Spanning four decades of writing, The Essential C.D. Wright carries the reverence and wisecracking lyricism of poems that reshaped American poetry.The Essential C.D. Wright, with a moving introduction by Forrest Gander, gathers rare selections from across her entire oeuvre--from the first book, Room Rented by a Single Woman (1978), through the final collection, Shall Cross, which was in production at the time of her unexpected death in 2016. Tracing a writing life that spans more than four decades, this essential collection illuminates works that remain empowered by an unrelenting independence, a reverence for mentors, and wry wisecracking lyricism. Wright introduced a contemporary audience to the promise and power of docupoetics, while pushing the musical boundaries of vernacular speech and reshaping American poetry. Formally restless and energetic, The Essential C.D. Wright stands as a staple in the larger poetic landscape.
With imaginative power and emotional force, Into The Hush explores the exigencies of climate change, of endangered cultures, and of our nuclear age.Like wind on a lake, Arthur Sze’s twelfth book of poetry, Into the Hush, extends a language that ripples and stills, widens and deepens. Through an earned and profound simplicity, these poems move with imaginative power and emotional force and gather a startling array of contrasts—from wildfires to a sprig of sunrise, from gunshots to a spirit evoked by swaying candles—to address the challenges of our nuclear age. Here, poems shadow sonnets and appear as haibun and ekphrasis, pantoum and segmented zuihitsu. They borrow the voice of an eraser and the voice of a jaguar. Even the aspen leaves speak. Sze harnesses a range of innovative forms to respond to the challenges of climate change, exploring what it means to live on an endangered planet. Written at the height of his powers, Into the Hush is a landmark publication. Sze enacts a thrilling journey from silence into sound, from emptiness into the rich panoply of existence.
Chronicle of Drifting enacts a restless quest for belonging, interweaving dreamlike imagery and Japanese lyricismYuki Tanaka’s stunning debut, Chronicle of Drifting, explores rootlessness, its beauty and perils. Tanaka’s restless imagination roams among places and personae—a village mermaid, a geisha in the Midwest, a flâneur in Tokyo—searching for a permanent self and a sense of community. In the feverish world of these poems, inspired by the Japanese tradition of tanka and haiku, as well as by timeless surrealism, one meets a light-lashed horse, an imaginary chauffeur, an out-of-business psychic, a girl who skewers a fish with a flower stalk. In poems ranging from lyric to prose, Tanaka creates a poignant dreamlike realm where the inner and outer worlds, the self and others, merge—like the train passenger who, looking out the window and seeing the sky through his reflection, feels “empty, a blue outline.”
If a Mountain Lion Could Sing stands as the first major English translation of poems written by China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji.Red Pine gathers and translates over 100 poems by China's greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji, in his latest bilingual collection, If a Mountain Lion Could Sing. Visiting the very places where Xin composed his stanzas—the cassia trees of the Wu River, houseboats along the Yangzi, mountain monasteries—and paying respects at the poet’s grave, Red Pine makes a spiritual and physical exercise of translation. In his skilled hands, we see the unique, multifaceted nature of Xin unfold—rebel warrior, patriot, human. Political themes and ideas of intimacy cross paths, moving between the voices of statesman and lover. Written over 800 years ago, and to melodies since lost, Xin’s verses still leap across centuries to relay the universal concepts of solitude, duty, youth, aging, and nostalgia. Though “true mirrors are hard to come by,” Xin’s poems serve as haunting reflections of a man whose voice of “heroic abandon” still resonates today.
"In The Silk Dragon II, National Book Award-winning poet Arthur Sze presents a sophisticated vision of the vitality, diversity, and power of the Chinese poetic tradition. Traveling over one and a half millennia, Sze guides readers through a luminous history of verse, from the contemplative insights of fifth century poet Tao Qian, through Tang dynasty poets such as Wang Wei and Du Fu, and into subsequent centuries in which lived such innovative artists as Li Qingzhao and Bada Shanren, among many others. Extending the work from the original 2001 volume, The Silk Dragon II then traces classical Chinese poetry's eruption into the free verse of the modern and contemporary eras, introducing groundbreaking poems by the Chinese Modernist master Wen Yiduo, as well as those from major living poets such as Wang Jiaxin, Zhai Yongming, and Xi Chuan. Through this remarkable journey -- deepened by Sze's personal introduction -- we see that the "impossible task" of translation is yet rich with encounter, as both long-lost voices and those still speaking enter the same conversation, with the same vivacity."--
From church barn to apple orchard, from snow-covered pasture to secret moonshine cabin, Manning’s Snakedoctor reinvigorates the Kentucky pastoral through poems that find light in shadow, good in evil, love in a father’s stinging blow.Maurice Manning returns to the Kentucky countryside in his eighth collection, Snakedoctor. Existing between haunting memory and pastoral dreamscape, this quiet collection showcases Manning’s storytelling at its finest. Simple, four-beat lines hold epiphanies—“the barn is just an empty church”— and announce visits from seven-foot strangers named Mr. True. Here, God is reimagined as a “serious banjo player” who calls the world to sing. And sing Manning does. Through rhyme, blues, and haiku, Snakedoctor trains our ears to hear music in the mundane, to find beauty all around us: in the annotated margins of a well-read book, the flight of a father’s shadow puppet, the yellow centers of daisies. Punctuated by rain’s pitter-patter on a tin wash tub, and the “ring of lonely” in a farmer’s voice as he calls his cattle home, Snakedoctor is a collection that will leave you wanting to dog-ear its pages. From childhood to fatherhood, church barn to apple orchard, moonshine to moonbeam, we leave these poems understanding Manning’s wish: “I wanted to make a prayer and I did, / in half-sleep after the dream.”
"A companion to our fiftieth anniversary anthology, this collection highlights over 150 selections of our community members' commentary and recommendations, beautifully celebrating poetry through the collective voice of passionate readers and advocates"--
"A collection of poetry and prose by Tomas Transtrèomer, translated by Patty Crane"--
"A collection of poems by Tao Yuanming, translated by Red Pine who is also known as Bill Porter"--
A herald of desire, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller’s Paper Banners catalogs the intimate experiences that create a life, hoping that “what will survive of us is love.”A herald of desire, suffering, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller’s Paper Banners “say the cosmos/ isn’t hostile/ yet strangles a dove /with one hand.” Against this angst, Miller steps outside of history to contemplate voices of love, aging, and artmaking. Many poems are addressed to family members, friends, and young poets, or pay homage to familiar figures taken by time or tragedy, including Virginia Woolf, Osip Mandelstam, and the Song Dynasty poet Li Qingzhao. In clear, short lines, these poems harken to ancient banderoles, or pennants, which announced rallying cries on the lances of knights and mottoes on the flags of ships. Here, Miller’s Paper Banners are made of images of the American Southwest and scrutinize its political and physical landscape. Like skywriting streamed in white smoke, this collection bears its message on the wind, its words addressed to anyone. As Miller catalogs the intimate experiences that make up a life—friendships, loves, dreams, our human connection to the environment—Paper Banners becomes a hope that “what will survive of us is love.”
An unflinching study of death, Kevin Prufer’s The Fears invites us to consider what it means to matter.Editor, publisher, and poet Kevin Prufer presents his ninth poetry collection, The Fears, an intimate meditation on storytelling and mortality. "Ghostlit by streetlights” and filtered through tale and recollection, Prufer examines our fears of loss, death, and obscurity. Narratives are braided together as Prufer manipulates white space to mimic the silence of minds at work on unsolvable problems, how time “unravels / endlessly.” Here, visions of classical Greece and the trials of ancient Romans coexist with the everyday—memories of a parent’s death or the loss of a pet. We bear witness as the poet writes to preserve the intricacy of his own mind against the “certainty of absence.” Exploring what it means to be forgotten and how legacy is preserved through poetry, history books, a mummy’s index finger, and love letters from the grave, The Fears invites us to consider what it means to matter.
"Warm tenderness and fiery critique sit side-by-side in Bolina's [poetry] collection that skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor"--
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