Recommendations based on "The Love Songs of Sappho (Literary Classics)"

This poem - originally published anonymously, written after Wilde's two year's hard labour in Reading prison - is the tale of a man who has been sentenced to hang for the murder of the woman he loved. The Ballad of Reading Gaol follows the inmate through his final three weeks, as he stares at the sky and silently drinks his beer ration. Heart-wrenching and eye-opening, the ballad also expresses perfectly Wilde's belief that humanity is made up only of offenders, each of us deserving a greater charity for the severity of our crimes.

A comprehensive selection of Kavanagh's poetry. It includes selection that range from initial offerings such as "Tinker's Wife" and "Inniskeen July Evening" to his tragic masterpiece "The Great Hunger" (1942) and celebratory verse, "To Hell with Common Sense" and "Come Dance with Kitty Stobling."

This collection of forty-eight short pieces on Venice showcase Joseph Brodsky at his very best: witty, intelligent, moving and elegant. Looking at every aspect of Venice, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures the magnificence and beauty of the city, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many winters, as he remembers friends, lovers and enemies he has encountered.Watermark is an unforgettable piece of writing, and a wonderful portrait of a remarkable, unique city.

Spains greatest and most well-loved modern poet, lorca has long been admired for the emotional intensity and dark brilliance of his work, which drew on music, drama, mythology and the songs of his andulucian childhood from the playful suites and stylized gypsy ballads, to his own dark vision of urban life, poet in new york, and his elegaic meditation on death, lament for ignacio sánchez mejías; his range was remarkable this bilingual edition provides versions by distinguished poets and translators, drawing on every book of poems published by lorca and on his uncollected works

Robert Browning, a towering poetic presence of the Victorian era, was hailed by Henry James as a tremendous and incomparable modern. The sheer immediacy and colloquial energy of his poetry ensure enduring appeal. Browning paints landscapes both suburban and sublime, combines lyric and demotic language, and introduces everyday events of the streets and marketplace into the rarified world of Victorian poetry.This edition includes examples from the early Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845); from the masterpieces Mena and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864), and from the less familiar works of his later years. Together they convey the intensity, the lyric beauty, and the vitality of Browning's poetry.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.

"Crossing the Water, a collection of poems written just prior to those in Ariel, . . . is of immense importance in recording [Plath's] extraordinary development. One senses on every page a voice coming into its own, the chaos of a lifetime at last getting ready to assume its final, triumphant shape." — Kirkus ReviewsSylvia Plath's extraordinary collection pushes the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed.

From the author of The Arsonists’ City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family–past, present, future–in the face of displacement and war.A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form—small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement.These poems take stock of who and what can displace you from home and from your own body—and, conversely, the kind of resilience, tenacity, and love that can bring you back into yourself and into the context of past and future generations. Hala Alyan asks, What stops you from transforming into someone or something else? When you have lived a life in flux, how do you find rest?

Edited by Abel Debritto, the definitive collection of poems from an influential writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, and acutely observant writing has left an enduring mark on modern culture.Few writers have so brilliantly and poignantly conjured the desperation and absurdity of ordinary life as Charles Bukowski. Resonant with his powerful, perceptive voice, his visceral, hilarious, and transcendent poetry speaks to us as forcefully today as when it was written. Encompassing a wide range of subjects—from love to death and sex to writing—Bukowski’s unvarnished and self-deprecating verse illuminates the deepest and most enduring concerns of the human condition while remaining sharply aware of the day to day.With his acute eye for the ridiculous and the troubled, Bukowski speaks to the deepest longings and strangest predilections of the human experience. Gloomy yet hopeful, this is tough, unrelenting poetry touched by grace.This is Essential Bukowski.

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 

ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S TOP 10 POETRY BOOKS OF FALL 2017NPR'S MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY BOOKS OF 2017A striking, full-length debut collection from Virgin Islands-born poet Nicole SealeyThe existential magnitude, deep intellect, and playful subversion of St. Thomas-born, Florida-raised poet Nicole Sealey’s work is restless in its empathic, succinct examination and lucid awareness of what it means to be human.The ranging scope of inquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast—at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential—is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet. In brilliant, often ironic lines that move from meditation to matter of fact in a single beat, Sealey’s voice is always awake to the natural world, to the pain and punishment of existence, to the origins and demises of humanity. Exploring notions of race, sexuality, gender, myth, history, and embodiment with profound understanding, Sealey’s is a poetry that refuses to turn a blind eye or deny. It is a poetry of daunting knowledge.