Now available in paperback, this highly acclaimed work, hailed by The New York Times as "graceful, fluid, and extremely accessible," is a study of the ways in which poets from the biblical age to the present have addressed the subject of the nature and existence of God. The book treats such authors as Dante, the medieval Hebrew religious poets, the 17th-century religious poets, and the 18th century Nature poets, and discusses, among other topics, the influence of Calvinism and the poetry of stoicism, agnosticism, and atheism. Throughout the work, Daiches examines the tensions generated when a traditional religious belief which the poet accepts, or feels he should accept, runs counter to the hard facts of his own experience. The author also considers the particular problems which have emerged in this century for the religious poet who cannot accept any specific religious creed, and for readers who are unable to appreciate a poet's set of beliefs. God and the Poets does not set out to provide a comprehensive account of the poetic portrayals of God, but offers the reader a wealth of illuminating reflections on a subject which has obsessed poets over the ages.

Scores of great poems in incomparable translations by noted British "16 Songs of Courtship," "Hymn for the Fallen," "Fighting South of the Ramparts," "Ballad of Mulan," more, plus many poems by the great Po Chü-I, including "After Passing the Examination," and "Last Poem." Splendid introduction to Chinese poetry.

It is for his poetry that A.M. Klein is best known and most warmly remembered. This collection includes all Klein's poetry, both original works and translations from Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, and Latin. Many of them, coming from all periods of his careers, have never been published. The poems are arranged chronologically according to date of composition. This makes possible, for the first time, an appreciation of Klein's poetic development. The editor's introduction places this development in the perspective of Klein's life and time, and in particular explores Klein's lifelong struggle to reconcile his dual vocations as both a Jewish and a modernist writer. The textual apparatus identifies all authoritative versions for each poem and lists all emendations and all substative variants in both published and mauscript versions. The explanatory notes gloss obscure terms and references. They also provide a rich context for appreciation and interpretation by drawing connections with Klein's life, his wide reading, and his work as a whole. Wherever possible, Klein's own numerous, but scattered, comments on his poems have been cited.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

'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.

The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 is San Francisco poet Bob Kaufman's third collection and his first to be published since the late 1960s. One of the original Beat poets (the coinage "beatnik" is his), Kaufman's work has always been essentially improvisational, often done to jazz accompaniment. And he became something of a legendary figure at the poetry readings in the early days of the San Francisco renaissance of the 1950s. With his extemporaneous technique, akin in many ways to Surrealist automatic writing, he has produced a body of work ranging from a visionary lyricism infused with satirical, almost Dadaistic elements to a prophetic poetry of political and social protest. Born in New Orleans of mixed Black and Jewish parentage, Kaufman was one of fourteen children. During twenty years in the Merchant Marine, he cultivated an intense taste for literature on his long sea voyages. Settling in California, in the '50s, he became active in the burgeoning West Coast literary scene. Disappointment, drugs, and imprisonment led him to take a ten-year vow of complete silence that lasted until 1973. The present volume includes previously uncollected poems written prior to his pledge and newer work composed in the years 1973-1978, before the poet once again lapsed into silence.

The poems of Anna Margolin (1887?1952), appearing here both in the original Yiddish and in English translation. Winner of the 2007 Yiddish Literature and Translation from Yiddish presented by the Helen and Stan Vine Annual Canadian Jewish Book Awards 2007 Runner Up of the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry Born Rosa Lebensboym in Belarus, Anna Margolin (1887?1952) settled permanently in America in 1913. A brilliant yet largely forgotten poet, her reputation rests on her volume of poetry published in Yiddish in 1929 in New York City. Although written in the 1920s, Margolin's poetry is remarkably fresh and contemporary, dealing with themes of anxiety, loneliness, sexual tensions, and the search for intellectual and spiritual identity, all of which were clearly reflected in her own life choices. Sensitively and beautifully translated here, the poems appear both in the original Yiddish and in English translation. Shirley Kumove's fascinating critical-biographical introduction highlights Margolin's tempestuous and unconventional life. An exceptionally beautiful and gifted woman, Margolin adopted a bohemian and an eccentric lifestyle, and threw herself into both intellectual pursuits and romantic attachments beyond her two marriages.

"A wide-ranging exploration of spirituality, sex, travel, food, holy texts, and coming of age. Poet Alicia Jo Rabins brings a searing eye for surreal beauty in everyday life with a deep knowledge of wisdom literature, and creates a modern manual for living, a fearless investigation of how we learn to live in a human body both prism and flesh."--Publisher's description.

Aaron Zeitlin was a living cruse of sacred oil saved from the Holocaust. Wracked by guilt and despair for having survived by chance, Aaron Zeitlin, a Yiddish poet of religious intensity, reconfirmed his faith while memorializing Polish Jewry and his lost family. In Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith, Morris Faierstein succeeds in bringing the reader closer to the unique vision and verse of Zeitlin's afflicted existence. He masterfully illuminates the images and allusions, whether Talmudic, kabalistic or hasidic, that inform and enrich the poetry of Aaron Zeitlin. Faierstein chose the texts he translates with esthetic sensibility and brings across their delicate nuances of insight and emotional challenges. This volume throws open a wholly new area of Jewish poetry, a distinct spiritual perspective and a shared human expression of both the faith and grief of someone faced with the obliteration of his home, family and people. Seth L. Wolitz Gale Chair of Jewish Studies Professor of Comparative Literature University of Texas at Austin This edition of Aaron Zeitlin's Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith introduces the English reader to the work of this remarkable author who embodies the broad culture of Polish Jewry that was virtually annihilated during the Holocaust. Morris Faierstein has done an admirable job in rendering Zeitlin's rich poetry into moving and powerful English, supplemented with annotations to the rich palette of mystical, biblical and religious allusions that illuminate Zeitlin's writing. This is a worthy introduction to the works of a prolific author who collaborated with his younger contemporary, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro Judaic Studies Department Brooklyn College of the City University of New York

"Translations of selected poetry concerning Jerusalem, for the 1930s to the present, with an introduction and notes"-- Provided by publisher.

Poetry. ELEGY FOR BOB KAUFMAN is poetry of elegance and feeling, a beautiful tribute to a "gone world." It speaks to the author's youthful memories of a great poet, Bob Kaufman--an enormously complex and difficult man. Cherkovski brings to life San Francisco's bohemian community in the late fifties and early sixties. "Neeli Cherkovski has written a magnificent tribute to the memory of Bob Kaufman. Neeli and Bob were close friends and true colleagues in the art of poetry. This gathering of poems is an expression of an era in San Francisco's North Beach literary community. I recommend it to all readers"--Eileen Kaufman.

In Sentences, contemporary poet Howard Nemerov adds to his distinguished work a collection of gnomic verses, declarative poems, sonnets after other poets, and sustained lyrics. "In [Sentences], not only has Nemerov continued to accommodate himself to the literary tradition without falling back on parody; he has also . . . extended the resources of blank verse beyond what any modern practitioner, himself included, has managed to. This extension comprises more than a mere prosodic advance; it is a rhetorical and imaginative advance. 'By Al Lebowitz's Pool,' 'The Makers,' 'Monet,' and 'A Christmas Storm,' for example, are dazzling in their very naturalness. . . . No one since Frost has done as much to move blank verse from where Wordsworth and Coleridge had left it."—Mary Kinzie, Poetry

As dismissal and disdain of Jews speak through the art of some leading twentieth-century poets, so the poetry of Rodger Kamenetz artfully answers, framing in subtle terms the questions that haunt our culture-about the voices through which culture speaks, about the identity of poet and poetry, about the capacity of art to harm and to heal. Whether subjecting the anti-Semitic verses of T. S. Eliot to a literary trial; conjuring the eloquence with which "Allen Ginsberg forgives Ezra Pound on Behalf of the Jews"; or drawing upon personal history, the Torah, and Jewish mysticism to explore the tangled relations of Jewish identity and modern literature, Kamenetz's poems attest to the inexorable power of language.

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.

First published in 1933, Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein contains three prose pieces written in the stream-of-consciousness style that Stein was famous for. A modernist classic not to be missed by fans and collectors of Stein's seminal work. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American poet, novelist, art collector, and playwright who famously hosted a Paris salon frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. Before she was a patron to "The Lost Generation" artists, Stein was an esteemed author who influenced many 20th-century writers with her innovative and experimental prose. Other notable works by this author include: Three Lives (1909), White Wines (1913), and An Exercise in Analysis (1917). Featuring an introduction by Sherwood Anderson, this volume is an essential read for fans of Gertrude Stein's work and those with an interest in Jazz Age literature.

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.