Written over a period of 30 years, this precise and generous poetry opens with an exuberant bestiary of spiders, starfish, penguins, snakes, and contemplative baboons. The collection then moves on to explore a world of intricate wonders and memories: the grandeur of noses, the mayonnaise tornado whipped up by a kitchen whisk, and the gossip gravediggers whisper to the dead. Finally, the poet's interest in classical Islam is invoked through the incorporation of a flamboyant, medieval caliph...

Bringing together Eric Ormsby's entire poetic oeuvre thus far, including a healthy selection of previously unpublished poems, Time's Covenant is timeless, by one of America's best poets. Essential reading.

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry and history of his native Germany and that of Persia. The resulting collection engages with the idea...

I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili StudiesThis is the first English translation of the final philosophical work of the great eleventh-century Ismaili thinker, poet, and Fatimid emissary, N?sir-i Khusraw. Appointed from Cairo by command of the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mustansir to serve first as a d?'?, and then as the hujjat, for the entire region of Khur?s?n, he maintained his allegiance both to his mission and his Imam-caliph for the rest of his life, even when...

In the second edition of this groundbreaking text in non-Western philosophy, fifteen experts introduce some of the great philosophical traditions in the world. The dozen essays collected here unveil exciting, sophisticated philosophical traditions that are too often neglected in the western world. The contributors include the leading scholars in their fields, but they write for students coming to these concepts for the first time. Building on revisions and updates to the original essays on...

Two major events occurred in the early centuries of Islam that determined its historical and spiritual development in the centuries that followed: the formation of the sacred scriptures, namely the Qur'an and the Hadith, and the chronic violence that surrounded the succession of the Prophet, manifesting in repression, revolution, massacre, and civil war.This is the first book to evaluate the writing of Islam's major scriptural sources within the context of these bloody, brutal conf...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • From one of today's best poets—a stunningly poignant sequence of poems that tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom.In this wise and intimate telling—which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending—Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love’s sight; the surprising physical bond that sti...

This volume replaced Ted Hughes's Selected Poems 1957-1981. It contains a larger selection from the same period, to which are added poems from more recent books, uncollected poems from each decade of Ted Hughes's writing life, and some new work. Another notable feature is the inclusion of poems from his books for younger readers, What is the Truth? and Season Songs.

This paperback edition contains the complete text of Roethke's seven published volumes in addition to sixteen previously uncollected poems. Included are his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners The Walking, Words for the Wind, and The Far Field.These two hundred poems demonstrate the variety of Roethke's themes and styles, the comic and serious sides of his temperament, and his breakthroughs in the use of language. Together they document the development ...

John Ashbery writes like no one else among contemporary American poets. In the construction of his intricate patterns, he uses words much as the contemporary painter uses form and color- words painstakingly chosen as conveyors of precise meaning, not as representations of sound. These linked in unexpected juxtapositions, at first glance unrelated and even anarchic, in the end create by their clashing interplay a structure of dazzling brilliance and strong emotional impact. From this preocc...

The renowned poet and author of The Handmaid’s Tale “brings a swift, powerful energy” to this “intimate and immediate” poetry collection (Publishers Weekly).These beautifully crafted poems, by turns dark, playful, intensely moving, tender, and intimate, are some of Margaret Atwood’s most accomplished and versatile works. Some draw on history and some on myth, both classical and popular. Others, more personal, concern themselves with love, with the fragility of the natural world, an...

Pulitzer Prize winner Sylvia Plath’s complete poetic works, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes.By the time of her death on 11, February 1963, Sylvia Plath had written a large bulk of poetry. To my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn...