Showing titles in Themes & Styles

The great Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna wrote his celebrated poem Letter to a Friend as a gift of advice to a South Indian king, and it has since become a monument in the Indian shastra tradition. Despite its short length (only 123 verses), it covers the entire Mahayana path, combining a practical approach to daily conduct with a theoretical exposition of the different stages leading to enlightenment. It has thus been an ideal source for many of Tibet’s greatest scholars seeking a scriptural authority to enhance their own descriptions of the Buddhist path.

One of the great masterpieces of Western literature, The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars. Though the stormy god of the ocean is determined to keep him off course, Odysseus is clever and has the brilliant goddess Athena on his side.

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement." If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life.

WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract modern artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang's new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.

Joan Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries (such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix), reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry.

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.

Inspired by environmental activism, Tiger Work blends fiction, essay and poetry to make a powerful and very personal appeal for change. If we continue to live as we do now, Ben Okri argues in this evocative collection, there will be no world left for us to fix. He imagines messages, sent to us from beyond the end, from those who saw it coming—from Africa, Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world—exhorting us to change now. This is a collection comprising two poems and six prose pieces—three short stories, an essay, a letter, and an interview.

America's first poet, Anne Bradstreet, wrote poems regularly for her family's private enjoyment. But in 1647, unbeknownst to Anne, her brother-in-law set sail for England with a manuscript of her poetry. Upon his return, he presented her book to her: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. Anne was thoroughly embarrassed but also pleased. Subsequent generations have valued her gifts as a poet as well, and her poetry remains in print to this day.

This volume brings together for the first time all of the poems that appeared in Anthony Hecht’s seven trade collections, from A Summoning of Stones of 1954 through to The Darkness and the Light of 2001; it adds the remarkable work contained in his posthumously issued Interior Skies: Late Poems from Liguria of 2011; and it rounds this out with the best of the many poems which were left uncollected at the time of his death in 2004, the earliest dating from 1950 and the latest from 2001.

For the past decade, Lemn Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life-affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Let the Light Pour In is a collection of the best of these poems, and a book celebrating this morning practice.

Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, listeners will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens.

A Sand Book is a poetry collection in 12 parts, a travel guide that migrates from wildfires to hurricanes, tweety bird to the president, lust to aridity, desertification to prophecy, and mother to daughter. It explores the negative space of what is happening to language and to consciousness in our strange and desperate times.

'I have meditated repeatedly on what it was about Finn that had me so dismantled.' A young woman moves from the countryside to the city. Inexplicably, inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life. Finn is 19 years older than her, wears men's clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile - and a long-term girlfriend. With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fall out of love.

Words of a Goat Princess is the USA TODAY bestselling debut poetry collection about life’s struggle and triumphs from Grammy-nominated and JUNO-award winning songwriter Jessie Reyez. With the authenticity and heartbreaking relatability that her fans know and love her for, Reyez brings the breadth of her lived experience to the page as few recording artists can. At times ethereal and visceral, these 43 poems are carefully painted moments that expertly explore love, loss, and identity with an artistry that leaps off the page with every turn.

In the beginning of Paradise Lost, Satan has ben banished to Hell and is working to organize the angels who fell with him and create his new kingdom. While a constant angelic war rages, Satan begins to wield his influence on the first humans created on Earth, and soon tempts them into defying God by using wit and logic to tempt Eve. The actions get Adam and Eve banished from paradise, and in the aftermath of their sin they get to glimpse the future of humanity based on their actions.

Things I Would Like to Do with You is about love. A love for a new generation. A love that includes room for independence, change, humor...even loneliness. Poetically searching through four seasons, this is a sweet book to curl up next to a fire and listen to.

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.

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.

A narrative poem of 14 stanzas, written by Lord Byron following a visit to the Château of Chillon on Lake Geneva in 1816. It was inspired by the story of 16th-century Swiss monk and patriot François Bonivard, held captive in the dungeons of Chillon between 1532 and 1536.

Gibran considered The Prophet his greatest achievement. He said: "I think I've never been without The Prophet since I first conceived it in Mount Lebanon. It seems to have been a part of me....I kept the manuscript four years before I delivered it over to my publisher because I wanted to be sure, I wanted to be very sure, that every word of it was the very best I had to offer."