The Novice Insomniac is a book of initiations and elegies wherein language becomes a sanctuary and remembrance a way of staving off oblivion. This is a brave and healing collection. --Edward HirschEmily Warn is our sleepless eremite. Her poetry situates and enlivens particular facts in a vision of creation. That makes her, I suppose, a religious poet, but she is also a poet of love and desire, mature in her account of personal pain and responsible in her account of the pain of the collective. Her simplest statements have the force of complex recognitions. --W.S. Di Piero.
Definitive and daring, The Ecopoetry Anthology is the authoritative collection of contemporary American poetry about nature and the environment--in all its glory and challenge. From praise to lament, the work covers the range of human response to an increasingly complex and often disturbing natural world and inquires of our human place in a vastness beyond the human. To establish the antecedents of today's writing,The Ecopoetry Anthology presents a historical section that includes poetry written from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Iconic American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are followed by more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and even more recent foundational work by poets like Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Muriel Rukeyser. With subtle discernment, the editors portray our country's rich heritage and dramatic range of writing about the natural world around us.
With works by over 100 poets, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry celebrates contemporary writers, born after World War II , who write about Jewish themes. This anthology brings together poets whose writings offer fascinating insight into Jewish cultural and religious topics and Jewish identity. Featuring established poets as well as representatives of the next generation of Jewish voices, it includes poems by Ellen Bass, Charles Bernstein, Carol V. Davis, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, David Lehman, Jacqueline Osherow, Ira Sadoff, Philip Schultz, Alan Shapiro, Jane Shore, Judith Skillman, Melissa Stein, Matthew Zapruder, and many others.
A reflection on this poet's legacy through essays by contemporary poets and literary critics Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was an award-winning author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose featuring the subjects of politics and war and, in later years, religion. Born and raised in England amid political unrest and war, Levertov moved to the United States after World War II and settled in as a passionate poet/activist for peace and environmental conservation. She initially gained recognition as a member of the Black Mountain poets and later as a highly respected mentor and educator at esteemed universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis, and Stanford, where she helped shape future generations of poets. In Denise Levertov in Company, Donna Krolik Hollenberg has assembled ten essays by contemporary poets who were influenced by Levertov as former students and/or colleagues and another ten by literary critics. Hollenberg selected contributors on the basis of their spiritual, intellectual, and political connections with Levertov at different stages of her life in the United States, and all are distinguished in their own right. The first five poets became acquainted with Levertov in the 1960s and 1970s, when she and they protested against the war in Vietnam. The next five poets, who were close to Levertov in the 1980s and 1990s while she was at Stanford, respond to aspects of Levertov's religious quest and her love and concern for the natural world. To assess Levertov's influence on contemporary poetry, Hollenberg has organized the essays into pairs. First a contributor offers a personal essay about his or her relationship with Levertov, which is followed by a companion essay about the contributor's poetry in relation to Levertov's. What emerges is a dialogue between autobiographical testimony and critical analysis. This combination of personal witness and objective evaluation contributes to a greater understanding of the contemporary poetry scene and the influence of Levertov's distinguished and affecting legacy. Contributors: Rae Armantrout Eavan Boland Martha Collins Alison Hawthorne Deming Susan Eisenberg Reginald Gibbons Donna Krolik Hollenberg Romana Huk Paul Lacey Aldon Lynn Nielsen Kathleen Norris Mark Pawlak Peggy Rosenthal Ben Sáenz Peter Dale Scott David Shaddock Michael Thurston Emily Warn Bruce Weigl Al Young
Gabrielle Levy's The Insomniac Society is the international phenomenon for those having sleepless night's everywhere . . . Five people. One thing in common: none of them can sleep. Claire, who sits awake beside a snoring husband and a little boy who is not hers. Jacques, a psychiatrist at the end of his career whose lonely nights are punctuated only by anonymous phone calls. Michèle, a retiree whose dark secret compels her out of bed and to church. Lena, a young goth who cannot brave the dawn, volunteering at a local café. Hervé, a shy accountant who sits in bed, panicking about his job while scrolling through emails into the early hours. As meetings led by sleep specialist Marie-Hélène draw them together, friendships will be formed and confessions made... but will they discover what's keeping them awake? And more importantly: will they be able to get to sleep?
“A lovely weave of memory and science, great characters and compassionate humor” from the author of Sweat: A History of Exercise (Anne Lamott). We often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.” An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity. “This intimate and beautifully written book brings scientific research alive in a heartfelt and deeply personal narrative.” —The Guardian “Memoir, history, and science come together and apart again in a book that reads very much like a dream.” —Out magazine
A vivid collection, bringing together a wide selection of contemporary poets, essayists, and fiction writers, that demonstrates the continuing vitality of Jewish American writing. The collection embraces tradition and innovation and is as diverse as it is consistently stimulating, sure to become required reading for enthusiasts of contemporary American literature.
Copper Canyon Press celebrates its first 50 years of poetry publishing in anticipation of the next 50 years. Poetry is vital to language and living. This anthology celebrates 50 years of Copper Canyon Press publications, one extraordinary poem at a time. Since its founding, Copper Canyon has been entirely dedicated to publishing poetry books; here Editor in Chief Michael Wiegers invites press staff and board—past and present—to help curate a retrospective. The result is a collection of beloved poems from books spanning half a century: representing Pulitzer Prize-winning books, debut collections, works in translation, and rare books from Copper Canyon’s early days. This book is a tribute to Copper Canyon poets and readers everywhere, because, as Gregory Orr writes, “Certain poems / In an uncertain world— / The ones we cling to: // They bring us back.”
