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Haywire: Poems (Swenson Poetry Award)
by George BilgereTenth annual winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award, Haywire is a well-polished collection from a highly accomplished poet. With humor, compassion, and an unflinching eye, Bilgere explores the human condition in accessible lines and a magician's way with language. In images bright and dark, tangible and immanent, Bilgere brings us time after time to the inner reaches of a contemporary life. In subjects ranging from adolescent agony to the loss of parents to the comic pain of middle age, he finds no reason to turn away his gaze, and ultimately no reason not to define himself in joy Haywire was chosen for the Swenson Award by poet Edward Field, winner of numerous awards and a personal friend of the late May Swenson. Field describes the book this way. "This poet, you knew from his very first lines, didn’t fall for anything phony—his own language is irresistibly no-bullshit down to earth, even sassy."
Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity
by Stanley BillThis book presents Czesław Miłosz's poetic philosophy of the body as an original defense of religious faith, transcendence, and the value of the human individual against what he viewed as dangerous modern forms of materialism. The Polish Nobel laureate saw the reductive "biologization" of human life as a root cause of the historical tragedies he had witnessed under Nazi German and Soviet regimes in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. The book argues that his response was not merely to reconstitute spiritual or ideal forms of human identity, which no longer seemed plausible. Instead, he aimed to revalidate the flesh, elaborating his own non-reductive understandings of the self on the basis of the body's deeper meanings. Within the framework of a hesitant Christian faith, Miłosz's poetry and prose often suggest a paradoxical striving toward transcendence precisely through sensual experience. Yet his perspectives on bodily existence are not exclusively affirmative. The book traces his diverse representations of the body from dualist visions that demonize the flesh through to positive images of the body as the source of religious experience, the self, and his own creative faculty. It also examines the complex relations between "masculine" and "feminine" bodies or forms of subjectivity, as Miłosz represents them. Finally, it elucidates his contention that poetry is the best vehicle for conveying these contradictions, because it also combines "disembodied", symbolic meanings with the sensual meanings of sound and rhythm. For Miłosz, the double nature of poetic meaning reflects the fused duality of the human self.
Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity
by Stanley BillThis book presents Czesław Miłosz's poetic philosophy of the body as an original defense of religious faith, transcendence, and the value of the human individual against what he viewed as dangerous modern forms of materialism. The Polish Nobel laureate saw the reductive "biologization" of human life as a root cause of the historical tragedies he had witnessed under Nazi German and Soviet regimes in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. The book argues that his response was not merely to reconstitute spiritual or ideal forms of human identity, which no longer seemed plausible. Instead, he aimed to revalidate the flesh, elaborating his own non-reductive understandings of the self on the basis of the body's deeper meanings. Within the framework of a hesitant Christian faith, Miłosz's poetry and prose often suggest a paradoxical striving toward transcendence precisely through sensual experience. Yet his perspectives on bodily existence are not exclusively affirmative. The book traces his diverse representations of the body from dualist visions that demonize the flesh through to positive images of the body as the source of religious experience, the self, and his own creative faculty. It also examines the complex relations between "masculine" and "feminine" bodies or forms of subjectivity, as Miłosz represents them. Finally, it elucidates his contention that poetry is the best vehicle for conveying these contradictions, because it also combines "disembodied", symbolic meanings with the sensual meanings of sound and rhythm. For Miłosz, the double nature of poetic meaning reflects the fused duality of the human self.
Language and the Renewal of Society in Walt Whitman, Laura: The American Cratylus (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics)
by C. BillitteriThis book takes up the utopian desire for a perfect language of words that give direct expression to the real, known in Western thought as Cratylism, and its impact on the social visions and poetic projects of three of the most intellectually ambitious of American writers: Walt Whitman, Laura (Riding) Jackson, and Charles Olson.
50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems
by Brian Bilston'Bilston is a magician with words' Guardian'Someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative.' The TimesA brilliant collection of funny, witty football poems by Brian Bilston.50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems shows Brian Bilston's genuine love for the beautiful game, whether it is a kick about in the back garden, a Sunday match in the park or watching your team winning the cup. There are poems about everything from training to match day, after match analysis, honest football chants and half-time satsumas. Includes chants, ballads, puns, acrostics and shape poems. This is a must for football fans of all ages.
Alexa, what is there to know about love?
by Brian Bilston'Brian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times.' Ian McMillan'Someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative.' The Times'Part John Cooper Clarke, part Frank Sidebottom . . . all brilliant.' Esquire'Bilston is a magician with words' GuardianAlexa, what is there to know about love? is a wonderful collection of poems about love in all its forms, covering everything from romantic love to familial love, to long-distance love, and even love on the internet.The collection also features poems about the true passions for many booklovers, reading and literature, and the odd one about the subject causing many of us heartbreak: politics. With titles like ‘Hold My Hand While We Jump Off This Cliff’ and ‘Remembrance of Things Pasta’, there’s something for even the most jaded romantic within these pages.The perfect, witty gift for Valentine’s and beyond.
And So This is Christmas: 51 Seasonally Adjusted Poems
by Brian BilstonIt’s that time of year again . . .With his signature wit, Brian Bilston returns with And So This is Christmas, fifty-one poems in celebration of the festive season: from bizarre family traditions to the office Christmas party; from voting day for turkeys to the impossible art of gift-giving.So hang your stockings, grab your mistletoe and curl up with this heart-warming collection of Christmas crackers.
Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems
by Brian BilstonA brilliant way to brighten each day. In this playful, innovative collection, Brian Bilston writes a poem to accompany every day of the year.Each poem is inspired by a significant – often curious – event associated with that day: from Open an Umbrella Indoors Day to the day on which New York banned public flirting; from the launch of the Rubik’s Cube to the first appearance of the phrase, ‘the best thing since sliced bread’.Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with friends, Days Like These: An alternative guide to the year in 366 poems will take the blues out of Monday, flatten the Wednesday hump, and amplify that Friday feeling.
You Took the Last Bus Home: The Poems of Brian Bilston
by Brian BilstonYou Took the Last Bus Home is the first and long-awaited collection of ingeniously hilarious and surprisingly touching poems from Brian Bilston, the mysterious ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’.With endless wit, imaginative wordplay and underlying heartache, he offers profound insights into modern life, exploring themes as diverse as love, death, the inestimable value of a mobile phone charger, the unbearable torment of forgetting to put the rubbish out, and the improbable nuances of the English language.Constantly experimenting with literary form, Bilston’s words have been known to float off the page, take the shape of the subjects they explore, and reflect our contemporary world in the form of Excel spreadsheets, Venn diagrams and Scrabble tiles.This irresistibly charming collection of his best-loved poems will make you question the very essence of the human condition in the twenty-first century.YOU TOOK THE LAST BUS HOMEyou tookthe last bus homedon’t know howyou got it through the dooryou’re always doing amazing stufflike the timewhen you caught that train
Room Swept Home (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
by Remica Bingham-RisherRoom Swept Home serves as a gloriously rendered magnifying glass into all that is held in the line between the private and public, the investigative and generative, the self and those who came before us. In a strange twist of kismet, two of Bingham-Risher's ancestors intersect in Petersburg, Virginia, forty years before she herself is born: her paternal great-great-great grandmother, Minnie Lee Fowlkes, is interviewed for the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives in Petersburg in 1937, and her maternal grandmother, Mary Knight, is sent to Petersburg in 1941, diagnosed with "water on the brain"—postpartum depression being an ongoing mystery—nine days after birthing her first child. Marrying meticulous archival research with Womanist scholarship and her hallmark lyrical precision, Bingham-Risher's latest collection treads the murky waters of race, lineage, faith, mental health, women's rights, and the violent reckoning that inhabits the discrepancy between lived versus textbook history, asking: What do we inherit when trauma is at the core of our fractured living? [sample poem] XI. the more ground covered, the more liberated you became I am scared my mind will turn on me. I am scared I will be naked in a burning house. I am scared my children won't outpace me.I am scared my children (who aren't made by me) believe I am a sad imitation of the others.I am scared I will gather in a roomwhere everyone will ask me to rememberand when I don't lie they'll say I'd hate to be you. I've lived long enough to be scared my kidneys will give out on me. I've lived long enough to know just when they should. I have never shared my fears with anyone; I am scared they will map the land and take liberties. Will the women be ashamed? I'm scared to ask. What will live again? What will die with me?
Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth-Century Literature
by D. Birch M. LlewellynHow should we understand Victorian conflict? The Victorians were divided between multiple views of the political, religious and social issues that motivated their changing aspirations. Such debates are a fundamental aspect of the literature of the period and these essays propose new ways of understanding their significance.
Hera Lindsay Bird
by Hera Lindsay BirdNew Zealand's best-selling poetry collection, from the mysterious force behind such classics as 'Monica' (as in, the one from Friends) and 'Keats is Dead so F**k Me from Behind'this impressive debut has established Hera Lindsay Bird as a good girl......with many beneficial thoughts and feelings......with themes as varied as snow and tears, the poems in this collection shine with the fantastic cream of who she is................juxtaposing many classical and modern breezesBird turns her prescient eye on love and loss, and what emerges is like a helicopter in fog......or a bejewelled Christmas sleigh, gliding triumphantly through the contemporary aesthetic desert.........this is at once an intelligent and compelling fantasy of tenderness......heart-breaking and charged with trees......without once sacrificing the forest............whether you are masturbating luxuriously in your parents' sleepout....................or pushing a pork roast home in a vintage pram...................this is the book for you.............................................heroically and compulsively stupid.............................................................................................................................whipping you once again into medieval sunlight.PRAISE FOR HERA LINDSAY BIRD'I think there's a pretty strong case which suggests Hera Lindsay Bird is like the most exciting newish poet in NZ' - Steve Braunias'On more than one occasion, while working through a poem, I have found myself asking, what would Hera Lindsay Bird do?' - Bill Manhire'Hi, dear, we have to say how much we enjoyed, if right word, the Hate poem. Really made us think, loved the line about the ancient cannon' - Text message from Ashleigh Young's mum'The wickedest problem in Hera Lindsay Bird is not sex but taste' - John Newton
Our Isles: Poems Celebrating The Art Of Rural Trades And Traditions
by Angus D. Birditt Lilly HedleyFrom baker, beekeeper and birdwatcher to falconer, farrier and forager, join poet Angus and printmaker Lilly as they explore the British Isles, uncovering and celebrating our crafts and traditions.
Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry
by Thomas BirkettReading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.
Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry
by Thomas BirkettReading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.
Christmas is Coming: A treasury of simple ways to celebrate festive days
by Auriol BishopEvery page holds a treat to unwrap in this gorgeous advent calendar of a book.From Equinox to Solstice, Diwali to Epiphany - countdown to Christmas with poems, inspirations and little moments of comfort and joy.Dip into the pages of this little treasury and you'll find plenty to inspire you: from the festivals that sprinkle the days of October and November, to a daily delight for Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas. Full of traditions, poems, stories and ideas for things to make and do, it's a celebration of all that we share across time, cultures and continents. A beautifully wise and calm companion to your festive season. Perhaps you'll have a go at making sloe gin when the berries are ripe in the hedgerows, or make popcorn on Walt Disney's birthday, or settle down with a hot chocolate to read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. You might be tempted to peel a satsuma whilst discovering a little bit more about this festive fruit, or learn how many cultures hold ancient festivals of light. Or you might decide to simply take a moment to pause and enjoy a little page of peace in the whirl of counting down the sleeps. Let Auriol Bishop guide you through this most magical time of year . . .
Geography III (FSG Classics) (PDF)
by Elizabeth BishopWhether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small emotional truths in language of stunning exactitude and even more astonishing resonance. As John Ashbery has written, "The private self . . . melts imperceptibly into the large utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds 'grand,' but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech. "
Poems: The Centenary Edition (FSG Classics)
by Elizabeth BishopThis is the definitive centenary edition of the work of one of America's greatest poets, recognised today as a master of her art and acclaimed by poets and readers alike. Her poems display honesty and humour, grief and acceptance, observing nature and human nature with painstaking accuracy. They often start outwardly, with geography and landscape - from New England and Nova Scotia, where Bishop grew up, to Florida and Brazil, where she later lived - and move inexorably toward the interior, exploring questions of knowledge and perception, love and solitude, and the ability or inability of form to control chaos.This new edition, edited by Saskia Hamilton, includes Bishop's four published volumes (North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel and Geography III), as well as uncollected poems, translations and an illuminating selection of unpublished manuscript poems, reproduced in facsimile, revealing exactly how finished, or unfinished, Bishop left them. It offers readers the opportunity to enjoy the complete poems of one of the most distinguished American poets of the twentieth century.
Prose: The Centenary Edition
by Elizabeth BishopAlthough Elizabeth Bishop is perhaps better known as a masterful poet, she was a dazzling and compelling prose writer too, as this centenary edition of her prose demonstrates. From her witty, unforgettable portraits of Marianne Moore and the Sitwells to her engaging childhood recollections of Canada and Massachusetts, her writing reflects a lifelong fascination with memory and travel, and her unique eye and ear for people and places.This new volume - edited by the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Lloyd Schwartz - includes virtually all her published shorter prose pieces and a number of prose works not published until after her death. Included here are her stories, crucial memoirs, literary and travel essays, book reviews, and - for the first time - the original draft of Brazil, the Life World Library volume she repudiated in its published version, as well as extensive selections from the correspondence between Bishop and the poet Anne Stevenson. Here is a rich and revealing selection, and the indispensible companion to the poems.
She Took Off Her Wings And Shoes (Swenson Poetry Award #7)
by Suzette BishopSuzette Marie Bishop teaches writing at Texas A&M International University. This will be her first full-length book, though she's published a chapbook and many individual poems in national poetry journals. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, Ms. Bishop's credits include publications in Antioch Review, 13th Moon, Eratica, Aries, The Little Magazine, and many other literary journals. As a poet and writing teacher on the faculty of Texas A&M International, she gives many readings, as well as workshops for gifted children, seniors, and other writers on the US-Mexico border; she has worked with at-risk youth and with the rural Hispanic community.
Old English Shorter Poems: Wisdom And Lyric (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library #32)
by Robert E. BjorkThe twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalizing insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the perennial themes of love, separation, and the passion for vengeance. From suffering comes wisdom, and these poems find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. "Woe is wondrously clinging; clouds glide," reads a stoic, matter-of-fact observation in Maxims II on nature's indifference to human suffering. Another form of wisdom emerges in the form of folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf. The enigmatic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn combine scholarly erudition and proverbial wisdom. Learning of all kinds is celebrated, including the meaning of individual runes in The Rune Poem and the catalog of legendary heroes in Widsith. This book is a welcome complement to the previously published DOML volume Old English Shorter Poems, Volume I: Religious and Didactic.
The Nature of Modernism: Ecocritical Approaches to the Poetry of Edward Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell and Charlotte Mew (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)
by Elizabeth BlackThis books presents the first extended study of the relationship between British modernist poetry and the environment. Challenging reductive associations of modernism as predominantly anthropocentric in character and urban in focus, the book’s central argument is that within British modernist poetry there is a clear and sustained interest in the natural world which has yet to receive adequate critical attention. Whilst modernist studies continues to emphasize the plurality of the movement and the breadth of voices and concerns within it, the environmental consciousness of modernist literature and its response to changes to human/nature relations following the experience of war and modernity remain largely unexamined. Exploring British modernist poetry from an ecocritical perspective offers a fresh approach to the movement and its context, and produces original readings of both canonical and more marginalized modernist voices. This book opens by discussing the relationship between modernism and ecocriticism and the benefits of creating a dialogue between the two. It then presents new readings of Edward Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, and Charlotte Mew that reveal a shared preoccupation with environmental issues and a common desire to find new ways of achieving physical, psychological, and artistic reconnection with nature. Building on the continuing growth of ecocriticism, this book demonstrates how green approaches to modernist studies can produce new insights into both individual poets and the modernist movement as a whole, making it an essential resource for students of modernism, ecocriticism, and early-twentieth-century literature.
The Nature of Modernism: Ecocritical Approaches to the Poetry of Edward Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell and Charlotte Mew (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)
by Elizabeth BlackThis books presents the first extended study of the relationship between British modernist poetry and the environment. Challenging reductive associations of modernism as predominantly anthropocentric in character and urban in focus, the book’s central argument is that within British modernist poetry there is a clear and sustained interest in the natural world which has yet to receive adequate critical attention. Whilst modernist studies continues to emphasize the plurality of the movement and the breadth of voices and concerns within it, the environmental consciousness of modernist literature and its response to changes to human/nature relations following the experience of war and modernity remain largely unexamined. Exploring British modernist poetry from an ecocritical perspective offers a fresh approach to the movement and its context, and produces original readings of both canonical and more marginalized modernist voices. This book opens by discussing the relationship between modernism and ecocriticism and the benefits of creating a dialogue between the two. It then presents new readings of Edward Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, and Charlotte Mew that reveal a shared preoccupation with environmental issues and a common desire to find new ways of achieving physical, psychological, and artistic reconnection with nature. Building on the continuing growth of ecocriticism, this book demonstrates how green approaches to modernist studies can produce new insights into both individual poets and the modernist movement as a whole, making it an essential resource for students of modernism, ecocriticism, and early-twentieth-century literature.
Unheard Voices: An Anthology of Stories and Poems to Commemorate the Bicentenary Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade
by Malorie BlackmanIn March 1807, the British Parliament passed an Act making the trading and transportation of slaves illegal. It was many years before slavery, as it was known then, was abolished, and slavery still continues today in different ways, but it was a big step forward towards the empancipation of a people. Malorie Blackman has drawn together some of the finest of today's writers and poets to contribute to this important anthology. Their short stories and poems sit alongside first-hand accounts of slavery from freed slaves, making a fascinating and absorbing collection that remembers and commemorates one of the most brutal and long-lasting inflictions of misery that human beings have inflicted upon other human beings.
Poems of R.P. Blackmur
by Richard Palmer BlackmurAs one of the first and most eloquent spokesmen for the New Criticism, R. P. Blackmur achieved a place of rare distinction in American letters. He preferred to think of himself as a poet, however, and this volume shows that his poetry was in its own right an enduring contribution to literature. Included here are The Second World (1942) and The Good European (1947), as well as From Jordan's Delight (1937), described by Allen Tate as "one of the most distinguished volumes of verse in the first half of the century."Blackmur was a formalist and a master of traditional versification, a poet whose work did not show the influence of Pound and Eliot although he read them closely. His poetry impresses the reader with its strength, gravity, and musicality. During his career, Blackmur lectured widely in the United States and abroad. He was the first man of letters to hold the Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, and he was Professor of English at Princeton University, where he conceived the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism. He was a Fellow in American Letters at the Library of Congress, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Vice President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.