In Daniel Galef’s Imaginary Sonnets, a cast of people and objects from mythology, history, the news, and the quotidian parades through a variety of imaginative scenarios. In dialogues, dramatic monologues, satires, lamentations, eulogies, and execrations, the sonnets adopt perspectives ranging from the familiar to the novel to the twisty and surprising. Characters include not only widely known figures such as Cassandra, Pandora, St. Augustine, Byron, and Doris Day, but also obscur...

This is the only digital version of Sappho’s work that presents each fragment in the original Greek alongside a concise brand new English translation. A brief biography is also included, as well as an Ancient Greek pronunciation section, allowing you to read aloud and experience the true beauty of Sappho’s original text. (Version 2)Features:* new translation of the surviving fragments* includes the recent 2005 discovery of a near complete poem by Sapp...

Dantes Hell is one of the most remarkable visions in Western literature. An allegory for his and future ages, it is, at the same time, an account of terrifying realism. Passing under a lintel emblazoned with these frightening words, the poet is led down into the depths by Virgil and shown those doomed to suffer eternal torment for vices exhibited and sins committed on earth. The Inferno is the first part of the long journey which continues through redemption to revelation through Purgatory a...

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...

“Under James’s uncanny touch, seven long centuries drop away, and the great poem is startlingly fresh and new.”—Stephen GreenblattThe Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and Clive James’s translation—decades in the making—gives us the entire epic as a single, coherent, and compulsively readable lyric poem. For the first time ever in an English translation, James makes the bold choice of switching from the terza rima composition of the orig...

A Season in Hell is an extended poem written and published by French writer Arthur Rimbaud. The book had a considerable influence on later artists and poets, for example the Surrealists. Henry Miller was important in introducing Rimbaud to America in the sixties. He once attempted an English translation of the book and wrote an extended essay on Rimbaud and A Season in Hell titled The Time of the Assassins. The poem is loosely divided into nine parts, some of which are much shorter than ot...

'Happiness beyond all words! A life of peace and love, entire and whole!'A collection of cantos from Paradiso, the most original and experimental part of the Divina Commedia.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, ...

A collection of poems by the renowned Beat poet, Gregory Corso.Gregory Corso's collection of poems contains works of major proportions. The title poem is a tribute to Jack Kerouac, fusing a memorial to the poet's dead friend with a bitter lament for the present state of America. The second major work, "The Geometric Poem," published previously in a limited edition by Fernanda Pivano in Italy, is a complex visionary restatement of themes from ancient Egyptian religi...

The Baby's Own Aesopby Aesop and Walter Crane, Illustrated by Walter CraneBeing the Fables Condensed in Rhyme with Portable Morals TABLE OF CONTENTS: PrefaceThe Fox & The Grapes The Cock & The Pearl The Wolf and the Lamb The Wind & The Sun King Log & King Stork The Frightened Lion The Mouse & The Lion The Married Mouse Hercules & The Waggoner The Lazy Housemaids The Snake & The File The Fox & The Crow The Dog in the Manger The Frog & The Bull The Fox & The Crane Horse and Man The Ass & The...

In this masterful retelling of one of the greatest works of world literature, Alasdair Gray – in his last work – offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme. Lyrical and modern, this complete edition brings all three parts of Dante’s epic journey through Hell and Purgatory and on to Paradise together in a single volume for the first time.

The Books of Catullus is the first full English translation to take the Roman poet at his word. Simon Smith's versions are scholarly yet eccentric, mapping theme and register to contemporary equivalents (such as poem 16, which echoes Frank O'Hara). He divides Catullus's complete verses into three 'books', the form in which it is thought the poems were originally received. 'Smith gets the all-important rhythm of Catullus, whose meters, like all else about this poet, are deceptively...

Documenting the colourful escapades of the former gladiator Encolpius and his less than faithful lover Giton, the "Satyricon" plunges the reader into the lives of ordinary Roman citizens, vividly revealing the Empire's seamy underbelly. A host of unforgettable characters are satirically presented, such as Trimalchio, the pretentious parvenu host, in a memorable banquet scene, the lascivious priestess Quartilla and the narrator's unreliable, roguish friend Ascyltus. Sometimes referred to as...