In these essays, the acclaimed artist, photographer, writer, and filmmaker Moyra Davey often begins with a daily encounter-with a photograph, a memory, or a passage from a book-and links that subject to others, drawing fascinating and unlikely connections, until you can almost feel the texture of her thinking. While thinking and writing, she weaves together disparate writers and artists-Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean Genet, Virginia Woolf, Janet Malcolm, Chantal Akerman, and Roland Barthes, among many others-in a way that is both elliptical and direct, clearheaded and personal, prismatic and self-examining, layering narratives to reveal the thorny but nourishing relationship between art and life.
A riveting lyrical constellation centered on the Battle of Passchendaele in Flanders Fields and tibetan protective magic
A writer is offered a devil's bargain: will he give up reading books in exchange for total world domination?
A joyful ode-in a single soaring, crazy sentence-to the interconnectedness of great (and mad) minds
A bilingual companion to The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa
First published in 1978, Mary Oppen's seminal Meaning a Life has been largely unavailable for decades. Written in her sixties, her first and only prose book recounts, with honesty, depth, and conviction, her fiercely independent life-"a twentieth-century American romance," as Yang describes it in the new introduction, "of consciousness on the open road; a book of travel where the autobiographer is not the usual singular self at the center of the story but the union of two individuals." Oppen tells the story of growing up with three brothers in the frontier towns of Kalispell, Montana, and Grants Pass, Oregon, determined to escape the trap of "a meaningless life with birth and death in a biological repetition." That escape happens in the fall of 1926, when she meets another student in her college poetry class, George Oppen. She is expelled for breaking curfew, and from then on the two face the world intertwined: living a life of conversation, hitchhiking across the US, sailing from the Great Lakes to New York City, meeting fellow poets and artists, starting a small press with Zukofsky and Pound, traveling by horse and cart through France, and fighting fascism through the Great Depression. Mary Oppen writes movingly of both her inner life and external events, of the inconsolable pain of suffering multiple stillbirths, of her husband fighting on the front lines during WWII while she struggled to care for their baby daughter, of fleeing to Mexico to avoid persecution for their political activities. This expanded edition includes a new section of prose and poetry that deepens Oppen's radiantly incisive memoir with further memories, travels, and reflections.
Empathy, first published by Station Hill Press in 1989, marked a turning point in Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's poetry, her lines lengthening across the page like so many horizons, tuned intimately to the natural world and its human relations, at once philosophical, lush, and rhythmic. As she writes in the new note for this edition, "I started to feel my way toward an intuited subliminal wholeness of composition." In these poems, empathy not only becomes the space of one person inside another, but of one element (water, or fog), one place (tundra or desert mesa), one animal (the swan) as the locus of human illumination and desire.
A Treatise on Stars extends Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's intensely phenomenological poetics to the fiery bodies in a "field of heaven...outside spacetime." Long, lyrical lines map a geography of interconnected, interdimensional intelligence that exists in all places and sentient beings. These are poems of deep listening and patient waiting, open to the cosmic loom, the channeling of daily experience and conversation, gestalt and angels, dolphins and a star-visitor beneath a tree. Family, too, becomes a type of constellation, a thought "a form of organized light." All of our sense are activated by Berssenbrugge's radiant lines, giving us a poetry of keen perception grounded in the physical world, where "days fill with splendor, and earth offers its pristine beauty to an expanding present."
The one-eyed singer, songwriter, and knight errant Oswald von Wolkenstein (surnameliterally "Cloud-Stone") was among the last of the great troubadours. A contemporaryof Villon, versed in Petrarch, and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, Wolkenstein was lostto history until scholarship in the 1970s recognized him as the German language's firstgenuinely autobiographical lyric voice. In the hands of the magician-translator RichardSieburth, working in the spirited tradition of Ezra Pound and Paul Blackburn, Wolkenstein's verse rises from the page like a medieval Bob Dylan. Facsimiles of Wolkenstein'smusical compositions are included.
The two sequences of this book form a braided ars poetica: "Killing Plato" and "Writing." The first is a numbered sequence of twenty-eight poems organized around an accident: a pedestrian has been hit by a truck and is dying in the middle of the road. Various characters appear-the philosopher Michel Serres, Robert Musil, a woman smoothing out her stocking, the truck driver, a boy on a balcony, the Spanish poet Jesús Aguado. At the bottom of the page another tale unfolds: a woman bumps into an old friend, a male poet who has written a book called Killing Plato about "a woman who has been knocked over by the force of a sound." "Writing," the second part, unfolds as a lyrical meditation on mortality and literary production.
One morning, Takahashi, a writer who has just stayed up all night working, is interrupted by a phone call from his old friend Sonomura: barely able to contain his excitement, Sonomura claims that he has cracked a secret cryptographic code based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug and now knows exactly when and where a murder will take place-and they must hurry if they want to witness the murder, because it's later that very night! Sonomura has a history of lunacy and playing the amateur detective, so Takahashi is of course reluctant to believe him. Nevertheless, they stake out the secret location, and through tiny peepholes in the knotted wood, become voyeurs at the scene of a shocking crime... Atmospheric, erotic, and tense, Devils in Daylight is an early work by the master storyteller who "created a lifelong series of ingenious variations on a dominant theme: the power of love to energize and destroy" (Chicago Tribune).
Sebastián de Covarrubias's famous Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language was first published in 1611, only two years before the author's death. A contemporary of Cervantes, learned in Hebrew and Arabic languages, Covarrubias wrote his encyclopedic dictionary to explore the heterogeneous origins of words and their hidden connections to the moral, transcendental, and everyday meanings of the world. Here, the translator Janet Hendrickson has dived deep into this influential, pre-Enlightenment text to cull a coherent, poetic selection of Covarrubias's pioneering work.
"Who was Samuel Greenberg?" editor Garrett Caples asks: "The short answer is 'the dead, unknown poet Hart Crane plagiarized.'" In the winter of 1923, Crane was given some of Greenberg's notebooks and called him "a Rimbaud in embryo." Crane included many of Greenberg's lines, uncredited and slightly changed, in his own poetry. Poems from the Greenberg Manuscripts was edited by James Laughlin, who first published it in 1939. As well as Laughlin's original essay, Caples includes a new selection of poems from Greenberg's notebooks, along with some of his prose. Now the work of this mysterious, impoverished, proto-surrealist American poet, who never published a word in his life, is available to a new generation of readers.
Who has not suffered grief? In Mourning Songs, the brilliant poet and editor Grace Schulman has gathered together the most moving poems about sorrow by the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks, Neruda, Catullus, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, W. S. Merwin, Lorca, Denise Levertov, Keats, Hart Crane, Michael Palmer, Robert Frost, Hopkins, Hardy, Bei Dao, and Czeslaw Milosz-to name only some of the masters in this slim volume. "The poems in this collection," as Schulman notes in her introduction, "sing of grief as they praise life." She notes, "As any bereaved survivor knows, there is no consolation. 'Time doesn't heal grief; it emphasizes it,' wrote Marianne Moore. The loss of a loved one never leaves us. We don't want it to. In grief, one remembers the beloved. But running beside it, parallel to it, is the joy of existence, the love that causes pain of loss, the loss that enlarges us with the wonder of existence."
After getting a haircut in London and a few new outfits ("she bought two pairs of shoes and began to enjoy herself"), Millie, the neglected American wife of an academic pill, is transformed-and, upon arrival in Africa, falls into the perfect affair. Binstead's Safari unfolds the fractured fairy tale of the rebirth of a drab, insecure woman as a fiercely alive, fearless beauty. "Life was too short to waste time trying to find excuses for not doing the things you really wanted to do," Millie realizes, helping herself to love and joy. The husband is astonished-everyone adores the new Millie. She can't put a foot wrong, and as they move deeper into Africa in search of lion myths for his book, "excitement and pleasure carried her upwards as on a tide." Mysteries abound, but in the hands of Rachel Ingalls, the ultimate master of the curveball, Millie's resurrection seems perfectly natural: caterpillar to butterfly. "Only now had she found her life"-and also her destiny, which may, this being Ingalls, take the form of a Lion God.
The American poet Robert Lax belongs to the generation of Thomas Merton, Beat poetry, Abstract Expressionism, and the compositions of John Cage. Yet he stands out as this era's most intriguing minimalist poet, gaining this reputation through a constant questioning of the universe and our idea about it. His poetry varies from fables and parables to clear-cut columns of words, from his account of a day at the circus as a vision of creation to his own insistent and mystical search for truth. 33 Poems presents the quintessential gathering of Lax's work, including Sea & Sky and The Circus of the Sun, "perhaps the greatest English-language poem of this century" (The New York Times).
With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one's sleeve, the poems of Ana Lui¿sa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems-in Margaret Jull Costa's gorgeous English versions-seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask "What's in a name?""How solid is a name if answered to," Amaral answers, but "like the Rose-no, like its perfume: ungovernable. Free." There is much freedom within Amaral's poetry, room for mysteries to multiply, and yet her beautiful lines are as clear as water: And that time of smiles Which does, incidentally, really exist, I swear, as does the fireAnd the invisible sea, which with nothing will agree
Winner of the 2020 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation PrizeThe Fox and Dr. Shimamura toothsomely encompasses East and West, memory and reality, fox-possession myths, and psychiatric mythmaking. As an outstanding young Japanese medical student at the end of the nineteenth century, Dr. Shimamura is sent-to his dismay-to the provinces: he is asked to cure scores of young women afflicted by an epidemic of fox possession. Believing it's all a hoax, he considers the assignment an insulting joke, until he sees a fox moving under the skin of a young beauty... Next he travels to Europe and works with such luminaries as Charcot, Breuer and Freud-whose methods, Dr. Shimamura concludes, are incompatible with Japanese politeness. The ironic parallels between Charcot's theories of female hysteria and ancient Japanese fox myths-when it comes to beautiful, writhing young women-are handled with a lightly sardonic touch by Christine Wunnicke, whose flavor-packed, inventive language is a delight.
In this day of mindless distraction, we're desperate for reasons to put down our phones and reconnect with our spiritual selves. In time for the 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death in 1968, Silence, Joy is an invitation to slow down, take a breath, make a space for silence, and open up to joy.Poet, monk, spiritual advisor, and social critic, Thomas Merton is a unique-and uniquely beloved-figure of the twentieth century, and this little rosary brings together his best-loved poems and prose. Drawn from classics like New Seeds Of Contemplation and The Way Of Chuang Tzu as well as less famous books, the writings in Silence, Joy offer the reader deep, calming stillness, flights of ecstatic praise, steadying words of wisdom, and openhearted laughter. Manna for Merton lovers and a warm embrace for novices, this slim collection is a delightful gift.
The Doctor Stories collects thirteen of Williams's stories (direct accounts of his experiences as a doctor), six related poems, and a chapter from his autobiography that connects the world of medicine and writing, as well as a new preface by Atul Gawande, an introduction by Robert Coles (who put the book together), and a final note by Williams's son (also a doctor), about his famous father. The writings are remarkably direct and freshly true. As Atul Gawande notes, "Reading these tales,you find yourself in a conversation with Williams about who people really are-who you really are. Williams recognized that, caring for the people of his city, he had a front-row seat to the human condition. His writing makes us see it and hear it and grapple with it in all its complexities. That is his lasting gift."
Who doesn't love haiku? It is not only America's most popular cultural import from Japan but also our most popular poetic form: instantly recognizable, more mobile than a sonnet, loved for its simplicity and compression, as well as its ease of composition. Haiku is an ancient literary form seemingly made for the Twittersphere-Jack Kerouac and Langston Hughes wrote them, Ezra Pound and the Imagists were inspired by them, Hallmark's made millions off them, first-grade students across the country still learn to write them. But what really is a haiku? Where does the form originate? Who were the original Japanese poets who wrote them? And how has their work been translated into English over the years? The haiku form comes down to us today as a cliché: a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables. And yet its story is actually much more colorful and multifaceted. And of course to write a good one can be as difficult as writing a Homeric epic-or it can materialize in an instant of epic inspiration.In On Haiku, Hiroaki Sato explores the many styles and genres of haiku on both sides of the Pacific, from the classical haiku of Basho, Issa, and Zen monks, to modern haiku about swimsuits and atomic bombs, to the haiku of famous American writers such as J. D. Salinger and Allen Ginsburg. As if conversing over beers in your favorite pub, Sato explains everything you wanted to know about the haiku in this endearing and pleasurable book, destined to be a classic in the field.
The Condition of Secrecy is a poignant collection of essays by Inger Christensen, widely regarded as one of the most influential Scandinavian writers of the twentieth century. As The New York Times proclaimed, "Despite the rigorous structure that undergirds her work-or more likely, because of it-Ms. Christensen's style is lyrical, even playful." The same could be said of Christensen's essays. Here, she formulates with increasing clarity the basis of her approach to writing, and provides insights into how she composed specific poetry volumes. Some essays are autobiographical (with memories of Christensen's school years during the Nazi occupation of Denmark), and others are political, touching on the Cold War and Chernobyl. The Condition of Secrecy also covers the Ars Poetica of Lu Chi (261-303 CE); William Blake and Isaac Newton; and such topics as randomness as a universal force and the role of the writer as an agent of social change. The Condition of Secrecy confirms that Inger Christensen is "a true singer of the syllables" (C. D. Wright), and "a formalist who makes her own rules, then turns the game around with another rule" (Eliot Weinberger).
*Winner of The Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award*The title section of Kim Hyesoon's powerful new book, Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during Korea's violent contemporary history, but also unveil what Kim calls "the structure of death, that we remain living in." Autobiography of Death, Kim's most compelling work to date, at once reenacts trauma and narrates our historical death-how we have died and how we survive within this cyclical structure. In this sea of mirrors, the plural "you" speaks as a body of multitudes that has been beaten, bombed, and buried many times over by history. The volume concludes on the other side of the mirror with "Face of Rhythm," a poem about individual pain, illness, and meditation.
Gathered here are the gems of William Carlos Williams's astonishing achievements in poetry. Dramatic, energetic, beautiful, and true, this slim selection will delight any reader-The Red Wheelbarrow & Other Poems is a book to be treasured.
The Shutters collects the two most important poetry collections-"The Shutters" and "Photograms"-by the legendary Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani. By intertwining myth and tradition with the familiar objects and smells of his lived present, Bouanani reconstructs vivid images of Morocco's past. He weaves together references to the Second World War, the Spanish and French protectorates, the Rif War, dead soldiers, prisoners, and poets screaming in their tombs with mouths full of dirt. His poetry, written in an imposed language with a "strange alphabet," bravely confronts the violence of his country's history-particularly during the period of les années de plomb, the years of lead-all of which bears the brutal imprint of colonization. As Bouanani writes, "These memories retrace the seasons of a country that was quickly forgetful of its past, indifferent to its present, constantly turning its back on the future."
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