'Although he was not one of the most prolific writers of his time, A.M. Klein has acquired through the excellence of his five books one of the highest literary reputation in North America. His influence on and encouragement of the younger Jewish writers of the United States and Canada is undeniable when we consider the works of such artists as Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Morecai Richler and numerous others. A.M. Klein's poetry draws heavily on the Jewish-North America experience. He knows the past and his traditions and expresses them with magnificence and density. His awareness of the urban-ethnic predicament and the incredible demands imposed by social difference and personal aspirations expresses itself in literary brilliance. His imagery is uniquely mythopoeic, his structures are truly elaborate ; his knowledge and understanding of the historical and the individual have remark scope and focus. The Collected poems of A.M. Klein is not only composite available collection of the poet's work, it is a testament to Klein's creative genius. He was a scholar, a politician, a social reformer, an artist, a craftsman, a dreamer....There have been very few writers like A.M. Klein.'- Publisher

'Although he was not one of the most prolific writers of his time, A.M. Klein has acquired through the excellence of his five books one of the highest literary reputation in North America. His influence on and encouragement of the younger Jewish writers of the United States and Canada is undeniable when we consider the works of such artists as Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Morecai Richler and numerous others. A.M. Klein's poetry draws heavily on the Jewish-North America experience. He knows the past and his traditions and expresses them with magnificence and density. His awareness of the urban-ethnic predicament and the incredible demands imposed by social difference and personal aspirations expresses itself in literary brilliance. His imagery is uniquely mythopoeic, his structures are truly elaborate ; his knowledge and understanding of the historical and the individual have remark scope and focus. The Collected poems of A.M. Klein is not only composite available collection of the poet's work, it is a testament to Klein's creative genius. He was a scholar, a politician, a social reformer, an artist, a craftsman, a dreamer....There have been very few writers like A.M. Klein.'- Publisher

U.A. Fanthorpe's Christmas Poems gathers together the poems she wrote and sent to friends as Christmas cards from 1974 to 2002. Now readers can enjoy Fanthorpe's yearly output in its entirety. Her subject matter covers a broad range of seasonal characters, from angels to personified Christmas trees, and a variety of styles to match, from moments of beautiful lyricism to the comically touching Gloucestershire foxes begging baby Jesus to visit: 'Come live wi we under Westridge / Where the huntin folk be few'. Fanthorpe is witty and highly original, rethinking the Christmas story from quirky angles, to create her own alternative Christmas legend – from the cat and the sheep-dog left out of the stable, to the wicked fairy's gifts for Jesus. Above all, these poems are celebrations of Christmas joy and love.

"Griffin's poems achieve a clarity which lies beyond the 'rational' Cartesian tradition, each fragment rescued from a realm of wider under-standing - that 'unremembered country' of the soul.'--on dust jacket flap.

From An Explanation of America : LAIR Robert Pinsky ? Inexhaustible, delicate, as if Without source or medium, daylight Undoes the mind; the infinite, Empty actual is too bright, Scattering to where the road Whispers, through a mile of woods ... Later, how quiet the house is: Dusk-like and refined, The sweet Phoebe-note Piercing from the trees; The calm globe of the morning, Things to read or to write Ranged on a table; the brain A dark, stubborn current that breathes Blood, a deaf wadding, The hands feeding it paper And sensations of wood or metal On its own terms. Trying to read I persist a while, finish the recognition By my breath of a dead giant's breath-- Stayed by the space of a rhythm, Witnessing the blue gulf of the air.

Weather is a sublime, chilling, and hilarious twelve-poem-long set of variations on, or mutations departing from, one short lyrical text ["The weather was still exciting. The whole city seemed to optically snap with the cool brightness of the just-moist light and air ricocheting in pings and flapping planes from surface of stone to surface of stone around and through the teeming traffic flesh and pumped out metal fumes and fresh water widely below and entering the underlooked and overseeing sky."] The perfect cover art is by Christopher Wool (whose giant show that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A., is now at the Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh).

A collection of poems about the unique experiences and emotions of childhood.

Drawing extensively upon the poet's unpublished manuscripts--poems, journals, essays, and letters--as well as all his published works, Marjorie Perloff presents Frank O'Hara as one of the central poets of the postwar period and an important critic of the visual arts. Perloff traces the poet's development through his early years at Harvard and his interest in French Dadaism and Surrealism to his later poems that fuse literary influence with elements from Abstract Expressionist painting, atonal music, and contemporary film. This edition contains a new Introduction addressing O'Hara's homosexuality, his attitudes toward racism, and changes in poetic climate cover the past few decades. "A groundbreaking study. [This book] is a genuine work of criticism. . . . Through Marjorie Perloff's book we see an O'Hara perhaps only his closer associates saw before: a poet fully aware of the traditions and techniques of his craft who, in a life tragically foreshortened, produced an adventurous if somewhat erratic body of American verse."--David Lenson, Chronicle of Higher Education "Perloff is a reliable, well-informed, discreet, sensitive . . . guide. . . . She is impressive in the way she deals with O'Hara's relationship to painters and paintings, and she does give first-rate readings of four major poems."--Jonathan Cott, New York Times Book Review

Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's leading and most prolific men of letters; a poet, philosopher, and fiction writer with dozens of books to his credit since his literary debut, at the age of twenty, in 1956. Although known in the English-speaking world primarily for his novels, Gustafsson is nevertheless one of the most frequently translated of contemporary Swedish poets. Elegies and Other Poems is a companion volume to The Stillness of the World before Bach (New Directions, 1988). As in that earlier volume, editor Christopher Middleton has made his selection from several of the poet's books and included his own translations as well as those of others, Yvonne Sandstroem, Bill Brookshire, and Philip Martin. Readers of Gustafsson's fiction will recognize in his verse the elegant mix of intellect and sheer play, the ruminations of a mind that apprehends humanity in the riddles of the universe.

Ladin continues the journey of self from one gender to the next--a journey of the soul in and out of flesh

Available in paperback for the first time, Jenny Strauss Clay's landmark study of the Odyssey argues that Athena's wrath is central to both the structure and the theme of the epic poem. Clay demonstrates that an appreciation of the thematic role of Athena's anger elucidates the poem's complex narrative organization and its conception of the hierarchical relations between gods and men. This edition includes a new introduction by the author.

This collection of the most beloved and brilliant poems from Howard Nemerov's fruitful career also introduces twenty-three new poems in a section entitled "Trying Conclusions." Written during his tenure as the nation's Poet Laureate, these new poems are imbued with vivid intelligence, an irreverent sense of humor, and masterful wit—trademarks of the Nemerov legacy.