Poet, publisher, bookseller, activist—this is the story of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the bookshop he made a landmark in San Francisco, and a life beautifully lived with writers and books.In the mid-1950s a group of San Francisco-based writers emerged as a central force in American letters. Self-styled bohemians, disillusioned with the old American dream of prosperity and conformity, they harangued these “virtues” in their writings. They became known as the Beat Genera...

Meet the man behind the myth in the only full-fledged biography of the American novelist, poet, and legend by a close friend and collaborator.Neeli Cherkovski began a deep friendship with Bukowski in the 1960s while guzzling beer at wrestling matches or during quieter evenings discussing life and literature in Bukowski's East Hollywood apartment. Over the decades, those hundreds of conversations took shape as this biography—now with a new preface, "This Thing Upon M...

In his final book, poet Neeli Cherkovski paints a portrait of his life through luminous details of encounters with his illustrious comrades.**"A prolific poet and denizen of beatnik cafes who chronicled the literary ethos of bohemian culture."**—New York TimesTo be published on what would have been his 80th birthday, The Portrait Gallery Called Existence finds the poet and memoirist combining these twin vocations in intima...

Edited by the magazine’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, a celebratory selection from one hundred years of influential, entertaining, and taste-making verse in The New YorkerSeamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Czesław Miłosz, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, E. E. Cummings, Sharon Olds, Franz Wright, John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Maggie Smith, Kaveh ...

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.“One of the best books of poetry of the year . . . Quinn has accomplished something dizzying here: arranged a stellar cast of poets . . . It is what all anthologies must be: comprehensive, contradictory, stirring.” —The Millions**Featuring...

Short offers the tradition and glorious present of these popular forms that stretch and defy genre. From 1500 to present, hundreds of pieces. Inventive, entertaining, and addictive.Short prose forms are elusive to define--one writer's prose poem is another's flash fiction or brief essay. Rather than quibble, Short opts for inclusiveness. Here is a dazzling array: 100s of pieces (under 1250 words) from 24 Western countries, written over five centur...

"If readers would like to sample the genius and diversity of American poetry in the last century, there's no better place to start." — World Literature TodayWhen Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912, she began with an image: the Open Door. For a century, the most important and enduring poets have walked through that door—William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens in its first years, Rae Armantrout and Kay Ryan in 2011. And at ...

Robert Pinsky, distinguished poet and man of letters, selects the top 100 poems from twenty-five years of The Best American PoetryThis special edition celebrates twenty-five years of the Best American Poetry series, which has become an institution. From its inception in 1988, it has been hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced), and obsessively scrutinized. Each volume consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major Amer...

A prose poem is a poem written in prose rather than verse. But what does that really mean? Is it an indefinable hybrid? An anomaly in the history of poetry? Are the very words "prose poem" an oxymoron? This groundbreaking anthology edited by celebrated poet David Lehman, editor of The Best American Poetry series, traces the form in all its dazzling variety from Poe and Emerson to Auden and Ashbery and on, right up to the present.In his brilliant and lucid introduction, Leh...

This important and inspiring collection is a sweeping overview of poetry written in New York in the year after the 9/11 attacks . . .This anthology contains poems by forty-five of the most important poets of the day, as well as some of the literary world’s most dynamic young voices, all writing in New York City in the year immediately following the World Trade Center attacks.It was inspired by the editors' observation that after the tragic events of Septemb...

Renowned poet Mary Jo Salter, whose command of verse forms and high intelligence is universally acknowledged, selects the poems for the 2024 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune).The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets) since 1988. Each volume presents a curated selection of the year’s ...