Poetry

Ally Press, 1991. Signed by author on title page. Like new.

The complete poems of the priestess Enheduana, the world's first known author, newly translated from the original Sumerian

"Helle's translation feels urgent, incandescent, stripped of academic cladding. . . . The growing popularity of Enheduana gives all of us readers a chance to discover another lineage--and to bring this poet and her imagination flashing back to life again."--Nilanjana Roy,

Financial Times

Enheduana was a high priestess and royal princess who lived in Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, about 2300 BCE. Not only does Enheduana have the distinction of being the first author whose name we know, but the poems attributed to her are hymns of great power. They are a rare flash of the female voice in the often male-dominated ancient world, treating themes that are as relevant today as they were four thousand years ago: exile, social disruption, the power of storytelling, gender-bending identities, the devastation of war, and the terrifying forces of nature.

This book is the first complete translation of her poems from the original Sumerian. Sophus Helle's translations replicate the intensity and imagery of the original hymns--literary time bombs that have lain buried for millennia. In addition to his translations, Helle provides background on the historical context in which Enheduana's poems were composed and circulated, the works' literary structure and themes, and their reception in both the ancient and the modern world.

Unjustly forgotten for millennia, Enheduana's poems are essential reading for anyone interested in the literary history of women, religion, the environment, gender, motherhood, authorship, and empire.

Acclaimed translator Dick Davis breathes new life into the timeless works of three masters of 14th-century Persian literature

Together, Hafez, a giant of world literature; Jahan Malek Khatun, an eloquent princess; and Obayd-e Zakani, a dissolute satirist, represent one of the most remarkable literary flowerings of any era. All three lived in the famed city of Shiraz, a provincial capital of south-central Iran, and all three drew support from arts-loving rulers during a time better known for its violence than its creative brilliance. Here Dick Davis, an award-winning poet widely considered "our finest translator of Persian poetry" (The Times Literary Supplement), presents a diverse selection of some of the best poems by these world-renowned authors and shows us the spiritual and secular aspects of love, in varieties embracing every aspect of the human heart.

"Davis [is] widely acknowledged as the leading translator of Persian literature in our time...Faces of Love has made the Persian originals into real and moving English poems." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Familiar at First, Then Strange, Meredith Holmes' first full-length book, introduces readers to a voice in which intellect and image vie for position, a voice of constant surprises, of startling honesty and intensity. The voice is rooted in nature, in the "vaulted bones" of trees. "I was fostered by an American Sycamore," she tells us. She "body surfs a blue biography of Luther Burbank," as "locusts harmonize in the tulip trees." We learn of a double life: "the tone and timbre / of everything flowed through me." Holmes pulls the quotidian down to the mysteries that silence holds. Ancestered by New England, nurtured by a small town in the East, the poet found herself in a city "soaked in immigrant grief." There, in Cleveland, she forged poems into an American voice of scope and originality. And, it must be said, of great beauty.