beautiful, life-affirming "The Art of Blessing the Day." 160 pp.

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street—these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky's work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: "I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry." That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America ; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart ; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante ; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music . That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume.

Ooga-Booga is Seidel's 10th collection of poetry.