"The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman―the power of her ties to family, husband and her 'adopted' country, Nigeria―as well as the...

In this "gorgeous translation" (The New York Times), one of our most fearless and original poets provides a tantalizing window onto the genius of a woman whose lyric power spans millennia. Of the nine books of lyrics the ancient Greek poet Sappho is said...

E.V. Rieu’s beloved translation of the great war epic of Western literature, revised and updated by D. C. H. RieuOne of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode of the Trojan War. At its center...

A selection of the best of three decades of writing about poetry, a celebration of the "tenacious curiosity" (Los Angeles Times) of the Nobel laureateWhether autobiographical, topical, or specifically literary, these writings circle the central...

I love to swim in the sea, which keepstalking to itselfin the monotone of a vagabondwho no longer recallsexactly how long he's been on the road.Swimming is like prayer:palms join and part,join and part,almost without end.--from "On Swimming"Without End...

James Richardson is one of the finest poets now writing, and the best contemporary practitioner of the art of aphorism."--Publishers Weekly "Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin's translations and adaptations of aphorisms in Asian Figures, some...

Enduring icon of creativity, authenticity, and rebellion, and the subject of numerous new biographies, Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most repeatedly scrutinized literary figures of the last half-century. Yet almost thirty years have elapsed without a...

The inspiration for the iconic musical Cats, T. S. Eliot's classic and delightful collection of poetry about cats, with whimsical illustrations by Edward Gorey. These playful verses by a celebrated poet have delighted readers and cat lovers around the...

The World of Odysseus is a concise and penetrating account of the society that gave birth to the Iliad and the Odyssey--a book that provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Long celebrated as...

In his first book of new poetry since Sumerian Vistas (1987), A. R. Ammons, one of America's greatest living poets, uses an unlikely subject - garbage - as the occasion for a profound and often funny meditation on nature and mutability. Driving along...

The Fact of a Doorframe is the ideal introduction to Rich's opus, from her formative lyricism in A Change of Word (1951), to the groundbreaking poems of Diving into the Wreck (1973), to the searching voice of Fox (2001).

This collection of recent poems is graced with a short introduction by the poet in which he says, "All I ever wanted to do was to paint light on the walls of life." For more than fifty years Ferlinghetti has been doing just thatilluminating both the...

Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, the poetry of the Beats is presented here in a stunning and portable hardcover selection.This rousing anthology features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the...

Sailing Alone Around the Room, by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, contains both new poems and a generous gathering from his earlier collections The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning...

Poems from every phase of the career of a great poetThis selection of Ted Hughes's poetry, made by the author himself in 1995, includes poems from every phase of his four-decade career. Here are poems from Hughes's first book, The Hawk in the Rain, and...

A comprehensive selection of essays--some never before translated into English--by the Nobel Laureate.To Begin Where I Am brings together a rich sampling of poet Czeslaw Milosz's prose writings. Spanning more than a half century, from an impassioned...

Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching artFor a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes.Virtually every day in the fall of 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke returned to a Paris gallery to view a Cezanne exhibition...

The poems of the legendary Nobel Laureate, in one volume at last One of the greatest and grandest advocates of the literary vocation, Joseph Brodsky truly lived his life as a poet, and for it earned eighteen months in an Arctic labor camp, expulsion from...