Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu's writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name--Zen.The Chinese sage abounds in wit and paradox and shattering insights into the true ground of being. Thomas Merton, no stranger to Asian thought, brings a vivid, modern idiom to the timeless wisdom of Tao.
Williams wrote: "This is a play about love in its purest terms." It is also Williams's robust and persuasive plea for endurance and resistance in the face of human suffering. The earthy widow Maxine
By now, Yukio Mishima's (1925-1970) dramatic demise through an act of seppuku after an inflammatory public speech has become the stuff of literary legend. With Patriotism, Mishima was able to give hi
Once Again for Thucydides is a collection of seventeen micro-epics written on trips around the world. In each brief journal entry, Handke concentrates on small things he observes, trying to capture th
One of the lost classics of the 1960s, and a legendary experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson's famous "book in a box," in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in a
Included here are all of Pound’s concert reviews and statements; the biweekly columns written under the pen name William Atheling for The New Age in London; articles from other periodicals; the comple
The book purports to be a biographical dictionary gathering 30 brief accounts of poets, novelists and editors (all fictional) who espouse fascist or extremely right-wing political views. While severa
In 1935 a young Englishman living on Corfu wrote enthusiastically to a middle-aged Brooklynite who had just published a succes de scandale in Paris: “…Tropic [of Cancer] turns the corner into a new li
In print for fifty years, this gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old from its very first edition.Dylan Thomas, one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captu
The final novel by John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson
In a stunning new collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Nathaniel Mackey's "asthmatic song of aspiration" scuttles across cultures and historiesfrom America to And
A book unlike any other, a daring experiential unfolding Spanish masterpiece, Your Face Tomorrow now leaps into uncharted new territory in Volume Two: Dance and Dream.
In 1613, four low-ranking Japanese samurai, accompanied by a Spanish priest,set sail for Mexico to bargain for trading rights with the West in exchange fora Catholic crusade through Japan. Their arduo
The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play--reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In."
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda's birth, New Directions is pleased to announce the reissue ofa classic work in a timeless translation by Donald D. Walsh and fully bil