Here is 'plainspoken' poetry par excellence, accessible and apolitical. The poems in this collection continue to sound 'natural' note as in previous previous volumes. Poetry lovers may find additional interest in the poet's humorous or idiosyncratic response to subject—a response yet allowing for a certain pathos in many instances. Lovers of form will not be disappointed. Here, rhyme and rhythm emphasize meaning in calculated ways. The poet's flood subjects are human interactions and a hig...

Popular poet Robert Dickerson has released a new collection, this time of haiku, with astonishing success. Here are a hundred or so examples of the form, each a thought-provoking gem. Together, the pieces burst upon the reader like a display of fireworks. Some are comic; some, serious. Some are strict; others, more loosely fashioned. Together, they comprise a treasure house of wit with which all serious practicers of the form must reckon. Best, none has been previously published. This coll...

The Museum Of The City Of...

Some of the poems in this volume may be found mediocre, others, less so. Some are more recent; some still less so, if you favor that sort of thingstanza poetry that rhymes and is oblivious of political currents. I happily publish them all. Assembled without regard for composition date, they can be viewed, for better and worse, as mature poems. The same indifference may account for their unevenness. This being my third collection, these pieces can, in some respects, be considered leftovers....

John Ashbery's wild, deliriously inventive book-length poem, inspired by the adventures of Henry Darger's Vivian GirlsHenry Darger, the prolific American outsider artist who died in 1973, leaving behind over twenty thousand pages of manuscripts and hundreds of artworks, is famous for the elaborate alternate universe he both constructed and inhabited, a "realm of the unreal" where a plucky band of young girls, the Vivians, helps lead an epic rebellion against dark fo...

Auguries of Innocence is the first book of poetry from Patti Smith in more than a decade. It marks a major accomplishment from a poet and performer who has inscribed her vision of our world in powerful anthems, ballads, and lyrics. In this intimate and searing collection of poems, Smith joins in that great tradition of troubadours, journeymen, wordsmiths, and artists who respond to the world around them in fresh and original language. Her influences are eclectic and strik...

A stunning lyrical achievement and Atwood’s first collection of new poems in over a decade.The Door is Margaret Atwood’s first book of poetry since the award-winning Morning in the Burned House (1995). Its fifty lucid yet urgent poems range in tone from lyric to ironic to meditative to prophetic, and in subject from the personal to the political, viewed in its broadest sense. They investigate the mysterious writing of poetry itself, as well as the ...

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATUREA remarkable, graceful collection from one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets.In these 100 poems, Wislawa Szymborska portrays a world of astonishing diversity and richness, in which nature is wise and prodigal and fate unpredictable, if not mischievous. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, she documents life's improbability as well as its transient beauty."Wislawa Szymborska is not only one of the fi...

This collection makes available work of one of our greatest American poets in the last decade of his life. The first section, Pictures from Brueghel, contains previously uncollected short poems, while the second and third parts are the complete texts of The Desert Music (1954) and Journey to Love (1955), originally published by Random House.This collection makes available work of one of our greatest American poets in the last decade of his life. The first section, ...

This anthology cuts into the Canadian poetry scene on a fresh, oblique angle. Included are Robert Bringhurst, Margaret Avison, A.F. Moritz, Guy Birchard, Terry Humby, Alexander Hutchison and Brent MacKay.

A 1995 collection of poems that finds John Ashbery at his most conversational, funny, and surprisingIn Can You Hear, Bird, John Ashbery's seventeenth collection, language is both a plaything and a sandbox. The poems are arranged not in the order of their composition but alphabetically, by the first letter in their titles, like the neatly arrayed keys of some fabulous Seussical instrument. In line after line, Ashbery demonstrates his alertness to language as...

In John Ashbery's haunting 1992 collection, just as in the traveler's experience of a hotel, we recognize everything, and yet nothing is familiar—not even ourselvesHotel Lautréamont invites readers to reimagine a book of poems as a collection of hotel rooms: each one empty until we enter it, and yet in truth abundantly furnished with associations, necessities, and echoes of both the known and the alien. The collection's title poem is itself an evocative ech...