With his journeys through Hell and Purgatory complete, Dante is at last led by his beloved Beatrice to Paradise. Where his experiences in the Inferno and Purgatorio were arduous and harrowing, this is a journey of comfort, revelation, and, above all,...

In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary poetry as it reflects its modernist and Romantic past. He isolates certain persistent ideas about poetry's situation relative to life and focuses on the conflict the poet faces between the nature of...

Robert Fagles's stunning modern-verse translation-available at last in our black-spine classics lineA Penguin ClassicThe Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here,...

This long-awaited volume, a new selection of his later poems, spans ten major collections by one of America's most visionary and influential poets. Chosen by the author himself, the poems in Notes from the Air represent John Ashbery's best work from the...

To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw,...

"The poets who fill these pages have come to testify, to bear witness to the mysterious power of Rock and Roll. -- from the Foreword by Bono "The thread or the theme That holds this tune Together is the same One that rips it open...." -- from Gimme...

From Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents.Cornelius Eady’s poems show him in full control...

This volume contains a selection of early works by Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko who blazed a trail for a generation of Soviet poets with a confident poetic voice that moves effortlessly between social and personal themes. ‘Zima Junction’ vividly...

One of the world's most influential poets, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is remembered as much for his volatile personality and tumultuous life as he is for his writings, almost all of which he produced before the age of twenty. Paul Schmidt's acclaimed...

Robert Fagles's translations of both the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and become the standard translations of our era. Now, his stunning modern verse translation of Virgil's "Aeneid" is poised to do the same. This...

This is Frank Bidart’s first book of lyrics—his first book not dominated by long poems. Narrative elaboration becomes speed and song. Less embattled than earlier work, less actively violent, these new poems have, by conceding time’s finalities and...

Whether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small...

In simple, striking verse, legendary poet Gary Snyder weaves an epic discourse on the topics of geology, prehistory, and mythology. First published in 1996, this landmark work encompasses Asian artistic traditions, as well as Native American storytelling...

For the poet, even the most minute details of the natural world are starting points for flights of the imagination, and the pages of this collection celebrating the four seasons are brimming with an extraordinary range of observation and imagery.Here are...

When W.S. Merwin was a young poet, Ezra Pound advised him to “read the seeds of poetry, not the twigs.” As the ballads of Spain are among those essential seeds, Merwin set out to select and translate a collection of them into English.Few, if any, popular...

In 1915, Edgar Lee Masters published a book of dramatic monologues written in free verse about a fictional town called Spoon River, based on the Midwestern towns where he grew up. The shocking scandals and secret tragedies of Spoon River were immediately...

James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop’s poems as “more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly intelligent than any written in our lifetime” and called her “our greatest national treasure.” Robert Lowell said, “I enjoy her poems more than...

This outstanding new translation brings a uniformity of voice to Zbigniew Herbert's entire poetic output, from his first book of poems, String of Light, in 1956, to his final volume, previously unpublished in English, Epilogue Of the Storm. Collected...

The radiant climax to Dante's awe-inspiring epic, in a definitive new translation Having plunged to the utmost depths of Hell and climbed Mount Purgatory in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, Dante now ascends to Heaven, guided by his beloved...

'Into the jaw of Death Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred'As Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign, Alfred Lord Tennyson's spellbinding poetry epitomized the Victorian age. The works in this volume trace nearly sixty years of his...