Recommendations based on "Living On Luck"

Based on your reading history, we think you will also enjoy the following books.

By William Blake

The Bloomsbury Classic Series has established itself as the preeminent hardcover poetry and literary collection -- books to be cherished, savored, and given on special occasions.To this series we now add two works by Oscar Wilde to herald the coming centennary of his death in Paris, at the age of 46, in 1900. Oscar Wilde: Selected Poems collects 33 of Wilde's finest poems, many of which were first published in 1881 in a book called Poems. Also included is The Ballad of Reading Jail, written after his friendship with Alfred Douglas, and his imprisonment in 1895 for homosexual offences. Oscar Wilde: The Fisherman and His Soul and Other Fairy Tales collects ten of Wilde's finest fairy tales into one magical volume. Culled from The Happy Prince and The House Of Pomegranates, these stories were first read to Wilde's sons and all are mesmerizing and heart-breaking to the end. True gems, these two Wilde volumes now bring to 12 the number of Bloomsbury Classics that St. Martin's has made available for years to come.

By Allen Ginsberg

Featuring the legendary and groundbreaking poem “Howl,” this remarkable volume showcases a selection of Allen Ginsberg’s poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews and contains sixteen pages of his personal photographs. One of the Beat Generation’s most renowned poets and writers, Allen Ginsberg became internationally famous not only for his published works but for his actions as a human rights activist who championed the sexual revolution, human rights, gay liberation, Buddhism and eastern religion, and the confrontation of societal norms—all before it became fashionable to do so. He was also the dynamic leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals. The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of materials that displays the full range of Ginsberg’s mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, “Howl” and “Kaddish,” are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult to find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and more. Through his essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive volume will inspire readers to delve deeper into a body of work that remains one of the most impressive literary canons in American history.

By Sappho

'Yes, we did many things, then - all Beautiful ...' Lyrical, powerful poems about love, sexuality, sun-soaked Greece and the gods. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Sappho (c.630-570 BCE). Sappho's Stung with Love is available in Penguin Classics.

By Robin Robertson

The acclaimed poet and author of A Painted Field serves up a startling new collection of lyrical verse that is at once introspective and outward looking.

By Gretel Ehrlich

A collection of transcendent, lyrical essays on life in the American West, the classic companion to Gretel Ehrlich’s new book, Unsolaced“Wyoming has found its Whitman.” —Annie DillardPoet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life.Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves.Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning” (Newsday), Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us.

By Anne Carson

The poetry and prose collected in Plainwater are a testament to the extraordinary imagination of Anne Carson, a writer described by Michael Ondaatje as "the most exciting poet writing in English today." Succinct and astonishingly beautiful, these pieces stretch the boundaries of language and literary form, while juxtaposing classical and modern traditions.Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers miniature lectures on topics as varied as orchids and Ovid. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy. She constructs verbal photographs of a series of mysterious towns, and takes us on a pilgrimage in pursuit of the elusive and intimate anthropology of water. Blending the rhythm and vivid metaphor of poetry with the discursive nature of the essay, the writings in Plainwater dazzle us with their invention and enlighten us with their erudition.

By Louise Glück

It is the astonishment of Louise Glück's poetry that it resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape―Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain―persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made.From the outset ("Come here / Come here, little one"), Gluck's voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we "do not see the intervening fathoms."From within the earth'sbitter disgrace, coldness and barrennessmy friend the moon rises:she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.

By Robert Frost

A proven bestseller time and time again, Robert Frost's Poems contains all of Robert Frost's best-known poems-and dozens more-in a portable anthology. Here are "Birches," "Mending Wall," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Two Tramps at Mudtime," "Choose Something Like a Star," and "The Gift Outright," which Frost read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy." An essential addition to every home library, Robert Frost's Poems is a celebration of the New England countryside, Frost's appreciation of common folk, and his wonderful understanding of the human condition. These classic verses touch our hearts and leave behind a lasting impression.* Over 100 poems* All Frost's best known verses from throughout his life

By Rio Cortez

Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for PoetryLonglisted for the 2023 PEN Open Book AwardFinalist for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award“Outstanding . . . the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.” —Roxane Gay, author of Hunger “I’ve never read anything like it. Truly a sublime experience.” —Jason Reynolds, author of Ain’t Burned All the BrightA groundbreaking collection about Afropioneerism past and present from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio CortezFrom a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.  In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors—some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction—Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.

By Coleman Barks

A year with the sensual, mysterious, and deeply spiritual poetry of Rumi, in a translation featuring 15 debut poems—365 poems for your daily dose of inspiration, spiritual healing, and deep self-reflectionThis stunning collection is a divine journey across each month of the year, offering 365 daily poetry reflections that with leave you both breathless and hopeful. Poet Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world, and in this volume, he brings Rumi’s words to life, allowing their beacon of light to allow us to reconnect with ourselves, and others, by recognizing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.Full of contemplation and deeply moving and profound prose, these poems allow readers to start each day fully present and aware of all the beauty around us, and the innate power and strength we each hold—in every moment of every day. Take a moment for yourself with this daily dose of innate wisdom and positive affirmations for self-love, compassion, and trust in the divine power of the universe and our place in it.“The poetry feels like it belongs to all. When Rumi died in 1273, members of all religions came to the funeral. Wherever you stand, his words deepen your connection to the mystery of being alive.” – Coleman Barks