Available for the first time in English, Azaleas is a captivating collection of poems by a master of the early Korean modernist style. Published in 1925, Azaleas is the only collection Kim Sowol (1902-1934) produced during his brief life, yet he remains one of Korea's most beloved and well-known poets. His work is a delightful and sophisticated blend of the images, tonalities, and rhythms of traditional Korean folk songs with surprisingly modern forms and themes. Sowol is...

Korea's modern poetry is filled with many different voices and styles, subjects and views, moves and countermoves, yet it still remains relatively unknown outside of Korea itself. This is in part because the Korean language, a rich medium for poetry, has been ranked among the most difficult for English speakers to learn. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry is the only up-to-date representative gathering of Korean poetry from the twentieth century in English, far more ge...

The 'Sunningdale experiment' of 1973-4 witnessed the first attempt to establish peace in Northern Ireland through power-sharing. However, its provisions, particularly the cross-border 'Council of Ireland', proved to be a step too far. The experiment floundered amid ongoing paramilitary-led violence, finally collapsing in May 1974 as a result of the Ulster Workers' Council strike.Drawing on new scholarship from some of the top political historians working on the period, this book pr...

Preeminent scholar and translator David R. McCann presents an anthology of his own translations of works ranging across the major genres and authors of Korean writing—stories, legends, poems, historical vignettes, and other works—and a set of critical essays on major themes.A brief history of traditional Korean literature orients the reader to the historical context of the writings, thus bringing into focus this rich literary tradition. The anthology of translations begins with the...

Lauded poet Christopher Merrill hatched a brilliant plan: invite six other poets to join him in four days of writing in Iowa City. The poets would write for 30 minutes, creating a poem of 15 lines, and then read it aloud to the group. As poets heard the poems, they noted memorable words, images, and lines, which they would borrow to insert in subsequent poems of their own. These rounds continued, until, in a process of call and response and unprecedented collaboration, 80 poems had been co...

Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania’s most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems – the most extensive collection of his work to date – reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and ...

The Confucian gentleman scholars of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) often published short anecdotes exemplifying their values and aesthetic concerns. In modern Seoul one scholar in particular would excel at adapting this style to a contemporary readership: Yi T'aejun.Yi T'aejun was a prolific and influential writer of colonial Korea and an acknowledged master of the short story and essay. He also wrote numerous novels and was an influential editor of cultural news. Born in northern ...

“Bodhisattva of Korean poetry, exuberant, demotic, abundant, obsessed with poetic creation . . . Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.”—Allen Ginsberg"Korea's greatest living Zen poet."—Lawrence FerlinghettiFlowers of a Moment is a treasure trove of more than 180 brief poems by a major world poet at the apex of his career. A four-time Nobel Prize nominee,Ko Un grew up in Korea d...

Cloud Clad Angel is Vera Srbinović's critically acclaimed collection of poems, which was first published in a bilingual English Serbian edition in 2008 and is now being released for the first time internationally. Since her debut in 1961 with Unlocked Gates, she has authored 21 other collections of poetry, including Wings of Destiny, Pomegranate Rubies, and The Dream of Byzantium.

Influenced by both the gray, sinister sea” that came ashore where her artist parents were sent during the Cultural Revolution, and the beauty of the sea in the books she read as a child, Sea Summit is a collection of paradox and questioning. The sea is an impossible force to the poet: It is both a destructive force that predates man, and something to carry with us wherever we go, to be put by an ancient rattan chair,” so we can watch it’s waves toss” from above. Exploring the c...

"No one else has ever made avant-garde, experimental poems so attractive to both the general and the special reader."—Randall JarrellThe one hundred and fifty-six poems here, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings's biographer, Richard S. Kennedy, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets. Also featured are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by...

A New York Times Notable book, this memoir by a journalist who lived in a small city in China is "a vivid and touching tribute to a place and its people" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remar...