Download or read book A Little Primer of Tu Fu written by David Hawkes and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The deepest and most varied of the Tang Dynasty poets, Tu Fu (Du Fu) is, in the words of David Hinton, the “first complete poetic sensibility in Chinese literature.” Tu Fu merged the public and the private, often in the same poem, as his subjects ranged from the horrors of war to the delights of friendship, from closely observed landscapes to remembered dreams, from the evocation of historical moments to a wry lament over his own thinning hair. Although Tu Fu has been translated often, and often brilliantly, David Hawkes’s classic study, first published in 1967, is the only book that demonstrates in depth how his poems were written. Hawkes presents thirty-five poems in the original Chinese, with a pinyin transliteration, a character-by-character translation, and a commentary on the subject, the form, the historical background, and the individual lines. There is no other book quite like it for any language: a nuts-and-bolts account of how Chinese poems in general, and specifically the poems of one of the world’s greatest poets, are constructed. It’s an irresistible challenge for readers to invent their own translations.
Download or read book A Primer on Parallel Lives written by Dan Gerber and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dan Gerber tenderly reels his readers through the ‘beautiful movie’ he calls the passing of time on earth in a language completely unadorned and Zen-like in its quietude. The thing itself carries the weight of these poems, which recall the deep imagery of Vallejo, Neruda and Wright.”—Rain Taxi Dan Gerber is a master of layered, bittersweet imagery. In his seventh book of poems, he writes of childhood misgivings and fears, the oak savannah landscape of California’s central coast, and a near-mystical relationship with nature. As novelist John Nichols once wrote of Gerber’s poetry, “Dan Gerber has an exquisitely muted, yet profound understanding of tragedy, love, family, and the haunting vagaries of nature.” “Some Distance” I wanted to be a stone in the field, simply that, and then I wanted to be the grass around it, and then the cattle grazing under the too blue sky, and then the blue, which has of itself no substance, and yet goes on and on and on. Dan Gerber is the author of a dozen books of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir. He has earned the Mark Twain Award, Book of the Year honors from ForeWord Magazine, and inclusion in The Best American Poetry. He lives in Santa Ynez, California.
Download or read book Paradise Lost written by Michael Cavanagh and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A record of a teacher’s lifelong love affair with the beauty, wit, and profundity of Paradise Lost, celebrating John Milton’s un-doctrinal, complex, and therefore deeply satisfying perception of the human condition. After surveying Milton’s recurrent struggle as a reconciler of conflicting ideals, this Primer undertakes a book-by-book reading of Paradise Lost, reviewing key features of Milton’s “various style,” and why we treasure that style. Cavanagh constantly revisits Milton the singer and maker, and the artistic problems he faced in writing this almost impossible poem. This book is emphatically for first-time readers of Milton, with little or no prior exposure, but with ambition to encounter challenging poetry. These are readers who tell you they “have always been meaning to read Paradise Lost,” who seek to enjoy the epic without being overwhelmed by its daunting learning and expansive frame of reference. Avoiding the narrowly specialized focus of most Milton scholarship, Cavanagh deals forthrightly with issues that recur across generations of readers, gathering selected voices—from scholars and poets alike—from 1674 through the present. Lively and jargon-free, this Primer makes Paradise Lost accessible and fresh, offering a credible beginning to what is a great intellectual and aesthetic adventure.
Download or read book Primer written by Aaron Smith and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his third poetry collection, Primer, Aaron Smith grapples with the ugly realities of the private self, in which desire feels more like a trap than fulfillment. What is the face we prepare in our public lives to distract others from our private grief? Smith's poetry explores that inexplicable tension between what we say and how we actually feel, exposing the complications of intimacy and the limitations of language to bridge those distances between friends, family members, and lovers. What we deny, in the end, may be just what we actually survive. Mortality in Smith's work remains the uncomfortable foundation at the center of our relationship with others, to faith, to art, to love as we grow older, and ultimately, to our own sense of who we are in our bodies in the world. The struggle of this book, finally, is in naming whether just what we say we want is enough to satisfy our primal needs, or are the choices we make to stay alive the same choices we make to help us, in so many small ways, to die.
Download or read book Poetry as Survival written by Gregory Orr and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for general readers and for students and scholars of poetry, Poetry as Survival is a complex and lucid analysis of the powerful role poetry can play in confronting, surviving, and transcending pain and suffering. Gregory Orr draws from a generous array of sources. He weaves discussions of work by Keats, Dickinson, and Whitman with quotes from three-thousand-year-old Egyptian poems, Inuit songs, and Japanese love poems to show that writing personal lyric has helped poets throughout history to process emotional and experiential turmoil, from individual stress to collective grief. More specifically, he considers how the acts of writing, reading, and listening to lyric bring ordering powers to the chaos that surrounds us. Moving into more contemporary work, Orr looks at the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, and Theodore Roethke, poets who relied on their own work to get through painful psychological experiences. As a poet who has experienced considerable trauma--especially as a child--Orr refers to the damaging experiences of his past and to the role poetry played in his ability to recover and survive. His personal narrative makes all the more poignant and vivid Orr's claims for lyric poetry's power as a tool for healing. Poetry as Survival is a memorable and inspiring introduction to lyric poetry's capacity to help us find safety and comfort in a threatening world.
Download or read book Forth a Raven written by Christina Davis and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christina Davis' deeply-felt lyric poems will seduce the reader with their spare elegance.
Download or read book Astro Poets written by Alex Dimitrov and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the online phenomenons the Astro Poets comes the first great astrology primer of the 21st century. Full of insight, advice and humor for every sign in the zodiac, the Astro Poets' unique brand of astrological flavor has made them Twitter sensations. Their long-awaited first book is in the grand tradition of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, but made for the world we live in today. In these pages the Astro Poets help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. If you've ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting "u up?" at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won't). Both the perfect introduction to the twelve signs for the astrological novice, and a resource to return to for those who already know why their Cancer boyfriend cries during commercials but need help with their new whacky Libra boss, this is the astrology book must-have for the twenty-first century and beyond.
Download or read book The Craft of Poetry written by Lucy Newlyn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wonderfully accessible handbook to the art of writing and reading poetry—itself written entirely in verse How does poetry work? What should readers notice and look out for? Poet Lucy Newlyn demystifies the principles of the form, effortlessly illustrating key approaches and terms—all through her own original verse. Each poem exemplifies an aspect of poetic craft—but read together they suggest how poetry can evoke a whole community and its way of life in myriad ways. In a series of beautiful meditations, Newlyn guides the reader through key aspects of poetry, from sonnets and haiku to volta and synecdoche. Avoiding glosses and notes, her poems are allowed to speak for themselves, and show that there are no limits to what poetry can communicate. Newlyn’s timeless verse will appeal to lovers of poetry as well as to practitioners, teachers, and students of all ages. Onomatopoeia You’d play here all day if you had your way— near the stepping-stones, in the clearest of rock-pools, where water slaps and slips; where minnows dart, and a baby trout flop-flips.
Download or read book Arabic Poetry written by Arthur John Arberry and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1965 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ordinary Hours written by Karen Enns and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sophomore collection of exquisite precision and musicality from a classically trained pianist In Ordinary Hours, the follow-up to Karen Enns' Gerald Lampert Award-nominated first collection, That Other Beauty, we revisit Enns' rural Mennonite childhood, replete with the sensuousness of diesel fuel and hot peaches. Enns also explores the Mennonite exodus from Russia, tracking its faint but unmistakable reverberations in the daily lives of its survivors and revealing the redemptive character of that dailiness. Reading an Enns poem feels effortless: her rhythms and phrasing are so minutely calibrated that the poem unfolds as if of its own accord: It was the ashtray on the arm of the chair, books lining the stairs, tapping rain, the smell of soup in the kitchen and black bread and nothing more. What exists, existed there. The spirit floundering and being saved again and again in the ordinary hours. The fountain in the garden like a simple well, the poplars, past the hedge, the sommerhaus with its green roof. - from William Street Elegi
Download or read book The Discovery of Poetry written by Frances Mayes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with basic terminology and techniques, Mayes shows how focusing on one aspect of a poem can help you to better understand, appreciate, and enjoy the reading and writing experience.
Download or read book Schoolroom Poets written by Angela Sorby and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2005 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and provocative approach to the popular schoolroom poets and the reading public who learned them by heart.
Download or read book How To Read A Poem written by Edward Hirsch and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1999-03-22 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful work by a master poet, this brilliant summation of poetry and human nature will speak to all readers who long to place poetry in their lives. How to Read a Poem is an unprecedented exploration of poetry and feeling. In language at once acute and emotional, National Book Critics Circle award-winning distinguished poet and critic Edward Hirsch describes why poetry matters and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message can make a difference. In a marvelous reading of verse from around the world, including work by Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath, among many others, Hirsch discovers the true meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. "The answer Hirsch gives to the question of how to read as poem is: Ecstatically."—Boston Book Review
Download or read book An American Primer written by Walt Whitman and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved written by Gregory Orr and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The heart of Orr’s poetry, now as ever, is the enigmatic image . . . mystical, carnal, reflective, wry.”—San Francisco Review This book-length sequence of ecstatic, visionary lyrics recalls Rumi in its search for the beloved and its passionate belief in the healing qualities of art and beauty. Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved is an incantatory celebration of the “Book,” an imaginary and self-gathering anthology of all the lyrics—both poems and songs—ever written. Each poem highlights a distinct aspect of the human condition, and together the poems explore love, loss, restoration, the beauty of the world, the beauty of the beloved, and the mystery of poetry. The purpose and power of the Book is to help us live by reconnecting us to the world and to our emotional lives. I put the beloved In a wooden coffin. The fire ate his body; The flames devoured her. I put the beloved In a poem or song. Tucked it between Two pages of the Book. How bright the flames. All of me burning, All of me on fire And still whole. There is nothing quite like this book—an “active anthology” in the best sense—where individuals find the poems and songs that will sustain them. Or the poems find them. Gregory Orr is the author of eight books of poetry, four volumes of criticism, and a memoir. He has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Orr has taught at the University of Virginia since 1975 and was, for many years, the poetry editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Download or read book How Beautiful the Beloved written by Gregory Orr and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] confident, mystical, expansive project.”—Publishers Weekly “[D]azzling and timeless . . . focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time.”—The Virginia Quarterly Review, “Editor’s Choice” "Mary Oliver calls him '...a Walt Whitman without an inch of Whitman's bunting or oratory.' In these pages, he is more nearly a modern-day Rumi. This is not primarily a poetry of image, but of ideas, perfectly distilled. Orr brings together the monumental themes of love and loss in small, spare, and exquisite koan-like poems."—ForeWord "...magnetic poems that open the world of lyrical verse to the larger questions of what is true and timeless." —The Bloomsbury Review Gregory Orr continues his acclaimed project on the “beloved” with a lyrical sequence about the joys and hungers of being fully engaged in life. Through concise, perfectly formed poems, he wakes us to the ecstatic possibilities of recognizing and risking love. Mary Oliver has called this project “gorgeous,” and said that he "speaks of the events that have no larger or more important rival in our lives—of our love and our loving." If to say it once And once only, then still To say: Yes. And say it complete, Say it as if the word Filled the whole moment With its absolute saying. Later for “but,” Later for “if.” Now Only the single syllable That is the beloved. That is the world. Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry. He teaches at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville.
Download or read book Mother Love written by Rita Dove and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1996 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gathers poems that recast the ancient Greek story of Demeter and Persephone in a variety of settings, from a patio in Arizona to the pyramids in Mexico, as they explore the complex mother-daughter bond
