Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Poetry

Unsung, Arunoday Singh’s first volume of poetry, presents a collection of his most popular work alongside new material, where he delves inwards and probes questions of love, loss, longing—everything that ails the human heart. He has amassed a large, involved following on Instagram, where he shares his poetry in handwritten calligraphy under the handle @sufisoul. The poems are deceptively simple and intensely piercing. They are divided into four sections that explore the themes of the self, the elements, breaking and healing, the search for divinity, and the light and darkness of the spirit.

A Hundred Lovers is a catalog of encounters, sublime, steamy, and frank. Inspired by French autofiction, the poems feel both sharp and diaristic; their lyrical, intimate world brings us everyday scenes imbued with sex. "Eros enters, where shame had lived," the speaker observes, as the poems explore risk and appetite, promiscuity and violence, and, in the wake of his marriage, questions about monogamy and desire.

Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins - the Pandavas and the Kouravas - but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.

DAVID DUCHOVNY’S SEVENTH PUBLISHED—AND FIRST POETIC—WORK covers a range of intimate themes and topics, including love, the loss of love, parenting, Duchovny’s own parents (in particular his father, who looms large throughout the work), alienation, and other emotional quandaries. Fans of Duchovny’s fiction will recognize the insightful and clever play of words that, in this new form, distill to an emotionally impactful portrayal of what the author holds most dear.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’ 57th birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts. The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. It is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.

These poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy, and the use of the Black vernacular in America’s vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets. Finna explores the erasure of peoples in the American narrative; asks how gendered language can provoke violence; and finally, how the Black vernacular, expands our notions of possibility, giving us a new language of hope: nothing about our people is romantic and it shouldn’t be.

This marvelous collection opens with the practical wisdom and unforgettable wit of the poet’s grandmother, who said (among other things) “Turmeric can heal anything / but a broken heart” and “Read that to me at / my funeral, boy, right now my show is on.” From the foundation of the matriarchal, Majmudar turns to the impact of women as lovers and partners, exploring the contours of passionate, romantic, and married love; he and his wife are “two fireflies/ scooped out of the same evening” to meet in the jar where their constancy contains and sustains them.

In this delightful collection, Ruskin Bond introduces us to the Dehradun he knows intimately and loves unreservedly - the town in which he had spent many years of his childhood and youth. A town which, when he knew it, was one of pony-drawn tongas and rickshaws; a town fond of gossip but tolerant of human foibles; a town of lush lichi trees; charming winter gardens and cool streams; a small town; a sleepy town; a town called "Dehra".

In this exclusive audio publishing event, Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, shares an evening of his poetry in a benefit reading for WNYC, New York Public Radio. Often compared to Robert Frost, his poetry has been embraced by people of all ages and backgrounds, and his readings are most often standing room only.

I Had A Brother Once is a brilliant, genre-defying work - both memoir and epic poem - about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss. Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp.

Michael Faudet's latest book explores the fine line between love and loss, the fragility of relationships, self-empowerment, and social commentary. Every piece taking the listener to a world of conflicting emotions, where nothing is what it seems and beautiful dreams come to life. All exquisitely captured in a thought-provoking collection of poetry, prose, and short stories.

The Sikh religion was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539), who drew upon the teachings of Muslim, Sufis, and Hindu Bhaktas. In its purest form Sikhism is about unity, simplicity, equality, and surrender (to God) and the verses of the Sikh Gurus - most of them included in the Granth Sahib - articulate this beautifully. This elegant edition contains a selection of verses from the Guru Granth Sahib and other sacred texts like Guru Tegh Bahadur’s Vairagmayi Bani and the Dasam Granth of Guru Gobind Singh.

Ghalib's poetic trajectory begins from Urdu, then moves to composing almost entirely in Persian and finally swings back to Urdu. It is nearly as complex as his poetry. However, his poetic output in Persian is far more than what he wrote in Urdu. More important is that he gave precedence to Persian over Urdu. Ghalib's voice presents us with a double bind, a linguistic paradox. Exploring his life, works and philosophy, this authoritative critical biography of Ghalib opens a window to many shades of India and the subcontinent's cultural and literary tradition.

The deliciously book-length story of "The Vineyard" is set in and around the little house in Oyster Ponds where the poet spends the summer months. In freeflowing lines and pages that turn with the calendar, the poem unspools impressions that seem confided rather than written, as Galassi observes the "pretend peace'' of this quiet village house and garden, his oasis in the great swirl of dailiness.

After storming the scene with Stereo(TYPE), the PEN America Award–winning poet makes his highly anticipated return—with a virtuosic sophomore collection that plunges the reader into the tenebrous realm between dreams and reality, and firmly establishes him as an essential voice in American poetry.

Observing the fragility of the body and soul in a world of threat, these startling poems stem from a central boyhood memory—the author’s near-drowning in a swimming pool on Crete. The observant child was troubled that none of the statues they saw had arms—and then it was his father’s arms lifting him from the water, saving his life.

Elegant, profound, and intoxicating—Spectral Evidence, Gregory Pardlo’s first major collection of poetry after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Digest, moves fluidly among considerations of the pro-wrestler Owen Hart; Tituba, the only Black woman to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials; MOVE, the movement and militant separatist group famous for its violent stand-offs with the Philadelphia Police Department (“flames rose like orchids . . . / blocks lay open like egg cartons”); and more.

A world-bending, lyrically rich poetry collection that reimagines the U.S.-Mexico border as both a real place and a living simulation—and tells the story of a pair of siblings trapped between the two.

Fever of Unknown Origin opens at a remote crossroads, where the speaker considers the intersection of history, beauty, and destruction: “the past / is paper / and the present, a match . . .” What follows is an urgent tour of landscapes—environmental, political, and personal—that reframes our perception of modern America and leads the listener into “An empire of rags and photons” where we must look to the past to clarify our futures.