Aram Saroyan's "minimal" poems of the 1960s demonstrated a completely unprecedented handling of words--often single words--that combined astounding economy with palpable textural warmth. Untitled poems that read in their entirety "eyeye" and "lobstee" evinced a pleasure in words that everybody could recognize--except Senator Jesse Helms, who publicly objected to Saroyan's poem "lighght" when its author received an NEA award--but which nobody else (except perhaps Gertrude Stein) had quite nailed until Aram Saroyan came along. In every one of Saroyan's page acts, the sound of typewriter keys inscribing blank paper are as audible to the mind's ear as the words themselves. Coffee Coffee was published as a mimeograph edition by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer's 0 To 9 imprint in 1967, and was one of Saroyan's earliest collections, containing such gems as "guarantee," "added" and "rinse." Acconci has since recorded his admiration for these works: "In the late sixties, when I called myself a poet, Aram was the poet I envied."

Amy Levy (1861-1889) was a British poet and novelist. Levy was born in Clapham, London into a Jewish family that was mildly observant, but as an adult she no longer practised Judaism although she continued to identify with the Jews as a people. Levy wrote stories, essays and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. The stories Cohen of Trinity and Wise in Their Generation, both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine Women's World, are among her best. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism. Her other works include Xantippe and Other Verse (1881), The Romance of a Shop (1888), Reuben Sachs (1888) and Miss Meredith (1889).

More blest than was of old Diogenes,I have not held my lantern up in vain.Not mine, at least, this evil--to complain:"There is none honest among all of these."Our hopes go down that sailed before the breeze;Our creeds upon the rock are rent in twain;Something it is, if at the last remainOne floating spar cast up by hungry seas.The secret of our being, who can tell?To praise the gods and Fate is not my part;Evil I see, and pain; within my heartThere is no voice that whispers: "All is well."Yet fair are days in summer; and more fairThe growths of human goodness here and there.

Allen Mandelbaum's long-awaited Savantasse of Montparnasse is a work of wonder, wit, and exhilarating originality. Of Mandelbaum's previous long poem, Chelmaxioms: The Maxims, Axioms, Maxioms of Chelm, James Wright said: ''A beautiful book: original, learned, comic in a way that only a master of many languages (like Joyce) can be comic, often lyrically lovely, and, finally, hauntingly sad. . . . I found myself startled by the extremely dense richness of its learning, only to discover, strategically placed, lyric poems of surpassing simplicity and beauty. So one might grasp the structure of the book as a rhythmical alternation between these two uses of language. Furthermore, one may read the book as a parody of extreme learning--a very deliberate parody--which is, at the same rime, a wonderful display of learning. But no matter how one approaches the book, one is always haunted by the city of Chelm and its inhabitants . . . in one sense a city literally constructed out of language, in another sense . . . a place created and transformed by the poet's imagination into a very specific, concrete town. . . . A marvelously original work . . . an important event." And now, with The Savantasse of Montparnasse, Mandelbaum has gifted us with another unforgettable volume.

The Wayward is an exploration into virtual life and theory. It uses tools from codework to traditional genre; much of its work is the result of programming intended to create systems of circulating texts. Think of The Wayward as a poetics of the imaginary, stumbling over the grounds of the real – constantly questioning linguistic referents and ‘meaning in general.’ The work is a ground-breaking exploration of the roots and structures of online and offline life, in which language simultaneously explodes and implodes. Conversations among ‘emanents’ dominate inconceivable landscapes; sexualities are constructed and deconstructed. There’s not another work like it.

Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new media artist, writer, musician, and theorist Alan Sondheim. Folding theoretical musings, text experiments, and personal confessions into a single textual flow, it examines the somatic foundations of philosophical theory and theorizing, discussing their relationships to the writer and body, and to the phenomenology of failure and fragility of philosophy's production. Writing remains writing, undercuts and corrects itself, is always superseded, always produced within an untoward and bespoke silo - not as an inconceivable last word, but instead a broken contribution to philosophical thinking. The book is based on fragmentation and collapse, displacing annihilation and wandering towards a form of "roiling" within which the text teeters on the verge of disintegration. In other words, the writing develops momentary scaffoldings - writing shored up by the very mechanisms that threaten its disappearance. Broken Theory is prefaced by a text from Maria Damon and followed by an extensive interview with art historian Ryan Whyte. Alan Sondheim is a new media artist, theorist, and writer concerned with the phenomenology of the virtual. He has collaborated with motion capture and virtual environment labs. His work is concerned with the inhabitation of the body in the virtual; with the textuality of the body; with the problematic of mixed reality and codework. His writing is known for its "somatic grit" and skeletal codes that partially appear within and determine the surface. This style embeds interferences among syntax, semantics, and formal systems. The textual body, body of text and writer, are deeply entangled. His current work is based on the psychogeography of real and virtual worlds and their modeling. Most recently he has focused on "semantic ghosting" - the body behind the virtual/symbolic body - and modes of viral dispersion in a series of videos and texts. Sondheim was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, attended Brown University, and has exhibited, taught, and lectured at a number of venues in the United States and abroad.

Poetica 19 Peter Levi's inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford discusses the lamentation of the dead in written and oral poetry from Homer and the Bible to recent times, by way of Shakespeare, Milton and the Serbian epics. He puts forward the view that `The Lament for Arthur O'Leary', composed by his widow Eileen O'Connell, is among the finest examples of the lamentation of the dead, and the greatest poem written in these islands in the whole of the eighteenth century. The text of Peter Levi's lecture is followed by Eilís Dillon's translation of the poem.

The best poetry is all about imagery. When you can "see" the poem, you can experience it fully. LIFETIMES OF DELIGHT In the beginning you fed me beautiful bits of roasted goat dipped into luminous gold bowls of cherry sauce. We lived a long and rapturously happy life in the mountains. As forest dwellers I braided my hair with wildflowers beneath the full moon, while watching you sprinkle your assortment of magical herbs into our dinner of deer, salad, and roots. Tonight I learned of saffron The city found us cold and poor but never hungry / while others starved you knew instinctively where to find food. We dined on baked squirrel & pigeon stuffed with wild lettuce and nuts topped with mint sauce. I was happiest on the coast / where daily we enjoyed a delightful mixture of wild onions, garlic, fish, eel, and crabs, wrapped in banana leaves and slow cooked inside salt bricks placed beneath our fire. This time around finds us in the countryside, and you in the kitchen preparing specialties from many countries / We eat desserts garnished with edible flowers sprinkled with sugar, served on fine lace in demitasse cups.

Reaching for Clear is David Solway's translation of poetry by Dominica's celebrated young poet Rhys Savarin. Savarin now joins the Greek Andreas Karavis and the Turkish Nesmine Rifat in the growing pantheon of figures given life by Solway. An internationalist of the imagination, Solway consolidates his reputation as one of Canada's most original poets with an exciting adaptation of Savarin's lush landscapes, both human and natural. Savarin's bewitching mix of visual acuity and vernacular, his celebratory sense of an island world hedged by magic (or what Savarin himself calls "the flora and fauna of a mythical condition"), has been vividly rendered by Solway into poems distinguished by their clarity, musicality, humour, and insight.

Karen Shenfeld's careful, concentrated language draws the reader in. Hers is a charged, physical world where figure skates are ?a shock of alpine white, ? and the Torah's ?crowned letters dance.? It is also a world marked by profound metaphysical connections where fireflies flash ?coded signals of their secret selves.? There is an irresistible brilliance and humour to several of the poems and Shenfeld's tributes to her redhot Jewish mamas - Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, and Sophie Tucker - will leave the lover of poetry wishing she?d offered more. - Kenneth Sherma

Poetry. DAY AND NIGHT collects Aram Saroyan's poems written in Bolinas in the 70s and 80s when he was a part of the well-known writers' community there. Previously, Saroyan was known for very short poems -- as, for example, his one-word poem "lighght" which became the subject of ongoing decades-long government and public debate after being chosen for a National Endowoment for the Arts Poetry Award by Robert Duncan in 1968. DAY AND NIGHT includes Saroyan's longer work. "As a writer in Bolinas, I eventually moved from an initial concentration on poetry into prose. As this happened, my poetry became more sporadic, and, I hope, as befits the passage from 28 to 37 years old, deepened. The title poem of this collection, "Day and Night," was also the last I worte in Bolinas ..." ("Afterword'). A past president of PEN Center West, Saroyan is a faculty member of the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC. He lives with his family in Santa Monica. 3/19/99

Poetry. Alison Stone's sixth collection deals with the myths, both classic and contemporary, that shape our psyches and our world. From Caligula and Medusa to Gabby Douglas and Ivanka Trump, these speakers illuminate the timeless struggles for power and love that play a central role in literature and art. Stone's speakers tell their stories in poems that both transcend culture and time and illuminate this particular historical moment.

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.