Gathering the best work from Patricia Young's eight books of poetry, as well as strong new poems that fittingly speak to the passage of time, Ruin & Beauty brings together in one volume the elusive yet buoyant epiphanies that together form a life.
Impassioned, Personal Poems From America's Poet Laureate "It spends itself regardless into the ocean. It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright: Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction, The chilly liquefaction of day to night, The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one: It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River, Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne. I feel it churning even in fair weather To craze distinction, dry the same as wet." --from "Jersey Rain" Jersey Rain--at once masterly and intimate--marks a fresh, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Poems like "Samurai Song," "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" have already attracted a wide readership. Now, assembled in this book, they become part of a larger, fugue-like meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, the brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.
New from a poet whose "intensity makes the world visible" (Linda Gregg) "Everywhere, a forceful, scrupulous intelligence is active- a luminous diction, a range of cadences." So has Mark Strand written of the work of Joanna Klink, who has won acclaim for elegant, sensual, and musical poems that "remain alert to the reparations of beauty and song" (Dean Young). The linked poems in Klink's third collection, Raptus, search through a failed relationship, struggling with the stakes of compassion, the violence of the outside world, and the wish to anchor both in something true.
Mississippi Magnolia is a collection of, what Munayem Mayenin, calls ionnets. Ionnets are a six line unit poems having two stanzas in them. In Mississippi Magnolia Mayenin tries to craft what love is: so ancient yet so new, so known yet so unknown, so close yet so beyond reach and finds a form suitable to bring that love home in English Poetry-into this form of ionnets.
From the crashing boom of a thunderstorm to a gentle breeze on a sunny afternoon, the weather has a way of fascinating us every day. Nothing captures the magic of weather better than poetry. Young meteorologists and poets alike will love this collection of poems that capture the natural phenomena of weather. Even reluctant readers will be intrigued by the gorgeous illustrations that accompany the poems and enrich the text. Fun and accessible, this carefully selected collection is the perfect introduction to poetry, making this book an excellent tool for any language arts curriculum.