Selected Poems (Penguin Poets) by John Ashbery

Selections from the first three decades of the poetry of John Ashbery, author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

The late John Ashbery was a poet whose “teasing, delicate, soulful lines made him one of the most influential figures of late-20th and early 21st century American literature.” (The New York Times)  This important volume gathers work from his first ten collections of poetry, from Some Trees, which was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series (1956), to A Wave (1984). The 138 poems in this volume include short lyrics, haikus, prose poems, and many of Ashbery’s major long poems, including “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” offering a beautiful distillation of the first thirty years of his remarkable, groundbreaking work

Martín and Meditations on the South Valley: Poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Fiercely moving, the two long narrative poems of Martín & Meditations on the South Valley revolve around the semi-autobiographical figure of Martin, a mestizo or "detribalized Apache." 

Fiercely moving, the two long narrative poems of Martín & Meditations on the South Valley revolve around the semi-autobiographical figure of Martin, a mestizo or "detribalized Apache." Abandoned as a child and a long time on the hard path to building his own family, Martin at last finds his home in the stubborn and beautiful world of the barrio. Jimmy Santiago Baca "writes with unconcealed passion," Denise Levertov states in her introduction, “but he is far from being a naive realist; what makes his writing so exciting to me is the way in which it manifests both an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events."

Made Flesh by Craig Arnold

 "Few... could have predicted the delayed depth-charge of this explosive second book, motored by vividly earthly language and disguised philosophical sophistication." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Throughout Made Flesh, one of the most powerful poetry books this year, Arnold gets at both the contradictions and timelessness of love." —Time Out New York

"The readers delighted with (Arnold's) first book (Shells) will be differently enchanted with these. They contain a wealth of contemplation as well as observation and experience. Their unpunctuated free style carries the reader into the poems, piling up events and details in a breathless rush....The poems of Made Flesh are unforgettable, and it is tragic that readers will have no new books from Craig Arnold."—Magill Book Reviews

A girl wakes up to find out just how completely her lover has possessed her. A couple realizes they’ve been trapped inside an ancient myth. A traveler glances out through a train window and catches the dim reflection of another world.

This is the world of Made Flesh, the long-awaited second book by Craig Arnold, a finalist for the Utah Book Award and the High Plains book award. Made Flesh delineates a new mythology of what it means to be in the body. Marrying narrative precision to lyric ecstasy, the archaic to the avant-garde, these poems celebrate the fragility of our very selves and “the joy of self-forgetting,” the acts of surrender that loves asks of us. Fierce, exuberant, and erotic, they invite the reader to share a rare and startling vision: how, if we would only permit ourselves to be drawn out of our mental privacies, out to the very surface of our skin, we might admit the beauty of being for a moment in the world, and with each other.

Craig Arnold is the author of Shells, a Yale Series of Younger Poets selection chosen by W.S. Merwin. He taught at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. In late April 2009, Craig Arnold went missing on the Japanese island of Kuchinoerabu-jima, where he was working on a book about volcanoes as part of a Creative Artists' Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. He was forty-one years old

Hereafter Landscapes by Jody Azzouni

As cheerful as Timon of Athens or Anacreon, philosopher-poet Jody Azzouni unleashes this cycle of aphoristic, terse and dark visions of the world after global warming, nuclear winter, pollution, mutation and plague have come and gone. There's no "rapture" to rescue us, just the hard light of a ruined world. Back in the Cold War, Bertrand Russell noted that the smartest thinkers were the most gloomy about the prospects for humankind, and this cycle inhabits that world of intellectual worry. And yet there is beauty in desolation, and every dystopian artwork, by depicting what might and must not come to pass, may serve as a warning. Hereafter Landscapes might be the butterfly that changes history by changing the hearts of a few — or it might be locked into a time capsule as a prime specimen of post-millennial gloom. However one takes this sombre and linguistically rich little book, it comes from a serious thinker, versed in myth, science and art. In keeping with the book's theme, we chose to decorate it with the paintings and engravings of the artist most associated with the terror of the Sublime: John Martin. Martin's vast murals terrified crowds in London, and his engravings of Paradise Lost and Biblical cataclysms gave nightmares to generations of Victorian schoolchildren.Selected as one of the six best chapbooks of 2010 by Presa magazine: "The most ambitious production in this round-up, complete with beautifully printed cover art and illustrations from the paintings and engravings of John Martin . . . The poetry has a prophetic quality that reminds us of the apocalyptic writings of William Blake. Azzouni also deals with the big themes, unafraid of directly engaging the spectre of potential environmental & nuclear disaster. His work is didactic, but not in a bad way, since the issues raised are the very issues of human meaning and survival. "

Go Figure (Wesleyan Poetry Series) by Rae Armantrout

 Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us

The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with "this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world" in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who "check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked" to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: "We name things/ to know where we are." Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. "It's true things fall apart." Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up."

Talking (American Literature) by David Antin

 -- Talking bridges the stylistic gap between David Antin's early experimental poems and the talk pieces for which he is most well-known. Combining one poem with two improvisations and his first published talk-poem, Talking is a unique book that cannot be classified as solely poetry, fiction or criticism. Infusing the lyricism of poetry with the compelling pull of the spoken voice, this collection is a testament to David Antin's reputation as one of the most influential artists of the contemporary era

L'emigrazione nelle poesie di Mereu

Blood Sugar by Nicole Blackman

 Poetry. BLOOD SUGAR is a disturbing and evocative collection of new work and selected poems previously featured in Blackman's popular chapbooks Pretty, Sweet, and Nice. It is futile to resist her brutal accounts of obsession and beauty. So give in. "Blackman's spoken-word vignettes conjure up bleak, dangerous, death-haunted plots with matter-of-fact detail...Blackman has her own gift for tersely poetic aphorism--and a gift for turning nightmares into revelations"--New York Times. "[Blackman's] apocalyptic, spoken-word electrolysis...is a biting diagnosis of modern society"-Rolling Stone. "Beautiful, hypnotic...violence and sex intermingle and all pleasures are suspect"--Entertainment Weekly. "Sassy. Direct. Contemporary. Often merciless-impressive throughout"--Gwendolyn Brooks. "All girls are born with wings./They never tell you these things"--from "Fifteen, She Learns."

And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

 

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

 

Thus begins “Phenomenal Woman,” just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it.

 

“It is true poetry she is writing,” M.F.K. Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.”

Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986-2006 by Ralph Angel

 “He brings something ancient and compelling . . . a kind of rare Sephardic wisdom, a brilliance traveling at the speed of Los Angeles light. He is one of America’s very best poets. A true visionary.”—Tomaz Salamun

 

“Angel’s poems are deceptively quiet, deceptively calm. Beneath their carefully constructed surfaces, they are wild, even intimidating. The power of restraint in poetry cannot be overestimated. . . . These poems burn from within.”—Carol Muske-Dukes, LA Times

With the publication of his award-winning volumes, Anxious Latitudes, Neither World, and Twice Removed, Ralph Angel has won the admiration of readers of contemporary poetry for the extraordinary abstract lyricism of his poems. There is a superb grace, speculative intelligence, and a wry philosophical wisdom to Angel’s poetry. There are few poets so accomplished at creating an elegant yet innovative and provocative voice. Now, in Ralph Angel’s Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986–2006, we find ourselves again in the presence of poetry that will move us even closer to a new and renewed promise of the American sublime. As Mark Doty has written, “These are the poems of a casual, down-to-earth philosopher who’s been spun around and turned inside out by loss, by the desolation of life in the late [and early] hours of the century. . . . Angel’s poems are stamped indelibly with the mark of a unique, shaping imagination, and they’re fresh with news of how it feels to live right now. He creates himself and his poems’ characters, strange people in a strangely familiar place. We recognize them, of course, as well we might since they are ourselves and the city where they live is ours.

Ralph Angel is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Anxious Latitudes; Neither World, which received the 1995 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; and Twice Removed; as well as a translation of Federico García Lorca’s Poem of the Deep Song.

Angel’s poems have appeared in scores of magazines and anthologies, both here and abroad, and recent literary awards include a gift from the Elgin Cox Trust, a Pushcart Prize, the 2003 Willis Barnstone Poetry Translation Prize, a Fulbright Foundation fellowship, and the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association.

Mr. Angel is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA Program in Writing faculty at Vermont College. Originally from Seattle, he lives in Los Angeles

Confluence by Ron Androla, Ann Androla (Editor), Kurt Nimmo (Contributor)

"Confluence" by poet Ron Androla is a major, important classic. 190 pages carefully crafted by Kurt Nimmo & Busted Dharma Books, edited by Ann Androla, "Confluence" shows the reader the wide range of Ron Androla's linguistic talent. "Confluence" is an instant collectible for any library by this prolific legendary writer who has been published extensively since the 1970s

New and Selected Poems: 1956-1996 by Philip Appleman

 With an astonishing command of nature imagery, from sparrows to mastodons, Philip Appleman can deftly weave into a single poem an intricate pattern of ideas drawn from evolution, humanism, anthropology, religious skepticism, and everyday experience. Appealing to reason as well as to emotion and imagination, he writes poems of lyrical intensity and remarkable narrative depth. He creates characters—Eve or Darwin or a failed priest—with such wit, compassion, and subtle humor that they live on the page and surprise us with new insights into joy and sorrow, life and death. Set on the beach at Malibu, in the port of Trieste, or in a Manhattan subway, his poems evoke genuine feeling with out sentimentality and transform the personal into the universal.

Drawn from six previous books of poetry written over four decades, and with fourteen new poems, this collection shows the power and complexity of Appleman’s wide-ranging talent

Factura by Bruce Andrews

Cover drawing by Bruce Pavlow. A decade's poetry on one stage, writing without the Security & Insecurity of WORDS, letter clusters, syllables, "naro/abu///hign/po///mak/likl....," how spatial, counter prefixes & suffixes of the wrong language, what comes before & after & a supplement to written words

Geometry of the Restless Herd by Sophie Cabot Black

Inverting the pastoral, Sophie Cabot Black uses the keeping of animals and tending of land to interrogate the self and in turn reveal new truths about the social, economic, and political realities of contemporary America.

In Geometry of the Restless Herd, Sophie Cabot Black stages a powerful allegory for the social and political realities of our human world. Through hauntingly metaphysical poems set within a sheepherder’s domain, Black conjures fields of harvest and resurrection, of wagers and outcomes—animals to keep, and those destined for slaughter. Here, both singular voices and polyvocal choruses argue through discourse, asking who has the real power, and how are we to survive the violence we do to each other?

Black’s scenes are at once oneiric and raw: a squeaking gate wails against neglect; a field receives a runt body; a raccoon flees with egg dripping from its mouth—all while lush rains and long winters quiet the dead. Navigating both confining pens and wide-open spaces, these poems ask startlingly immediate questions about captivity and freedom, protection and exploitation, confronting the predicaments of late capitalism: industries of infinite regress, technologies that exceed us, and a soul stranded somewhere between expectation and redemption. Ultimately, these stark pastorals paint a moving portrait of life: as utterly inseparable from the world it inhabits

Lilith's Garden by Victor H. Anderson

 A companion volume to Anderson's award-winning first book of poetry, Thorns of the Blood Rose, these poems were selected by the author before his death to be contained in the present collection. Picking up where the first book left off, the poems explore themes of love, death, the beauty of the natural world, and devotions to the Goddess and God in their many guises. Some of the poems which were deemed too scandalous for inclusion in the previous work are published here for the first time

Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets by David Biespiel

Long Journey showcases work by over eighty of the Pacific Northwest's leading poets. Of the nearly two hundred poems collected in this remarkable anthology--the first of its kind for the Northwest--most are new and previously unpublished, providing readers with a fresh look at the state of contemporary poetry in the region. Featuring poets from Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana

The Next of Us is About to Be Born: The Wick Poetry Series Anthology in Celebration of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Wick Poetry Center by Maggie Anderson

 “The books in the Wick Poetry Series present exciting writing by new and emerging poets. Diverse, surprising, and politically and emotionally charged, this series has published some of the best new poetry being written, chosen by many of our most beloved and respected poets. The Next of Us Is About to Be Born is a valuable addition to the landscape of contemporary poetry.”―Harvey Hix, Finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry for CHROMATIC

The Next of Us Is About to Be Born is an anthology of fifty-five poets published in the Wick Poetry Series celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. Designed to be an eclectic grouping, the anthology illustrates the exciting new directions poets have been taking from the early 1990s to the present, in keeping with the Wick Poetry Center’s mission of encouraging new voices.

Since 1992 the Wick Poetry Series has published first books of poems by many of the country’s best young and emerging poets, including Victoria Redel, Richard Tayson, Honoree Fannone Jeffers, Kate Northrop, Lee Peterson, and others. The Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize is offered annually and judged by well-known poets, including Gerald Stern, Lucille Clifton, Marilyn Hacker, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, and C. K. Williams. The Wick Center also sponsors a series of chapbooks by Ohio poets selected through two competitions―one for students enrolled in Ohio colleges and universities and one for any poet living in Ohio. This series, edited by Maggie Anderson, has published early work by many poets now publishing their second and third books, such as Thomas Sayers Ellis, Jeanne Bryner, Diane Gilliam, Joe Bonomo, Matthew Cooperman, and Mary Ann Samyn.

Including two to three poems by each poet, the range of form and subject matter of The Next of Us Is About to Be Born is varied and far-ranging. Since some of the poets were still in undergraduate or graduate programs when these poems were written, the collection makes an excellent text for use in college and university poetry workshops. In addition to the now well-known poets, there are many whose work is just beginning to be published