Pity the Plumeria TreePity the poor plumeria tree:no white petals again this year;and again its green, oblong leavesfall before their prime, exposeits skeletal frame like a desert fossil.We hadn’t asked all that muchof the plumeria---neither the shadenor the elegance the others give---only that it be a privacy screenbetween our patio and the passersby.Perhaps it thinks itself the orphanw...

This book provides detailed histories of colonial water systems in four localities in the Mexican Baja-o-Celaya, Salvatierra, Valle de Santiago, and Queretaro. It includes studies of irrigated agriculture, hydraulic technology, and water law in the region. The local histories richly illustrate, through the patterns of irrigation, the interactions b

Most of us wish that our parents and grandparents had left more about themselves and what moved them for us to read and talk about today.In Songs of Crocus Hill, author Michael E. Murphy presents a poetry collection that focuses on memory poemscandle-lit vignettes related to the memoir genre. The people, places, and experiences he imagines are drawn from his years growing up in the Crocus Hill district of St. Paul, from his experiences as a parent, and from his travels abroad as an...

This selection of poems by Leonard Cohen, one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters in the world, is accompanied by twenty-four of his striking and provocative drawings.Cohen first made his name as a poet more than half a century ago and since then his achievements in poetry and music have made him an internationally revered figure. These fifteen poems, including “Death of a Lady’s Man,” “On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken,” and “The Embrace,” are drawn from across his remarkable c...

In 1988 the University of Arkansas Press published Billy Collins’s The Apple That Astonished Paris, his “first real book of poems,” as he describes it in a new, delightful preface written expressly for this new printing to help celebrate both the Press’s twenty-fifth anniversary and this book, one of the Press’s all-time best sellers. In his usual witty and dry style, Collins writes, “I gathered together what I considered my best poems and threw them in the mail.” After “what seemed like a...

Endpoint opens with a series of connected poems which were written on the occasions of Updike's recent birthdays and culminate in his confrontation with his final illness. They look back on the boy that Updike once was, on his family and little town and the circumstances that fed his love of writing. Then there are 'Other Poems', ranging from fanciful musings about what it would be like to be a stolen Rembrandt painting to celebratory outpourings that capture the spontaneity and f...

The award-winning author of Evening “reveals an ear for cadence and rhyme [and] her descriptive powers are fully realized” (Miami Herald) in this stunning collection of poems.“Exquisite . . . Minot negotiates a torturous course over the unsettled waters of frayed family ties, substance-free love, and the occasional adulterous affair.”—The Christian Science MonitorIn Poems 4 A.M., we come to know a differe...

What people are saying about Elise Skidmore --I've read POEMS FROM THE EDGE OF SPRING, and can highly recommend it! The sort of book you can pick up for a moment's respite or inspiration--or just sit and read from piece to piece, always entertained/comforted/made to think. Lovely book! -- Diana GabaldonPoignant and lyrical, every sentence is a gem. Each poem brought back personal memories of family members and past experiences, each one re-lived through Ms. Skidmore's preci...

In paperback for the first time: Kenneth Koch’s six masterly, groundbreaking longer poems, which contain some of the poet’s most original work, full of exclamation and exaggeration but graced as well with dry wit and sophistication. Together they serve as the companion volume to the highly praised Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch.

Haunting and memorable, the poems in this collection exhibit a sensuous command of language. They are written in the new formalism, a refreshing change from the spate of free verse that has lately dominated the poetry scene. In each poem, Whipple plays with assonance, rhythm, and intermittent rhyme to intensify his meaning.

This book is a collection of short poems written in a minialistic style of writing. The book features many themes in its content.

Siren, Kateri Lanthier’s astonishing second book, calls us to attention. In her search for what she calls “compelling melancholy,” Lanthier’s new poems not only draw on the ghazal's history as love poetry but remind readers of the dangerous and alluring quality of the ancient form itself. The siren was a lethal yet seductive figure, and that sense of power—and as well as her fast-taking bemusement at her own reputation—is present in lines that marry unnerving dream logic to emotio...