At the core of Libby Burton's highly anticipated debut poetry collection, Soft Volcano, are the vivid details underpinning the relationships we hold dearly in our lives. A feminist force, highly wrought and impressionistic, surges from these intensely lyric distillations that show us what we look like standing in the hallways of the museum of lost love—where we stand, how our hair looks, what marks of woe and time are left upon the body after love is strained or abandoned. Soft Volcano is ...

In this collection of short works that defy easy categorization, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and viruosity of her best-selling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry.Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and the five methods of making a man (suc...

Ozzy is the short story of a cat and his master. After losing his beloved wife, the man struggles to cope with a lonely life, a troubled son, and the nightmares of his past.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry“One of the truly imaginative writers of our time.” —Los Angles Times Book ReviewYou never know what Charles Simic is up to until you reach the end of the line or the bottom of the paragraph. Waiting for you might be a kiss. Or a bludgeon. A smile at the absurdities of society, or a wistful, grim memory of World War II.He puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak hims...

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize"You read Lydia Davis to watch a writer patiently divide the space between epiphany and actual human beings by first halves, then quarters, then eighths, and then sixteenths, into infinity," says The Village Voice. Indeed, Lydia Davis is mathematician, philosopher, sculptor, jeweler, and scholar of the minute. Few writers map the process of thought as well as she, few perceive with such charged intelligence.T...

From the Pulitzer Prize winning poet comes this “nearly perfect collection issued to celebrate his being named poet laureate of the United States” (The New York Times).Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his slyly original poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and, not least, his sardonic humor. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutiae of Americ...

How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, and their bodies, to express ourselves?

Poetry that explores how accidental voyeurism can force reconsideration and reconciliationWhite⋅out: n. a surface condition … in which no object casts a shadow, the horizon cannot be seen, and only dark objects are discernible …Whiteout: when the heavy weather of daily life establishes the measure of the measureless; when the predatory nature of the accidental conjures cowboys and the comatose; when the sickly sweet pop of life underfoot contrasts the televised ima...

A "harrowing and hallucinogenic" collection of poems from author of the New York Times–bestselling National Book Award-finalist Citizen: An American Lyric ( Library Journal).Claudia Rankine's book-length poem about rising racial tensions in America, Citizen: An American Lyric, won numerous prizes, including the The National Book Critic's Circle Award. Her new collection of poems—intrepid, obsessive, and erotic—tell the story of a...

New writings on our fear of—and fascination with—the "other" from Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, and more.Alien is a powerful and flexible word. Aliens are "other." Aliens are the stuff of science fiction and fantasy. Aliens are traditional literary figures that cause us to see ourselves anew. Indeed, when we witness our "normal" lives through these strangers' eyes, we become the unfamiliar ones.Conjunctions:67, Other ...

A love affair chronicled--from obsession to heartbreak, foolhardiness to faith. In Love Outlandish, Barry Dempster undoes all the clichés that have barnacled our love lives and, with the zest and courage typical of his work, explores their torrents and eddies afresh. As in his previous books, Dempster responds to D.H. Lawrence's plea that we should discover and articulate what the heart really wants rather than some idealized version of it. Thoughtful, passionate, full of humour and self-a...

Poetry from the author of Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award.A chestnut with a white blaze is scorching across the turf towards the finishing post.