The most trusted guide to getting poetry published!Want to get your poetry published? There's no better tool for making it happen than the 2015 Poet's Market, which includes hundreds of publishing opportunities specifically for poets, including listings for book/chapbook publishers, poetry publications, contests, and more. These include contact information, submission preferences, insider tips on what specific editors want, and--when offered--payment information.In addition to the listings, Poet's Market offers articles on the Craft of Poetry, Business of Poetry, and Promotion of Poetry--not to mention new poems from today's best and brightest poets, including Beth Copeland, Joseph Mills, Judith Skillman, Laurie Kolp, Bernadette Geyer, and more. Learn the habits of highly productive poets, the usefulness of silence, revision tricks, poetic forms, ways to promote a new book, and more.You also gain access to:Lists of conferences, workshops, organizations, and grantsA free digital download of Writer's Yearbook featuring the 100 Best Markets*Includes access to the webinar "How to Build an Audience for Your Poetry" from Robert Lee Brewer, editor of Poet's Market*
Publisher: n/a
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9781599638447
|
Book
The Art of Losing
By Young, Kevin
Poetry serves a unique role in our lives, distilling human experience and emotion down to truths as potent as they are brief. There are two times most people turn to it: for love and loss. The Art of Losing will be the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption) , with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal a gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss. Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W.H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.
Publisher: n/a
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9781608190331
|
Book
Best of the Best American Poetry
By Pinsky, Robert
Robert Pinsky, distinguished poet and man of letters, selects the top 100 poems from twenty-five years of The Best American PoetryTHIS SPECIAL EDITION CELEBRATES twenty-five years of the Best American Poetry series, which has become an institution. The Best American Poetry is the most prestigious poetry publication in the United States and has been so almost from its inception in 1988. Hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced) , and obsessively scrutinized, every volume in the series consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet - from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Jorie Graham, Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Glck, James Tate, Adrienne Rich, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1,875 poems that have appeared in The Best American Poetry, here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition. Each volume in the series is represented, and the result is a pleasure-giving book of twice-honored poems that readers will find indispensable. The Best of the Best American Poetry is proof positive that the art form is flourishing. The volume is a reminder, too, of the role this anthology series has played in the resurgence of interest in American poetry in the last quarter century. With dazzling introductory essays by guest editor Robert Pinsky and series editor David Lehman, The Best of the Best American Poetry includes up-to-date biographies of the poets, along with the comments they made when the poems were originally selected. This is an invaluable addition to the cherished series.
Publisher: n/a
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9781451658873
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Hardcover
Bewilderment
By Ferry, David
Winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Poetry. To read David Ferry s "Bewilderment" is to be reminded that poetry of the highest order can be made by the subtlest of means. The passionate nature and originality of Ferry s prosodic daring works astonishing transformations that take your breath away. In poem after poem, his diction modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century. Ferry has fully realized both the potential for vocal expressiveness in his phrasing and the way his phrasing plays against and with his genius for metrical variation. His vocal phrasing thus becomes an amazingly flexible instrument of psychological and spiritual inquiry. Most poets write inside a very narrow range of experience and feeling, whether in free or metered verse. But Ferry s use of meter tends to enhance the colloquial nature of his writing, while giving him access to an immense variety of feeling. Sometimes that feeling is so powerful it s like witnessing a volcanologist taking measurements in the midst of an eruption. Ferry s translations, meanwhile, are amazingly acclimated English poems. Once his voice takes hold of them they are as bred in the bone as all his other work. And the translations in this book are vitally related to the original poems around them. From "Bewilderment" OctoberThe day was hot, and entirely breathless, soThe remarkably quiet remarkably steady leaf fallSeemed as if it had no cause at all. The ticking sound of falling leaves was likeThe ticking sound of gentle rainfall asThey gently fell on leaves already fallen, Or as, when as they passed them in their falling, Now and again it happened that one of them touchedOne or another leaf as yet not falling, Still clinging to the idea of being summer: As if the leaves that were falling, but not the day, Had read, and understood, the calendar. "
Publisher: n/a
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9780226244884
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Paperback
Black Crow Dress
By Johnson, Roxane Beth
"These poems move forward like a novel in verse with a real understanding of the differences between the past and history. Or, as Johnson herself says in the opening poem, 'Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom.' This is a poet the best readers will be reading for the rest of their lives." - Jericho BrownA haunting collection of lyrically intense persona poems, Black Crow Dress is at once about the emancipation of slaves in their myriad voices as well as a meditation on the self. The collection's lush imagery takes us from churchyard to church, chanting the old spirituals, as Roxane Beth Johnson seeks to embody the spirits of the dead: Clea, Caroline, and Zebedee. From "Slave Ancestors Found Unburied in a Dream":Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloomthem alive in this room like water softens beans.Leaning near, close to me they see my tooth & tonguethat test doneness, licks stamps & hums.Their ear listens to what a hand might fiddleif it had fingers.Stare this way with eyes like smudges . . .Roxane Beth Johnson's first book of poetry, Jublilee (Anhinga Press, 2006) , won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She won an AWP Donald Hill Prize in Poetry and a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and has received scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in San Francisco, California.
Publisher: n/a
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9781882295951
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Paperback
Collected Poems
By Ceravolo, Joseph
Like an underground river, the astonishing poems of Joseph Ceravolo have nurtured American poetry for fifty years, a presence deeply felt but largely invisible. Collected Poems offers the first full portrait of Ceravolo's aesthetic trajectory, bringing to light the highly original voice that was operating at an increasing remove from the currents of the time. From a poetics associated with Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery to an ever more contemplative, deeply visionary poetics similar in sensibility to Zen and Dante, William Blake and St. John of the Cross, this collection shows how Ceravolo's poetry takes on a direct, quiet lyricism: intensely dedicated to the natural and spiritual life of the individual. As Ron Silliman notes, Ceravolo's later work reveals him to be "one of the most emotionally open, vulnerable and self-knowing poets of his generation." Many new pieces, including the masterful long poem "The Hellgate," are published here for the first time. This volume is a landmark edition for American poetry, and includes an introduction by David Lehman.
Publisher: n/a
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9780819573414
|
Book
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry
By Smith, Marc Kelly
Get in on the action...CD included! According to the PBS television series The United States of Poetry, a "strand of new poetry began at Chicago's Green Mill Tavern in 1986 when Marc Smith found a home for the Poetry Slam." Since then, performance poetry has spread throughout the United States. Now, the father of the poetry slam presents the most comprehensive book on spoken-word poetry performances.
Publisher: n/a
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9781592572464
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Paperback
Just Saying
By Armantrout, Rae
In Just Saying, improbable and even untenable speakers are briefly constituted - only to disappear. The result is part carnival, part nightmare. A television pundit's rhetoric segues into an unusual succulent with writhing maroon tongues. When the world suddenly becomes legible, is that revelation or psychosis? In this book, the voice of the Lord and/or the voice of the security state can come from anyplace. The problem of identity becomes acute. The poems in Just Saying may be imagined as chimeras, creatures that appear when old distinctions break down and elements generally kept separate combine in new ways. Here Armantrout both worries (as a dog worries a bone) and celebrates the groundless fecundity of being and of language.
Publisher: n/a
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9780819572998
|
Book
Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
By Powers, Kevin
The award-winning author of The Yellow Birds returns with an extraordinary debut poetry collection.. National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldiers life: driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams. . Written with evocative language and discernment, Powerss poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience. Just as The Yellow Birds was hailed as the "first literary masterpiece produced by the Iraq war," this collection will make its mark as a powerful, enduring work (Los Angeles Times) .
Publisher: n/a
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9780316401081
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Hardcover
Letters to Borges
By Kuusisto, Stephen
"[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor." - The New York Times"A talented writer judged against any standard." - USA TodayBest-selling memoirist Stephen Kuusisto uses the themes of travel, place, religion, music, art, and loneliness to explore the relationship between seeing, blindness, and being. In poems addressed to Jorge Luis Borges - another poet who lived with blindness - Kuusisto leverages seeing as negative capability, creating intimacy with deep imagination and uncommon perceptions."Alone"Today I understoodWhile drinking tea& hearing rainThat the word for birth& the one for sinCome from a single rootIn Finnish - that tongue theySpoke when I was small.Synnty, untranslatable,Original sin nearly,But softer,Like waterCarried a long wayIn a jarIn May.Stephen Kuusisto is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of two collections of poetry and two memoirs, including the best-selling Planet of the Blind (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998) . A graduate from and former teacher at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Kuusisto now teaches at Syracuse University in New York State.
Publisher: n/a
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9781556593864
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Print book
The Little Black Book of Writers' Wisdom
By Price, Steven D
Author and journalist Gene Fowler put it best: "Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." Anyone who has ever wanted or been required to create something more complicated than a shopping list or a Tweet knows there's more truth than poetry in the observation. The process can be difficult, frustratingly so when we realize that although we use words all the time, coming up with the right ones can be a daunting task.Even the most celebrated writers have reflected on this creative process, and their observations and conclusions are collected in this book. The compiler, himself no stranger to a blank page or computer screen, has selected the wisest and wittiest utterances on such subjects as why we write (Ernest Hemingway: "I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.") ; how to write (Anton Chekhov: "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.") ; and writing for money (Cormac McCarthy: "I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.") .It has been said that reading won't make you a good writer, but it will make you a better writer. Dip into this lively and useful treasure trove, and you'll be well on your way.
Publisher: n/a
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9781620875278
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Book
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
By Kaufman, Alan
From the Beat poetry of the '50s to the spoken word of today, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry brings readers the words, visions, and extravagant lives of bohemians, beatniks, hippies, punks, and slackers. Like Donald Allen's epochal New American Poetry, The Outlaw Bible will serve as a primer for generational revolt and poetic expression, and is an enduring document of the visionary tradition of authenticity and nonconformity in literature. This exuberant manifesto includes lives of the poets, on-the-scene testimony, seminal underground articles never before collected, photographs of clubs and cafes, interviews, and, above all, the poems.
Publisher: n/a
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9781560252278
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Book
The Poets Corner
By Lithgow, John
From listening to his grandmother recite epic poems from memory to curling up in bed while his father read funny verses, award-winning actor John Lithgow grew up with poetry. Ever since, John has been an enthusiastic seeker of poetic experience, whether reading, reciting, or listening to great poems. The wide variety of carefully selected poems in this book provides the perfect introduction to appeal to readers new to poetry, and for poetry lovers to experience beloved verses in a fresh, vivid way. William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dylan Thomas are just a few names among Lithgows comprehensive list of poetry masters. His essential criterion is that "each poems light shines more brightly when read aloud." This unique package provides a multimedia poetry experience with a bonus MP3 CD of revelatory poetry readings by John and the familiar voices of such notable performers as Eileen Atkins, Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Billy Connolly, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Gary Sinise, and Sam Waterston. Every reader will enjoy reciting or listening to these poems with the entire family, appreciating how each one comes to life through the spoken word in this superlative poetry collection.
Publisher: n/a
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9780446580021
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Hardcover
Poet's Guide
By Bugeja, Michael J
A practical handbook clearly explaining how poets can successfully publish and market their work. Published poets and Bugeja, former poetry columnist for Writer's Digest magazine and author of the acclaimed Art and Craft of Poetry, offer practical advice on workshops, readings, contests, magazines, revising, and publishing. An excellent resource for helping poets publish single poems or complete collections.
Publisher: n/a
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9781885266006
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Book
Senegal Taxi
By Herrera, Juan Felipe
"I wish I could find the words to tell you the story of our village after you were killed." So begins Senegal Taxi, the new work by one of contemporary poetry's most vibrant voices, Juan Felipe Herrera. Known for his activism and writings that bring attention to oppression and injustice, Herrera turns to stories of genocide and hope in Sudan. Senegal Taxi offers the voices of three children escaping the horrors of war in Africa. Unflinching in its honesty, brutality, and beauty, the collection fiercely addresses conflict and childhood, inviting readers to engage in complex and often challenging issues. Senegal Taxi weaves together verse, dialogue, and visual art created by Herrera specifically for the book. Stylistically genre-leaping, these many layers are part of the collection's innovation. Phantom-like televisions, mud drawings, witness testimonies, insects, and weaponry are all storytellers that join the siblings for a theatrical crescendo. Each poem is told from a different point of view, which Herrera calls "mud drawings," referring to the evocative symbols of hope the children create as they hide in a cave on their way to Senegal, where they plan to catch a boat to the United States. This collection signals a poignant shift for Herrera as he continues to use his craft to focus attention on global concerns. In so doing, he offers an acknowledgment that the suffering of some is the suffering of all.
Publisher: n/a
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9780816530151
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Paperback
Stag's Leap
By Olds, Sharon
In this wise and intimate new book, Sharon Olds tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. As she carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending, Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip; the radical change in her sense of place in the world. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and who now loves another woman. As she writes in the remarkable "Stag's Leap," "When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver." Olds's propulsive poetic line and the magic of her imagery are as lively as ever, and there is a new range to the music - sometimes headlong, sometimes contemplative and deep. Her unsparing approach to both pain and love makes this one of the finest, most powerful books of poetry she has yet given us.
Publisher: n/a
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9780307959904
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Book
Singing School
By Pinsky, Robert
A bold new approach to writing (and reading) poetry based on great poetry of the past. Quick, joyful, and playfully astringent, with surprising comparisons and examples, this collection takes an unconventional approach to the art of poetry. Instead of rules, theories, or recipes, Singing School emphasizes ways to learn from great work: studying magnificent, monumentally enduring poems and how they are made -- in terms borrowed from the "singing school" of William Butler Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium." Robert Pinsky's headnotes for each of the 80 poems and his brief introductions to each section take a writer's view of specific works: William Carlos Williams's "Fine Work with Pitch and Copper" for intense verbal music; Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" for wild imagination in matter-of-fact language; Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe" for surrealist aplomb; Wallace Stevens's "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" for subtlety in meter. Included are poems by Aphra Behn, Allen Ginsberg, George Herbert, John Keats, Mina Loy, Thomas Nashe, and many other master poets.This anthology respects poetry's mysteries in two senses of the word: techniques of craft and strokes of the inexplicable.
Publisher: n/a
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9780393050684
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Hardcover
The Spoken Word Revolution With Audio CD
By Eleveld, Mark
We're about to take you off the road you expected to be on when you heard the word "poetry." Sandburg, Kerouac, Whitman, and Millay were all radicals in their early days. They outraged the status quo. The poets you'll experience in this book and audio CD travel on that same track. The Spoken Word Revolution is a continuation and rebirth of the oral tradition in our country, and in countries around the world, where the power of poetry performed out loud compels an audience to listen.The Spoken Word Revolution brings to life the written and performed works of more than 40 of the most influential slam, hip hop, performance art and contemporary poets in the world today. This defining collection of spoken word poetry captures today's electrifying words and voices, in text and immediately live on one audio CD. Hear the innovative poetry styles of:--Slam--Nuyorican--Performance art--Taos--Youth poetry--Hip hopIncludes poems by:--Sherman Alexie--Billy Collins--Regie Gibson--Celena Glenn--Edward Hirsch--Jean Howard--Taylor Mali--Viggo Mortensen--Beau Sia--Patricia Smith--Saul Williams
Publisher: n/a
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9781402200374
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Book
The Spoken Word Revolution Redux
By Eleveld, Mark
From its earliest days to today, poetry has always been a spoken art. On the page and out loud, poetry is the home for the brilliant, the rebellious, the artists and performers who are changing the world. Today's spoken word revolution is the literary equivalent to grabbing a culture by the collar and shaking it...hard. In the tradition of The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux brings more of the gripping, moving, innovative, often hilarious poetry in the oral tradition. This redefining collection gathers multiple forms of "spoken word" under the same motley tent-slam, hip-hop, musical interpretations, and youth movements among them. The resulting brew is both satisfying and world-expanding. One audio CD features some of the best poems and poets, immediately live in their own electrifying words and voices. The Spoken Word Revolution Redux includes:--Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley--Slam Poetry founder Marc Smith--Ethan Hawke reading Beat Poet Gregory Corso--Jazz pianist Patricia Barber adapting ee cummings--Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Bill Collins and Mark Strand--Four-time national poetry slam champion Patricia Smith--Jeff Tweedy of Wilco--Hip-Hop founder Gil Scott-Heron--Indy National Poetry Slam Champions, including Mayda da Ville--Viggo Mortensen and Hank Mortensen--Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins
Publisher: n/a
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9781402208690
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Book
Riding Westward
By Phillips, Carl
The singer turning thisand that way, as if watching the song itself--the words to the song--leave him, as helets each go, the wind carrying most of it,some of the words, falling, settling intoinstead that larger darkness, where the smallerdarknesses that our lives were lie softly down."--from "Riding Westward"What happens when the world as we've known it becomes divided, when the mind becomes less able--or less willing--to distinguish reality from what is desired? In Riding Westward, Carl Phillips wields his celebrated gifts for syntax and imagery that are unmistakably his own--speculative, athletic, immediate--as he confronts moral crisis. What is the difference, he asks, between good and evil, cruelty and instruction, risk and trust? Against the backdrop of the natural world, Phillips pitches the restlessness of what it means to be human, as he at once deepens and extends a meditation on that space where the forces of will and imagination collide with sexual and moral conduct.
2015 Poet's Market
By Brewer, Robert Lee
The most trusted guide to getting poetry published!Want to get your poetry published? There's no better tool for making it happen than the 2015 Poet's Market, which includes hundreds of publishing opportunities specifically for poets, including listings for book/chapbook publishers, poetry publications, contests, and more. These include contact information, submission preferences, insider tips on what specific editors want, and--when offered--payment information.In addition to the listings, Poet's Market offers articles on the Craft of Poetry, Business of Poetry, and Promotion of Poetry--not to mention new poems from today's best and brightest poets, including Beth Copeland, Joseph Mills, Judith Skillman, Laurie Kolp, Bernadette Geyer, and more. Learn the habits of highly productive poets, the usefulness of silence, revision tricks, poetic forms, ways to promote a new book, and more.You also gain access to:Lists of conferences, workshops, organizations, and grantsA free digital download of Writer's Yearbook featuring the 100 Best Markets*Includes access to the webinar "How to Build an Audience for Your Poetry" from Robert Lee Brewer, editor of Poet's Market*
The Art of Losing
By Young, Kevin
Poetry serves a unique role in our lives, distilling human experience and emotion down to truths as potent as they are brief. There are two times most people turn to it: for love and loss. The Art of Losing will be the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption) , with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal a gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss. Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W.H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.
Best of the Best American Poetry
By Pinsky, Robert
Robert Pinsky, distinguished poet and man of letters, selects the top 100 poems from twenty-five years of The Best American PoetryTHIS SPECIAL EDITION CELEBRATES twenty-five years of the Best American Poetry series, which has become an institution. The Best American Poetry is the most prestigious poetry publication in the United States and has been so almost from its inception in 1988. Hotly debated, keenly monitored, ardently advocated (or denounced) , and obsessively scrutinized, every volume in the series consists of seventy-five poems chosen by a major American poet - from John Ashbery in 1988 to Mark Doty in 2012, with stops along the way for such poets as Jorie Graham, Charles Simic, A. R. Ammons, Louise Glck, James Tate, Adrienne Rich, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, Heather McHugh, and Kevin Young. Out of the 1,875 poems that have appeared in The Best American Poetry, here are 100 that Robert Pinsky, the distinguished poet and man of letters, has chosen for this milestone edition. Each volume in the series is represented, and the result is a pleasure-giving book of twice-honored poems that readers will find indispensable. The Best of the Best American Poetry is proof positive that the art form is flourishing. The volume is a reminder, too, of the role this anthology series has played in the resurgence of interest in American poetry in the last quarter century. With dazzling introductory essays by guest editor Robert Pinsky and series editor David Lehman, The Best of the Best American Poetry includes up-to-date biographies of the poets, along with the comments they made when the poems were originally selected. This is an invaluable addition to the cherished series.
Bewilderment
By Ferry, David
Winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Poetry. To read David Ferry s "Bewilderment" is to be reminded that poetry of the highest order can be made by the subtlest of means. The passionate nature and originality of Ferry s prosodic daring works astonishing transformations that take your breath away. In poem after poem, his diction modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century. Ferry has fully realized both the potential for vocal expressiveness in his phrasing and the way his phrasing plays against and with his genius for metrical variation. His vocal phrasing thus becomes an amazingly flexible instrument of psychological and spiritual inquiry. Most poets write inside a very narrow range of experience and feeling, whether in free or metered verse. But Ferry s use of meter tends to enhance the colloquial nature of his writing, while giving him access to an immense variety of feeling. Sometimes that feeling is so powerful it s like witnessing a volcanologist taking measurements in the midst of an eruption. Ferry s translations, meanwhile, are amazingly acclimated English poems. Once his voice takes hold of them they are as bred in the bone as all his other work. And the translations in this book are vitally related to the original poems around them. From "Bewilderment" OctoberThe day was hot, and entirely breathless, soThe remarkably quiet remarkably steady leaf fallSeemed as if it had no cause at all. The ticking sound of falling leaves was likeThe ticking sound of gentle rainfall asThey gently fell on leaves already fallen, Or as, when as they passed them in their falling, Now and again it happened that one of them touchedOne or another leaf as yet not falling, Still clinging to the idea of being summer: As if the leaves that were falling, but not the day, Had read, and understood, the calendar. "
Black Crow Dress
By Johnson, Roxane Beth
"These poems move forward like a novel in verse with a real understanding of the differences between the past and history. Or, as Johnson herself says in the opening poem, 'Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom.' This is a poet the best readers will be reading for the rest of their lives." - Jericho BrownA haunting collection of lyrically intense persona poems, Black Crow Dress is at once about the emancipation of slaves in their myriad voices as well as a meditation on the self. The collection's lush imagery takes us from churchyard to church, chanting the old spirituals, as Roxane Beth Johnson seeks to embody the spirits of the dead: Clea, Caroline, and Zebedee. From "Slave Ancestors Found Unburied in a Dream":Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloomthem alive in this room like water softens beans.Leaning near, close to me they see my tooth & tonguethat test doneness, licks stamps & hums.Their ear listens to what a hand might fiddleif it had fingers.Stare this way with eyes like smudges . . .Roxane Beth Johnson's first book of poetry, Jublilee (Anhinga Press, 2006) , won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She won an AWP Donald Hill Prize in Poetry and a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and has received scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in San Francisco, California.
Collected Poems
By Ceravolo, Joseph
Like an underground river, the astonishing poems of Joseph Ceravolo have nurtured American poetry for fifty years, a presence deeply felt but largely invisible. Collected Poems offers the first full portrait of Ceravolo's aesthetic trajectory, bringing to light the highly original voice that was operating at an increasing remove from the currents of the time. From a poetics associated with Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery to an ever more contemplative, deeply visionary poetics similar in sensibility to Zen and Dante, William Blake and St. John of the Cross, this collection shows how Ceravolo's poetry takes on a direct, quiet lyricism: intensely dedicated to the natural and spiritual life of the individual. As Ron Silliman notes, Ceravolo's later work reveals him to be "one of the most emotionally open, vulnerable and self-knowing poets of his generation." Many new pieces, including the masterful long poem "The Hellgate," are published here for the first time. This volume is a landmark edition for American poetry, and includes an introduction by David Lehman.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry
By Smith, Marc Kelly
Get in on the action...CD included! According to the PBS television series The United States of Poetry, a "strand of new poetry began at Chicago's Green Mill Tavern in 1986 when Marc Smith found a home for the Poetry Slam." Since then, performance poetry has spread throughout the United States. Now, the father of the poetry slam presents the most comprehensive book on spoken-word poetry performances.
Just Saying
By Armantrout, Rae
In Just Saying, improbable and even untenable speakers are briefly constituted - only to disappear. The result is part carnival, part nightmare. A television pundit's rhetoric segues into an unusual succulent with writhing maroon tongues. When the world suddenly becomes legible, is that revelation or psychosis? In this book, the voice of the Lord and/or the voice of the security state can come from anyplace. The problem of identity becomes acute. The poems in Just Saying may be imagined as chimeras, creatures that appear when old distinctions break down and elements generally kept separate combine in new ways. Here Armantrout both worries (as a dog worries a bone) and celebrates the groundless fecundity of being and of language.
Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
By Powers, Kevin
The award-winning author of The Yellow Birds returns with an extraordinary debut poetry collection.. National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldiers life: driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams. . Written with evocative language and discernment, Powerss poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience. Just as The Yellow Birds was hailed as the "first literary masterpiece produced by the Iraq war," this collection will make its mark as a powerful, enduring work (Los Angeles Times) .
Letters to Borges
By Kuusisto, Stephen
"[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor." - The New York Times"A talented writer judged against any standard." - USA TodayBest-selling memoirist Stephen Kuusisto uses the themes of travel, place, religion, music, art, and loneliness to explore the relationship between seeing, blindness, and being. In poems addressed to Jorge Luis Borges - another poet who lived with blindness - Kuusisto leverages seeing as negative capability, creating intimacy with deep imagination and uncommon perceptions."Alone"Today I understoodWhile drinking tea& hearing rainThat the word for birth& the one for sinCome from a single rootIn Finnish - that tongue theySpoke when I was small.Synnty, untranslatable,Original sin nearly,But softer,Like waterCarried a long wayIn a jarIn May.Stephen Kuusisto is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He is the author of two collections of poetry and two memoirs, including the best-selling Planet of the Blind (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998) . A graduate from and former teacher at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Kuusisto now teaches at Syracuse University in New York State.
The Little Black Book of Writers' Wisdom
By Price, Steven D
Author and journalist Gene Fowler put it best: "Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." Anyone who has ever wanted or been required to create something more complicated than a shopping list or a Tweet knows there's more truth than poetry in the observation. The process can be difficult, frustratingly so when we realize that although we use words all the time, coming up with the right ones can be a daunting task.Even the most celebrated writers have reflected on this creative process, and their observations and conclusions are collected in this book. The compiler, himself no stranger to a blank page or computer screen, has selected the wisest and wittiest utterances on such subjects as why we write (Ernest Hemingway: "I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.") ; how to write (Anton Chekhov: "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.") ; and writing for money (Cormac McCarthy: "I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.") .It has been said that reading won't make you a good writer, but it will make you a better writer. Dip into this lively and useful treasure trove, and you'll be well on your way.
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
By Kaufman, Alan
From the Beat poetry of the '50s to the spoken word of today, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry brings readers the words, visions, and extravagant lives of bohemians, beatniks, hippies, punks, and slackers. Like Donald Allen's epochal New American Poetry, The Outlaw Bible will serve as a primer for generational revolt and poetic expression, and is an enduring document of the visionary tradition of authenticity and nonconformity in literature. This exuberant manifesto includes lives of the poets, on-the-scene testimony, seminal underground articles never before collected, photographs of clubs and cafes, interviews, and, above all, the poems.
The Poets Corner
By Lithgow, John
From listening to his grandmother recite epic poems from memory to curling up in bed while his father read funny verses, award-winning actor John Lithgow grew up with poetry. Ever since, John has been an enthusiastic seeker of poetic experience, whether reading, reciting, or listening to great poems. The wide variety of carefully selected poems in this book provides the perfect introduction to appeal to readers new to poetry, and for poetry lovers to experience beloved verses in a fresh, vivid way. William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dylan Thomas are just a few names among Lithgows comprehensive list of poetry masters. His essential criterion is that "each poems light shines more brightly when read aloud." This unique package provides a multimedia poetry experience with a bonus MP3 CD of revelatory poetry readings by John and the familiar voices of such notable performers as Eileen Atkins, Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Billy Connolly, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Gary Sinise, and Sam Waterston. Every reader will enjoy reciting or listening to these poems with the entire family, appreciating how each one comes to life through the spoken word in this superlative poetry collection.
Poet's Guide
By Bugeja, Michael J
A practical handbook clearly explaining how poets can successfully publish and market their work. Published poets and Bugeja, former poetry columnist for Writer's Digest magazine and author of the acclaimed Art and Craft of Poetry, offer practical advice on workshops, readings, contests, magazines, revising, and publishing. An excellent resource for helping poets publish single poems or complete collections.
Senegal Taxi
By Herrera, Juan Felipe
"I wish I could find the words to tell you the story of our village after you were killed." So begins Senegal Taxi, the new work by one of contemporary poetry's most vibrant voices, Juan Felipe Herrera. Known for his activism and writings that bring attention to oppression and injustice, Herrera turns to stories of genocide and hope in Sudan. Senegal Taxi offers the voices of three children escaping the horrors of war in Africa. Unflinching in its honesty, brutality, and beauty, the collection fiercely addresses conflict and childhood, inviting readers to engage in complex and often challenging issues. Senegal Taxi weaves together verse, dialogue, and visual art created by Herrera specifically for the book. Stylistically genre-leaping, these many layers are part of the collection's innovation. Phantom-like televisions, mud drawings, witness testimonies, insects, and weaponry are all storytellers that join the siblings for a theatrical crescendo. Each poem is told from a different point of view, which Herrera calls "mud drawings," referring to the evocative symbols of hope the children create as they hide in a cave on their way to Senegal, where they plan to catch a boat to the United States. This collection signals a poignant shift for Herrera as he continues to use his craft to focus attention on global concerns. In so doing, he offers an acknowledgment that the suffering of some is the suffering of all.
Stag's Leap
By Olds, Sharon
In this wise and intimate new book, Sharon Olds tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. As she carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending, Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip; the radical change in her sense of place in the world. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and who now loves another woman. As she writes in the remarkable "Stag's Leap," "When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver." Olds's propulsive poetic line and the magic of her imagery are as lively as ever, and there is a new range to the music - sometimes headlong, sometimes contemplative and deep. Her unsparing approach to both pain and love makes this one of the finest, most powerful books of poetry she has yet given us.
Singing School
By Pinsky, Robert
A bold new approach to writing (and reading) poetry based on great poetry of the past. Quick, joyful, and playfully astringent, with surprising comparisons and examples, this collection takes an unconventional approach to the art of poetry. Instead of rules, theories, or recipes, Singing School emphasizes ways to learn from great work: studying magnificent, monumentally enduring poems and how they are made -- in terms borrowed from the "singing school" of William Butler Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium." Robert Pinsky's headnotes for each of the 80 poems and his brief introductions to each section take a writer's view of specific works: William Carlos Williams's "Fine Work with Pitch and Copper" for intense verbal music; Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" for wild imagination in matter-of-fact language; Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe" for surrealist aplomb; Wallace Stevens's "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" for subtlety in meter. Included are poems by Aphra Behn, Allen Ginsberg, George Herbert, John Keats, Mina Loy, Thomas Nashe, and many other master poets.This anthology respects poetry's mysteries in two senses of the word: techniques of craft and strokes of the inexplicable.
The Spoken Word Revolution With Audio CD
By Eleveld, Mark
We're about to take you off the road you expected to be on when you heard the word "poetry." Sandburg, Kerouac, Whitman, and Millay were all radicals in their early days. They outraged the status quo. The poets you'll experience in this book and audio CD travel on that same track. The Spoken Word Revolution is a continuation and rebirth of the oral tradition in our country, and in countries around the world, where the power of poetry performed out loud compels an audience to listen.The Spoken Word Revolution brings to life the written and performed works of more than 40 of the most influential slam, hip hop, performance art and contemporary poets in the world today. This defining collection of spoken word poetry captures today's electrifying words and voices, in text and immediately live on one audio CD. Hear the innovative poetry styles of:--Slam--Nuyorican--Performance art--Taos--Youth poetry--Hip hopIncludes poems by:--Sherman Alexie--Billy Collins--Regie Gibson--Celena Glenn--Edward Hirsch--Jean Howard--Taylor Mali--Viggo Mortensen--Beau Sia--Patricia Smith--Saul Williams
The Spoken Word Revolution Redux
By Eleveld, Mark
From its earliest days to today, poetry has always been a spoken art. On the page and out loud, poetry is the home for the brilliant, the rebellious, the artists and performers who are changing the world. Today's spoken word revolution is the literary equivalent to grabbing a culture by the collar and shaking it...hard. In the tradition of The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux brings more of the gripping, moving, innovative, often hilarious poetry in the oral tradition. This redefining collection gathers multiple forms of "spoken word" under the same motley tent-slam, hip-hop, musical interpretations, and youth movements among them. The resulting brew is both satisfying and world-expanding. One audio CD features some of the best poems and poets, immediately live in their own electrifying words and voices. The Spoken Word Revolution Redux includes:--Singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley--Slam Poetry founder Marc Smith--Ethan Hawke reading Beat Poet Gregory Corso--Jazz pianist Patricia Barber adapting ee cummings--Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Bill Collins and Mark Strand--Four-time national poetry slam champion Patricia Smith--Jeff Tweedy of Wilco--Hip-Hop founder Gil Scott-Heron--Indy National Poetry Slam Champions, including Mayda da Ville--Viggo Mortensen and Hank Mortensen--Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins
Riding Westward
By Phillips, Carl
The singer turning thisand that way, as if watching the song itself--the words to the song--leave him, as helets each go, the wind carrying most of it,some of the words, falling, settling intoinstead that larger darkness, where the smallerdarknesses that our lives were lie softly down."--from "Riding Westward"What happens when the world as we've known it becomes divided, when the mind becomes less able--or less willing--to distinguish reality from what is desired? In Riding Westward, Carl Phillips wields his celebrated gifts for syntax and imagery that are unmistakably his own--speculative, athletic, immediate--as he confronts moral crisis. What is the difference, he asks, between good and evil, cruelty and instruction, risk and trust? Against the backdrop of the natural world, Phillips pitches the restlessness of what it means to be human, as he at once deepens and extends a meditation on that space where the forces of will and imagination collide with sexual and moral conduct.