Pre-Pulitzer Poetry
Pre-Pulitzer Poetry

Author: Robert Hillyer

Publisher: Personville Press

Published: 2023-12-30

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13:

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Before winning the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Robert Hillyer (1895-1961) explored a variety of subjects and poetic forms in his books. This new poetry collection contains six of Hillyer's pre-Pulitzer books in their entirety, including a longer narrative poem (Carmus) that is a haunting fairy tale for adults with beautiful imagery and sentences. Hillyer was classmates with E.E. Cummings at Harvard and became lifelong friends with Robert Frost (who said that he and Hillyer had been "running side-by-side all these years, and he knows that I think of his poetry as he thinks of mine: with affection ... (and) ... admiration." While poets of Hillyer's era were flirting with modernism, imagism and symbolism, Hillyer was working with sonnets and pastorals, mostly rejecting free verse and the "existential agonies of modern man" in order to write about eternal themes like nature, love and death. Hillyer was not really an innovator. Hillyer felt most comfortable writing sonnets and other constricted forms with meter and rhyme, and his poems rarely sounded artificial or stilted. Although occasionally the poems used allusions to art and history and mythology, the poems mostly remained accessible and didn't require elaborate footnotes. This ebook edition also contains illustrations by Beatrice Stevens and two books of translations: a collection of Danish poetry and an improved translation in verse of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It also includes an essay about Robert Hillyer's poetry by horror writer Arthur Machen and an essay that Hillyer wrote comparing Egyptian religion with Christianity. Recently Personville Press republished Hillyer's 1942 poetic novel My Heart for Hostage (which evokes Hillyer's experiences of living in Paris after WWI and presents a coherent aesthetic sensibility for a lyrical novel). This sensibility is apparent in his poems as well. Critics Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska said that the "gift that Hillyer possessed was an extremely sensitive ear for verbal music, a gift that, however 'literary' its speech may be, never fails to delight the reader, for among the best of Hillyer's lyrics the clear strains of sixteenth-century music were revived and were sounded with the mastery that conceals its art." This volume includes English translations Hillyer did of Danish poems by notable Danish poets (sometimes for the first time). That includes: Adam Oehlenschläger (1779-1850), B.S. Ingeman (1789-1862), Poul M. Møller (1794-1838), Christian Winther (1796-1876), Frederick Paludan-Müller (1809-1876), Holger Drachmann (1846-1908), Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956), Ludvig Holstein (1864-1943), Jeppe Aakjær (1866-1930), Sophus Claussen (1865-1931) and Johannes V. Jensen (1873-1950) . Between 1937-1945 Hillyer was the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and taught several authors including Howard Nemerov, James Agee and Theodore Roethke. After that appointment ended, Hillyer taught at Kenyon College between 1948-1951 and ultimately finished his teaching career at University of Delaware between 1954-1961. In addition to publishing several more poetry collections after winning the Pulitzer, Hillyer published two books about versification and several scholarly essays about well-known poets. To avoid having lines of poetry run onto multiple lines, reading this ebook on smaller displays (such as mobile phones) is not recommended.

The End of the Myth
The End of the Myth

Author: Greg Grandin

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1250179815

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall. Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation – democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall. In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history – from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America’s constant expansion – fighting wars and opening markets – served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home. It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.

3 Sections
3 Sections

Author: Vijay Seshadri

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 1555973450

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* Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry * The long-awaited third poetry book by Vijay Seshadri, "one of the most respected poets working in America today" (Time Out New York) Vijay Seshadri's new poetry is assured and expert, his line as canny as ever. In an array of poetic forms from the rhyming lyric to the philosophical meditation to the prose essay, 3 Sections confronts perplexing divisions of contemporary life—a wayward history, an indeterminate future, and a present condition of wanting to outthink time. This is an extraordinary book, witty and vivacious, by one of America's best poets.

The Quick and the Dead
The Quick and the Dead

Author: Joy Williams

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 030776382X

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PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • From one of our most heralded writers comes the “poetic, disturbing, yet very funny” (The Washington Post Book World) life-and-death adventures of three misfit teenagers in the American desert. Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape eccentric with signs and portents—from the preservation of the living dead in a nursing home to the presentation of the dead as living in a wildlife museum—accompanied by restless, confounded adults. A father lusts after his handsome gardener even as he's haunted (literally) by his dead wife; a heartbroken dog runs afoul of an angry neighbor; a young stroke victim drifts westward, his luck running from worse to awful; a sickly musician for whom Alice develops an attraction is drawn instead toward darker imaginings and solutions; and an aging big-game hunter finds spiritual renewal through his infatuation with an eight-year-old—the formidable Emily Bliss Pickless. With nature thoroughly routed and the ambiguities of existence on full display, life and death continue in directions both invisible and apparent. Gloriously funny and wonderfully serious, The Quick and the Dead limns the vagaries of love, the thirst for meaning, and the peculiar paths by which all creatures are led to their destiny. A panorama of contemporary life and an endlessly surprising tour de force: penetrating and magical, ominous and comic, this is the most astonishing book yet in Joy Williams's illustrious career. Joy Williams belongs, James Salter has written, "in the company of Céline, Flannery O'Connor, and Margaret Atwood."

Preliminary Report
Preliminary Report

Author: Jon Davis

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 1556593155

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"Davis is as good as DeLillo at playing off our internal hunger for meaning against surface senselessness. And Davis catches the surface brilliantly."--American Book Review Punctuated by subversive humor, verbal theatrics, and moments of strange, luminous beauty, Davis' clear, unsentimental poems are meditations and mediations on contemporary existence and the unreliability of language, emotions, and the memory to gather it all in. Jon Davis, author of five collections of poetry, earned his MFA from the University of Montana. He has received a Lannan Literary Award and currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Tinkers
Tinkers

Author: Paul Harding

Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press

Published: 2019-01-01

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 1942658613

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Special edition of Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel—featuring a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson and book club extras inside In this deluxe tenth anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces the beautiful novel Tinkers, which begins with an old man who lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past, where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature. The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel—the first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since A Confederacy of Dunces received the award nearly thirty years before—is as extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family’s history, Paul Harding began writing Tinkers when his rock band broke up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published, the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare the novel’s remarkable success “the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent memory.” That story is still being written as readers across the country continue to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and passionate audience. Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers. He teaches at Stony Brook Southampton.

Today in the Taxi
Today in the Taxi

Author: Sean Singer

Publisher: Tupelo Press

Published: 2022-12-28

Total Pages: 75

ISBN-13: 1946482854

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From the passenger seat of Sean Singer’s taxicab, we witness New York’s streets livid and languid with story and contemplation that give us awareness and aliveness with each trip across the asphalt and pavement. Laced within each fare is an illumination of humanity’s intimate music, of the poet’s inner journey—a signaling at each crossroad of our frailty and effervescence. This is a guidebook toward a soundscape of higher meaning, with the gridded Manhattan streets as a scoring field. Jump in the back and dig the silence between the notes that count the most in each unique moment this poet brings to the page. “Sean Singer’s radiant and challenging body of work involves, much like Whitman’s, nothing less than the ongoing interrogation of what a poem is. In this way his books are startlingly alive... I love in this work the sense that I am the grateful recipient of Singer’s jazzy curation as I move from page to page. Today in the Taxi is threaded through with quotes from Kafka, facts about jazz musicians, musings from various thinkers, from a Cathar fragment to Martin Buber to Arthur Eddington to an anonymous comedian. The taxi is at once a real taxi and the microcosm of a world—at times the speaker seems almost like Charon ferrying his passengers, as the nameless from all walks and stages of life step in and out his taxi. I am reminded of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, of Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn... Today in the Taxi is intricate, plain, suggestive, deeply respectful of the reader, and utterly absorbing. Like Honey and Smoke before it, which was one of the best poetry books of the last decade, this is work of the highest order.” —Laurie Sheck

Mean Spirit
Mean Spirit

Author: Linda Hogan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-09-03

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 166808998X

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FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE * Named a Best Mystery and Thriller Book of all Time by Time A haunting epic following a Native American government official who investigates the murder of Grace Blanket: an Osage woman who was once the richest person in her territory until the greed of white men led to her death and a future of uncertainty for her family. When rivers of oil are discovered beneath the land belonging to the Osage tribe during the Oklahoma oil boom, Grace Blanket becomes the wealthiest person in the territory. Tragically, she is murdered at the hands of greedy men, leaving her daughter Nola orphaned. After the Graycloud family takes Nola in, they too begin dying mysteriously. Though they send letters to Washington DC begging for help, the family continues to slowly disappear until Native American government official Stace Red Hawk ventures west to investigate the terrors plaguing the Osage tribe. Stace is not only able to uncover the rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder that led to the deaths of Grace Blanket and the Greycloud family, but also finds something truly extraordinary—a realization of his deepest self and an abundance of love and appreciation for his native people and their brave past.

Blonde
Blonde

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0062685864

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The National Book Award finalist and national bestseller exploring the life and legend of Marilyn Monroe Soon to be a Netflix Film starring Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson In one of her most ambitious works, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker—the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist—intensely conflicted and driven—who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood’s myth and an extraordinary woman’s heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great 20th-century American star.