This book features readings of over twenty key texts and authors in Western poetry and philosophy, including Homer, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rousseau. Simon Haines argues that the histor
Out of the intellectual ferment of the English Renaissance came a number of outstanding critical works that sought to define and defend the role of literature in society and to comment on the craft of
Toward the Open Field brings together many of the great prose pieces--essays, letters, declarations, defenses, manifestos, and apologia--by the most influential European and American poets from the R
Cross-pollinations is about dissolving boundaries and blending disciplines to reveal a world rich in possibility. A biologist and writer, Gary Paul Nabhan believes that the free movement between scie
"The days of anything static--form, content, state--are over," declares poet and translator Pierre Joris in A Nomad Poetics, his first collection of critical essays. Joris maps the success and limitat
To whom does a poem speak? Do poems really communicate with those they address? Is reading poems like overhearing? Like intimate conversation? Like performing a script? William Waters pursues these qu
Whole works and excerpts reveal the thoughts on poetry in general and on particular poems, poets, styles, and schools by 32 critics ranging from Plato and Horace through Snorri Sturluson and Alexander
Dworkin (English, Princeton U.) explains how to comprehend modern poets, in various media, who go to great lengths to make themselves incomprehensible. The CiP claims the study was his 1998 doctoral d
The Grand Permission is a book of deeply enriching and articulate meditations on motherhood and the composition of poetry by practicing poets. The 32 contributors write with originality and commitment
In this new edition of Best Words, Best Order, Stephen Dobyns further explains the mystery of the poet's work. Through essays on memory and metaphor, pacing, and the intricacies of voice and tone, an
Dealing with poetry is frequently problematic for the university teacher and student: although undergraduates are usually responsive to discussions about drama and prose, poetry often silences the cla
Independent scholar Brittan presents an introduction to the interpretation of metaphorical language in poetry. Aimed at undergraduate students of English or comparative literature, the text provides a
"The tone may vary from one essay to another, but more than anything else, these are love stories, not rose-colored romances, but love that includes doubt, violence, wrestling with angels, and devils.
In his first collection of essays on poetry in 27 years, W.D. Snodgrass goes after that seminal quality, the poet’s individual voice, that separates the best poetry from the merely technical and pedan
If you were stranded on some far slope of Parnassus and could bring only one book to map the landscape, H.L. Hix’s As Easy As Lying would be a good choice. Accessible, erudite, and ebullient, these es
In 1991, Dana Gioia's provocative essay "Can Poetry Matter?" was published in the Atlantic Monthly, and received more public response than any other piece in the magazine's history. In his book, Gioi
Mark Jarman, author of the narrative poem Iris and the lyric sequence Unholy Sonnets, is a poet associated with the revival of narrative and traditional form in contemporary American poetry. In Body
Poet, critic, biographer, and Catholic intellectual Paul Mariani delivers huge armfuls of experience and knowledge in this wide-ranging collection of twenty-four essays. As a man of faith in a secular
