Random House New Releases - Poetry - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

The Intent On by Kenneth Irby

2009-12-01T00:30:00-05:00

The Intent On Collected Poems 1962-2006
Written by Kenneth Irby

Kenneth Irby has practiced his craft at the center of the American poetry scene for decades, yet is little known to the mainstream. An associate of the legendary Black Mountain poets as well as of the celebrated seventies L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group of literary experimenters, he was a close colleague of writers such as Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, and Robert Creeley. This comprehensive collection marks the first time the full range of Irby’s artistry has been presented in one place.

Irby’s early career, starting in the 1960s, paralleled the late Beat era and the counterculture, and his blend of innovative wordplay with personal and political themes made him an important voice of that era. At the same time, he was able to forge his own path, conjuring a style that was both universal and distinctly American. Critics and other poets especially have noted his avant-garde use of sound, silence, and unusual sentence structure to seduce readers. His surprising, incantatory style conjures the feel of jazz in a striking blend of heart and mind. As poet Robert Kelly has observed, “No one . . . has ever rooted down and plumbed the mystery of American places, land, name, history of our taking space, as Irby does. No one . . . has so clearly articulated the living fact, that America is an intelligent thing, and that . . . each human being has a root awareness of the inadequacy of this place, and that is vision.”

The Canterbury Tales by John Miles Foley

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

The Canterbury Tales
Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
Translated by Burton Raffel
Introduction by John Miles Foley

Beyond its importance as a literary work of unvarnished genius, Geoffrey Chaucer’s unfinished epic poem is also one of the most beloved works in the English language–and for good reason: It is lively, absorbing, perceptive, and outrageously funny. But despite the brilliance of Chaucer’s work, the continual evolution of our language has rendered his words unfamiliar to many of us. Esteemed poet, translator, and scholar Burton Raffel’s magnificent new unabridged translation brings Chaucer’s poetry back to life, ensuring that none of the original’s wit, wisdom, or humanity is lost to the modern reader. This Modern Library edition also features an Introduction by the widely influential medievalist and author John Miles Foley that discusses Chaucer’s work as well as his life and times.

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This little book contains the wisdom of the ages, and is guaranteed to produce a smile of appreciation at the sheer sense of the proverbs you will find inside. From advice you wish your mother had given you, to things you probably suspected, but had never put into words, Lifelines is a book to be read, absorbed and treasured.—Pearl Cleage, New York Times best selling author of What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day

This illustrated treasury of proverbs unites the timeless wisdom of Black communities in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, while speaking to the triumphs and challenges of everyday life.

Lifelines: The Black book of Proverbs travels to all corners of the globe to reclaim and preserve African wisdom. This book offers the remarkably wise heart of Africa and her children to readers experiencing career changes, new births, weddings, death, and other rites of passage. Readers will find truth in the African saying, “When the occasion arises, there is a proverb to suit it.”

Proverbs are presented in vibrant story-poem form; and are uniquely arranged by key life cycle events such as birth, initiation, marriage, and death. The proverbs can be found under themes such as “wealth”, “parenting”, “change” and “strength.” Inspired illustrations introduce each section along with beautiful vignettes showing how African proverbs comfort, inspire and instruct during different phases of life.

Lifelines illuminates how traditions, civilization and spirit survive and thrive, despite centuries of loss of freedom, family, identity, language, land, and wealth. The proverbs offer wisdom for every stage of our lives. Collected in one place as never before, it is the perfect addition to the book shelves of families large and small, from Nairobi to New Orleans and every city in between.

From Birth:
Every cackling hen was an egg at first.
-Rwanda
to Marriage:

A woman's clothes are the price her husband pays for peace.
-Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa (Bantu)
and Elderhood:
Every time an old man dies it is as if a library has burnt down.
-West Africa

as well as every stage of life in between, the proverbs found in Lifelines offer the guidance and wisdom to last a life time.

Unlike other collections of proverbs, Lifelines hews closely to the cycle of life and draws inspiration from the authors combined 110 years of experience. Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers have set out to let their proverbs both tell a story and stand alone. So whether you flip it open to a random page, read it through from start to finish, or go searching for a proverb to match your unique circumstance, you’ll find just the right lifeline to provide the comfort and guidance you’re looking for.

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

2009-11-10T00:30:00-05:00

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Ants on the Melon by Virginia Adair

2009-11-04T00:30:00-05:00

Ants on the Melon A Collection of Poems
Written by Virginia Adair

Already singled out by The New York Times and the subject of a feature in The New Yorker, Virginia Adair has, after decades of shunning book publication, decided to collect eighty of her best poems in a volume that will surely be hailed as among the most accomplished works of our time.

Ants on the Melon includes poems that concern the author's childhood, that explore sensuality in candid terms, that starkly treat her husband's suicide and her own blindness, and that explore both her own emotional landscape and the universal mysteries of the human condition. Technically brilliant, using strict, classical prosody, yet entirely modern in sensibility, Virginia Adair's poetry will play a central role in the ongoing American poetry renaissance.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton by Stephen M. Fallon

2009-10-28T00:30:00-05:00

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton
Written by John Milton
Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon

Purgatory by Gustave Dore

2009-10-28T00:30:00-05:00

Purgatory
Written by Dante
Illustrated by Gustave Dore
Translated by Anthony Esolen

A new translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré

Includes an appendix of key sources and extensive endnotes

Arguably the greatest single poem ever written, The Divine Comedy presents Dante Alighieri's all-encompassing vision of the three realms of Christian afterlife. In this groundbreaking new translation of Dante's most brilliant, imaginative creation, Purgatory, Dante struggles up the terraces of Mount Purgatory, still guided by Virgil, in continuation of his difficult ascent to purity.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Amazing Peace by Maya Angelou

2009-10-21T00:30:00-05:00

Amazing Peace A Christmas Poem
Written by Maya Angelou

In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. “Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward,” she writes, “and speak the word aloud. Peace.”

Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the “Glad Season” is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths.

From the Hardcover edition.

Easy by Marie Ponsot

2009-10-20T00:30:00-05:00

Easy Poems
Written by Marie Ponsot

Leave it to the graceful Marie Ponsot, now in her late eighties, to view her life in poetry as easeful. As she tells us, pondering what stones can hear, “Between silence and sound / we are balancing darkness, / making light of it.” In this celebratory collection, Ponsot makes light, in both senses, of all she touches, and her pleasure in offering these late poems is infectious. After more than a half century at her craft, she describes her poetic preferences unpretentiously thus: “no fruity phrases, just unspun / words trued right toward a nice / idea, for chaser. True’s a risk. / Take it I say. Do true for fun.”

Ponsot is accepting of what has come, whether it’s a joyous memory of her second-grade teacher in a New York public school or the feeling of being “Orphaned Old,” less lucky in life since her parents died. She holds herself to the highest standard: to see clearly, to think, to deal openhandedly and openheartedly with the world, to “Go to a wedding / as to a funeral: / bury the loss” and also to “Go to a funeral / as to a wedding: / marry the loss.” She confides that she meets works of great art “expectant and thirsty.”

Indeed, Ponsot’s thirst for life and its best expression, for the sprightly phrase and the deeper understanding running beneath, makes this book a transformative experience. The wisdom and music of Easy, like all of Ponsot’s poetry, will remain with her readers for decades to come.

Three Centuries of American Poetry by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

2009-10-14T00:30:00-05:00

Three Centuries of American Poetry
Edited by Allen Mandelbaum and Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

A comprehensive overview of America's vast poetic heritage, Three Centuries of American Poetry features the work of some 150 of our nation's finest writers. It includes selections from Anne Bradstreet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and Gertrude Stein, as well as significant works of lesser-known American poets.

From the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to the Romantic Era and the Gilded and Modern Ages, this unrivaled anthology also presents a memorable array of rare ballads, songs, hymns, spirituals, and carols that echo through our nation's history. Highlights include Native American poems, African American writings, and the works of Quakers, colonists, Huguenots, transcendentalists, scholars, slaves, politicians, journalists, and clergymen.

These discerning selections demonstrate that the American canon of poetry is as diverse as the nation itself, and constantly evolving as we pass through time. Most important, this collection strongly reflects the peerless stylings that mark the American poetic experience as unique. Here, in one distinguished volume, are the many voices of the New World.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Haiku by Akira Y. Yamamoto

2009-10-13T00:30:00-05:00

Haiku An Anthology of Japanese Poems
Written by Stephen Addiss
Edited by Fumiko Y. Yamamoto and Akira Y. Yamamoto

More than last year
it is lonely—
the autumn dusk
—Buson

Haiku, one of the most popular forms of poetry, is celebrated here in all its subtle glory. This anthology brings together the most important poets in the haiku tradition—including Basho, Buson, and Issa—along with surprising and lesser-known Japanese haiku poets. In only three short lines, the poems express the miracle of a particular moment, the profundity of the human experience, and sometimes, the humor of life. These elegant translations are paired with traditional woodblock prints and beautifully presented in the elegant Shambhala Library series.

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus by Stephen Mitchell

2009-10-06T00:30:00-05:00

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Available for the first time in a single volume, Ranier Maria Rilke’s two most beloved sequences of poems rendered by his most faithful translator. Rilke is unquestionably the twentieth century’s most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation and spiritual quest. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert perennial fascination. In Stephen Mitchell’s versions of Rilke’s two greatest masterpieces readers will discover an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of his poetry. Stephen Mitchell adheres impeccably to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought; at the same time, Mitchell’s work has authority and power as poetry in its own right.

News of the World by Philip Levine

2009-10-06T00:30:00-05:00

News of the World Poems
Written by Philip Levine

A superb new collection from “a great American poet . . . still at work on his almost-song of himself” (The New York Times Book Review).

In both lively prose poems and more formal verse, Philip Levine brings us news from everywhere: from Detroit, where exhausted workers try to find a decent breakfast after the late shift, and Henry Ford, “supremely bored” in his mansion, clocks in at one of his plants . . . from Spain, where a woman sings a song that rises at dawn, like the dust of ages, through an open window . . . from Andorra, where an old Communist can now supply you with anything you want—a French radio, a Cadillac, or, if you have a week, an American film star.

The world of his poetry is one of questionable magic: a typist lives for her only son who will die in a war to come; three boys fish in a river while a fine industrial residue falls on their shoulders. This is a haunted world in which exotic animals travel first class, an immigrant worker in Detroit yearns for the silence of his Siberian exile, and the Western mountains “maintain that huge silence we think of as divine.”

A rich, deeply felt collection from one of our master poets.

Poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge

2009-09-30T00:30:00-05:00

Poemcrazy Freeing Your Life with Words
Written by Susan G. Wooldridge

Following the success of several recent inspirational and practical books for would-be writers, Poemcrazy is a perfect guide for everyone who ever wanted to write a poem but was afraid to try. Writing workshop leader Susan Wooldridge shows how to think, use one's senses, and practice exercises that will make poems more likely to happen.

From the Hardcover edition.

Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

2009-09-15T00:30:00-05:00

Leaving Yuba City Poems
Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Like Divakaruni's much-loved and bestselling short story collection Arranged Marriage, this collection of poetry deals with India and the Indian experience in America, from the adventures of going to a convent school in India run by Irish nuns (Growing up in Darjeeling) to the history of the earliest Indian immigrants in the U.S. (Yuba City Poems).

Groups of interlinked poems divided into six sections are peopled by many of the same characters and explore varying themes. Here, Divakaruni is particularly interested in how different art forms can influence and inspire each other. One section, entitled Indian Miniatures, is based on and named after a series of paintings by Francesco Clemente. Another, called Moving Pictures, is based on Indian films, including Mira Nair's "Salaam Bombay" and Satyajit Ray's "Ghare Baire." Photographs by Raghubir Singh inspired the section entitled Rajasthani. The trials and tribulations of growing up and immigration are also considered here and, as with all of Divakaruni's writing, these poems deal with the experience of women and their struggle to find identities for themselves.

This collection is touched with the same magic and universal appeal that excited readers of Arranged Marriage. In Leaving Yuba City, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni proves once again her remarkable literary talents.

A Phone Call to the Future by Mary Jo Salter

2009-09-15T00:30:00-05:00

A Phone Call to the Future New and Selected Poems
Written by Mary Jo Salter

This “wholly attractive volume” that brings together twenty-five years of “elegantly shaped and voiced creations” (William Pritchard, The Boston Globe) offers a generous sampling of Mary Jo Salter’s five previous award-winning volumes and a collection of superb new poems. A mid-career retrospective of one of the major poets of her generation.

Wheeling Motel by Franz Wright

2009-09-15T00:30:00-05:00

Wheeling Motel
Written by Franz Wright

In his tenth collection of poetry, Franz Wright gives us an exquisite book of reconciliation with the past and acceptance of what may come in the future.

From his earliest years, he writes in “Will,” he had “the gift of impermanence / so I would be ready, / accompanied / by a rage to prove them wrong / . . . and that I too was worthy of love.” This rage comes coupled with the poet’s own brand of love, what he calls “one / strange alone / heart’s wish / to help all / hearts.” Poetry is indeed Wright’s help, and he delivers it to us with a wry sense of the daily in America: in his wonderfully local relationship to God (whom he encounters along with a catfish in the emerald shallows of Walden Pond); in the little West Virginia motel of the title poem, on the banks of the great Ohio River, where “Tammy Wynette’s on the marquee” and he is visited by the figure of Walt Whitman, “examining the tear on a dead face.”

Here, in Wheeling Motel, Wright’s poetry continues to surprise us with its frank appraisal of our soul, and with his own combustible loneliness and unstoppable joy.

Selected Poems by Mark Ford

2009-09-08T00:30:00-05:00

Selected Poems
Written by Frank O'Hara
Edited by Mark Ford

The first new selection of O’Hara’s work to come along in several decades. In this “marvellous compilation” (The New Yorker), editor Mark Ford reacquaints us with one of the most joyous and innovative poets of the postwar period.

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron by Leslie A. Marchand

2009-08-26T00:30:00-05:00

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron
Written by Lord George G. Byron
Edited by Leslie A. Marchand

Poet, celebrity, and revolutionary, Lord (George Gordon) Byron was one of the most influential and controversial figures of the first half of the nineteenth century, his distinctive, deeply felt work comprising one of the enduring high points of Romantic literature. From “Manfred,” with its evocation of the figure that came to be called the “Byronic hero,” to the melancholy “Childe Harold,” to the satirical masterpiece “Don Juan” (presented here in judiciously selected form), this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes all of the essential Byron.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Selected Poems by John N. Serio

2009-08-25T00:30:00-05:00

Selected Poems
Written by Wallace Stevens
Edited by John N. Serio

A beautiful new edition—the first in nearly twenty years—of the work of Wallace Stevens, a founding father of contemporary American poetry, with a dazzling range of work that is at once emotional and intellectual. As John N. Serio reminds us in his elegant introduction, Stevens has written more persuasively than any other poet about the significance of poetry itself in everyday life: “The imagination—frequently synonymous with the act of the mind, or poetry, for Stevens—is what gives life its savor, its sanction, its sacred quality.”

This rich and thorough selection—published in the 130th anniversary year of Stevens’s birth—carries us from the explosion of Harmonium in 1923 to the maturity of The Auroras of Autumn in 1950 and the magisterial Collected Poems published by Knopf in 1954. To be drawn in once more by “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” “Sunday Morning,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” to name only a few, is to experience again the mystery of a poet who calls us to a higher music and to a deeper understanding of our vast and inarticulate interior world.

This essential volume for all readers of poetry reminds us of Stevens’s nearly unparalleled contribution to the art form and his unending ability to puzzle, fascinate, and delight us.

Random House New Releases - Poetry - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

The Intent On by Kenneth Irby

The Intent On Collected Poems 1962-2006Written by Kenneth Irby

The Canterbury Tales by John Miles Foley

The Canterbury Tales Written by Geoffrey Chaucer Translated by Burton Raffel Introduction by John Miles Foley

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of ProverbsWritten by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Lifelines by Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of ProverbsWritten by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Ants on the Melon by Virginia Adair

Ants on the Melon A Collection of PoemsWritten by Virginia Adair

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton by Stephen M. Fallon

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton Written by John Milton Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon

Purgatory by Gustave Dore

Purgatory Written by Dante Illustrated by Gustave Dore Translated by Anthony Esolen

Amazing Peace by Maya Angelou

Amazing Peace A Christmas PoemWritten by Maya Angelou

Easy by Marie Ponsot

Easy PoemsWritten by Marie Ponsot

Three Centuries of American Poetry by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

Three Centuries of American Poetry Edited by Allen Mandelbaum and Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

Haiku by Akira Y. Yamamoto

Haiku An Anthology of Japanese PoemsWritten by Stephen Addiss Edited by Fumiko Y. Yamamoto and Akira Y. Yamamoto

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus by Stephen Mitchell

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus Written by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Stephen Mitchell

News of the World by Philip Levine

News of the World PoemsWritten by Philip Levine

Poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge

Poemcrazy Freeing Your Life with WordsWritten by Susan G. Wooldridge

Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Leaving Yuba City PoemsWritten by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A Phone Call to the Future by Mary Jo Salter

A Phone Call to the Future New and Selected PoemsWritten by Mary Jo Salter

Wheeling Motel by Franz Wright

Wheeling Motel Written by Franz Wright

Selected Poems by Mark Ford

Selected Poems Written by Frank O'Hara Edited by Mark Ford

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron by Leslie A. Marchand

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron Written by Lord George G. Byron Edited by Leslie A. Marchand

Selected Poems by John N. Serio

Selected Poems Written by Wallace Stevens Edited by John N. Serio

The Intent On Collected Poems 1962-2006
Written by Kenneth Irby

The Canterbury Tales
Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
Translated by Burton Raffel
Introduction by John Miles Foley

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Lifelines The Black Book of Proverbs
Written by Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne McCalla Sobers
Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Ants on the Melon A Collection of Poems
Written by Virginia Adair

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton
Written by John Milton
Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon

Purgatory
Written by Dante
Illustrated by Gustave Dore
Translated by Anthony Esolen

Amazing Peace A Christmas Poem
Written by Maya Angelou

Easy Poems
Written by Marie Ponsot

Three Centuries of American Poetry
Edited by Allen Mandelbaum and Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

Haiku An Anthology of Japanese Poems
Written by Stephen Addiss
Edited by Fumiko Y. Yamamoto and Akira Y. Yamamoto

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

News of the World Poems
Written by Philip Levine

Poemcrazy Freeing Your Life with Words
Written by Susan G. Wooldridge

Leaving Yuba City Poems
Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A Phone Call to the Future New and Selected Poems
Written by Mary Jo Salter

Wheeling Motel
Written by Franz Wright

Selected Poems
Written by Frank O'Hara
Edited by Mark Ford

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron
Written by Lord George G. Byron
Edited by Leslie A. Marchand

Selected Poems
Written by Wallace Stevens
Edited by John N. Serio