This is an anthology of irreverence and humor in the hands of our best poets. Can serious poetry be funny? Chaucer and Shakespeare would say yes, and so do the authors of these 187 poems that address timeless concerns but that also include comic elements. Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, ""Seriously Funny"" ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness. Most of the selections were made in the editors' battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they'd set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn't driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it. Readers will find a true generosity in these poems, an eagerness to share ideas and emotions and also to entertain. The singer Ali Farka Toure said that honey is never good when it's only in one mouth, and the editors of ""Seriously Funny"" hope its readers find much to share with others.

William Maxwell, who died in July 2000, was revered as one of the twentieth century's great American writers and a longtime fiction editor at "The New Yorker." Now writers who knew Maxwell and were inspired by him both the man and his work offer intimate essays, most specifically written for this volume, that "bring him back to life, right there in front of us." Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel "So Long, See You Tomorrow"; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell's kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist."

The Greek Tragedy in New Translations series is based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves, or who work in collaboration with poets, can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of the great Greek writers. These new translations are more than faithful to the original text, going beyond the literal meaning in order to evoke the poetic intensity and rich metaphorical texture of the Greek language.
Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all the Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. Medea, is a story of betrayal and vengeance. Medea, incensed that her husband Jason would leave her for another after the many sacrifices she has made for him, murders both his new bride and their own children in revenge. It is an excellent example of the prominence and complexity that Euripides gave to female characters. This new translation does full justice to the lyricism of Euripides original work, while a new introduction provides a guide to the play, complete with interesting details about the traditions and social issues that influenced Euripides's world.

Think of a time when you've feigned courage to make a friend, feigned forgiveness to keep one, or feigned indifference to simply stay out of it. What does it mean for our intimacies to fail us when we need them most? The poems of this collection explore such everyday dualities-how the human need for attachment is as much a source of pain as of vitality and how our longing for transcendence often leads to sinister complicities. The title poem tells the conflicted and devastating story of the poet's friendship with the now-disgraced Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, interweaving fragments of his parents' funerals, which the Bishop concelebrated, with memories of his childhood spiritual leanings and how they were disrupted by a pedophilic priest the Bishop failed to protect him from. This meditation on spiritual life, physical death, and betrayal is joined by an array of poised, short lyrics and expansive prose poems exploring how the terror and unpredictability of our era intrudes on our most intimate moments. Whether Collier is writing about an airline disaster, Huey Newton's trial, Thomas Jefferson's bees, a piano in the woods, or his own fraught friendship with the disgraced Catholic Bishop, his syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail, and flawless ear bring the felt-and sometimes frightening-dimensions of the mundane to life. Throughout, this collection pursues a quiet but ferocious need to get to the bottom of things.

The award-winning poet Michael Collier's elegiac fifth collection is haunted by spectral figures and a strange, vivid chorus of birds: From a cardinal that crashes into a window to a gathering of turkey vultures, Collier engages birds as myth-makers and lively messengers, carrying memories from lost friends. The mystery of death and the vital absence it creates are the real subjects of the book. Collier juxtaposes moments of quotidian revelation, like waking to the laughing sounds of bird song, with the drama of Greek tragedy, taking on voices from Medea. As Vanity Fair praised, his poems "tread nimbly between moments of everyday transcendence and spiritual pining."

Michael Collier's much acclaimed fourth collection of poetry poises experience on the ledge between the everyday and the unknown. In THE LEDGE, the poems are narrative and colloquial, musical and crystalline, at once intimate and sharp-edged. The world is rendered beautifully mysterious as the poems slide into unexpected emotional territory. The artistry and directness of THE LEDGE confirm Collier's place among the most significant poets of his generation.