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A milestone in City Lights history, David Meltzer's When I Was a Poet is number sixty of the famous Pocket Poets Series. The title work is an ambitious late masterpiece from a legendary poet at the height of his powers, a spiritual assessment of the meaning of a lifetime of writing poetry. Also included are reminiscences of California bohemian life, a series of mystical amulets, and profound meditations on love, loss, aging and death. Associated with the Beat Generation and late '60s psychedelia, musician, novelist and editor David Meltzer is one of America's foremost living poets. "Meltzer is a prolific poet of many modes and voices, quite a few of which are here, love poems, poems out of childhood, a series of "amulets," cryptic short wisdom poems, and much more. These are all tasty, often ironic and/or mysterious, pieces of Davidness to be savored . . . "--Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash
Bathroom Songs: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a Poet is the first book of essays to consider the poetry of one of the twentieth- and early twenty-first-century's most important literary, affect, and queer theorists. Acclaimed as one of the "truly innovative" poets of her generation, by Maud Ellmann, Sedgwick's work as a poet is, perhaps, less well known, but is no less compelling than her ground-breaking trilogy of queer theoretical texts: Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Epistemology of the Closet, and Tendencies. The book includes seven, specially commissioned essays considering Sedgwick's published poetry and writing about poets, by Angus Brown, Meg Boulton, Mary Baine Campbell, Jason Edwards, Kathryn R. Kent, Monica Pearl, and Benjamin Westwood, that range across the complete range of Sedgwick's work, from her earliest published lyrics through her first collection of poetry, Fat Art, Thin Art, to her part-haiku, part-prose autobiography, A Dialogue on Love, and beyond. In addition, the book contains over forty of Sedgwick's previously uncollected poems, ranging from her earliest poem on T.E. Lawrence to her final poem 'Death', introduced and contextualized in a second essay by Edwards. TABLE OF CONTENTS // Part I. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a Poet Jason Edwards - Introduction: Bathroom Songs? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a Poet Angus Connell Brown - Look with Your Hands Ben Westwood - The Abject Animal Poetics of 'The Warm Decembers' Kathryn R. Kent - Eve's Muse Mary Baine Campbell - 'Shyly / as a big sister I would yearn / to trace its avocations', or, Who's the Muse? Monica Pearl - Queer Therapy: On the Couch with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Meg Boulton - Waiting in the Dark: Some Musings on Sedgwick's Performative(s) Part II. The Uncollected Poems Jason Edwards - Introduction: Someday We'll Look Back with Pleasure Even on is: Sedgwick's Uncollected Poems Poems Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit - Death - Bathroom Song - Pandas in Trees - Untitled (Blake panda poems) - Tru-Cut - Valentine - 2/81 - Lost Letter - The Palimpsest - Explicit - Hank Williams and a Cat - Jimmy Lane - Jukebox - Die Sommernacht hat mir's angetan - Phantom Limb - Two P.O.W. Suicides - Once There Was a Way to Get Back Homeward - The Ring of Fire - The Prince of Love in the Desert Night - Artery - A Death by Water - Yellow Toes - Soutine - Another Poem from the Creaking Bed - Cain - The City and Man - Lullaby - No More Dusk - Ribs of Steel - To a Friend - When in Minute Script - To a Swimmer - Untitled ('Wonder no more upon the mysteries') - From an Ending for ' e Triumph of Life' - T.E. Lawrence and the Old Man, His Imagined Tormentor - Movie Party, Telluride House, Ithaca, New York - Falling in Love over The Seven Pillars - Calling Overseas - What the Poet ought And What She Found in the Telluride Files: - Epilogue: Teachers and Lovers - The Last Poem of Yv*r W*nt*rs - Saul at Jeshimon [First Variant] - Saul at Jeshimon [Second Variant] - Siegfried Rex von Munthe, Soldier and Poet, Killed December, 1939, on the German Battleship Graf Spee - Lawrence Reads La Morte D'Arthur in the Desert
Papa Is a Poet: is a picture book about the famous American poet Robert Frost, imagined through the eyes of his daughter Lesley. When Robert Frost was a child, his family thought he would grow up to be a baseball player. Instead, he became a poet. His life on a farm in New Hampshire inspired him to write "poetry that talked," and today he is famous for his vivid descriptions of the rural life he loved so much. There was a time, though, when Frost had to struggle to get his poetry published. Told from the point of view of Lesley, Robert Frost's oldest daughter, this is the story of how a lover of language found his voice.
Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes by Margo LaPierre Pdf
"What happens when we believe in something that isn't there? What happens to the mind maps of places we don't live in anymore? What happens when we doubt our own history? We cling to the solidity of physical space. Our abstracted sense of being swells to its limits, presses against its boundary of skin, bumps up against the world, finds itself there. Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes explores the idea that we as humans are undefined, chaotic, that we come to know ourselves through the spaces we inhabit and the people we encounter. These are hungry poems looking feverishly outwards, phenomenological poems that speak of late nights, feminist issues, mental illness and writing itself."--
"That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear—and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. Wiman does. That gift is what makes Ambition and Survival, not just one of the best books of poetry criticism in a generation, but a spiritual memoir of the first order." —New York Sun "This weighty first prose collection should inspire wide attention, partly because of Wiman's current job, partly because of his astute insights and partly because he mixes poetry criticism with sometimes shocking memoir ... The collection's greatest strength comes in general ruminations on the writing, reading and judging poetry." —Publishers Weekly "[Wiman is] a terrific personal essayist, as this new collection illustrates, with the command and instincts of the popular memoirist ... This is a brave and bracing book." —Booklist “Blazing high style” is how The New York Times describes the prose of Christian Wiman, the young editor transforming Poetry, the country’s oldest literary magazine. Ambition and Survival is a collection of stirring personal essays and critical prose on a wide range of subjects: reading Milton in Guatemala, recalling violent episodes of his youth, and traveling in Africa with his eccentric father, as well as a series of penetrating essays on writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy and Janet Lewis. The book concludes with a portrait of Wiman’s diagnosis of a rare form of incurable and lethal cancer, and how mortality reignited his religious passions. When I was twenty years old I set out to be a poet. That sounds like I was a sort of frigate raising anchor, and in a way I guess I was, though susceptible to the lightest of winds. . . . When I read Samuel Johnson’s comment that any young man could compensate for his poor education by reading five hours a day for five years, that’s exactly what I tried to do, practically setting a timer every afternoon to let me know when the little egg of my brain was boiled. It’s a small miracle that I didn’t take to wearing a cape. Christian Wiman is the editor of Poetry magazine. His poems and essays appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and The New York Times Book Review.
A poem is like a butterfly. A moment seeds itself inside us. A memory. An experience when we saw, we felt, perhaps even, we knew. There is a poet in all of us. However unknown or neglected that part of us may be, it is there, often just waiting for the right conditions to present themselves. Jay Ramsay presents a workbook which guides you into writing poetry—a unique exploration and synthesis between poetry and personal development. Specially designed for people who may be longing to write, as well as those who already are, Ramsay's particular gift is to teach poetry primarily from inspiration and imagination rather than intellectual technique.
The Beat Generation in San Francisco by Bill Morgan Pdf
An entertaining read as well as a practical walking (and driving) tour, this guide covers the entire Bay Area, and comes with an introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Billy Bragg is one of Britain's most distinctive and accomplished songwriters, whose work has articulated the passions, both personal and political, of Britain during the past five decades. A Lover Sings contains over seventy of his best-known lyrics, selected and annotated by the author. 'Sexuality', 'A New England', 'Levi Stubbs' Tears' - these are unadorned, poetic songs that skilfully interweave everyday observation with much broader concerns: of fairness and outrage, of generosity and love. A Lover Sings reveals a unique sensibility: principled and proudly of the Left, funny, forthright and tender. It is a remarkable collection.
Winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize How can a search for self‑knowledge reveal art as a site of community? Yanyi’s arresting and straightforward poems weave experiences of immigration as a Chinese American, of racism, of mental wellness, and of gender from a queer and trans perspective. Between the contrast of high lyric and direct prose poems, Yanyi invites the reader to consider how to speak with multiple identities through trauma, transition, and ordinary life. These poems constitute an artifact of a groundbreaking and original author whose work reflects a long journey self‑guided through tarot, therapy, and the arts. Foregrounding the power of friendship, Yanyi’s poems converse with friends as much as with artists both living and dead, from Agnes Martin to Maggie Nelson to Robin Coste Lewis. This instructive collection gives voice to the multifaceted humanity within all of us and inspires attention, clarity, and hope through art-making and community.
Dwellers in the House of the Lord by Wesley McNair Pdf
"In this book-length narrative poem, ... Wesley McNair takes us to rural Virginia, where his younger sister Aimee is adrift in a difficult marriage to Mike, an off-the-grid gun shop owner. As Aimee grapples with self-doubt and searches for solace in a vacuous megachurch, Mike's misunderstandings are magnified by the self-first ideology and fear-of-others philosophy swirling around him"--
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2021. Lyrical and unforgettable, part elegy and part memoir, we present a previously unpublished masterpiece from the Beat Generation icon. Simultaneously released with an expanded edition of di Prima's classic Revolutionary Letters on the one-year anniversary of her passing. In the autumn of 1964, Diane di Prima was a young poet living in New York when her dearest friend, dancer, choreographer, and Warhol Factory member, Freddie Herko, leapt from the window of a Greenwich Village apartment to a sudden, dramatic, and tragic death at the age of 29. In her shock and grief, di Prima began a daily practice of writing to Freddie. For a year, she would go to her study each day, light a stick of incense, and type furiously until it burned itself out. The narrative ranges over the decade from 1954—the year di Prima and Herko first met—to 1965, with occasional forays into di Prima's memories of growing up in Brooklyn. Lyrical, elegant, and nakedly honest, Spring and Autumn Annals is a moving tribute to a friendship, and to the extraordinary innovation and accomplishments of the period. Masterfully observed and passionately recorded, it offers a uniquely American portrait of the artist as a young woman in the heyday of bohemian New York City. Praise for Spring and Autumn Annals: "The book is a treasure. Moving between the East Village, San Francisco, Topanga Canyon and Stinson Beach with young children, di Prima's life is unbelievably rich. She studies Greek, writes, prepares dinners and feasts, and co-edits Floating Bear magazine. Diane di Prima is one of the greatest writers of her generation, and this book offers a window into its lives."—Chris Kraus "Extolled by a writer who radically devoted herself to the experiential truth of beauty and intellect, in poverty and grace, in independent dignity, and in the community of Beat consciousness, Diane di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals arrives as a long-lost charm of illuminated meditations to love, life, death, eros and selflessness. An essential 1960s text of visionary rapaciousness."—Thurston Moore "Freddie Herko wished for a third love before he died; and what a love is in this book's beholding, saying, and release. Di Prima's dancing narrative, propelled and circling at the speed of thought, picking up every name and detailed perception as a rolling tide, fills me with gratitude for the truth of her eye. Nothing gets past it, not even the 'ballet slippers letting in the snow.'"—Ana Božičević "A masterpiece of literary reflection, as quest to archive her dancer friend's life, to make art at all costs and the price dearly paid. Di Prima's observational capacity is profound, her devotion and loyalty assures her deserved place as a national treasure. She generously instills in us the call of poetic remembrance as an act of resistance, and gives voice to the marginalized participants in experimental cultural movements that carried courage in creative rebellion while envisioning freedom of the human spirit. Di Prima’s poetic memoir of the artist journey is a triumph. A must read and reread for years to come."—Karen Finley
Featuring “Good Bones”—called “Official Poem of 2016” by the BBC/Public Radio International. Maggie Smith writes out of the experience of motherhood, inspired by watching her own children read the world like a book they've just opened, knowing nothing of the characters or plot. These are poems that stare down darkness while cultivating and sustaining possibility, poems that have a sense of moral gravitas, personal urgency, and the ability to address a larger world. Maggie Smith's previous books are The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo, 2015), Lamp of the Body (Red Hen, 2005), and three prize-winning chapbooks: Disasterology (Dream Horse, 2016), The List of Dangers (Kent State, 2010), and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005). Her poem “Good Bones” has gone viral—tweeted and translated across the world, featured on the TV drama Madam Secretary, and called the “Official Poem of 2016” by the BBC/Public Radio International, earning news coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. Maggie Smith was named the 2016 Ohio Poet of the Year. “Smith's voice is clear and unmistakable as she unravels the universe, pulls at a loose thread and lets the whole thing tumble around us, sometimes beautiful, sometimes achingly hard. Truthful, tender, and unafraid of the dark....”—Ada Limón “As if lost in the soft, bewitching world of fairy tale, Maggie Smith conceives and brings forth this metaphysical Baedeker, a guidebook for mother and child to lead each other into a hopeful present. Smith's poems affirm the virtues of humanity: compassion, empathy, and the ability to comfort one another when darkness falls. 'There is a light,' she tells us, 'and the light is good.'”—D. A. Powell “Good Bones is an extraordinary book. Maggie Smith demonstrates what happens when an abundance of heart and intelligence meets the hands of a master craftsperson, reminding us again that the world, for a true poet, is blessedly inexhaustible.”—Erin Belieu
A collection of interviews with 16 prominent Latino poets reveals how they found their niche in American literature and what political and social issues helped shape their personal and creative lives.
No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore." In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.