The last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in “The Waste Land.” Here, in four linked poems (“Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding”), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.
From the opening tale of this volume of novellas and short stories to its final work, the reader is given adventure, tragedy, and humor that tell us in effect that their origin can be found not only in the shaping imagination of the author but in events experienced by everyone in their own lives. From the tragic murder of a young man the narrator had come to admire, to love experienced in a wholly unconscious way, and the cruel manipulation of the narrator himself that leads him to commit a terrible crime he will never have to admit or make reparations for, the reader is permitted to participate in events far from his or her own life, events nevertheless which either echo or adumbrate what lurks in our own past or future. Each tale takes us to an intriguing location: a wild and scenic river somewhere in the still-primitive wilderness of the South; a long-forgotten age of radical innocence no longer possible or perhaps even imaginable in today’s so wise, so jaded world; the laboratory of a scientist whose powerful mind moves with a degree of precision and speed that invites and causes catastrophe; the simple soul of an endearing man whose sensitivity drives him to actions few of us would ever consider; the mind of a man so deformed by self-satisfied egotism that he cannot see beyond the physical deformity of a man maimed, but somehow ennobled, by terrible war injuries; the impossible, but beautifully innocent, yearning of a boy for imagined perfection. IN MY BEGINNING shows the force of imagination that has given to its owner, as imagination does to all of us, a vision, one we can shape and reshape exclusively for ourselves.
Civilisation is on the brink of collapse. The people are controlled with Big Lies, mass surveillance and brutal suppression. What price would you pay for freedom? Oric and his lover Belkis are part of a rebel band devoted to liberating people all over the world from totalitarian oppression. When Belkis is brutally murdered, Oric's world is torn apart. Haunted by the thought that he could have done more to save her, he continues the fight for freedom that they began together. But Oric knows he doesn't have long left before his nemeses, the self-professed Saviours, return for him too. As the Saviours forge new alliances and grow ever stronger, Oric must stay one step ahead to complete the mission he was born to fulfill. Here, in the darkest hour, Oric will discover that even the smallest of gestures can bring the greatest gift to humankind – hope.
In this book, David Lehman, the longtime series editor of the Best American Poetry, offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column’s plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers. He offers his generous and playful mentorship on forms such as the sonnet, haiku, tanka, sestina, limerick, and the cento and shares strategies for how to build one line from the last. This groundbreaking book shows how pop-up crowds of poets can inspire one another, making art, with what poet and guest editor Angela Ball refers to as "spontaneous feats of language." How can poetry thrive in the digital age? Next Line, Please shows the way. Lehman writes, "There is something magical about poetry, and though we think of the poet as working alone, working in the dark, it is all the better when a community of like-minded individuals emerges, sharing their joy in the written word."
In My End Is My Beginning is the story of Mary Queen of Scots (1542–87), the tragic heroine par excellence. Queen of an unfamiliar and troubled nation when she was a week old, it was her misfortune to be a pawn in the game of international politics throughout her life. Even in the brief period from 1561 to 1567 when she was ruler of Scotland in fact as well as in name, she was beset with problems that would have defeated a much stronger, more experienced monarch. A talented poet and a charismatic leader, she contended with a treacherous, self-serving nobility, the religious ferment of the Reformation, and the political ambitions of larger and more powerful neighbours. With little real authority and few resources, Mary’s reign was successful, until her disastrous marriage to the dissolute Darnley set in motion the events that brought about her downfall. For the last 20 years of her life she was a prisoner in the hands of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, and the subject of treacherous plots and conspiracies. A hostage to fortune, she represented a threat and a rallying-point for English Catholics. Her tragic end was inevitable. Yet her life, with all its adventurous, failures and disasters, produced the son – James – who ultimately brought about the union of Scotland and England. In the End Is My Beginning uncovers the true facts of Mary’s life in the context of Anglo-Scottish relations and shows why, after more than 400 years, she remains arguably the greatest character in popular Scottish history.
Through the magnificent literary, scholarly, and psychological analysis of the text that is her trademark, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg tackles the enduring puzzlement of the book of Numbers. What should have been for the Israelites a brief journey from Mount Sinai to the Holy Land becomes a forty-year death march. Both before and after the devastating report of the Spies, the narrative centers on the people's desire to return to slavery in Egypt. At its heart are speeches of complaint and lament. But in the narrative of the book of Numbers that is found in mystical and Hasidic sources, the generation of the wilderness emerges as one of extraordinary spiritual experience, fed on miracles and nurtured directly by God: a generation of ecstatic faith, human partners in an unprecedented conversation with the Deity. Drawing on kabbalistic sources, the Hasidic commentators depict a people who transcend prudent considerations in order to follow God into the wilderness, where their spiritual yearning comes to full expression. Is there a way to integrate this narrative of dark murmurings, of obsessive fantasies of a return to Egypt, with the celebration of a love-intoxicated wilderness discourse? What effect does the cumulative trauma of slavery, the miracles of Exodus, and the revelation at Sinai have on a nation that is beginning to speak? In Bewilderments, one of our most admired biblical commentators suggests fascinating answers to these questions.
This historical novel tells the tragic story of Mary Queen of Scots, from her childhood until the beginning of her end. The clash of opinion over whether Mary was a martyr or a murderess is perfectly represented by four eye-witnesses (The Four Maries – her ladies-in-waiting) who narrate this captivating story with distinctive conclusions.
The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.
Walt was born in Nelsonville, a small town in southeastern Ohio, whose population has been around 5,000 for the last hundred years. In this book he tells us about many extraordinary events that he survived from the age of three to eighteen while growing up in Nelsonville. Like the time he almost drowned in the creek below their home on 969 Pleasant View Avenue. Or taking rabies shots when their pet dogs got rabies from a pack of wild dogs that roamed the hills on the other side of the valley. Or surviving car wrecks when the cars were totaled and there were no seat belts then. He graduated from NHS in 1960 in a class of 56, so you knew everyone and everyone knew you and your business. You didn’t do anything without the whole town finding out very quickly what happened. So, when he broke the taillight in his Dad’s car, Dad knew about it before he got home. Or, when he drove that same car and took his girl friend all the way to Columbus to the Kahiki Supper Club for dinner one time, and, ruined his older brother’s white sport coat and Tanya’s new dress when an orange fountain exploded while they waited in the Kahiki’s crowded lobby, somehow people knew about the incident by the time they got back to Nelsonville. They quickly told a story to their friends first, then their parents, that some kid sprayed orange soda all over them at the high school dance that evening. And the best part of that adventure was, that the dinner was free if they didn’t take the free dry cleaning offer from the Kahiki. That is the way small towns were back then. Walt went on to work his way through Ohio University and eventually earned three degrees from there and a Master’s Degree from the University of Dayton in 1980. Walt’s adventures after finishing High School in 1960, like Ohio University, the party school, Western Electric in Columbus, and the Army and Vietnam, are in his next book, The Second Eighteen Plus.
