Poetry
Rita Dove's Collected Poems 1974-2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove's fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America's kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove's mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the "precise, singing lines" for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove "has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental" (Poetry magazine).
Hailed as "the best poet writing in England" (Michael Longley, The Guardian) and "a magnificent poet" (Poetry), Geoffrey Hill has produced powerfully mythic verse that distinguishes him as a contemporary poet in allegiance with the great tradition. Complex yet spare, Hill is a poet of despair and redemption whose work contains some of contemporary poetry's most powerful moments. This collection brings together for the first time the poems appearing in five previous books, including the acclaimed long poem The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy; also here are three hitherto unpublished poems, Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres.
1st hardback trade edition, published by Andre Deutsch, 1986. Dust jacket in protective cover; no tears or creases, very clean; gray cloth with gilt lettering on spine; former owner's name on front pastedown; binding tight; text clean and bright. G+/VG
In these wise and lovely mortal ruminations Neil Carpathios, long one of my favorite poets, turns fifty, that perilous promontory from which the world starts to flicker like an old neon sign. But age just makes Carpathios pay attention all the more keenly. The joy of this book is that it makes us pause with him on our little human journey and take in the view while we still have time. You couldn't ask for a better guide. --George Bilgere
The poems in Neil Carpathios' new book, though much concerned with death, are very much alive: intelligent, tender, humorous, entertaining, and even profound--sometimes all at the same time. As the best poets do, Carpathios celebrates our astonishing luck in being able, however limited our time, to "behold the lipstick kiss on a glass's rim," and "listen to the crickets." --Charles Harper Webb
Black Sparrow Press, 1992. Signed limited edition, no. 56 of 125; decorated paper boards over light blue cloth spine with paper label; front and rear covers have one small ding along bottom edge; binding good; text clean. VG
Finalist for the National Book Award - Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award - Winner of the National Jewish Book Award - Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award - Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize - Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
Ilya Kaminsky's astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?
In this defiant and urgent collection, Noor Hindi navigates Arab womanhood, migration, queerness, and Palestinian identity with striking and evocative lyricism.
A new book of poetry from internationally acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author Margaret Atwood
In Dearly, Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and - zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.
While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood's fiction--including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others--she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry. This collection is a stunning achievement that will be appreciated by fans of her novels and poetry readers alike.
Dirge for an Imaginary World from Matthew Buckley Smith is the winner of the 2011 Able Muse Book Award, selected by Andrew Hudgins. These are poems of breathtaking craftsmanship that find inspiration in the simplicity of the quotidian, or the perplexity of the grand. Smith is equally at ease musing about Neanderthals or God as he is with a ballet exam or highway medians. These poems of personal and universal introspection are filled with grace, and sparkle with abundant intelligence and wit. This masterful debut collection is an event to celebrate.
PRAISE FOR DIRGE FOR AN IMAGINARY WORLD:
Wildness and precision and passion balanced with wit-there are the hallmarks of Matthew Buckley Smith's superb Dirge for an Imaginary World. In subjects great ("For the Neanderthals") and small made great ("For the College Football Mascots"), the comic is rich with serious intent and gravity lightened with discerning wit. But only a poet who lifts heavy and unwieldy subjects-death, lost love, the absence of god-knows the imperatives of graceful balance.
- Andrew Hudgins (Judge, 2011 Able Muse Book Award)
In this deeply impressive debut volume of poetry, Dirge for an Imaginary World, Matthew Buckley Smith delivers a remarkable range of deft formal schemes, temporal movements, and varied settings. We encounter sonnets, couplets, quatrains, Sapphics, sestets and so forth written with a slick, delightful merging of technical expertise and smooth contemporary rhythms. The range of subjects is equally and as charmingly eclectic, from Neanderthals, Dante, Vermeer, for instance, to College Football Mascots, Highway Mediums, and Spring Ballet Exams. Mental and linguistic agility generously challenge the reader in poem after poem.
- Greg Williamson (from the "Foreword")
"If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst," wrote Thomas Hardy, whose spirit moves through the fine poems of Matthew Buckley Smith's debut collection. Like his blast-beruffled predecessor, Smith braves a clear-eyed look at our fallen world, mourning in elegantly precise language the sorrows inherent in "set(ting) out to map a promised land/ Out of reach and always just at hand," but also wishing great mercy upon us travelers failed and failing. These are poems full of both reckoning and grace, made all the more beautiful for their humane wisdom. Dirge for an Imaginary World is immensely impressive.
- Carrie Jerrell
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Matthew Buckley Smith was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his MFA in poetry at the Johns Hopkins University. His poems have appeared, or will soon appear in various magazines, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Iron Horse Literary Review, Measure, The Alabama Literary Review, Think Journal, and Best American Poetry 2011. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, Joanna.