The first book of inventive prose by a poet whose writing “refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution” (Seamus Heaney)I: What do the dead think about, anyway?G: For
Kate Braverman grew up in Los Angeles in the late 1950s at the time when glitz was just beginning to be manufactured. Her Los Angeles was made up of stucco tenements, welfare, and the marginalized. I
The first publication in the United States of celebrated contemporary Israeli poet Agi Mishol, winner of the Yehuda Amichai Poetry PrizeYou are only twenty and your first pregnancy is an exploding bo
In the city of Beirut, five shabby dwellings circle a courtyard with a pomegranate tree weeping blood red fruit. The residents hear screams in the night as a boy is beaten by his father - a punishmen
A brilliant new collection by Elizabeth Alexander, whose "poems bristle with the irresistible quality of a world seen fresh" (Rita Dove, The Washington Post)Too many people have seen too muchand live
Jane Kenyon is considered one of America’s best contemporary poets. Her previous collection, Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, published just after her death in 1995, has been a favorite amo
“A book that translates, and transcends, the eternal question of home, belonging, family, identity.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)My name is Jeong Kyong-Ah. My ancestry includes lando
After a brilliant youth, the painter Roderic Kennedy's life has been overtaken by a series of crises - alcoholism, the failure of his marriage to an Italian woman, and estrangement from his three dau
The latest collection by Irish poet Eamon Grennan, winner of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prizewe have to be at home here no matter what no matter what the shivering belly says or the dry-salted la
A chilling and masterful second poetry collection by the author of the award-winning The Anchorage Sometimes the heart breaks. Sometimesit is not held hostage. The red worldwhere cells prepare for th
The Celebrated poet and author of Can Poetry Matter?offers another bold, insightful collection of essays on literature's changing place in contemporary culturePoetry is an art that preceded writing,
"Black's poems, in their measured grace, have a quiet intensity, animated by her passion for a clarity of understanding, in the art as in the life."-Stanley Kunitz I have not handled the ordinary wel
Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multi-genre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and me
The Award-winning poet Carl Phillips grapples with issues of authority, identity, and beauty in these sensual and deeply intelligent essaysThe "coin of the realm" is, classically, the currency that f
The only definitive anthology of contemporary British poetry available in the United States, New British Poetry presents the exciting work of thirty-five poets from England, Scotland, and Wales. In c
With a poet's precision and an intellectually adventurous spirit, Elizabeth Alexander explores a wide spectrum of contemporary African American artistic life through literature, paintings, popular me
Winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, The Body's Question debuts Tracy K. Smith's ambitious and engaging new voiceYou are pure appetite. I am pureAppetite. You are a phantomIn that far-off city
It's where you sit down that determines everything in life.Sarah's aunt Edna paints portraits of chairs. Not people in chairs, just chairs. The old house is filled with the paintings, and the chairs
A prolific writer, a famous pacifist, a respected teacher, and a literary mentor to many, William Stafford is one of the great American poets of the twentieth century. His first major collection--Tra
“John D’Agata is an alchemist who changes trash into purest gold.” —Guy Davenport, Harper’sJohn D’Agata journeys the endless corridors of America’s myriad ha
In this singular collection, John D'Agata takes a literary tour of lyric essays written by the masters of the craft. Beginning with 1975 and John McPhee's ingenious piece, "The Search for Marvin Gard
In this second collection, Nick Flynn invites us to consider the intricate geometry of the beehive. Our guide to this new world is Blind Huber, loosely based on the eponymous eighteenth-century beeke
Poet Katie Ford's debut collection confronts God in a language as shifting and ecstatic as divine encounter This comes out of folklore. Invented because tenderness at times must be written in. There
This is a deeply felt and highly informed essay collection about life in the American west by one of the finest writers ever to emerge from that region. As the Seattle Times has said of Owning It All
A Lannan Translation SelectionBeautifully translated by the award-winning American poet Forrest Gander, the work of highly esteemed Mexican poet Pura López-Colomé is, with this important
Selected as a "2003 Notable Book" by the American Library AssociationIn the early 1900s, E.J. Bellocq photographed prostitutes in the red-light district of New Orleans. His remarkable, candid photos
02 Originallly published as four clothbound editions (The Roses and The Windows, The Astonishment of Origins, Orchards, and The Migration of Powers), this large paperback brings together all of Rilke'
In surprising turns through different American cities, mindsets, and eras, and through the strange rhythms of dreaming, the celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander composes her own kind of improvisationa
In an age of memoir, the distinction between fiction and nonfiction has become increasingly blurred, sparking controversy among writers and readers alike. But what about the autobiographical impulse
A rising star in the United Kingdom, contemporary Scottish poet Paterson is poised to become a major voice of our time. The London Review of Books calls him "one of the most talented Scottish writers
Mississippi native Natasha Trethewey, author of Bellocq's Ophelia and Domestic Work, has been awarded the Grolier Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize. Her work was also included in The Best American Po
In this enlightening and typically endearing collection of prose and poetry, the late author of five highly regarded books of verse reflects on her writing life, growing spirituality, passionate hobb
A Time magazine "Best Book" of 1994This is the compelling personal narrative of Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh, who was born in South Vietnam in 1958. He survived the war in Vietnam to become a unive
Winner of a "Discovery"/The Nation AwardWinner of the 1999 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for PoetrySome Ether is one of the more remarkable debut collections of poetry to appear in America in recent memor
Drawing upon his collection of quirky antique postcards, Lawrence Sutin has penned a series of brief but intense reminiscences of his "ordinary" life. In the process he creates an unrepentant, wholly
Have women finally moved beyond the status of cultural outsiders to become full participants in American poetry and its criticism? In By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, contemporary women poets reconsi
In this wilderness classic, the quintessential Alaskan frontiersman relates his experiences from over twenty years as a homesteader. As New York Newsday has said of his work, If Alaska had not existed
Carl Phillips is the author of nine previous books of poems, including Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006; Riding Westward; and The Rest of Love, a National Book Award finalist. He teaches at
Throughout Things and Flesh, there is a wonderful sense of song, a kind of ringing up and down the scales of being. Here, Linda Gregg engages with the searches and findings of both the intellect and t
