This is the first complete edition and the first English translation of one of the most fascinating poems of the late Middle Ages. Machaut's narrative tells "the true story" of the aged poet's romance with a young admirer, constructed around the letters and lyric poems they exchanged, and offers unique insights into the making of poetry, music and manuscripts. Introductory essays survey Machaut's biography, reevaluate the autobiographical content of the poem, explore the literary context, and discuss the miniatures, which are reproduced within the text. Also included is a full listing of variant readings, a commentary on references to contemporary events and the writing of the poem, an outline chronology, indices of lyrics, and a table to convert line numbers between this edition and the incomplete 1875 edition of P. Paris.
Describes the author's deep friendship with a mysterious intellectual who introduced her to the culture and people of El Salvador in the 1970s, a tumultuous period in the country's history, inspiring her work as an unlikely activist.
THE THICH NHAT HANH POETRY COLLECTION: Over 50 inspiring poems from the world-renowned Zen monk, peace activist, and author of The Miracle of Mindfulness. “ . . . the antidote to our modern pain and sorrows. His books help me be more human, more me than I was before.” —Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Though he is best known for his groundbreaking and accessible works on applying mindfulness to everyday life, Thich Nhat Hanh is also a distinguished poet and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. This stunning poetry collection explores these lesser-known facets of Nhat Hanh’s life, revealing not only his path to becoming a Zen meditation teacher but his skill as a poet, his achievements as a peace activist, and his experiences as a young refugee. Through more than 50 poems spanning several decades, Nhat Hanh reveals the stories of his past—from his childhood in war-torn Vietnam to the beginnings of his own spiritual journey—and shares his ideas on how we can come together to create a more peaceful, compassionate world. Uplifting, insightful, and profound, Call Me By My True Names is at once an exquisite work of poetry and a portrait of one of the world’s greatest Zen masters and peacemakers.
A strange and charming collection of hilariously absurd poetry, writing, and illustration from one of today's most popular young comedians?Ķ Bo Burnham was a precocious teenager living in his parents' attic when he started posting material on YouTube. 100 million people viewed those videos, turning Bo into an online sensation with a huge and dedicated following. Bo taped his first of two Comedy Central specials four days after his 18th birthday, making him the youngest to do so in the channel's history. Now Bo is a rising star in the comedy world, revered for his utterly original and intelligent voice. And, he can SIIIIIIIIING! In Egghead, Bo brings his brand of brainy, emotional comedy to the page in the form of off-kilter poems, thoughts, and more. Teaming up with his longtime friend, artist, and illustrator Chance Bone, Bo takes on everything from death to farts in this weird book that will make you think, laugh and think, "why did I just laugh?"
“This is a practical guide for everyone to learn the requisite art of slowing down, becoming more curious in order to ‘nurture transformation and love limitlessly.’” —Derrick C. Brown, author of Hello. It Doesn’t Matter., UH-OH, and How the Body Works the Dark How do we deal with the heaviness of everyday living? When we are surrounded by uncertainty, distrust, and destruction, how do we sift through the chaos and enjoy being alive? In Every Day Is a Poem, Jacqueline Suskin aims to answer these questions by using poetry as a tool for finding clarity and feeling relief. With provocative questions, writing practices, and mindset exercises, this celebrated poet shows you how to focus your senses, cultivate curiosity, and create your own document of the world’s beauty. Emphasizing that the personal is inextricable from the creative, Suskin offers specific instructions on how make a map of your past and engage with your pain to write a healing poem. Poetry isn’t a magic cure-all that makes adversity vanish, but it does summon the wondrous and sublime out of the shadows. Suskin seeks to remind you how incredible it is to be alive at all, even when it hurts. Most importantly, Every Day Is a Poem reveals that we all have the ability to weave beauty and meaning out of otherwise difficult and overwhelming times.
Rumi: The Book of Love is a collection of astonishing poems for lovers from the mystic Rumi, by the translator who made him sing anew, Coleman Barks. Poetry and Rumi fans will want to own this gorgeously packaged compilation of love poems by the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic. Rumi is best known and most cherished as the poet of love in all its forms, and renowned poet and Rumi interpretor Coleman Barks has gathered the best of these poems in delightful and wise renderings that will open your heart and soul to the lover inside and out.
Danna Faulds is the author of six popular books of poetry including Go In and In and also the memoir Into the Heart of Yoga: One Woman's Journey. About this her seventh poetry book she writes: "This collection of poems and prose pieces were all written in the last five years. Those years have been especially rich in experience, challenge, difficulty, delight, connection, learning, forgetting, and remembering again. During this time I've used the question "What's true here?" to fuel and focus my daily meditations and that inquiry practice has sparked many of the writings you'll find inside. Like life itself, every book is a journey, and this one is no exception. I've chosen to include poems from all facets of my experience-inner, outer, dark, light, the highs, the lows, and all the territory in between." Danna lives in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband Richard Faulds. She retired from her day job in 2018 and is now exploring new mediums of creative expression while continuing her longstanding practices of yoga, meditation, and writing.
"There is no one quite like Lloyd Schwartz, whose unique combination of comedy and pathos is rare in contemporary American poetry. Over the years and books, Schwartz has developed a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, producing poems that are hilarious in their depiction of unsettling social situations, while still managing to find the kernel of poignancy buried in everyday encounters. He is a master of the speech-driven style of verse, which is based on overheard, interrupted, or invented conversations that are by turns humorous and deeply unsettling, intimate yet decorous. In the new poems section, Schwartz brings his broad experience across the arts (including his many years as a music critic and commentator) to bear, with poems that recall the feeling of both performing and apprehending a piece of music, say, or a painting, a film, or a poem; he explores the figures depicted within these artworks, their fears and desires, revealing whole unexplored, interior worlds, a universe in a pack of tarot cards. This collection, which gathers the very best of Schwartz's work over his long, distinguished career, amply displays the tenderness and delicacy of feeling that we've come to rely on in his poetry. "Who's on First?" is a fitting capstone to a long life lived in the arts"--
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
