Originally published in the 1980s and out of print until now, Rodefer's four long poems are milestones in American avant-garde poetry.Stephen Rodefer was an innovative, singular American writer—a student of Charles Olson’s often associated with the Language poets but whose eclectic, energetic verse defies categorization and embraces a worldly lyricism all Rodefer’s own. Four Lectures—first published in 1982 by Geoffrey Young’s legendary press The Figures a...

A resplendent life in sonnets from the author of Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,” Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss’s working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sh...

Anne Carson’s first original work since Float (Knopf, 2016)A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2024WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRYFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYPublished here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like ...

Chock-full of jokes and entertaining twists of the tongue, this lighthearted but scholarly guide to humorous language is a sure?re hit with word lovers. The examples are entertainingly bawdy, with a delightful narrative voice in word sleuth and author, Jim Bernhard. He provides examples and puzzles, teaching a smidgen of historical and etymological scholarship, but above all, amusing his audience.Puns from Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, the Bible, George S. Kaufman, and Groucho Mar...

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRYFINALIST FOR THE 2025 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZEWINNER OF THE 2024 HEARTLAND BOOKSELLERS AWARD FOR POETRYDiane Seuss’s signature voice—audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude—has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry...

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 ...

The definitive collection of a twentieth-century master of the short story, whose unforgettable inventions revolutionized the formThe short stories of Donald Barthelme, revered by the likes of Thomas Pynchon and George Saunders, are gems of invention and pathos that have dazzled and delighted readers since the 1960s. Here, for the first time, these essential stories are preserved as they were published in Barthelme's original collections, beginning with Come Ba...

**Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeFinalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Poetry)A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from "perhaps the best public poet we have" (Boston Globe).**In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Je...

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...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love, a collection of more than 125 small poems, all of them new, and each a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essence“Whenever I pick up a new book of poems, I flip through the pages looking for small ones. Just as I might have trust in an abstract painter more if I knew he or she could draw a credible chicken, I...

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...