Recommendations based on "Spirits Rebellious, a Tear and a Smile, the Madman His Parables and Poems, the Wanderer"

First published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece--an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century.  Now a major motion picture, starring James Franco, Howl was directed by two-time Academy Award-winners Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, who hired Eric Drooker to animate the poem. Howl: A Graphic Novel visualizes the poem--stanza by stanza--with full color animation art Drooker designed for the film. [Printed on recycled paper with Soy Ink, this luxury art book has french flaps and spot gloss on cover.]

A collection of essays on life and literature, from one of the most iconic authors and astute critics in contemporary letters.Words Are My Matter is essential reading: a collection of talks, essays, and criticism by Ursula K. Le Guin, a literary legend and unparalleled voice of our social conscience. Here she investigates the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction—and, through the lens of literature, gives us a way of exploring the world around us.In “Freedom,” Le Guin notes: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now … to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.”Le Guin was one of those authors and in Words Are My Matter she gives us just that: a vision of a better reality, fueled by the power and might and hope of language and literature.

In 1936, twenty-year-old Edward Weismiller became the youngest poet to win the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. Today, more than sixty years later, he retains that distinction. Yale University Press here reintroduces Edward Weismiller - now the oldest living Younger Poet - with the publication of his latest book of poetry. Weismiller’s is "a talent that has kept faith with itself and its sources," says W. S. Merwin, current judge of the Younger Poets Series. In Walking Toward the Sun, youthful lyricism has given way to plainness of speech - even spareness. These poems are honest and unflinching, always striking in their prosody. They will remind some readers of Yeats, for they convey nobility in the face of old age, infirmity, and disappointment. Weismiller sings powerfully about a world of loss, but he is never grim or despairing. The poet in old age remains hopeful, open to possibility, and always aware of beauty in the smallest places.

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems.Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of readers, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of thirteenth-century Sufi Mystic Rumi more popular than ever.The Essential Rumi continues to be the bestselling of all Rumi books, and the definitive selection of his beautiful, mystical poetry.

In ten interlocking essays, the acclaimed author of Written on the Body and Art & Lies reveals art as an active force in the world--neither elitist nor remote, available to those who want it and affecting those who don't. Original, personal, and provocative, these essays are not so much a point of view as they are a way of life, revealing "a brilliant and deeply feeling artist at work" (San Francisco Chronicle).

A wonderful collection from one of England's best-loved poetsOne of the most admired poets of his day, A.E. Housman wrote poems that conjure a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss. Expressed in simple rhythms, they show a fine ear for the subtleties of meter and alliteration, and they touch on subjects ranging from religious doubt and doomed love to patriotic celebration of the soldier and intense nostalgia for the countryside. This volume brings together the works Housman published in his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922), along with many posthumous selections and three translations of extracts from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes that display his mastery of classical literature.This edition has been revised by Archie Burnett and includes updated notes on the text and indexes of first lines and titles. It is introduced by Nick Laird and includes an afterword by John Sparrow.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1.700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout historyand 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.

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins.With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, intense wonder, and a reverence for the everyday: “The birds are in their trees, / the toast is in the toaster, / and the poets are at their windows. / They are at their windows in every section of the tangerine of earth–the Chinese poets looking up at the moon, / the American poets gazing out / at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.”Through simple language, Collins shows that good poetry doesn’t have to be obscure or incomprehensible, qualities that are perhaps the real trouble with most “serious” poetry: “By now, it should go without saying / that what the oven is to the baker / and the berry-stained blouse to the drycleaner / so the window is to the poet.”In this dazzling new collection, his first in three years, Collins explores boyhood, jazz, love, the passage of time, and, of course, writing–themes familiar to Collins’s fans but made new here. Gorgeous, funny, and deeply empathetic, Billy Collins’s poetry is a window through which we see our lives as if for the first time.

From Leaves of Grass to "Song of Myself," all of Whitman's poetry in one volumeIn 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work that defined him as one of America’s most influential voices and that he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,” edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.” • Features a completely new—and fuller—introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibility• Includes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notesFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 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.

Each facsimile page of the original manuscript is accompanied here by a typeset transcript on the facing page. This book shows how the original, which was much longer than the first published version, was edited through handwritten notes by Ezra Pound, by Eliot’s first wife, and by Eliot himself. Edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot; Preface by Ezra Pound.

This is the first ever UK publication of the poetry of Wanda Coleman- a beat-up, broke Black woman who wrote with anger, humour and clarity about her life on the margins, and who went overlooked by the establishment for much of her career even as she was known colloquially as the 'unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles'. Nobody wrote about police hassle like she did. Nobody wrote about poverty, about making do with what's on hand, about the slave trade or about their personal vendetta against slow walkers in the supermarket, in quite the same way. Wicked Enchantment gathers 130 of Coleman's best poems, spanning some four decades, in a selection by Terrance Hayes. Mary Karr has called it 'hateful and hilarious, heartbroke and hellbent'; the Washington Post says that 'Wanda Coleman is not just wickedly wise, she is transcendent'; the New Yorker calls her 'one of the greatest poets ever to come out of L. A.' Brutal, hilarious, triumphant, wild and paradoxically, sometimes horrifically precise, these are not poems written for a course, for establishment approval or for polite applause; they were written because Coleman had to write what she saw and felt, and wrote brilliantly. Few if any writers, before or since, have had the courage to write with such honesty about the daily experience of life in a racist world.