|
Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Poetry texts & anthologies
|
Under a Giant Sky
(Paperback)
Toon Tellegen; Translated by Judith Wilkinson; Introduction by Robert Minhinnick
|
R465
R421
Discovery Miles 4 210
Save R44 (9%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
|
The Seven Seas is a celebration of the sea, and of the seven oceans
on earth, in poetry and painting. The land, the seven continents of
our planet, usually takes centre stage with its diverse populations
of flora and fauna, and humanity - ourselves. But this book gives
first place to the water, the element that covers some seventy per
cent of the earth's surface, and the life above and within it. The
volume is organised to reveal the nature and character of the seven
oceans ('the seven seas', as poets have traditionally called them)
and the principal ports that link them as one vast waterway. It
contains a series of seven voyages which together comprise one
extensive and imaginary tour of the world, encircling the globe
three times at different latitudes and visiting both the Arctic and
Antarctic Oceans at the northern and southern extremes. After a
lively Foreword and a learned Introduction, describing the ocean
today and its history, the sea-routes and landfalls of the voyage -
and also providing a short account of the arts of poetry and
painting - the book is arranged in seven chapters representing each
of 'the seven seas' in turn, beginning and ending at Greenwich. The
imaginary voyage explores the North Atlantic first, followed by the
Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, then the Antarctic, before
turning northwards again to tour the South Atlantic, passing
through the Panama Canal to reach the South and North Pacific, and
finally the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic and North Sea, before
returning home. Each port of call is characterised in Sandra
Lello's delightful illustrations and thoughtful verses from the pen
of John Elinger, who are each experienced travellers and
cruise-lecturers.
This Norton Critical Edition includes: An expanded translation from
the Akkadian by Benjamin R. Foster based on new discoveries, adding
lines throughout the world's oldest epic masterpiece. Benjamin R.
Foster's full introduction and expanded explanatory annotations.
Eleven illustrations. Analogues from the Sumerian and Hittite
narrative traditions along with "The Gilgamesh Letter," a parody of
the epic enjoyed by Mesopotamian schoolchildren during the first
millennium BCE. Essays by Thorkild Jacobsen, William L. Moran,
Susan Ackerman, and Andrew R. George, and a poem by Hillary Major.
A Glossary of Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography.
In Martyn Crucefix's bold new sequence of poems, A Hatfield Mass,
the sensuous shapes of Henry Moore's work interweave with the
fluid, observant voices of the verse. From curves and spaces, words
and silence, Crucefix constructs a secular Mass that explores a
variety of forms of love, our relationships with people and the
world around us. In part a journey from innocence to experience,
these are poems marvellously open to the beauty of landscape, the
shared intimacies of our bodies, the passage of time through which
we are endlessly becoming: "if not more beautiful we grow more
rich"
Early/Late: New and Selected Poems draws from Philip Fried's
previous four collections of poetry. These highly praised books
explored such themes as the tribulations of a vulnerable deity and
the intersection of personal myth and historical moment. The new
poems, in a section titled "The Emanation Crunch," are haunted by
the current financial turmoil and possessed by the disembodied
voices that multiply in our world of simulacra.
Winner of a 2022 Palestine Book Award "Written from his native
Gaza, Abu Toha's accomplished debut contrasts scenes of political
violence with natural beauty."-The New York Times In this poetry
debut Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege in Gaza,
first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four
brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of
destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a
profound humanity. These poems emerge directly from the experience
of growing up and living in constant lockdown, and often under
direct attack. Like Gaza itself, they are filled with rubble and
the ever-present menace of surveillance drones policing a people
unwelcome in their own land, and they are also suffused with the
smell of tea, roses in bloom, and the view of the sea at sunset.
Children are born, families continue traditions, students attend
university, and libraries rise from the ruins as Palestinians go on
about their lives, creating beauty and finding new ways to survive.
Accompanied by an in-depth interview (conducted by Ammiel Alcalay)
in which Abu Toha discusses life in Gaza, his family origins, and
how he came to poetry. Praise for Things You May Find Hidden in My
Ear: "Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishingly gifted young poet from
Gaza, almost a seer with his eloquent lyrical vernacular ... His
poems break my heart and awaken it, at the same time. I feel I have
been waiting for his work all my life."-Naomi Shihab Nye "Though
forged in the bleak landscape of Gaza, he conjures a radiance that
echoes Milosz and Kabir. These poems are like flowers that grow out
of bomb craters and Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishing talent to
celebrate."-Mary Karr "Mosab Abu Toha's Things You May Find Hidden
in My Ear arrives with such refreshing clarity and voice amidst a
sea of immobilizing self-consciousness. It is no great feat to say
a complicated thing in a complicated way, but here is a poet who
says it plain: 'In Gaza, some of us cannot completely die.' Later,
'This is how we survived.' It's remarkable. This is poetry of the
highest order."-Kaveh Akbar
|
Home Body
(Paperback)
Rupi Kaur
|
R449
R339
Discovery Miles 3 390
Save R110 (24%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
The poet Cas Vos has already established a reputation with his
previous collections of love poetry. In Intimately absent he
touched on the themes of love and loss. In this collection, of his
poems are fed from ancient times, the religious as well as the
mythological, but also at the same time reaching out to the modern
era. The poet searches for new links, connecting with other times,
other texts and other art forms. The poem is palimpsest where other
times and texts are constantly evident, where nothing is final. He
involves artists, artworks, ancient history, the mythology,
eroticism and music. Opposite the powers of silence and death, he
poses that of sound, language and music. The poems in Duskant die
donker/Before it darkens are accessible and should be appreciated
by a variety of readers.
Posthumously launched as the "electric-age Blake", Mina Loy's
futurist techniques were unlike anything British critics had seen
before; her subjects - sex, parturitiion, prostitution, suicide,
addiction, retardation - were considered shocking even by some
modernists. Updating and correcting the earlier book, this edition
features previously unknown works by Loy rescued from Dada archives
and avant-garde magazines. All of Loy's futurist and feminist
satires are included, as are the poems from her Paris and New York
periods, the cycle of "Love Songs", and her portraits-in-verse
which define the trajectory of her favoured company and geography -
from fellow modernist Joyce and Brancusi in Paris in the 1920s to
fellow destitutes in New York's Lower East Side in the 1940s.
America's Kim Addonizio has been called 'one of the nation's most
provocative and edgy poets'. Her poetry is renowned both for its
gritty, street-wise narrators and for a wicked sense of wit. With
passion, precision and irreverent honesty, her poems explore life's
dual nature: good and evil, light and dark, joy and suffering,
exposing raw emotions often only visible when truly confronting
ourselves - jealousy, self-pity, fear, lust.
I am the Rage is not just a poetry book. It is a call-to-action.
This evocative collection of thirty poems puts readers in the
position of feeling, reflecting, and empathizing with what it means
to be Black in America today. Dr. Martina McGowan, a doctor and
grandmother who has been a victim of and an advocate against
social, racial, and sexual injustices, uses powerful free verse
poetry to express the range of emotions, thoughts, and grief she
had following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the
subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and the ongoing attacks
against the Black community. For those who are moved by the poetry
of Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou, Dr. McGowan's poems are a
glimpse into the Black experience and will stay with you long after
you've read them. Her unforgettable words are brought to life
through powerful illustrations by Diana Ejaita, whose work has been
featured in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The New York Times,
making it a beautiful poetry gift book for women and men. Praise
for I am the Rage: "I am The Rage is a timely look at generations
of trauma and inaction."-Bustle "A raw and searing examination of
America's reckoning with racism."-POPSUGAR "These poems reverberate
with the powerful grief of a woman who speaks the vulnerability of
living in a world where being black makes you a target."-Pamala A.
Thiede, Amazon customer review
Maggie Millner's seductive debut is a novel-in-verse about a woman
in her late twenties who leaves a long-term relationship with a
boyfriend for another woman. The affair thrusts her from an
outwardly conventional life into queerness, polyamory, kink, and
unalloyed, consuming desire. What ensues is an exploration of
obsession, gender, identity-making, sexual experiment, and the art
and act of literary transformation. Couplets is a dazzling fusion
of form and content, chronicling the strictures, structures and
pitfalls of relationships - the mirroring, the pleasing, the small
jealousies and disappointments. Playful, clever, lovestruck,
griefstruck, its narrator dances a tightrope of her own invention
with captivating passion and skill. Advance Praise: 'Couplets
compelled me like a love affair-I didn't want to eat, didn't want
to go to bed, didn't want to get off the subway, I just wanted to
hear the story it was telling, which was, ultimately, a story about
form-what are the forms (of intimacy, vocation, domesticity, verse,
pleasure) we want to be held by, and to break free from? I cannot
remember the last time I was this gripped by a voice or its
questions. Reading it was a thrill, a rearrangement of my psychic
molecules.' Leslie Jamison, author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn
'A dazzling, feather-light tour de force-witty and effervescent and
insightful, and so sexy, and so real.' Elif Batuman, author of
Either/Or 'In this riveting debut, Maggie Millner makes the rhyming
couplet-that supposedly staid, outmoded vehicle of 18th century
moralism-an engine of radical metamorphosis and scorching sex.
Couplets plunges us into desire so fierce it overwrites existence,
exiling us from the lives we know. This is an endlessly inventive,
wise, exhilarating book.' Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and
What Belongs to You
|
Gun/Shy
(Paperback)
Jim Daniels
|
R467
R383
Discovery Miles 3 830
Save R84 (18%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
The poems in Gun/Shy deal with the emotional weight of making do.
Tinged with both the regrets and wisdom of aging, Jim Daniels's
poems measure the wages of love in a changing world with its
vanishing currency. He explores the effects of family work-putting
children to bed, leading parents to their final resting places-and
what is lost and gained in those exertions. Childhood and
adolescence are examined, through both looking back on his own
childhood and on that of his children. While his personal death
count rises, Daniels reflects on his own mortality. He finds solace
in small miracles-his mother stretching the budget to feed five
children with ""hamburger surprise"" and potato skins, his children
collecting stones and crabapples as if they were gold coins.
Daniels, as he always has, carries the anchor of Detroit with him,
the weight both a comfort and a burden. He explores race, white
privilege, and factory work. Eight Mile Road, a fraught border,
pulses with division, and the echoes of music, singing through
Detroit's soiled but solid heart, resonate in these poems. His
first long poem in many years, ""Gun/Shy,"" centers the book.
Through the personas of several characters, Daniels dives into
America's gun culture and the violent gulf between the fearful and
the feared. Throughout, he seeks connection in likely and unlikely
places: a river rising after spring rain and searchlights crossing
the night sky. Comets and cloudy skies. Cement ponds and the Garden
of Eden. Adolescence and death. Wounds physical and psychic.
Disguises and more disguises. These are the myths we memorize to
help us sleep at night, those that keep us awake and trembling.
Daniels's accessible language, subtlety, and deftness make this
collection one that belongs on every poetry reader's shelf.
Longlisted for the 2021 Kate Greenaway Medal'A quiet masterpiece .
. . a love story, a hope story, a story out of time, out of
stricture, out of the narrow artificial bounds by which we try to
contain the wild wonderland of reality because we are too
frightened to live wonder-stricken' Maria Popova, Brain
Pickings'The tales feel like half-remembered dreams, peopled with
fairytale characters and magnificent creatures' Rebecca Armstrong,
i Paper Best Books of 2020'A powerful spell book to make the
sleepless fall into slumber and the agitated calm' i Paper'A
lyrical and enchanting collection' ScotsmanThis book is not meant
to be read from cover to cover. It is a book for dreamers. Slight
of word, rich of image, its purpose is to ease the soul. The
paintings between these covers were worked in the between times, an
unwinding of the soul, when the pressures of work were too much.
Dreams and wishes are the inspiration at times like this. Threaded
through the curious world of The Unwinding are words, slight and
lyrical. Their aim is to set the reader's mind adrift from the
troubles of our times, into peaceful harbours where imagination can
stretch, where quiet reflection can bring peace. The Unwinding is
designed to be a companion, a talisman to be turned to again and
again and a place of respite from an increasingly frantic and
complex world.
Testament is an imaginative improvisation on the Bible that engages
with the intensities, the ups and downs, of existence in our
complex and fragmented world. Psalter, the first part, comprises
150 psalm-like poems that sound the depths and heights of life
lived in the presence of God. Here, shaped into powerful,
accessible poetry, is the wisdom of a mature and practical faith
that knows love, grief, doubt, fear, disappointment, and
overwhelming delight and joy. Micheal O'Siadhail stretches heart,
mind, and imagination to open up profound questions of God,
suffering and aging, truth and trust, freedom and surprise, desire
and love. There are passionate exchanges with God and daring leaps
of insight. Through them all runs a gripping conversational
relationship expressed in praise, thanks, lament, and distilled
wisdom, embracing a dazzling variety of forms and rhythms. Gospel,
the second part, retells in poetry stories from the four Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The emphasis is on the plain sense
of the stories, newly imagined. We are invited to reread them, to
discover insights and nuances, angles and depths, and above all to
encounter afresh the familiar yet endlessly mysterious central
character-Jesus. The world's bestselling book shows yet again its
capacity to excite and inspire. O'Siadhail's acclaimed The Five
Quintets engaged with the ways in which the arts, economics,
politics, the sciences, philosophy, and theology have shaped our
twenty-first-century world. Here in Testament is an imaginative
faith and wise spirituality that can inspire day-to-day living in
that world, revealed through the inner life and penetrating
discernment of a great poet.
|
|