Showing titles in Poetry

Ryokan (1758–1831) is, along with Dogen and Hakuin, one of the three giants of Zen in Japan. But unlike his two renowned colleagues, Ryokan was a societal dropout, living mostly as a hermit and a beggar. He was never head of a monastery or temple. He liked playing with children. He had no dharma heir. Even so, people recognized the depth of his realization, and he was sought out by people of all walks of life for the teaching to be experienced in just being around him.

In his debut poetry collection Sex and Oatmeal, Eric Guilmette explores the complexities of love, identity, and what it means to feel deeply in a world that often asks us not to. This is a book that lives in contrast: the warm, honeyed rush of intimacy and the thick, cold quiet that follows... the ache of absence, the weight of longing, the emotional staleness of something once comforting, now unfinished and forgotten.

This beloved poem captures the wonder and warmth of Christmas Eve with its classic charm. Whether it’s being heard for the very first time or recited as part of a treasured family tradition, it invites listeners of all ages to gather close and listen for jolly old St. Nicholas.

SURE STRENGTH is a powerful and deeply moving collection of poetry that delves into themes of loss, resilience, and divine restoration. Through raw emotion and vivid imagery, the poet captures the pain of abandonment and the silent cries of the fatherless and motherless, yet offers a message of unwavering hope. Each verse unfolds like a journey—one that moves from sorrow to healing, from brokenness to wholeness. Rooted in faith, SURE STRENGTH reminds listeners that even in our most vulnerable moments, God’s grace and love are the tools that rebuild us, making us strong once again.

The Pulitzer Prize winner’s final written work: poems of penetrating acceptance and humor, whose soul-sweeping gaze encompasses his own autobiography and the broken world he nonetheless gives thanks for.

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.

In Clarity and Connection, Yung Pueblo explores how intense emotions accumulate in our subconscious and condition us to act and react the ways we do. With his distinctive voice, at once spare and evocative, the author guides us through the excavation and release of the past that is required for growth.

Acclaimed actress Claire Danes burnishes an epic story of heroes, gods, and monsters in a groundbreaking translation of The Odyssey, the first great adventure story in the Western literary tradition. When the wily warrior-king Odysseus sets off for home after the Trojan War, he doesn’t realize this simple undertaking will become a perilous journey of 10 years. Beset at every turn, he encounters obstacles, detours, and temptations—both supernatural and human—while his wife Penelope fends off would-be suitors desperate to take the throne.

In Paradise Lost, Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the fall of man....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.

In A Meditation on I Am, Rupert Spira contemplates the essential nature of our self before it has been conditioned or qualified by the content of experience. It is a poem, a prayer and a hymn of praise to the simple fact of being that is the source of the peace and happiness for which we long above all else.

In these rapidly changing times, it is more important than ever to know ourselves well and fully, even and especially in the face of turmoil. The Way Forward encourages listeners to connect more deeply to their intuition, using it to remain focused and grounded amidst a world in constant flux. In his latest collection of poetry and short prose, Yung Pueblo offers clear strategies for managing the unknown, inhabiting your personal power, and bringing your truest, healthiest self to relationships.

Blake Ritson, David Warner, Hattie Morahan and John Hurt star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dante's epic poem. Inferno: Thirty-five year old Dante finds himself in the middle of a dark wood, in extreme personal and spiritual crisis. Hope of rescue appears in the form of the venerable poet Virgil, now a shade himself, who offers to lead Dante on an odyssey through the afterlife, beginning in the terrifying depths of Hell.

A wildly original poetry collection written and read by one of the UK’s most exciting young comics. A poet who favours dark suits, lager and long hot baths, he works on BBC Four in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe and on Radio 4, doing his late night poetry show. In 2009 he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his poetical recital The Slutcracker and has filmed some of his verse in black and white to overwhelming critical approval.

Through poetry, prose, and the compassionate encouragement you would expect from someone who knows exactly what you're working through, Sparacino is here with the words you need. The Strength in Our Scars tackles the gut-wrenching but relatable experiences of moving on, self-love, and ultimately learning to heal. In this book you will find peace, you will find a rock, you will find understanding, and you will find hope.

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

The Epic of Gilgamesh relates the tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings. Gilgamesh was first inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets by an unknown author during the Sumerian era and has been described as one of the greatest works of literature in the recounting of mankind's unending quest for immortality.

Paul Kelly's songs are steeped in poetry. And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves - poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature's great themes that have proven so powerful in his music: love and death - plus everything in between.

It is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came The Ancient Mariner and ‘Kubla Khan’, as well as Coleridge’s unmatched hymns to friendship and fatherhood, Wordsworth’s revolutionary verses in Lyrical Ballads and the greatness of ‘Tintern Abbey’, his paean to the unity of soul and cosmos, love and understanding.

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems. Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of listeners, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi more popular than ever.