These essays from a distinguished, international group of scholars trace the process of thinking and creation in one of the great literary minds of the twentieth century. Archival and newly available materials reveal this canonical author's composition process and artistic virtuosity.

From the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War until the end of World War II, many poets around the world felt an obligation to write about the wars of their time. Famed poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and Ivor Gurney had earned their literary authority because of their experience fighting in the trenches during World War I, but civilian poets who wished to write about warfare doubted their own authority to write about the battles from afar. In News of War, Professor Rachel Galvin argues that this standard is a strongly gendered norm that is problematic for women writers, who were much less likely to have firsthand experience with war. Galvin indicates that the predicament of writing war without witnessing war is exemplified by six of the most prominent poets of the time: a Spanish-language poet, Cesar Vallejo; a French-language poet, Raymond Queneau; and four English-language poets, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Gertrude Stein. Although scholars have previously observed the anxieties of civilian poets writing about war, especially in the literature of World War I, Galvin gives the topic a new emphasis by developing the idea that the poets are in dialogue with journalism of the time and developing a framework within which to see their formal patterns for grappling with war at a distance. Expanding on the work of previous scholars who have written on poetry's relation to the news, News of War develops the idea of a strong tendency toward aesthetic self-reflexivity and ethical self-scrutiny in the poetry of the war.

News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936-1945 is a powerful account of how civilian poets confront the urgent problem of writing about war. The six poets Rachel Galvin discusses-W. H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Raymond Queneau, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, and Cesar Vallejo-all wrote memorably about war, but still they felt they did not have authority to write about what they had not experienced firsthand. Consequently, these writers developed a wartime poetics engaging with both classical rhetoric and the daily news in texts that encourage readers to take critical distance from war culture. News of War is the first book to address the complex relationship between poetry and journalism. In two chapters on civilian literatures of the Spanish Civil War, five chapters on World War II, and an epilogue on contemporary poetry about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Galvin combines analysis of poetic form with attention to socio-historical context, drawing on rare archival sources and furnishing new translations. In comparing how poets wrestled with the limits of bodily experience, and with the ethical, political, and aesthetic problems they faced, Galvin theorizes the concept of meta-rhetoric, a type of ethical self-interference. She argues that civilian writers employed strategies drawn from journalism precisely to question the objectivity and facticity of war reporting. Civilian poetics of the 1930s and 1940s was born from writers' desire to acknowledge their own socio-historical position and to write poems that responded ethically to the gravest events of their day.

DAVY JONES A dreaded name for all who sailed the seven seas. Behind the folklore, myth and legend is the tragedy of a young man who touches the impossible dream that becomes a cosmological nightmare. "Davy Jones & the Heart of Darkness" is part adventure story, part high seas romance sprinkled with philosophy and humor. This novella also includes two essays from The Cave of Cinema Dave; "The Monkees and Davy Jones" and "Movies from Davy Jones' Locker." This book also contains family album photos from 1975 that feature The Bounty, the tall ship that sank on October 29th, 2012 caused by Hurricane Sandy. Built for the 1962 version of "Mutiny of the Bounty," this ship was seen in two "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, "Dead Man's Chest" and "At World's End," which features the character of Davy Jones. Fans of Ernest Hemingway, H.P. Lovecraft, Paul McCartney, J.K. Rowling, Alice Cooper, Louis L'Amour and C.S. Lewis will want to read "Davy Jones & the Heart of Darkness "