Being Reflected Upon is a memoir in verse from one of America's legendary poets. Alice Notley delivers a collection that serves as a window into the sources of her telepathic and visionary poetics. The book is a reflective journey through Notley's Paris-based life between 2000 and 2017, a period that encapsulates her experiences with illness and recovery following her first breast cancer treatment.
As Notley penned these poems, she discovered connections between events of this period and those from previous decades. The narrative moves from reminiscences of her mother and childhood in California to meditations on illness and recovery. It also encompasses various poetic adventures in cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, and Edinburgh.
The collection is deeply concerned with the mysteries of consciousness and the connection between the living and the dead. The term "stream-of-consciousness" is not just a stylistic description but also teases out a lived physics or philosophy that Notley explores through her work.
Death Styles is a poignant exploration of the intertwining of style and survival in the face of profound loss. Following her award-winning collection, Toxicon and Arachne, author Joyelle McSweeney embarks on a personal challenge to write a poem each day, using a single icon as a creative spark. From the unexpected muses like River Phoenix and Mary Magdalene to a backyard skunk, McSweeney delves deep into each subject, pushing through the exhaustion of grief.
With its candid and mesmerizing lyrics, Death Styles takes readers on a journey through the contradictory forces of survival and mourning. It is a testament to the power of poetic expression to navigate through life's most challenging moments, discovering hope in the act of creation and the resilience to step out of the shadows of death.
New and Selected Poems is an indispensable collection that spans more than three decades of profound, luminous poetry from acclaimed poet Marie Howe. Characterized by "a radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose, along with a fearless interest in autobiography and its tragedies and redemptions," as noted by Matthew Zapruder in the New York Times Magazine, Howe's poetry effortlessly transforms penetrating observations of everyday life into sacred, humane miracles.
This essential volume draws from each of Howe's four previous collections—including What the Living Do (1997), a haunting archive of personal loss, and the National Book Award–longlisted Magdalene (2017), a spiritual and sensual exploration of contemporary womanhood—and contains more than fifteen new poems. Whether speaking in the voice of the goddess Persephone or contemplating aging while walking the dog, Howe is hailed as "a light-bearer, an extraordinary poet of our human sorrow and ordinary joy" by Dorianne Laux.
You Are Here: Poetry In The Natural World, edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, is a singular collection of poems that reflects on our relationship to the natural world. This book brings together fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation's most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more.
Contrary to the traditional images evoked by "nature poetry," this collection presents an updated and vibrant perspective. Each poem interacts with the author's local landscape, whether it's the vast array of flora in a national park or a resilient tree blooming by a bus stop. These works offer an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us.
Through a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States, You Are Here challenges our preconceptions about nature and poetry. The collection is both joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, offering a lyrical reimagining of what "nature" and "poetry" signify in the current era, and inviting readers to experience both in a fresh, new light.
From one of the most influential writers of this generation, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. This gorgeous and surprising collection delves into memory, love, and the act of looking back.
In pieces that are sometimes wittily funny, moving, and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and abandoned landscapes we hold onto to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.
Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Moliere's chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to a California coast, and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges his past and present, in the way memory and the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence all that surrounds him.
As in this startling passage from his poem His chair, a narrow bed, a motel room, the fox:
At the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles Sam Cooke was shot dead. 'See my shadow on the wall...'
All those motels and hotels in literature and song, where X wrote this, where Y got drunk, where Z overdosed. The one Hank Williams was driven past, dead already in his car. The Slaviansky Bazaar Hotel in Lady with a Dog where Dmitri imagines their dark but hopeful future. The Hotel du Grand Miroir in Brussels where Baudelaire lived his last few months. (A decade later Verlaine shot Rimbaud there.) The Casa Verdi in Milan where retired opera singers were welcome along with the various heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa in their afterlife.
The Moon That Turns You Back is a new collection of poetry by Hala Alyan, the author of The Arsonists' City and The Twenty-Ninth Year. This collection explores the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family across different times and places. Alyan delves into the experiences of displacement and war, creating a tapestry of memories that interlink Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem.
The poems challenge the boundaries between space and time, intermingling daily life with the brutalities of geopolitical strife. Alyan examines the forces that can displace an individual from home and body, and conversely, the resilience and love that can anchor a person back into their essence and familial legacy. The work raises poignant questions about transformation and stability for those who have led a life in constant change.
An explosive, devastating debut book of poetry from the acclaimed author of The Boat. In his first international release since the award-winning, best-selling The Boat, Nam Le delivers a shot across the bow with a book-length poem that honors every convention of diasporic literature—in a virtuosic array of forms and registers—before shattering the form itself.
In line with the works of Claudia Rankine, Cathy Park Hong, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, this book is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity—and the violence of identity. For Le, a Vietnamese refugee in the West, this means the assumed violence of racism, oppression, and historical trauma.
But it also means the violence of that assumption. Of being always assumed to be outside one's home, country, culture, or language. And the complex violence—for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this—of language itself.
Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks, and camouflages, Le's poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilizing energy between the personal and political. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book.
Ten Bridges I've Burnt: A Memoir in Verse brings forth a wrenching, sexy, and exhilaratingly energetic memoir from the beloved author of 100 Boyfriends, Brontez Purnell. With his unique literary style, Purnell turns his keen gaze inward, crafting a narrative that is as much a collection of genre-defying verse as it is a candid self-exploration.
In this series of thirty-eight autobiographical pieces, Purnell is at his unapologetic best. He vividly recounts events ranging from a ferocious altercation at a poetry conference to the challenges of navigating TV writers' rooms while dealing with personal trauma. Purnell grapples with the legacies inherited from his family, both curses and gifts, and lays bare a whirlwind of experiences that include misadventures and intimate encounters.
Throughout the memoir, Purnell's musings extend to a diverse array of subjects, from love and loneliness to the intricacies of capitalism and Blackness, as well as reflections on physical exercise and the ethics of artistic creation. His writing, marked by a balance of humor and insight that garnered acclaim for 100 Boyfriends, thrives on its unpredictability and fluidity. Ten Bridges I've Burnt stands as yet another testament to Purnell's boundary-pushing creativity, offering a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.
Spectral Evidence is a profound exploration by Gregory Pardlo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Digest and Air Traffic. In this major collection of poetry, Pardlo's words flow seamlessly through a variety of themes, from the life of pro-wrestler Owen Hart to Tituba, the only Black woman accused during the Salem witch trials, and the MOVE organization's confrontations with Philadelphia Police.
The collection invites readers to ponder on topics such as Blackness, beauty, faith, and the impact of law. It is both cerebral and intimate, urging us to reflect on our notions of devotion and art, the criminalization and mortality of Black bodies, and the quest for justice. These themes are intricately woven into our current societal fabric, our history, and the Western literary tradition. Pardlo's poetry acts as a bridge connecting the past and present, challenging us to consider the role of art in interpreting and understanding the world around us.
Arrangements in Blue is a poignant memoir that delves into the life of poet Amy Key, who, in her forties, embarks on an exploration of living without romantic love. With expectations of love shaped by Joni Mitchell's album Blue, Key reflects on a life that has unfolded differently than she imagined.
Key's journey is one of self-discovery, as she builds a home, travels solo, contemplates motherhood, and learns to recognize her personal milestones. She uncovers the often overlooked forms of connection and care, while also confronting the challenging emotions of loneliness, envy, grief, and failure.
This memoir is not just Key's story but an invitation to live and love more honestly, honoring the life one leads completely by oneself. Arrangements in Blue is a testament to the expansive potential of self-friendship and the importance of candidly embracing the full spectrum of human experience.
Above Ground is a remarkable poetry collection from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed. This vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated Smith's sense of the world.
The poems interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. They revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of children, as they experience it for the first time. The poems meditate on what it means to raise a family amidst constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body.
Smith's lyrical, narrative poems invite the reader on a journey through the early years of his children's lives and the changing world in which they are growing up—a world that we all are a part of. Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Poem relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.
Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.
Mirar con las palabras, con los nervios, los latidos, contemplar el cielo con el asombro del verso contenido, encender la hierba y los insectos, saber del aroma y del recuerdo. Ventanas ofrece una contemplación al paisaje y también a las emociones, a los deseos y la inquietud existencial. Gracias a los cristales de esta poesía podemos asumir el instante de la germinación, el trasunto de las nubes pensativas o sentir la vibración de las moléculas, las células en su afán metafísico de construir.
Pero Ventanas va más allá del asombro de la observación es una apuesta por el lenguaje y el verso dilatado, por los senderos de la métrica y los espacios de la hoja para labrar una sombra, dibujar un astro o iluminar el acto amoroso, los poemas nos permiten asomarnos a la vida retratada y a la reflexión del tiempo disfrazado de lluvia, de flores indolentes, de tersura en el campo de voces, árboles y sonidos.
Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanfani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature.
The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah—an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations.
Named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, the book makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.
Selected Poems (1923) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Dedicated to Edward Thomas, a friend of Frost’s and an important English poet who died toward the end of the First World War, Selected Poems is a wonderful sampling of poems from Frost’s early collections, including A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. Known for his plainspoken language and dedication to the images and rhythms of rural New England, Robert Frost is one of America’s most iconic poets, a voice to whom generations of readers have turned in search of beauty, music, and life.
“Mowing” envisions the poet’s work through the prism of rural labor. “There was never a sound beside the wood but one / And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. / What was it it whispered?” The speaker does not know, but continues his task, hypnotized by its rhythm and simple music. In “After Apple-Picking,” as fall gives over to winter, the poet remembers in dreams how the “Magnified apples appear and disappear, / Stem end and blossom end” as he climbs the ladder into the heart of the tree. Both a symbol for life and a metaphor for the poetic act, apple picking leaves the poet “overtired / Of the great harvest [he himself] desired”, awaiting sleep as he describes “its coming on,” wondering what, if anything, it will bring.
“The Road Not Taken,” perhaps Frost’s most famous poem, is a meditation on fate and free will that follows a traveler in an autumn landscape, unsure of which path to take, but certain he cannot stand still. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Robert Frost’s Selected Poems is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
A teen navigates questions of grief, identity, and guilt in the wake of her sister’s mysterious disappearance in this breathtaking novel-in-verse from the author of 500 Words or Less—perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo.
Rowena feels like her family is a frayed string of lights that someone needs to fix with electrical tape. After her mother died a few years ago, she and her sister, Ariana, drifted into their own corners of the world, each figuring out in their own separate ways how to exist in a world in which their mother is no longer alive.
But then Ariana disappears under the cover of night in the middle of a snowstorm, leaving no trace or tracks. When Row wakes up to a world of snow and her sister’s empty bedroom, she is left to piece together the mystery behind where Ariana went and why, realizing along the way that she might be part of the reason Ariana is gone.
Haunting and evocative—and told in dual perspectives—Turtle Under Ice examines two sisters frozen by grief as they search for a way to unthaw.
Reflection is the debut poetry book from All-Pro NFL wide receiver Tyler Lockett. It is a reflective and positive journey through faith, identity, and life's many challenges and rewards. This book serves as a scorching read, an evocative portrait of a professional athlete, and a captivating exercise in rhythm and verse.
Fueled by faith and powered by a strong work ethic, Lockett's poetry explores topics such as identity, sports, race, relationships, and how to live a purposeful life. As an NFL All-Pro wide receiver and return specialist for the Seattle Seahawks, Lockett draws on his unique perspective to address life's many challenges, temptations, and rewards.
From reminding young people to pursue their dreams, to pleading with a friend not to take his own life, Lockett's poetry encourages readers to stay positive even when confronting impossible odds.
From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying—her most powerful collection yet.
Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. “Fine then, / I’ll take it,” she writes. “I’ll take it all.”
In Bright Dead Things, Limón showed us a heart “giant with power, heavy with blood”—“the huge beating genius machine / that thinks, no, it knows, / it’s going to come in first.” In her follow-up collection, that heart is on full display—even as The Carrying continues further and deeper into the bloodstream, following the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.
Beowulf is a major epic of Anglo-Saxon literature, probably composed between the first half of the seventh century and the end of the first millennium. The poem was inspired by Germanic and Anglo-Saxon oral tradition recounting the exploits of Beowulf, the hero who gave his name to the poem.
Here, it's transcribed as a verse epic, onto which are grafted Christian additions.
Written to honor Diamante's children in Heaven, Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief is a gleaning of insights from artist Diamante Lavendar. For her, life has been a long, difficult road, but it has taught many poignant lessons. Her poetry collection is an exploration of the human soul, a traversing of situations that life throws at us.
Diamante has always been intrigued by the ability to overcome and move on to bigger and better things. She writes to encourage hope and possibility in those who read her stories. If she can help others heal, as she has, then Diamante’s work as an author and artist will have been well spent. She believes that everyone should try to leave a positive mark on the world, to make it a better place for all. Writing is the way that she is attempting to leave her mark—one story at a time.
Aednan marks the American debut of Sweden's esteemed literary figure Linnea Axelsson with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse that delves deep into the lives of two Sámi families. This groundbreaking work explores their enduring bond through a century marked by migration, violence, and the scars of colonial trauma.
This sweeping Scandinavian epic, reminiscent of classics such as Halldór Laxness’s Independent People and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, begins in the 1910s. We follow Ristin and her family as they migrate their reindeer herd to summer pastures. Amidst this journey, a tragedy strikes, etching a path of sorrow that echoes throughout the novel.
In the 1970s, we meet Lise, a member of a new Sámi generation confronting her identity and legacy. Her reflections on a childhood marred by forced separation from her family and the loss of her ancestral language at a Nomad School paint a vivid picture of the struggles faced by her people.
The narrative then carries us to the 2010s, introducing Sandra, Lise’s daughter. Sandra stands as a symbol of Indigenous resilience, an activist demanding justice in a landmark land rights trial during a time when the Sámi language teeters on the brink of extinction.
Through the interwoven voices of characters spanning generations, Axelsson crafts a poignant family saga centered around the fallout of colonial settlement. Ædnan serves as a testament to the tenacity of language, even when adopted, to encapsulate memories of what has been lost. The verse of one character to another resonates beyond mortality: "I was the weight / in the stone you brought / back from the coast // to place on / my grave," and the haunting call, "There will be rain / there will be rain."
In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family is forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.
This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world—of new life and new hope—sings with love.
Hourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time--abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage, and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning--a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.
Drawing on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology, Shapiro writes gloriously of the joys and challenges of matrimonial life, in a luminous narrative that unfurls with urgent immediacy and sharp intelligence. Artful, intensely emotional work from one of our finest writers.
Exotic Neurotic is a book of poetry which delves into a myriad of poignant themes. It navigates the complex terrain of depression, the imbalance within one's personal self, angst, frustration, youthfulness, antisocial behavior, and violence. In addition, the book explores themes of love, illness, death, human anatomy, physical deformities, elimination, birth, and abortion, making it a reflective and thought-provoking read.
If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling. Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off. Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she'd be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school.
So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam's weekly visits to her psychiatrist. Caroline introduces Sam to Poet's Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more normal than she ever has as part of the popular crowd... until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.
Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose that delves into the themes of survival, violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is structured into four distinct chapters, each one confronting a different form of pain and offering a path to healing a different heartache.
The book guides readers through the darkest moments of life and uncovers the sweetness hidden within them—because there is sweetness to be found everywhere, if one is only willing to search for it.
في مجال المسرح و الشعر، و في المجال الأدبي عموما، معروف أن هناك أدبا يتم تطويع المواضيع و الأفكار له، و أدبا يتم تطويعه و استخدامه لعرض الأفكار و المواضيع من خلاله.
في المسرح مثلا، لدينا تجارب لتوفيق الحكيم و دكتور مصطفى محمود من مسرحيات هي فنيا قد تكون غير صالحة باعتراف أصحابها ذاتهم، لكنها على مستوى عرض الموضوع و الفكرة ناجحة طبعا. كذلك في الشعر، هناك أشعار يتم تطويع المواضيع و الأفكار لها، و هناك أشعار يتم تطويعها و استخدامها لعرض الأفكار و المواضيع و الأحداث، الشيء الذي يجعل الجانب الفني فيها مجورا عليه.
ديوان (دول العرب و عظماء الإسلام) لأمير الشعراء أحمد شوقي مثلا هو واحد من هذه الأدبيات التي جار صاحبها على الجانب الفني فيها، لصالح المواضيع و الأفكار التي طرحها من خلال أشعاره. و ليس ذاك لمشكلة ما أو نقص في حس الشاعر أو موهبته، و إنما ذاك لثقل و تعقيد وكثافة التجربة التي مر بها الشاعر و التي أبت عليه شعريا كفكرة مجملة، و هو أحوج ما يكون إلى التعبير عنها مجملا مما دفع به إلى ذلك الأسلوب، لا ابتذالا أو تهاونا، و لكن رغبة منه في أن يهتف بها جملة واحدة بشكل مباشر و صريح للتنفيس و لمشاركة الناس بها.
كذلك أعترف بأنني قد جرت على الجانب الفني في الجزء الأول من الكتاب (الأصوات) لصالح الموضوع و الحدث، و لكنه ليس جور لا يغتفر، فـ (الأصوات) هي أشعار غنائية على أي حال أي أن مباشرتها مغفورة! هي أيضا أشعار تُسمع لا تُقرأ، تُسمع مغناة :)، و هو ما دفعني لوسمها بـ (أصوات) منذ البداية.
عموما فـ (الصوت روح) هو كارت تعارف ما بيني و بين القراء ليس إلا، و لا أعده تجربة جدية في الكتابة على أية حال.
هدى عويس، الكاتبة مطربة موسيقى عربية في الأساس، قررت أن تستقل و تغني أغانيها الخاصة و أن تخرج من عباءة الغناء النمطي و الكلمات النمطية للغناء العربي عن الهيام و الهجران و اللوعة و ما إلى ذلك. و بعدما أرهقها البحث عن الكلمات المناسبة التي تستطيع من خلالها خدمة رسالتها و أفكارها و كل ما هي مؤمنة به، قررت أن توفر أجرة شاعر! و أن تقدم بصوتها بروحها لكل ذلك. لم لا؟ و هي تملك الموهبة اللازمة للقيام بذلك، فقد كان لها العديد من المحاولات الأدبية في سنوات نشأتها الأولى، انقطعت بعدها لفترة طويلة (جدا) عن الكتابة لأسباب قهرية، إلا أنها الآن تحاول نفض الغبار عن موهبتها تلك و تجديدها ما دامت الحاجة تدعو إلى ذلك.
لقد وفقت في تأليف أشعار الكتاب كلها في حوالي أسبوعين من أواخر أبريل و أول مايو 2014، عدا (يحيا الإرهاب) و (ضلع أعوج).
هي أيضا تؤمن بأن (الصوت روح)، و هذا ما عبرت عنه و حاولت إيصاله إلى القارئ من خلال صفحات الكتاب.
بداية استعانت الكاتبة برمزية (مأذنة المسجد) في صورة الغلاف للتعبير عن رسالتها الروحية و الفكرية. الكتاب يعرض لثنائية ضدية ما بين الحسي و الروحي (الصوت و الروح) و يطرحها من منظور جديد يجعل منها تكاملية بشكل ما، و ذلك من خلال مقدمة مبسطة في بداية الكتاب. بعدها تستخدم الكاتبة بعض الأشعار العامية و التي دورها في المقام الأول يحدد كـ (موديل) إن صح التعبير لتوضيح نظريتها أو للتدليل عليها. و إن كانت الأشعار هذه قيمتها و دورها لا يتعدى (كونها موديل) لطرح فكرة الكاتبة، إلا أنه يشفع لها في النهاية أنها كتبتهم بإخلاص حقيقي لهذه القضايا و (الأصوات) التي عرضت لهم من خلالها.
بعدها تقدم الكاتبة لـ (صوتها) كأي كاتب آخر! (فأي كاتب من وجهة نظرها يعرض صوته و وجهة نظره الذاتية من خلال كتاباته و دراساته و أشعاره، مهما ادعى الموضوعية). من خلال خواطر روحانية عن الوجود و الكون و الدين مشوبة ببعض الرؤى الفلسفية، تتحدى من خلالها النظرة المادية لتلك القضايا و التي استفحلت في مجتمعاتنا خلال الفترة الأخيرة. في الختام، بعض المحاولات الشعرية التي كتب أغلبها في ربيع 2014 و التي تستمر الكاتبة من خلالها في عرض (صوتها) و رؤاها الروحانية و الفلسفية و الحياتية أيضا و لكن بنظم شعري.
الكاتبة أشارت في البداية لـ (معجم) بالكلمات العامية المصرية في الكتاب، و بالنسبة لها كانت فكرة موفقة على المستوى الشخصي على الأقل لأنها تعتقد في قدرة اللغات السامية على الاستمرار و العربية هنا بالأخص لكونها لغة القرآن الكريم. فعلى المحور المكاني في الوقت الحاضر و على المحور الزماني مستقبلا لمواجهة تطويع اللغة لمقتضيات عصرها و ما يستتبع ذلك من اختلاف اللهجات على المستوى المكاني في نفس العصر أو على المستوى الزماني على نفس المكان، وجدت أهمية من هذا المنطلق لوضع معجم لترجمة اللغة العامية المصرية على أساس محور ثابت ألا و هو (اللغة العربية الأم). إذن فاستخدامها للعامية لم يكن دعوة، أو مشاركة منها في دعوة إلى استخدام العامية عوضا عن العربية الفصحى، و إنما تعاملا مع واقع.
إلا أنها لم توفق في المراجعة اللغوية و فشلت في تحقيق هدفها هذا بسبب استعجالها على تقديم نفسها للقراء ككاتبة و لقلقها من وصول خبر الكتاب للسلطات قبل تسجيله و توثيقه بدار الكتب، ما جعلها تغفل عن هذه النقطة المهمة، نقطة (مراجعة كتابها لغويا). و إن كانت تستغرب من انتقد عدم مراجعة (الأشعار العامية) في الكتاب (لغويا)! فإن كان من المفهوم ضرورة مراجعة العربية الفصحى لغويا، فمن غير المفهوم أو حتى المقبول ادعاء (نموذج) معين للعامية أو القول بأن لها قواعد لغوية و أصول!
عن تلك الجزئية خصوصا علقت الكاتبة بأن من عاب عليها بمثل هذا القول خصوصا، هو إما مدعي سفيه أو جاهل لا ريب! و عن استخدامها للغة العامية من أساسه فقد أرجعته لمحاولة منها لاجتذاب فئة معينة من الشباب يهمها أن تصل رسالتها إليهم لأنها الفئة الأكثر استهدافا من قبل المنظمات العلمانية و أصحاب المذاهب المادية. هي فئة يجتذبها هذا اللون من الأدب العامي على حد علمها سواء مقالة أو أشعار.
أيضا عن تأثرها بأسلوب الأستاذ و الدكتور (مصطفى محمود) رحمه الله فهي لم تنكره، بل على العكس فقد اعتبرت هذا التأثر الواضح بالأسلوب المنهجي و الأدبي لـ (أستاذها) على حد وصفها مدعاة لفخرها.
افتتاحية الكتاب: مأذنة المسجد كانت أهم وسيلة إعلام في مجتمعنا الإسلامي على مر العصور. لذا حينما قررت أن أخرج إلى النور أول كتبي (الصوت روح) و الذي عبرت فيه عن جزء مهم من رسالتي، تلك الكلمة التي خلقت من أجلها، أو خلقت لأكونها، لم أجد أفضل من مأذنة المسجد كوسيلة إعلام أدشن من عليها و أنادي بـ رسالتي تلك. و كان لي الشرف أن أعتلي في سبيل ذلك مأذنة الأزهر الشريف و التي تعد من أهم منابرنا على الإطلاق. و قد يسر الله لي الأمر بعد دعاء و تسليم، و ها أنا ذا، و ها هو كتابي اليوم بين أيديكم فـ بسم الله.
Lang Leav is a poet and internationally exhibiting artist. Her work expresses the intricacies of love and loss. Love & Misadventure is her first poetry collection, beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully conceived, taking you on a rollercoaster ride through an ill-fated love affair - from the initial butterflies to the soaring heights - through to the devastating plunge.
Leav has an unnerving ability to see inside the hearts and minds of her readers. Her talent for translating complex emotions with astonishing simplicity has won her a cult following of devoted fans from all over the world. Forget the dainty, delicate love poems of yore; these little poems pack a mighty punch.
Paradise Lost by John Milton is a monumental epic poem in the English language. It chronicles the dramatic story of the Fall of Man, filled with rebellion, treachery, and the clash between innocence and corruption. The narrative unfolds across three distinct realms - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his cohort of rebel angels conspire against God.
Central to this cosmic conflict are Adam and Eve, whose human frailties lead them to temptation, yet their story is ultimately one of enduring love. Paradise Lost is renowned for Milton's extensive knowledge and his ambitious undertaking of the epic form. For centuries, it has captivated audiences and left a lasting impact on Western culture.
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. His life was divided by political duties and poetry, the most famous of which was inspired by his meeting with Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice, including La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy. He died in Ravenna in 1321.
Meeting with Christ and Other Poems is written by internationally renowned poet Deepak Chaswal. His poetry has been widely appreciated by eminent poets, critics, and poetry lovers around the globe.
Prof. Hugh Fox (Professor Emeritus of Michigan State University, archaeologist, editor, writer, and iconic poet of international fame) has liked and appreciated this book in these words: "One of the deepest, widest, most universal poetry books ever written about individual spirituality in a world-wide context. And Chaswal has the single most original view of Christianity in all its totality and specifics of anyone else on the contemporary scene. What he wants is individual sanity, salvation, an escape from the depravities of the modern world into an ancient oneness with the universe, a kind of reworking of human spirituality, so that it really functions and Man as such can glide into, drift into individual completeness. Christ isn't someone distant for Chaswal but someone he goes to Jerusalem to meet and converse with, all about a return to essential humanity. He hates greed, selfishness, in a sense the whole mechanical-cybernetic drifting of the modern world into a flow that is turning humankind into something minor and self-involved that it was never intended to be. Chaswal identifies with blacks, whites, Indians in India, Americans....you name it, he identifies with it. Universalism at its most universal. You read his poetry and you go through a kind of spiritual renewal."
In the words of Candice James, Poet Laureate, New Westminster, BC CANADA: "Deepak Chaswal is a master of words and weaves them into an intricate pattern that indelibly imprints the mind. His poem, 'Man', tells succinctly the story of our existence from cradle to grave. In 'Day of Judgement' Chaswal's poetry wanders the bleak alleyways of ignorance, atrocity, and man's inhumanity to man. He then leads us from the paths of iniquity into a gentle serenity with his musing in his poem 'Joy'. Deepak Chaswal bares his soul to bleed onto every page that you may be further enriched for reading it."
Felix Nicolau (prolific poet, novelist, critic and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at "Hyperion" University of Bucharest, Romania, where he is the Dean of Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages) observes: "Now and again Christ pops up before our eyes - bearer of intense messages. But when He emerges in front of the Poet there’ll be some mind-twisting revelation for sure. Deepak Chaswal regretfully conjures apocalypse and playfully takes snapshots of voracious appearances. His art can’t sit legs crossed and contemplate ivory towers. Every verse in this book testifies for or against something, proving the intellectual and political charge of contemporary poetry. Then, the details and frailties of a world in turmoil are cunningly surprised by the poet. Such an art refutes the confined vision of Cyclops and energetically assumes the thousand-eyed body of Argus. More than ever, the poet is a seer, full of experience and innocence in the same time."
Philip Ellis, a freelance critic, poet and scholar from Australia comments: "The poetry of Deepak Chaswal's Meeting with Christ and Other Poems invokes the exterior world in language both spiritual and secular, so that the world becomes something newer and stranger than what it was in the past. It is also a melange of images and motifs which appear, disappear and reappear throughout this collection, and it is a body of work unique to his life experiences and his worldview. It is a poetry where the tropes of Western religion, such as Christ and angels, encounter Chaswal's eastern milieu and are transformed, made, again, strange. The result of all this is a verbal and formal richness, using rhyme and free verse alike in its dexterity, and poems that are both distinctive."
Hunter. Autumn. Summer. Different homes. Different guardians. Different last names. Different lives. But there is one person who binds them together. Kristina.
Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster---crank---her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions. Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.
A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother's love should be leads all three down the road of their mother's notorious legacy. Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse---there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe. But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they'll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves---the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.
Fallout is bestselling author Ellen Hopkins's riveting conclusion to her trilogy begun by Crank and Glass. It is a revelation and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person's problem.
Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer's timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War.
Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.
Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer's poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad's mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls "an astonishing performance."
The Canterbury Tales is a timeless piece of literature, penned by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. This vibrant collection of stories is presented in the form of a storytelling contest by a group of pilgrims on their journey to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The tales, most of which are in verse with some in prose, showcase Chaucer's unparalleled wit and insight into the human condition.
Each character, from the noble Knight to the bawdy Wife of Bath, is drawn with vivid detail, bringing to life the social spectrum of Chaucer's time. The stories themselves range from romantic adventures to moral allegories, reflecting the rich diversity of medieval society. Chaucer's daring use of the English language, rather than the conventional Latin, marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of English literature.
Although The Canterbury Tales remains an unfinished masterpiece, with some tales left incomplete and others lacking final revision, its legacy endures. The work continues to captivate readers with its complex characters, intricate narratives, and biting social commentary.
Few readers need any introduction to the work of the most influential poet of the twentieth century. In addition to the title poem, this selection includes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Gerontion", "Ash Wednesday", and other poems from Mr. Eliot's early and middle work.
"In ten years' time," wrote Edmund Wilson in Axel0s Castle (1931), "Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than that of any other poet writing in English." In 1948 Mr. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work as trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. A ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistichs) per line, hence the word rubáiyát (derived from the Arabic language root for "four"), meaning "quatrains".
Omar Khayyám was an eleventh-century Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. Renowned in his own time for his scientific achievements, his fame was reborn in the nineteenth century when Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of his rubáiyát (quatrains in a style popular among Persian intellectuals of his day). Fitzgerald's first translation was first published anonymously in 1859. (His revised editions were published in 1868, 1872, and 1879). FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is perhaps the most frequently read Victorian poem of all time.
The poems in Sylvia Plath's Ariel, including many of her best-known such as 'Lady Lazarus', 'Daddy', 'Edge' and 'Paralytic', were all written between the publication in 1960 of Plath's first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963. 'If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded . . . They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity . . . the book is a major literary event.' A. Alvarez in the Observer
This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series with five other cherished poets, including Wendy Cope, Don Paterson, Philip Larkin, Simon Armitage and Alice Oswald.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the fates of three men and three women. It was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.
Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it contains a large cast of characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation seeks to retain both the literal sense and the poetic music of the original, and capture the poem's spontaneity and wit.
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire is a masterwork that scandalized society with its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city, and lost innocence. The book remains powerful and relevant for our time.
In Spleen et idéal, Baudelaire dramatizes the erotic cycle of ecstasy and anguish of sexual and romantic love. Tableaux Parisiens condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city's soul and praises the city's anti-heroes, including the deranged and derelict. Le Vin centers on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The book explores the many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality in Fleurs du Mal and rebellion is at the heart of Révolte.
The Red Parts chronicles the uncanny series of events that led to Nelson's interest in her aunt's death, the reopening of the case, the bizarre and brutal trial that ensued, and the effects these events had on the disparate group of people they brought together. But The Red Parts is much more than a "true crime" record of a murder, investigation, and trial. For into this story Nelson has woven an account of a girlhood and early adulthood haunted by loss, mortality, mystery, and betrayal, as well as a look at the personal and political consequences of our cultural fixation on dead (white) women.
When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.
The most popular work by Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and the subject of Pablo Larraín's acclaimed feature film Neruda starring Gael García Bernal.
Millie McDeevit screamed a scream
So loud it made her eyebrows steam.
She screamed so loud
Her jawbone broke,
Her tongue caught fire,
Her nostrils smoked...
Poor Screamin' Millie is just one of the unforgettable characters in this wondrous new book of poems and drawings by the creator of Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic. Here you will also meet Allison Beals and her twenty-five eels; Danny O'Dare, the dancin' bear; the Human Balloon; and Headphone Harold.
So come, wander through the Nose Garden, ride the Little Hoarse, eat in the Strange Restaurant, and let the magic of Shel Silverstein open your eyes and tickle your mind.
When Billie Jo is just fourteen, she must endure heart-wrenching ordeals that no child should have to face. The quiet strength she displays while dealing with unspeakable loss is as surprising as it is inspiring.
Written in free verse, this story is set in the heart of the Great Depression. It chronicles Oklahoma's staggering dust storms, and the environmental--and emotional--turmoil they leave in their path. An unforgettable tribute to hope and inner strength.
The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by "the greatest poet of the twentieth century-in any language" (Gabriel García Márquez)
In his work a continent awakens to consciousness," wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers and political figures-a loyal member of the Communist party, a lifelong diplomat and onetime senator, a man lionized during his lifetime as "the people's poet." Born Neftali Basoalto, Neruda adopted his pen name in fear of his family's disapproval, and yet by the age of twenty-five he was already famous for the book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which remains his most beloved. During the next fifty years, a seemingly boundless metaphorical language linked his romantic fantasies and the fierce moral and political compass-exemplified in books such as Canto General-that made him an adamant champion of the dignity of ordinary men and women.
Edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, this is the most comprehensive single-volume collection of this prolific poet's work in English. Here the finest translations of nearly six hundred poems by Neruda are collected and join specially commissioned new translations that attest to Neruda's still-resounding presence in American letters.
Don Juan by Lord George Gordon Byron is a masterpiece of literature that satirizes English society. It follows the adventures of Don Juan from an illicit teenage love affair and subsequent exile to Italy, through a shipwreck, slavery, and his exploits in Russia as a favorite of the empress, to a journey to England.
The poem is renowned for its use of ottava rima, a rhyme scheme that lends a comedic effect in English, chosen by Byron for this reason. Although variations of the Don Juan myth show some variation, the basic storyline remains the same, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. This satiric poem is considered by many critics as Byron's masterpiece, showcasing his sharp wit and deep insights into human behavior and society.
In Crank, Ellen Hopkins chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, a character based on her own daughter, and the "monster," the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or "crank." Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne'er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree:
"there is no perfect daughter, / no gifted high school junior, / no Kristina Georgia Snow. / There is only Bree." Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won't, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.
Enter The Realm of Possibility and meet a boy whose girlfriend is in love with Holden Caulfield; a girl who loves the boy who wears all black; a boy with the perfect body; and a girl who writes love songs for a girl she can't have.
These are just a few of the captivating characters readers will get to know in this intensely heartfelt new novel about those ever-changing moments of love and heartbreak that go hand-in-hand with high school. David Levithan plumbs the depths of teenage emotion to create an amazing array of voices that readers won't forget. So, enter their lives and prepare to welcome the realm of possibility open to us all. Love, joy, and these stories will linger.