In this, his third book of poetry, Garrett presents recent poems that enhance a reputation already well established for charm of language, a frank and perceptive approach to experience, strong images, and a large understanding of life and feelings. The three sections comprising the book are well differentiated, moving from the casually actual to the neatly satirical to depth poems.
Originally published in 1961.
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Here, published in a single volume as Faulkner always hoped they would be, are the three novels that comprise the famous Snopes trilogy, a saga that stands as perhaps the greatest feat of Faulkner's imagination. "The Hamlet, "the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, is a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes dominates the rural community of Frenchman's Bend--and claims the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. "The Town, " the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. Finally, "The Mansion "tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concerns with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics."

The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander. This volume presents fresh versions of Sophocles's Theban plays, which include the most famous of the ancient Greek tragedies, King Oedipus. Sophocles reveals the history of Oedipus from the fulfillment of the oracle that foretold he would kill his father, outwit the Sphinx, marry his mother, and have a family, through his banishment and tortured death as a blind man and the attempted redemption of the family by his daughter, Antigone. Translations are by Jascha Kessler (King Oedipus), George Garrett (Oedipus at Colonus), and Kelly Cherry (Antigone).

To drink deep of the direction and sensibility of contemporary southern fiction, savor each dram in this delectable volume. Nineteen of the South's most venerable writers -- Madison Smartt Bell, Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, George Garrett, Allan Gurganus, Barry Hannah, William Hoffman, Madison Jones, Michael Knight, William Henry Lewis, Jill McCorkle, Lewis Nordan, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Walter Sullivan, and Allen Wier -- have selected a short work for inclusion here. All of the contributors are affiliated with the the Fellowship of Southern Writers, organized in 1989 under the inspiration of the late Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging and honoring excellence in southern letters.

Each piece in The Cry of an Occasion celebrates the distinctness of southern experience, giving expression in story form to a singular episode of mind, heart, or will. Varying from whimsical to ominous to sidesplitting to melancholy, the stories share a regard for the people who brush against us and in so doing shape us -- generations of family especially, neighbors, as well as those occasional individuals who can mysteriously yet profoundly affect our lives.

On a freezing December night, a woman returning home from a first date with a man finds herself locked out of her apartment; the pains he takes to help her surprises them both. A teenage girl suffers the day of her grandmother's funeral attempting to be adult, furious with the pessimism of her mother and wounded by the absence of her father since she was three. A slave fleeing Mississippi in 1862 draws on the wisdom of breaking horses passed down from his grandfather to win assistancein his flight for freedom. Fourteen years after his teenage son's death, a man realizes his mourning is incomplete despite therapy, relocation, and the outward signs of contentment. A pregnant woman has vivid dreams -- of giving birth to a kitten, of forgetting her baby on the hood of her car, and of concealing a joint in her bra -- as she watches Boston's changing seasons and struggles with her torturous enjoyment of smoking.

"Now where will it all end?" asks one character. "All this pain and loving, mystery and loss. And it just goes on and on". The occasion and expression of southern fiction are in hale and hardy form, and reading this exemplary collection is pure pleasure.

There are many books about famous bands and rock stars out there, but whatever happened to those musicians that did not become famous? These are the experiences of drummer-singer George Garrett and guitarist-singer Rick Lawton. They were on a crazy and unpredictable U.S. road tour in 1978, but as they were buddies and played in bands together in high school, their reminiscences go way back. What started out as a simple e-mail memory exchange grew into this book. If you have ever wondered what happened to all those club bands and musicians you used to go out to see, listen, and dance to (or even go out with) back in the 70s, read on. You might get a clue from this book

Few if any are better endowed than George Garrett to comment on the general and the particular, the long and the short, of southern letters in our time. Garrett- a prolific and internationally renowned author of fiction, poetry, drama, and biography as well as a teacher, editor, critic, and frequent jurist for literary competitions- has been immersed in the writers and literature of his native region for almost a half century. Southern Excursions contains more than fifty of the best essays, reviews, and other short pieces of his career. For the connoisseur of good writing, this book is a depository, a treasure, a veritable time capsule of southern, literary, and American culture. Without sacrificing reverence for modern masters such as Faulkner, O'Connor, and Welty, Garrett has consistently embraced worthy new artists through the years, deftly and judiciously drawing the line between critical acclaim and popular success. Payton Davis, Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, William HoVman, Madison Jones, Reynolds Price, Robert Morgan, R. H. W. Dillard, Wendell Berry, Doris Betts, William Goyen, Mary Lee Settle, Randall Kenan, David Huddle, Allan Gurganus, Dorothy Allison- these are a few of the writers Garrett has championed. If some names sound less familiar, Garrett, in these pages, will inspire readers to swift investigation. The author's charm, wit, and anecdotal style make reading Southern Excursions a delight, and yet there's no mistaking his erudition. Wise like a prophet, with a talent scout's enthusiasm, Garrett is not afraid to tell unwelcome truths, covering topics that include southern publishing houses and literary quarterlies, the alliance between writers and academia, the state of criticism and theory, and, most eloquently, the persistence of place, memory, and the Civil War as themes in southern letters. Southern Excursions is a book for the ages, stowing as it does the sage views of one as learned, respected- and modest- in his time as George Garrett. ""My strong suggestion [to readers],"" he states, ""is to plunge in and fare forward. Experience the story before turning to or trusting the opinions and judgments of others, myself included.

Although George Garrett is best known for his outstanding fiction, he has also written a large body of superb poetry. This generous compilation, which brings together the work of almost a half-century and adds to it some forty-three new poems, splendidly affirms Henry Taylor's assertion that ""[George Garrett's] poetry is among the treasures of contemporary literature."" Garrett's older poems are arranged in roughly chronological order, enabling the reader to see how his work has changed even as it addresses his unaltering central concerns. Through various styles and forms, ranging from bawdy satires to quiet lyrics, Garrett remains an unwavering moralist, one who confronts larger issues without affectation or evasion. The new poems here cover fresh ground and offer surprising discoveries, but their voice is unmistakably Garrett's. Garrett's poems can be intensely personal, extremely witty, evocative of real places, or beautiful love ballads. Yet, for all of its diversity, Garrett's poetry has an extraordinary unity of vision that is magnified in this remarkable collection of his life's work.

The Sleeping Gypsy is an important collection of poems by an American writer who was but twenty-nine when awarded the coveted Prix de Rome in 1958. When George Garrett's first collected verse, The Reverend Ghost and Other Poems, appeared in Scribner's Poets of Today: IV, critics hailed the emergence of an authentic new talent of great promise. Babette Deutsch, writing in the New York Herald Tribune, said, "His poems are short, highly charged, and also, as he intended, clear. They move rapidly, without waste, exhibiting a lively skill and vigor in action.... His sensitive perceptivity makes his thoughtful insights more memorable." Louise Bogan, writing in the New Yorker, said, "It is good to come upon in Garrett's work] an ordered brilliance and effects, long neglected, that link us to the ancient tradition of English 'song.'"

Readers will find in The Sleeping Gypsy all of the qualities that distinguished Garrett's earlier collection of verse--the pointed, incisive writing, the abhorrence of "pretty" poetic words, the harsh impact of language that is, at the same time, strangely musical. Many will feel that, in this later work, these qualities have been enhanced and that Garrett's advancing maturity indicates strongly that his early promise will be richly fulfilled.

The fifteen stories of George Garrett's ""Empty Bed Blues"" (his eighth book-length collection) are vintage Garrett - no two alike - with each moving, one way and another, in new and daring directions. His stories are deeply concerned with the old verities of love and death and filled with the joys and woes of characters who come to life and command our attention. Diversity is the key word for Garrett's short fiction. He works in every known form and invents a few himself. In ""A Story Goes with It,"" Garrett fondly remembers an old friend while retelling a story the man once told him. Most of it is probably not accurate, as Garrett is quick to admit, but the mixture of fact with fiction makes for an entertaining read. His stories turn like the sharp curves of a mountain road, abruptly changing from a fond trip down memory lane to a sleazy reporter's quest along the backroads for the ultimate crime story in ""Pornographers."" He tops off his collection with ""A Short History of the Civil War,"" a series of poems written by two participants: one a Confederate, the other a Yankee. In the marriage of fact and fiction, of comedy and pathos, and the music of many voices, the stories of ""Empty Bed Blues"" reconfirm the judgment of novelist and story writer Richard Bausch, who said in 1998: ""There is no writer on the American scene with a more versatile, more eclectic, or more restless talent than George Garrett.

"Southern Fiction is alive and kicking and going off in all kinds of directions as this old century stagers to an end." To prove their audacious pronouncement, George Garrett and Paul Ruffin have assembled thirty-one stories representing the best of recent Southern fiction. These stories weave together themes that underscore what being Southern is all about: the retelling of the past, the uncertainty of the future, the haunting presence of racial guilt, the inescapable influence of family--for better or worse, the struggle for survival, and the tragedy and humor of Southern life. Born of a Texas Review competition to honor outstanding new writing, the collection snowballed as Garrett and Ruffin realized Southern fiction of the 1990s merits a gathering all its own. Contributors hail from nearly every Southern state; their subjects span the world; their style fit no defined formulas; their works both praise and parody the literary legacy of their forebears. Some writers are well known while others are virtually unknown. Unified by excellence as much as by region, these works comprise the most representative and entertaining collection of short Southern fiction to be published in decades.

This annual compendium includes original material covering a given years literary highlights, including obituaries and tributes. The Yearbook provides signed essays summarizing the year in poetry, fiction, biography, drama and childrens books we well as scholarly articles, interviews, biographies and critical studies covering events, organizations, works, writers and the business of literature. Volumes include lists of award and honors winners; a necrology; a cumulative index and more.

"The two rode on. To left and right were lighted streets of tents, visited here and there by substantial cabins. Soldiers were everywhere, dimly seen within the tents where the door-flap was fastened back, about the camp-fires in open places, clustering like bees in the small squares, everywhere apparent in the foreground and divined in the distance. From somewhere came the strains of 'Yankee Doodle.' A gust of wind blew out the folds of the stars and stripes, fastened above some regimental headquarters. The city of tents and of frame structures hasty and crude, of fires in open places, of Butlers' shops and canteens and booths of strolling players, of chapels and hospitals, of fluttering flags and wandering music, of restless blue soldiers, oscillating like motes in some searchlight of the giants, persisted for a long distance. At last it died away; there came a quiet field or two, then the old Maryland town of Frederick."from "The Long Roll "

Before "Gone with the Wind" exploded into print, Mary Johnston's "The Long Roll "was one of the definitive novels about the Civil War. Unlike Mitchell's novel of Southern aristocracy, however, Johnston sets her tale among the fighting armies. "The Long Roll" begins with secession and ends with the funeral of Stonewall Jackson. Our protagonists are Richard Cleave of Virginia, and General Jackson himself, who begins the novel as a major. Cleaves' action in the Confederate artillery alternates with Jackson's cavalry maneuvers to show a wide range of battle experience and combat effectiveness. Johnston peels away some of the historical romance of the cavalry and shows how vital artillery was in the battles. No less significant, she pays close attention to the importance of planning and patience, and the role of roads, rail, horse, and boat, mixing all of these elements with descriptions of raw courage and reckless abandon. As the narrative follows Cleave and Jackson, we are led through the most decisive engagements in the years of Confederate supremacy: Manassas, The Seven Days, Fredericksburg, Malvern Hill, and Sharpsburg. "The Long Roll "brings alive the differing motives for secession and war, and eerily evokes the suspicion and battered consciences of both North and South.