Jack Kerouac immortalized her in his novel Big Sur. A student of Zen, she hung out with Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg and was a speaker at San Francisco’s Human Be-In. But Lenore Kandel was no muse or hanger-on; she was a brilliant lyric poet, often unabashedly erotic, and that’s where her legacy lies.Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel contains 80 examples of her art, from the “holy erotica” of her early years to later, more contemplative works. Many of the poems h...

JANE HIRSHFIELD's first book, Alaya, received the Quarterly Review Of Literature Prize in 1982. In 1986, OF Gravity Angels receive d the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation for a book in progress; in 1989, it was awarded the Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Hirshfield's third book The October Palace, published in 1994, received the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the Poetry Center Book Award. She has also edited aand co-transla...

Brilliant new poems and an expansive gathering from six collections by a Pulitzer Prize winner celebrated as “indispensable.”What Goes On displays the evolving style and sensibility of a major award-winning poet, and a traceable growth that has blossomed into a provocative confrontation with questions of consciousness and existence. Stephen Dunn’s poems probe life’s big questions without ever losing sight of the significance of the mundane.

Writing Past Dark charts the emotional side of the writer's life. It is a writing companion to reach for when you feel lost and want to regain access to the memories, images, and the ideas inside you that are the fuel of strong writing. Combining personal narrative and other writers' experiences, Friedman explores a whole array of emotions and dilemmas writers face—envy, distraction, guilt, and writer's block—and shares the clues that can set you free. Supportive, intimate, and re...

This collection of Japanese haiku by American singer and composer, Don Raye is a delightful contribution to the world of haiku written in the English language.Like Haiku sings as haiku should—of life and joy, and sorrow and the seasons. Nor is this surprising for Mr. Raye is a successful song writer. For him no subject is too trivial, and none is too deep to put into poetry. He writes for Hope and History; Women and Wanderlust; Soul Brothers and a Seeing Eye Friend; Ego an...

Finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2015)Since his celebrated first book of poetry, Peter Gizzi has been hailed as one of the most significant and distinctive voices writing today. Gathered from over five collections, and representing close to twenty-five years of work, the poems in this generous selection strike a dynamic balance of honesty, emotion, intellectual depth and otherworldly resonance—in Gizzi's work, ...

A courageous and enthralling collection of poems by Fear of Flying author Erica Jong celebrating life, art, sex, and womanhoodseven lives,then webecome light . . .Erica Jong's novels are fearless and passionate. So, too, is her poetry. Though renowned—and sometimes vilified—for her unabashedly sensual fiction, the author considers herself a poet first and foremost. "It was my poetry," Jong writes, "that kept ...

These are true poems of the heart and from the heart which look at the nature of hope and the futility of despair. Poems related here are full of naturalistic observations as well as commentary on the state of the world. These show how we must keep hope alive in a dark world around us.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of exquisite poems by "a poet of mad wit and stunning anecdote. Tate is now in the fullness of his powers" (Julian Moynahan, author of Sisters and Brothers).Selected Poems, James Tate's award-winning collection and his first British publication, gathers work from nine previous books, from the Lost Pilot which was a Yale Younger Poets selection in 1967, through his 1...

“Brenda Shaughnessy’s poems bristle with imperatives: ‘confuse me, spoon-feed me, stop the madness, decide.’ There are more direct orders in her first few pages than in six weeks of boot camp...Only Shaughnessy’s kidding. Or she is and she isn’t. If you just want to boss people around, you’re a control freak, but if you can joke about it, then your bossiness is leavened by a yeast that’s all too infrequent in contemporary poetry, that of humor.”—New York Times“Shaughnessy’...

This essential collection of Michael McClure's poetry contains the most original, radical, and visionary work of a major poet who has been garnering acclaim and generating controversy for more than fifty years. Ranging from A Fist Full, published in 1957, through Swirls in Asphalt, a new poem sequence, Of Indigo and Saffron is both an excellent introduction to this unique American voice and an impressive selection from McClure's landmark volumes for those already...

“[Twichell’s] poems generate the requisite heat with the poet’s precise, original and frequently brilliant use of language. . . . A major voice in contemporary poetry.” —Publishers Weekly“[Twichell’s poems] track the inner movements of one life with an unexpected freshness.” —The Washington PostPublishers Weekly called Chase Twichell “a major voice in contemporary poetry,” and this long overdue retrospective supports the claim. Selected from six a...