Winner of the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award, Richard Eberhart is one of America's most respected and acclaimed poets. Collected Poems, 1930-1986 offers a wide selection of poems from a career that has spanned over half a century, incorporating the earlier Collected Poems, 1930-1976, plus over fifty additional poems written in the last ten years. Eberhart's poetry, celebrated for its profundity and humanity, has won praise from fellow poets as various as Robert Penn Warren and Dame Edith Sitwell. This collection represents a comprehensive record of the work of a major American poet.
The Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century contains over 400 entries that treat a broad range of individual poets and poems, along with many articles devoted to topics, schools, or periods of American verse in the century. Entries fall into three main categories: poet entries, which provide biographical and cultural contexts for the author's career; entries on individual works, which offer closer explication of the most resonant poems in the 20th-century canon; and topical entries, which offer analyses of a given period of literary production, school, thematically constructed category, or other verse tradition that historically has been in dialogue with the poetry of the United States.
In America’s twentieth century, there is no man of letters more versatile, distinguished, and influential than the poet, novelist, editor, critic, social commentator, and teacher Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989). The most intimate of Warren’s “letters,” his personal correspondence, now join his published canon under William Bedford Clark’s expert supervision. Volume One, The Apprentice Years, forms a kind of epistolary coming-of-age novel, taking Warren from the awkwardness of emerging genius during his Fugitive student years at Vanderbilt to the brink of producing great work in a newly appointed post at Louisiana State University. Warren’s earliest correspondence limns a friendship in earnest with Allen Tate, a crushing heartbreak, and an attempted suicide. Eventually the author regroups, graduates with honors, and entertains a bad-boy phase at Berkeley and Yale. As he studies at Oxford, writes his first book, and decides not to complete his doctorate, Warren exhibits a deepening maturity and devotion to his literary craft, expressing ever more complex ideas about poetry and fiction. His nagging financial difficulties, growing commitment to the -Agrarian movement, controversial essay for I’ll Take My Stand, marriage to Cinina Brescia, and professional uncertainty as one of the first to combine writing with college teaching lead him into the 1930s, when the bright prospect of tenure and an opportunity to remake the Southwest Review arises. Warren’s letters, all but one previously unpublished, fascinate in their revelations, such as the author’s surprisingly tangled relationship with his parents, his delicate health, and the gossip about major literary figures, including Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Laura Riding. But beyond rich biographical detail, they offer a veritable self-portrait of the fledgling artist: “When a person writes a letter it is nearly as much one to himself as to the person who takes it from the postbox.” The self-conscious, precocious, yet sensitive young Warren modulates to the sardonic, irreverent aesthete/wit “Red” and finally acquires a voice distinctively “Warrenesque,” confident and sophisticated. Thus the imaginative as well as literal aspects of these years in Warren’s life are conveyed, his writing persona and historical person always an intriguing comparison. Highly accessible, unfailingly interesting, and scrupulously annotated, The Apprentice Years will satisfy scholar and lay reader alike, providing a unique window on what it means to “profess” the writer’s calling in an era of rapid change. When complete, the selected letters of Robert Penn Warren will prove an indispensable addition to the author’s literary oeuvre.
Over 3,200 entries An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers. This online-exclusive new edition adds 60,000 new words, including over 50 new entries dealing with authors who have risen to prominence in the last five years, as well as fully updating the entries that currently exist. Each entry provides details of a writer's nationality and birth/death dates, followed by a listing of their titles arranged chronologically by date of publication.
The Nobel Prize winning author Samuel Beckett is a literary treasure, and this work represents the only comprehensive reference to the concepts, characters, and biographical details mentioned by, or related to, Beckett. Painstakingly and lovingly compiled by acclaimed Beckett scholars C.J. Ackerley and S.E. Gontarski, it is alphabetical, cross-referenced, and laid out in a very user-friendly format. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett provides an organized trove of information for students and scholars alike, and is a must for any serious reader of Beckett. As most Beckettians know, “reading [him] for the first time is an experience like no other in modern literature.” (Paul Auster)
If you are looking to brush up on your literary knowledge, check a favorite author's work, or see a year's bestsellers at a glance, The Chronology of American Literature is the perfect resource. At once an authoritative reference and an ideal browser's guide, this book outlines the indispensable information in America's rich literary past--from major publications to lesser-known gems--while also identifying larger trends along the literary timeline. Who wrote the first published book in America? When did Edgar Allan Poe achieve notoriety as a mystery writer? What was Hemingway's breakout title? With more than 8,000 works by 5,000 authors, The Chronology makes it easy to find answers to these questions and more. Authors and their works are grouped within each year by category: fiction and nonfiction; poems; drama; literary criticism; and publishing events. Short, concise entries describe an author's major works for a particular year while placing them within the larger context of that writer's career. The result is a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of some of America's most prominent writers. Perhaps most important, The Chronology offers an invaluable line through our literary past, tying literature to the American experience--war and peace, boom and bust, and reaction to social change. You'll find everything here from Benjamin Franklin's "Experiments and Observations on Electricity," to Davy Crockett's first memoir; from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" to Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome; from meditations by James Weldon Johnson and James Agee to poetry by Elizabeth Bishop. Also included here are seminal works by authors such as Rachel Carson, Toni Morrison, John Updike, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Lavishly illustrated--and rounded out with handy bestseller lists throughout the twentieth century, lists of literary awards and prizes, and authors' birth and death dates--The Chronology of American Literature belongs on the shelf of every bibliophile and literary enthusiast. It is the essential link to our literary past and present.
‘The best leave you with a renewed sense of how extraordinary it is that poetry can, over the course of one sentence, flood your circuit board with loss, or anger, or love’ Independent From J.J. Abrams to John le Carré, Salman Rushdie to Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Radcliffe to Nick Cave, Ian McEwan to Stephen Fry, Stanley Tucci to Colin Firth, and Seamus Heaney to Christopher Hitchins, 100 men confess to being moved to tears by poems that haunt them. This remarkable collection of poems, from the sixteenth century to the present day, delivers private insight into the souls of men whose writing, acting and thinking are admired around the world.
A landmark late-twentieth century pictorial archive that beautifully chronicles, in illuminating detail, fifty important American artists and writers in place: Edward Albee, John Chamberlain, Annie Dillard, John Hersey, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Roy Lichtensein, Alison Lurie, William Manchester, James Merrill, John D. MacDonald, James A. Michener, Jules Olitski, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Isaac B. Singer, and Joy Williams, among others. Book jacket.
What happens when public figures' private selves are put forth for examination by public audiences? How do the personal struggles of music artists, specifically those with immigrant backgrounds, compare to the private struggles of other individuals? At a time when many countries in the European Union experience an increase in far-right political party activities, how do individuals from the margins negotiate new ways of thinking about identity, offering hope for greater understanding of shared struggles across societies? This book offers interpretations of identity and belonging by examining the work of two music artists, Faudel Belloua from France and Adam Tensta from Sweden. By analyzing texts produced by these individuals, I argue that ongoing engagement with the materials produced by Belloua and Tensta, a process which I refer to as living biography, presents a unique window into the process of how Belloua and Tensta connect personal struggles to public issues, providing a compelling departure point for further discussions on how interpretations of national identity are changing in France and Sweden and beyond.
A complete collection—over 300 poems—from one of this country's most influential poets. "These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."—Adrienne Rich "The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms—beautifully, forcefully—for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."—Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."—Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."—Out Magazine
