From Two Live Crew's controversial comedy to Ice Cube's gangsta styling and the battle rhymes of a streetcorner cypher, rap has always drawn on deep traditions of African American poetic word-play, In Talking 'Bout Your Mama, author Elijah Wald explores one of the most potent sources of rap: the viciously funny, outrageously inventive insult game known as "the dozens." So what is the dozens? At its simplest, it's a comic chain of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it's an intricate form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Wald traces the tradition of African American street rhyming and verbal combat that has ruled urban neighborhoods since the early 1900s. Whether considered vernacular poetry, aggressive dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirty insults, the dozens is a basic building block of African-American culture. A game which could inspire raucous laughter or escalate to violence, it provided a wellspring of rhymes, attitude, and raw humor that has influenced pop musicians from Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson to Tupac Shakur and Jay Z. Wald goes back to the dozens' roots, looking at mother-insulting and verbal combat from Greenland to the sources of the Niger, and shows its breadth of influence in the seminal writings of Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston; the comedy of Richard Pryor and George Carlin; the dark humor of the blues; the hip slang and competitive jamming of jazz; and in its ultimate evolution into the improvisatory battling of rap. From schoolyard games and rural work songs to urban novels and nightclub comedy, and pop hits from ragtime to rap, Wald uses the dozens as a lens to provide new insight into over a century of African American culture. A groundbreaking work, Talking 'Bout Your Mama is an essential book for anyone interested in African American cultural studies, history and linguistics, and the origins of rap music.

Perfectly preserving the tone and mood of the novel whilst condensing it into two acts, David Malouf, with the gift for language already evident from his novels and poetry, presents afresh the timeless story of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, one of the most enduring literary classics of all time. The love between Jane and Mr Rochester, and the mystery of the woman behind the locked door, are here set to music in the opera composed by Michael Berkeley.

Lila Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But her analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of a system of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the relationship between ideology and human experience.

Since emigrating to the U.S. from his native Romania in 1966, Andrei Codrescu has blazed a rocket-bright trail across the cultural landscape of his adopted country, gaining a national audience as public radio commentator, television personality and editor of the radical literary journal Exquisite Corpse. He has also commanded considerable critical recognition for his poetry (Alien Candor, Black Sparrow, 1996), and fiction (most notably, his novel about his Transylvanian homeland, The Blood Countess, 1995).

Pittsburgh has always been—despite its industrial reputation—a great city in which to be a writer. Its active, close-knit writing community has seen the rise of several luminaries with Pittsburgh connections, such as Annie Dillard and Stewart O'Nan, and the caliber of Pittsburgh's writing community today is better than ever. Lee Gutkind has assembled a reunion of sorts with writers from across the nation, as well as the up-and-coming stars on the local scene—each of whom has a Pittsburgh connection. Many grew up in the region, others attended college here: all of them have an association with the city. The resulting collection of essays is both gentle and jarring, eclectic and persuasive, covering a range of topics—from a stripper's work ethic to West Virginia's famed Matewan shootout, Atlantic City's Boardwalk before Donald Trump, and the uses of poetry to better understand one's own life. Although Pittsburgh is not the subject of most of the essays, these writers are bound by their affinity for the written word and their collective fondness for Pittsburgh.

Daniela Gioseffi is an American Book Award winning author of fourteen books. She's been a worldwide speaker on campuses, at book fairs, on NPR, BBC, and on The Poet and the Poem, Library of Congress' Radio Show of The National Endowment for the Arts. This book, based on her non-fiction Afterword, includes newly discovered, startling research and theory published in The Emily Dickinson Journal, Vol. X1.2. She is listed with the Dickinson Scholar's Registry, has received the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in poetry, two New York State Council for the Arts grants in poetry, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. "Gioseffi's writing is appealing... Engaging, filled with energy.... irresistible. Larry McMurty, The Washington Post. Pulitzer Prize: Terms of Endearment "Gioseffi's work overflows with poetic vision." Nona Balakian, former staff reviewer, The New York Times "... a gifted writer.... A stunning essay [afterword]. It should be a book." Galway Kinnell, Pulitzer Prize & National Book Award winning poet "Whatever Daniela does, she does well. Among other things, I'd put my life in her hands.... Dickinson is lucky Daniela took hers in her hands." Grace Paley, Former Poet Laureate of VT. NY State Fiction Award "Startlingly fresh. Animated. Voluptuous. Gioseffi's writing is mythopoeic." Mary Pradt, Library Journal "Gioseffi's writing is imaginatively rich, startling, intelligent, with a wide range of reading behind it, and relevant to the most profound issues of our times." John Logan, Former poetry editor: The Nation "I like the way your essay richly evokes the life and times of Dickinson." Robert Hass, Former Poet Laureate USA "The essay [afterword] on Dickinson is fascinating and convincing...." Alice Quinn, Director: Poetry Society of America "Daniela's is an adamant poet's world where the poem is the source of all good." Bob Holman, PBS: The United States of Poetry, and Bowery Poetry Club, NY

"In Banquet at Brabazan, Patricia Schonstein takes us to the heart of Cape Town's violent inner city, creating a cornucopia of baroque magic realism featuring an angel, drug-money, a muti murder, superb food, romance, a cappella, a miracle or two, librettos, reflections on South Africa's war in Angola, visions of the Afterlife, poetry, Shakespearean drama and various works of fine art, with flashbacks to her wondrous A Time of Angels."--P. [4] of cover.

The unspoken poetry of our nation revealed by an American master. The first collection of the extensive and superlative work realized by Mary Ellen Mark in the United States, Mary Ellen Mark is composed of many previously unpublished images, as well as photographs from several of her best-known projects. From "Streetwise" to "The Damm Family," Mary Ellen Mark includes the most iconic images from these groundbreaking stories, as well as powerful, never-before-seen photographs Mark accomplished in subsequent years. She makes a deeply felt commitment to her subjects, and her empathy and humanity come through in every image. Mark is unsurpassed at shaping not only the odd but the everyday into genuinely surprising visual icons. With an eye for symbolism and a gift for meticulous composition, she is drawn to a variety of spectacles and situations, and demonstrates a particular affinity for children. Her elegantly revealing imagery creates a fascinating portrait of our complex, amusing, and occasionally unsettling country.

The author describes his activities as a sportsman, his involvement in the London literary circle, and the beginnings of his career as a poet