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Poetry
An intimate, autobiographical poetry collection from legendary artist and activist, Joan Baez.
Joan Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries (such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix), reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry. While Baez has been writing poetry for decades, she's never shared it publicly. Poems about her life, her family, about her passions for nature and art, have piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper. Now, for the first time ever, her life is shared revealing pivotal life experiences that shaped an icon, offering a never-before-seen look into the reminiscences and musings of a great artist. Like a late-night chat with someone you love, this collection connects fans to the real heart of who Joan Baez is as a person, as a daughter and sister, and as an artist who has inspired millions.
Organized as a field guide, a literary anthology filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers--perfect for writers, artists, and botanists alike. "The collection as a whole reminds us how lucky we are to share the world with this variety of shape and color, and to open our eyes to what grows on the side of the highway, between cracks in the sidewalk, along the riverbank." --Boston Globe Winner of a 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide collects poems, essays, and letters from the 1700s to the present that focus on wildflowers and their place in our culture and in the natural world. Editor Susan Barba has curated a selection of plants and texts that celebrate diversity: There are foreign-born writers writing about American plants and American writers on non-native plants. There are rural writers with deep regional knowledge and urban writers who are intimately acquainted with the nature in their neighborhoods. There are female writers, Black writers, gay writers, Indigenous writers. There are botanists like William Bartram, George Washington Carver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, and horticultural writers like Neltje Blanchan and Eleanor Perényi. There are prose pieces by Aldo Leopold, Lydia Davis, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. And most of all, there are poems: from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and T. S. Eliot to Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton and Louise Glück, Natalie Diaz and Jericho Brown. The book includes exquisite watercolors by National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Leanne Shapton throughout and is organized by species and botanical family--think of it as a field guide to the literary imagination.
Poetry. Art. Improvising on the tropes of classic pulp fiction, including genres like crime noir, horror, sci-fi, superhero, espionage, and vigilante, Tony Barnstone's audacious new poems are counterpointed by the mischievous (and blood-splattered) ink drawings of Iranian artist Amin Mansouri. At times reinventing the sonnet tradition, Barnstone's linked sequences evoke serial-format comics and cinema, as each series breaks into discrete frames propelled by action. The ancient gods and epics have been high-jacked by animations and video games, but pulp remains unconquerable--ghastly, shameless, outrageous--and fun!
Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.
First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation--earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire's untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire's masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.
Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire's lyrical innovations--rendering them in "an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs" (A. E. Stallings)--and an intuitive feel for the work's dark and brooding mood. Poochigian's version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original--reanimating for today's reader Baudelaire's "unfailing vision" that "trumpeted the space and light of the future" (Patti Smith).
An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire's masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.
A "rich hybrid of memoir and history" (The New Yorker) of the literary art form that has transformed the cultural landscape, by one of its influential practitioners, an award-winning poet, professor, and slam champion "Bennett...transport[s] us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited...an instructive text for young poets, artists or creative entrepreneurs trying to find a way to carve out a space for themselves...Shines with a refreshing dynamism." --The New York Times In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for the Obamas, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater. That meeting is but one among many in the trajectory of Bennett's young life, as he rode the cresting wave of spoken word through the 2010s. But in this book, he is not a memoirist so much as a participant historian, who goes back to the roots of the spoken word form, considering the Black Arts movement and the prominence of poetry and song in Black education; the origins of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side living room of the visionary Miguel Algarín, who hosted verse gatherings with legendary figures like Ntozake Shange and Miguel Piñero; the rapid growth of the "slam" format that was pioneered at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago; the perfect storm of spoken word's rise during the explosion of social media; the stories and perspectives of many others on this journey, as they helped shape spaces dedicated to literature as practiced with urgency by people of color and to the pursuit of human freedom. A celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative, who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined what--and whom--the mainstream would include, Bennett's book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard, from Broadway to academia, from the podiums of political protest to cafés, schools, and rooms full of strangers all across the world.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - A "rich hybrid of memoir and history" (The New Yorker) of the literary art form that has transformed the cultural landscape, by one of its influential practitioners, an award-winning poet, professor, and slam champion "Bennett...transport[s] us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited...an instructive text for young poets, artists or creative entrepreneurs trying to find a way to carve out a space for themselves...Shines with a refreshing dynamism." --The New York Times In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater. That meeting is but one among many in the trajectory of Bennett's young life, as he rode the cresting wave of spoken word through the 2010s. In this book, he goes back to its roots, considering the Black Arts movement and the prominence of poetry and song in Black education; the origins of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side living room of the visionary Miguel Algarín, who hosted verse gatherings with legendary figures like Ntozake Shange and Miguel Piñero; the rapid growth of the "slam" format that was pioneered at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago; the perfect storm of spoken word's rise during the explosion of social media; and Bennett's own journey alongside his older sister, whose work to promote the form helped shape spaces online and elsewhere dedicated to literature and the pursuit of human freedom. A celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative, who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined what--and whom--the mainstream would include, Bennett's book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard, from Broadway to academia, from the podiums of political protest to cafés, schools, and rooms full of strangers all across the world.
Winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the Griffin Prize and the Massachusetts Book Award An acclaimed poet further extends his range into the realm of speculative fiction, while addressing issues as varied as abolition, Black ecological consciousness, and the boundless promise of parenthood Featuring the novella "The Book of Mycah," soon to be adapted by Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad Productions & Warner Bros. TV Across three sequences, Joshua Bennett's new book recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building even now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems that deal with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth. The central section, "The Book of Mycah," features an alternate history where Malcolm X is resurrected from the dead, as is a young black man shot by the police some fifty years later in Brooklyn. The final section of The Study of Human Life are poems that Bennett has written about fatherhood, on the heels of his own first child being born last fall.
A new collection of poems and the companion volume to the popular bestseller This Day, Wendell Berry's Another Day is another stunning contribution to the poetry canon from one of America's most beloved writers A companion to his beloved volume This Day and Wendell Berry's first new poetry collection since 2016, this new selection of Sabbath Poems are filled with spiritual longing and political extremity, memorials and celebrations, elegies and lyrics, alongside the occasional rants of the Mad Farmer, pushed to the edge yet again by his compatriots and elected officials. With the publication of this new edition, it has become increasingly clear that the Sabbath Poems have become the very heart of Berry's work.
A rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with 2 full sections of new poems bookending Blanco's selections from his 5 previous volumes "An engineer, poet, Cuban American . . . his poetry bridges cultures and languages--a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future--reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming."--President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco, 2023 "What a gift, this new gathering of poems from the singular Richard Blanco. A cause for rejoicing!"--Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise and host of On Being "Blanco's poems are journeys to a homeland within the heart, a welcome homecoming earned from a lifetime's wise voyaging."--Sandra Cisneros
"A triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings."--Naomi Shihab Nye In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define "home," and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that "home" is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art. The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco's poetry: how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco's many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us. Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.
"A triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings."--Naomi Shihab Nye In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define "home," and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that "home" is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art. The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco's poetry: how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco's many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us. Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.
A new volume of original poetry from the bestselling creator of Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy. In Dharma Talk, award-winning poet John Brehm explores the perennial themes of aging, compassion, emptiness, nonseparation, and more. At once poignant and humorous, Brehm's gentle, wry poems remind us that the personal and the universal are not different--and point us to the Dharma of everyday life.