Poetry

The advent of relatively cheap editions in the mid-sixteenth century produced an explosion of verse, much of which represented the first person speaker as a version of the author. This book examines ways in which writers, often seeking advancement in their careers, harnessed verse for self-promotional purposes. Texts studied include a manuscript autobiography by Thomas Whythorne, printed verse by a woman, Isabella Whitney, travel and war narratives, as well as canonical texts by Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare. more...

Price: $100.00

Balance Act is Ken Cormier's first published collection of prose and poetry. Ranging in mood from all-out hilarity to heart-stopping melancholy, Balance Act utilizes a consistent thread of music and rhythm to propel its language. Cormier's extensive background in percussion informs his writing at every level of the process. Simply put, Cormier brings performance to the page, and Balance Act is his one-man variety show. Cormier's stories peel back the layers of a bent suburban landscape, and his characters scratch and claw to find inspiration on the railroad tracks, to bear the absurdity of family dysfunction, to trade the bitterness of complacency for the thrill of total annihilation. The poems reinforce his over-arching themes, punctuating the text like rapid-fire epiphanies. more...

Price: $9.99

Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, and a representative of neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was also greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. M. Barrie. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their definition of modernism. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon. [Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson under the terms of the GNU-FDL] more...

Price: $7.99

The Beautiful Lesson of the I is a collection of finely made poems by an accomplished poet. It will reward the scholar and the student of poetry, as well as the reader looking for the simple pleasures of poetic insight authentically felt. Winner of the Swenson Poetry Award 2005. more...

Price: $11.95

Dick Ringler's deceptively simple translation captures the rhythm, movement, and power of the original Old English poem while employing a fluid modern English style and a relatively spare vocabulary. more...

Price: $9.95