Recommendations based on "The Complete Poems of Sappho"

W.B. Yeats's Selected Poems is edited with an introduction and notes by Timothy Webb in Penguin Modern Classics. Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats in his love affairs, politics and poetry. From his youth in the 1880s, a fertile dreamer rediscovering and remaking the Irish tradition, he grew into a great and innovative poet of the twentieth century. This selection of Yeats's work includes the final book from the unjustly neglected narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin and a number of lyrics from Yeats's work as poetic dramatist. This edition breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozen poems in alternative versions; in many other cases it provides significant variants, so that Yeats's struggle to revise his poetry can be experienced with unusual immediacy. It also includes explanatory and textual notes for each poem. W B Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the 'sedentary toil' of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939. If you enjoyed Selected Poems, you might like The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, also available in Penguin Classics. 'A compelling poetic presence ... together with Joyce, Yeats made modern Irish poetry possible' Timothy Webb

Closer to Dylan Thomas than Matthew Arnold in his ‘creative violence’ and insistence on the sound of poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins was no staid, conventional Victorian. On entering the Society of Jesus and the age of twenty-four, he burnt all his poetry and ‘resolved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession, unless by the wish of my superiors.' The poems, letters, and journal entries selected for this edition were written in the following twenty years of his life and published posthumously in 1918.His verse is wrought from the creative tensions and paradoxes of a poet-priest who wanted to evoke the spiritual essence of nature sensuously, and to communicate this revelation in natural language and speech-rhythms while using condensed, innovative diction and all the skills of poetic artifice. Intense, vital, and individual, his writing is the ‘terrible crystal’ through which the soul—the inscape, the nature of things—may be illuminated.

One Of The Best-known And Best-loved Works Of Buddhist Literature, The Dhammapada Forms Part Of The Oldest Surviving Body Of Buddhist Writings, And Is Traditionally Regarded As The Authentic Teachings Of The Buddha Himself, Spoken By Him In His Lifetime, And Memorized And Handed On By His Followers After His Death. A Collection Of Simple Verses Gathered In Themes Such As 'awareness', 'fools' And 'old Age', The Dhammapada Is Accessible, Instructional And Mind-clearing, With Lessons In Each Verse To Give Ethical Advice And To Remind The Listener Of The Transience Of Life. Valerie Roebuck's New Translation Is Accompanied By An Introduction Examining The Language Of The Dhammapada, Its Status As Literature And The School Of Buddhist Teaching From Which It Comes.

'The first poet in the world in some things', is how John Donne was described by his contemporary Ben Jonson. Yet it is only this century that Donne has been indisputably established as a great poet—and even, many feel, the greatest love poet of them all. Jonson went on to remark that 'That Donne, for not keeping of an accent, deserved hanging', yet Donne's rhythms, once thought 'unmusical' are now recognized as the natural rhythms of the speaking voice; his 'eccentricity' as a complex self-doubt; his 'obscurity' the reflection of a brilliantly learned and allusive mind. Poets such as Eliot and Empson have found Donne's poetry profoundly attuned to our modern age, while Yeats' glowing comment will always be true: 'the intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion.' This volume, superbly edited by Professor Smith, is the first complete edition to make a serious attempt to guide the reader closely through the complexities of Donne's poetry. Considerable attention has been paid to the text, and a selection of the important manuscript variants are included. This edition is also the first to make use of the newly discovered manuscript of the verse letter to Lady Carey and Mistress Essex Rich.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 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.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In this stunning volume of epic breadth, Michael Schmidt connects the lives and works of more than 300 poets over the last 700 years--spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean, all sharing the English language. Schmidt reveals how each poet has transformed "a common language of poetry" into the rustic rhythms and elegiac ballads, love sonnets, and experimental postmodern verse that make up our lyrical canon. A comprehensive guided tour that is lively and always accessible, Lives of the Poets illuminates our most transcendent literary tradition.

The perfect introduction to poetry, The Poetry Book offers a fascinating exploration of more than 90 of the world's greatest poetic works.Discover poems in all their many guises, from the epics of the ancient world through Renaissance sonnets to modernist masterpieces such as The Waste Land, and the key works of the last 50 years, including And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou and Derek Walcott's Omeros.Using the Big Ideas series' trademark combination of clear explanation, witty infographics, and inspirational quotes, The Poetry Book unlocks the key ideas, themes, imagery, and structural techniques behind even the most complex of poems, in clear and simple terms, setting each work in its historical, social, cultural, and literary context. Dive into the passionate world of poetry to discover:COMPREHENSIVE: Brings together a curated selection of the most celebrated and important poems ever written, majoring on English-language poetryANALYTICAL: Provides critical analysis of form, structure, and style, exploring the trademark themes and subjects of the poets who wrote them, and using each poem as a route into wider literary trends, poetic movements and schools, and related poetsGRAPHIC APPROACH: Combines creative typography, graphics, and clear text to explore the world's most famous and important poems, and the people behind them, in a unique wayEYE-CATCHING: Thought-provoking graphics and flow-charts explore form and structure, and the central concepts behind each work QUOTATIONS: Features insightful and inspiring quotes from the featured poems, the poets behind them, and leading writers and criticsREFERENCE: Features a glossary section of poetic termsDelve into the works of Dante, Baudelaire, Rumi, Dickinson, Eliot, and Li Bai with in-depth literary analysis and fascinating biographies. Find out what odes, ballads, and allegories are. Trace recurring motifs, explore imagery, and discover how rhyme and rhythm work. From Homer's Odyssey to Seamus Heaney's Casualty, The Poetry Book is essential reading for lovers of poetry and aspiring poets alike.

This stunning anthology gathers together the riches of poetry in Hebrew from �The Song of Deborah� to contemporary Israeli writings. Verse written up to the tenth century show the development of piyut, or liturgical poetry, and retell episodes from the Bible and exalt the glory of God. Medieval works introduce secular ideas in love poems, wine songs and rhymed narratives, as well as devotional verse for specific religious rituals. Themes such as the longing for the homeland run through the ages, especially in verse written after the rise of the Zionist movement, while poems of the last century marry Biblical references with the horrors of the Holocaust. Together these works create a moving portrait of a rich and varied culture through the last 3,000 years.

An “astounding” (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems – Winner of the National Poetry Series CompetitionIn this ­­­powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madness attempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax’s innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it.

Compiling nineteen essays and introductions, a volume with explanatory notes includes Per Amica Silentia Lunae and On the Boiler as well as introductions on Shelley and Balzac and essays on Irish poetry and politics.

The most published and lauded woman writer of early sixteenth-century Italy, Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) in effect defined what was the "acceptable" face of female authorship for her time. Hailed by the generation's leading male literati as an equal, she was praised both for her impeccable command of Petrarchan style and for the unimpeachable chastity and piety of the persona she promoted through her literary works. This book presents for the very first time a body of Colonna's verse that reveals much about her poetic aims and outlook, while also casting new light on one of the most famous friendships of the age. Sonnets for Michelangelo, originally presented in manuscript form to her close friend Michelangelo Buonarroti as a personal gift, illustrates the striking beauty and originality of Colonna's mature lyric voice and distinguishes her as a poetic innovator who would be widely imitated by female writers in Italy and Europe in the sixteenth century. After three centuries of relative neglect, this new edition promises to restore Colonna to her rightful place at the forefront of female cultural production in the Renaissance.