That Denise Levertov (1923-97) was one of the most pioneering and skilled poets of her generation is beyond dispute. Her masterly use of language, innovative experimentations with organic form, and the political acuity disclosed by her activist poetry are well marked by critical communities. But it is also quite clear that the poems Levertov wrote in the last twenty years of her life, with their more explicit focus on theological themes and subjects, are among the best poems written on religious experience of any century, let alone the twentieth. The collection of essays gathered here shed vit... View More...
This book explores the much debated relation of language and bodily experience (i.e. the 'flesh'), considering in particular how poetry functions as revelatory discourse and thus relates to the formal horizon of theological inquiry. The central thematic focus is around a 'phenomenology of the flesh' as that which connects us with the world, being the site of perception and feeling, joy and suffering, and of life itself in all its vulnerability. The voices represented in this collection reflect interdisciplinary methods of interpretation and broadly ecumenical sensibilities, focusing attention ... View More...
The Prospect of Lyric, edited by Bainard Cowan Reading a great lyric poem we know that lyric is more than a convention, that it speaks of an encounter of genuine depth. But what is the terrain of that encounter? The fourth in the Genres of Literature series enters into the heart of the lyric experience, with General Editor Louise Cowan analyzing the lyric impulse, its ontological ground, and its relation to the life of a culture in her Introduction to the volume. The following sixteen essays examine key poets and texts, from Biblical and Greek antiquity through the pinnacles of the English lyr... View More...
The Tria sunt, named for its opening words, was a widely used and highly ambitious book composed in England in the late fourteenth century during a revival of interest in the art of poetry and prose.The backbone of this comprehensive guide to writing Latin texts is the wealth of illustrative and instructive sources compiled, including examples from classical authors such as Cicero and Horace as well as from medieval literature, and excerpts from other treatises of the same period by authors from Matthew of Vend me through Gervase of Melkley. Topics treated at length include methods for beginn... View More...
The essays of The Poet Resigns: Poetry in a Difficult World set out to survey not only the state of contemporary poetry, but also the poet's relationship to politics, society, and literary criticism. In addition to pursuing these topics, The Poet Resigns peers into the role of the critic and the manifesto, the nature of wit, the poetics of play, and the persistence of modernism, while providing detailed readings of poets as diverse as Harryette Mullen and Yvor Winters, George Oppen and Robert Pinsky, Pablo Neruda and C.S. Giscombe. Behind it all is a sense of poetry, not just as an academic ar... View More...
Admirers of Dante as a supreme religious poet will delight to discover yet another facet of his genius: how he created a picture of earthly life so detailed and original that it laid the foundations for the modern secular novel. As Michael Dirda notes in the introduction to this edition, Auerbach recognized in Dante 'our first great realist author, and perhaps our greatest.' Written in 1929 as the precursor to Mimesis (Auerbach's ground-breaking work on the history of realism), Dante: Poet of the Secular World reveals how The Divine Comedy stands apart from literary predecessors such as the O... View More...
A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin Classics Since its initial publication in 1958, The Poetics of Space has been a muse to philosophers, architects, writers, psychologists, critics, and readers alike. The rare work of irresistibly inviting philosophy, Bachelard's seminal work brims with quiet revelations and stirring, mysterious imagery. This lyrical journey takes as its premise the emergence of the poetic image and finds an ideal metaphor in the intimate spaces of our homes. Guiding us through a stream of meditations on poetry, art, and the blooming of consciousness itself,... View More...
Accepting Dante's prophetic truth claims on their own terms, Teodolinda Barolini proposes a "detheologized" reading as a global new approach to the Divine Comedy. Not aimed at excising theological concerns from Dante, this approach instead attempts to break out of the hermeneutic guidelines that Dante structured into his poem and that have resulted in theologized readings whose outcomes have been overdetermined by the poet. By detheologizing, the reader can emerge from this poet's hall of mirrors and discover the narrative techniques that enabled Dante to forge a true fiction. Foregrounding th... View More...
Studying the nature of symbol in Coleridge's work, Father Barth shows that it is central to Coleridge's intellectual endeavor in poetry and criticism as well as in philosophy and theology. He finds symbol to be an essentially religious reality for Coleridge, one that partakes of the nature of a sacrament, especially sacrament as an encounter between material and spiritual reality. Father Barth notes that eighteenth-century poetry was by and large a poetry of metaphor rather than of symbol, a poetry of reference rather than of encounter. In close readings of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleri... View More...
1992 HarperPerennial HARDCOVER (not paperback) First Edition, First Printing. Near Fine copy in Very Good jacket, text pristine. The hardcover edition of this book is extremely scarce. View More...
"Anyone interested in how language calls to language, and heart to heart, will find these pages irresistible." --The Philadelphia Inquirer"In this quirky, resonant, and necessary book, generously edited by Stephen Berg, a wide range of American poets at all stages of their writing lives offer their poems and choose their precursors, meditating with great humility and insight on the dual mysteries of influence and mastery, on the reading that fosters writing, on the shimmering nobility of poetry itself." --Edward Hirsch, Author of How to Read a PoemTwenty-eight distinguished contemporary Americ... View More...
"Generously quoting many of Williams' best lines, tenderly confessing when he doesn't understand Williams (e.g., Williams' elusive 'variable foot'), and referring to his own life and work to clarify what he thinks about Williams, Berry produces a work of aesthetics more than evaluation, of love more than critique." --Booklist "Berry's superb study reminds us that Williams remains our contemporary not only for the lively cadences and fresh imagery that animate his poems, but for the ethical imperative of his example: to know ourselves as creatures of a particular place and, through that ground... View More...
Ex-library with usual marks, stamps, additions. Otherwise, very good condition. Solid binding, unmarked interior, some scuffing to edge of boards. View More...
"The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can." So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises the sustaining power of poetry. "Passionate. . . . Perhaps Bloom's most personal work, this is a fitting last testament to one of America's leading twentieth-century literary minds."--Publishers Weekly "An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of... View More...
Each poet-profile in The Light Within the Light is based on intimate personal interviews and explores the landscapes, lives, and artistic achievements of the poet. Several poems are woven into each essay, allowing the reader to experience the poet's world in his or her own words. Since the paths of the four poets cross frequently, the essays "converse" with one another, layering the narrative. View More...
Each poet-profile in The Light Within the Light is based on intimate personal interviews and explores the landscapes, lives, and artistic achievements of the poet. Several poems are woven into each essay, allowing the reader to experience the poet's world in his or her own words. Since the paths of the four poets cross frequently, the essays "converse" with one another, layering the narrative. View More...
