A leading critic explains what makes American poetry--a vast genre covering diverse styles, techniques, and form--distinctive. In this short and engaging volume, David Caplan proposes a new theory of American poetry. With lively writing and illuminating examples, Caplan argues that two characteristics mark the vast, contentious literature. On the one hand, several of America's major poets and critics claim that America needs a poetry equal to the country's distinctiveness...

With lively writing and illuminating examples, David Caplan argues that two characteristics mark the vast, contentious literature. On the one hand, several of America's major poets and critics claim that America needs a poetry equal to the country's distinctiveness. They advocate for novelty and for a break with what is perceived to be outmoded and foreign. On the other hand, American poetry welcomes techniques, styles, and traditions that originate from far beyond its borders. The force o...

Questions of Possibility examines the particular forms that contemporary American poets favor and those they neglect. The poets' choices reveal both their ambitions and their limitations, the new possibilities they discover and the traditions they find unimaginable. By means of close attention to the sestina, ghazal, love sonnet, ballad, and heroic couplet, this study advances a new understanding of contemporary American poetry. Rather than pitting "closed" verse against "open" an...

Rhyme's Challenge offers a concise, pithy primer to hip-hop poetics while presenting a spirited defense of rhyme in contemporary American poetry. David Caplan's stylish study examines hip-hop's central but supposedly outmoded verbal technique: rhyme. At a time when print-based poets generally dismiss formal rhyme as old-fashioned and bookish, hip-hop artists deftly deploy it as a way to capture the contemporary moment. Rhyme accommodates and colorfully chronicles the most conspicu...

Ronald Caplan’s account of his search for song and obituary poetry and the tools for community survival in northern Cape Breton, as he learned about the in-home singing tradition and the community’s extraordinary devotion to the poet Andrew Dunphy—a person who might in other places have been an outcast. A hundred years before, Dunphy roamed northern Cape Breton, sharing the news, nursing the sick, often caring for small children. And he wrote magnificent obituary poems that, with great res...

SELinux: Bring World-Class Security to Any Linux Environment!SELinux offers Linux/UNIX integrators, administrators, and developers a state-of-the-art platform for building and maintaining highly secure solutions. Now that SELinux is included in the Linux 2.6 kernel—and delivered by default in Fedora Core, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and other major distributions—it’s easier than ever to take advantageof its benefits.SELinux by Example is the first complete, ha...

Hanabi has decided to confess. Mugi is confronted with Moka's feelings. Ebato still pines after Hanabi. They want to go forward, they want to stop, they want it all to end...or do they? It's not uncommon to be a coward when it comes to love.

Mugi and Hanabi are in a relationship in spite of (and because) they're in love with other people. As this deception continues, are they going to hurt the ones they care for most?

Mugi and Hanabi are the perfect high school couple...but their relationship is built on a single shared secret: They're each in love with someone else.

After seeing Akane's true self, Hanabi makes a decision. For want of the one she loves, a convenient substitute presents a warmth she cannot resist. Love and desire intertwine, and the red string of fate is lost in the tangle...

Twisted love causes problems. Hanabi and Mugi are supposed to be dating, but Ebato's love confession has confused Hanabi. Moka's love for Mugi is still unrequited, a painful thorn hiding beneath the blossoms of love. As all around them people are changing their shape, will their feelings change also...?

Mugi and Hanabi's faux relationship continues, with the players secure in the knowledge that their true feelings lie elsewhere. When the objects of their affections begin crafting a new story, though, what will be the fallout?