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Liquid Beauty
"People of Orphalese..."
A Work of Art
Seeking Truth?
loved it

The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart (Arkana)
The Madman: His Parables and Poems
Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran
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ASIN: 0394404289
Release Date: 1923-09-12

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In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya

Book Description

A brilliant man's philosophy on love, marriage, joy and sorrow, time, friendship and much more. Originally published in 1923 - translated into more than 20 languages. With 12 full page drawings by Gibran.

Customer Reviews:

Liquid Beauty.......2007-04-19

This book is poetic myth,
a work of beauty,
whose every word drips a truth,
and a thought of knowledge.

Reading it is like swimming in reality
but a reality I have not known,
till now.

Kahlil Kahlil Gibran knew something we did not,
he shared a bit of the wonder of simplicity.
Though this is merely the preaching of a Prophet,
Gibran is able to turn it into story,
and I feel from the gut for all the characters.

The Prophet is unsurpassed in form,
in content best when speaking of beauty,
in ways I had never known,
and weakest when speaking of prayer.

Certainly Gibran relies on the story of Jesus,
and throughout there are allusions to his words
and actions.
But this is a new prophet,
who speaks the words of old,
though it be in new wineskin.

"People of Orphalese..." .......2007-04-10

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), the Lebanese-American poet and mystic never wrote anything finer than this 1923 volume, his masterwork. Had he written nothing before or beyond THE PROPHET, he would still be remembered into perpetuity.

Each brief chapter of THE PROPHET addresses an aspect of the human condition, including Love, Marriage, Work, Pleasure, Buying and Selling, Children, Eating and Drinking, to name but a few. Gibran espouses no particular religious, ethical or moral system, and yet includes them all in this slim tome, written it seems, with a quill of light, not ink.

A Higher Power (by whatever name you may call it) spoke through Gibran in the writing, a perfect letter to the ages, and an ultimate expression of Humanity.

A Work of Art.......2007-03-22

The Prophet is an elegant and beautifully crafted piece of art that eloquently states Universal Truths concerning all pertinent aspects of ourlive. These include love, death, justice, art, etc. It's divine poetr that could have only been inspired by the creator of this magnificent world.

Highly recommended.

Seeking Truth?.......2007-03-22

The Prophet is an elegant and beautifully crafter piece of art that eloquently states Universal Truths concerning all pertinent aspects of ourlive. These include love, death, justice, art, etc. It's divine poetr that could have only been inspired by the creator of this magnificent world.

Highly recommended.

loved it.......2007-02-17

I receivedd my book very fast, I was completly satisfied with my purchase.

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A COLLEGE TEXT I"D BUY AGAIN
This is the best edition
The Text to Own

Complete Poems and Major Prose
John Milton
Manufacturer: Hackett Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

The Cambridge Companion to Milton (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Blackwell Critical Biographies)
A Companion to Milton (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)
A Preface to Paradise Lost: Being the Ballard Matthews Lectures Delivered at University College, North Wales, 1941

ASIN: 0872206785

Book Description

First published by Odyssey Press in 1957, this classic edition provides Milton's poetry and major prose works, richly annotated, in a sturdy and affordable clothbound volume.

Customer Reviews:

A COLLEGE TEXT I"D BUY AGAIN.......2003-12-11

Coming from someone who was so frugal that my choice of major in college was influenced by the fact I could find most required reading for a dual degree in philosophy and English literature in the library rather than pay my hard earned money for books that were not worthy.... this is my strongest possible recommendation: This was one of the few texts I actually shelled out money for in college without regret and would even purchase AGAIN! ( My copy was destoryed by Hurricane Isabel) I have fond memories of studying Milton, and when he seemed at his most confusing the notes in this text were wonderfully clear.

This is the best edition.......2000-08-14

Others have suggested the Norton is the edition for college students. I disagree. The Hughes edition is definitely worth the money. The notes are the best -- in reading criticism on Milton, there's usually plenty of references to Mr. Hughes's notations themselves. This is the standard, accepted text. This is the complete poems, with his Latin and Italian poetry appearing ajacent to an English translation. There's a generous selection of Milton's prose, too.

Spend the wad and buy the book. If you're reading this, then you're a bibliophile, no doubt. For the rest of your life wouldn't you prefer to have the best edition of Milton on your shelf, or will you be satisified with a $9 Signet Classic? (I tossed mine.)

Check out the Dore Illustrations for PL, too.

BTW, after reading Areopagitica, I believe that everything Jeffereson said was a debt to Milton.

The Text to Own.......2000-07-23

This is still the most extensive, best-annotated, one-volume Milton set available. As the blurb above indicates, Hughes presents all the poems and prose in chronological sequence, so it is easy to trace the great poet's increasing facility, and later mastery, in both areas. We start with Milton, the fifteen-year-old student, translating Psalms from the Hebrew as well as passages from the love poems of Ovid and Properius. We then follow him to Cambridge, where he really starts assimilating all his classical studies, first fashioning imitative Latin elegies followed by his first poems of native genius, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare," "L'Allegro and Il Penseroso."

Hughe's edition is invaluable as a tool for students, scholars, or general readers. The notes never get in the way of the text, but will lead the reader to relevant sources should he/she desire to learn more about a given allusion or want more background. If the reader is patient, and actually reads all the material that comes before "Paradise Lost", he/she will be rewarded with a richer understanding of Milton's magnum opus. Please be advised that if you have made it that far, don't stop there. "Paradise Regained" and "Sampson Agonistes" are powerful examples of epic poetry as well. I personally feel that "Paradise Regained" has had almost as large an impact on modern fiction in particular (Dostoevsky and Flaubert are prime examples)as has "Paradise Lost."

Blake said that Milton was of Satan's party without knowing it. Actually Milton's prose does open up some interesting possibilities in that sphere. In "Areopagitica" he advocates for the necessity of evil. He was, as history has amply recorded, hardly a defender of central authority. He was emphatic about individual liberty and wouldn't be dictated to by Pope or King.

There are several short early biographies of the poet at the end of the book. All paint a portrait of an idiosyncratic genius who suffered numerous setbacks both physical and political, particularly in his last decades. He was an extraordinarily brave man, who has taken some heat from Virginia Woolf and later feminists for his "ill use" of his daughters, who, the line goes, he kept in ignorance and near slavery so that they could aid him as ameneunses after he went blind. If such detractors had actually done any wide reading on the subject (Shawcrosse is an excellent source) they would not have made such charges. Though not what could be described as a "loving father," Milton certainly never inveighed against his daughters to remain "indentured" to him, nor did he subvert any marriage plans they arranged (none were forced into "arranged marriages" either, though the practice was still common in that era). He didn't tutor them in the Languages he asked them to transcribe, per se. But this begs the question, if they were'nt taught Latin, Greek and Hebrew, how would they have been able to act as scribes in those languages in the first place?

I'm sorry to see that this volume is now almost $100. In this day of large trade paperbacks, perhaps a more affordable edition will be forthcoming.

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Wonderful collection
Not perfect but still pretty good

Poems and Shorter Writings
James Joyce
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Stephen Hero
Finnegans Wake (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

ASIN: 0571143059

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful collection.......2007-04-18

This is still a wonderful collection of Joyce's writings that you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, but a word of advice: the used copies sold here are outrageously priced, where Amazon.co.uk readily sells new copies for 12 pounds ...

Not perfect but still pretty good.......2000-05-25

Out of print in the USA, maybe, but not where I come from. It's a minor scandal of the multinational Joyce industry that there is no decently comprehensive, fully annotated edition of Joyce's poems and early writings. This volume contains most but not quite all of the poems, sometimes in texts the correctness of which has been questioned, plus Joyce's early prose Epiphanies, his turgid autobiographical essay "A Portrait of the Artist" (_not_ to be confused with the novel of almost the same name) and his curious prose work "Giacomo Joyce", a half-sardonic, half-bittersweet account of an affair he conducted in his thirties.

Joyce wrote poetry on and off for most of his life, to the mild embarrassment of his modernist friends who couldn't understand how such a revolutionary prose writer could come out with such old-fashioned poems. His early work is very much that of a young writer on a testing ground, trying out the dominant fashions of the age and seeing how well they fitted. Much of his later poetry is comic - I have a friend who's memorised the rollicking satirical broadside "Gas from a Burner", written after Dubliners had been rejected for the umpteenth time - but there are some later lyrics which have appeal for more than just Joyce fans. (The short lyric "Ecce Puer" is his most famous poem, but I also like the sombre "Tilly" which was displayed on Dublin suburban trains for quite some time.) His "Epilogue to Ibsen's Ghosts" is one of the funniest and most acute of his late poems, simultaneously critiquing, celebrating and providing a sequel to the play.

The notes in this edition are very skimpy. Far better annotated is James Mays' Penguin edition of "Poems and 'Exiles'", which included Joyce's only surviving original play; but also omitting for copyright reasons work included here. You really wish that some good fairy could put a stop to the Joyce squabbles and provide us with a reasonably complete, more-or-less well-edited, properly annotated, uniform edition of the works, but it ain't gonna happen. In the meantime, the Penguin Joyce, this and the Critical Writings are all the amateur completist are likely to need. Oh, and the Selected Letters, if you're interested in contractual difficulties and the texture of Nora's underwear.

Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America)

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The complete Frost- The road not taken
You'll Never Need Another Frost Book
Pure Frost Without Editorial Heat
A fine edition of a great American Voice.
Buy this now!

Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America)
Robert Frost
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Edgar Allan Poe : Poetry and Tales (Library of America)

ASIN: 188301106X

Customer Reviews:

The complete Frost- The road not taken .......2005-11-07

For most of us most poets live through a few poems of theirs we have read in anthologies. It may be that in the case of a poet we especially love we have gone and read most of their poetry.
This volume presents a wonderful opportunity for the devotees of Frost to have in one book the work of a lifetime.
For me Frost is "The Road Not Taken" and "Birches" and "Mending Wall" and a host of scattered lines, " Good fences make good neighbors" and " The land was ours, before we were the land's".
Frost is also however, I must admit , for me the poet whose life casts a shadow on his work. Unfortunately perhaps I long ago read parts of the Thompson biography of Frost the central theme of which was his inveterate cruelty to all those around him.
All this has left me, you will excuse this, a bit 'cool toward Frost' and I personally prefer the more musical metrics of Wallace Stevens to the canny, often pithily wise lines of Frost.

You'll Never Need Another Frost Book.......2005-05-19

I took a class last semester on Robert Frost, and it was quite an experience. Frost was truly a wonderful poet who deserves every bit of praise he gets (and who is unfairly ignored in academia it seems). His words are so often true and lifechanging and beautiful and honest. Nobody is fully educated until they have read Frost's classics: "The Death of the Hired Man," "Mending Wall," "Birches," "After Apple-Picking," "Storm Fear," "Meeting and Passing," etc. There are so many good ones.

The Library of America edition is a great way to be exposed to Frost's poetry. It's true that there are a lot of pretty bad poems since everything, good and bad, is included in the volume; the uncollected poems here were meant to stay uncollected. Nevertheless, that everything is here is really a great strength to the book. It's great being able to place a single poem in Frost's entire oevre. I also liked seeing how his command of the language and the forms of poetry. Seeing everything also helped to see how his conception of his role changed. Most importantly, I loved that Frost's prose and his plays were included here. There are a number of gems to be found there. I particularly enjoyed the "'Sermon' at the Rock Avenue Temple" and Frost's children's stories. The ability to read Frost's prose alongside his poetry really enhances the reading of both.

Overall, Frost was a magnificant poet who cannot be given less than five stars, and by reading everything in this edition, one can certainly gain a greater appreciation of the poet at his finest.

Pure Frost Without Editorial Heat.......2005-05-04

Are you someone who buys for the art of the book as much for the art of the contents? If so, you can't do better than any of the stellar titles from the Library Of America series of books... This splendid collection of Frost will not dissapoint...One of the many treats of this volume as is virtually true with all of the Library Of America volumes is the ease with which you can hold it comfortably in your hand...Exclusively thin acid free paper is the secret and this volume packs in a two inch thick volume what normal paper would weigh you down with five or six inches of...

What nice unedited and thorough Frost you get here!...Speaking of editing, the true Frost afficionado will want to be sure to avoid items edited by an Edward Latham...This edition is Latham free and contains Frost's work as he originally wrote it...Unfortunately, from the late sixties on, several editions of Frost went forward with unnecessary "clean up" editing by this very punctuation weilding word meister...He added to many editions extra commas and punctuation in places Frost never originally put it...If you'd like to read a much more thorough analysis of this than I can describe here, be sure to pick up a copy of writer Donald Hall's " Breakfast Served Anytime" and read the article he wrote exposing Latham and his added cleansing of Frost's work...This Library Of America edition captures Frost unedited and at his purest and best...

The reader can choose here from a smorgasbord of outstanding selections and offerings...Poetry, prose, plays...there is quite a variety of choice fare offered here...

In the words of Mr. Frost.." I'm going up to the meadow to check the newborn calf,...I shan't be long...You come too!"

A fine edition of a great American Voice. .......2005-04-11

Robert Frost is a unique American voice that many people love. A few reject him, but the majority of those whom he was writing for still love and admire his poetry. His fans always have favorites and can quote lines and whole poems from memory. When a poet gets into people's memories and hearts it is not a sure sign of greatness, but it is a good indicator of something special.

In some ways his works have aged because they are about an America that has passed. One poem that I think catches a lot of the issues surround Frost is "The Literate Farmer and the Planet Venus". This piece is about the electrification of rural America and the strangeness of it all. It talks about the speeding up of life and wonders if the future will simply do away with beds because there won't be time to sleep. The poem is set in 1926, but was published in 1942 as part of "A Witness Tree". I don't know when it was written, but if it was written around the Second World War its nostalgia seems a bit more cynical to me (which I suspect to be the case). However, if it was written back in the late 1920s then it has more whimsy and an earnest wonder.

This poet does have a capacity for irony and bite as well as humor and whimsy. His words are more conversational than lyric and that is fine. They have less music, but a great deal of color and subtle observation. It really doesn't matter what any critic says about Frost. He will outlast all of them. What matters is what he says to you. He is certainly a more worthwhile read than most of what gets published nowadays, just expect to have to deal with some words and references to an America from a century ago.

This volume from the Library of America is terrific. The table of contents in the front refers to the whole volume. The Collected Poems is the reprint that takes up most of the book and has its own table of contents as well. There is also a chronology of Frost's life, notes on sources, and many very helpful notes that can help you understand certain references. There is an index of titles and first lines, and an index of prose titles.

I always feel grateful to the Library of America whenever I get a chance to read their volumes. Heck, they are simply great to hold and flip through!

Buy this now!.......2004-02-25

Very attractive, solid and sturdy, materials are very well organized. Not the cheapest, but well worth it -- especially at the discount Amazon provides... And then there's the content -- top notch stuff, perfect.

War Stories and Poems (Oxford World's Classics)

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War Stories and Poems (Oxford World's Classics)
Rudyard Kipling
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192836862

Book Description

A unique anthology of Kipling's war stories and poems, from the frontier wars of empire to the Boer War and the First World War.

Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems

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poets of evil

Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
Manufacturer: Citadel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Baudelaire in English (Poets in Translation, Penguin)
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The Fall

ASIN: 0806501960

Book Description

Here, for the first time, the work of three of Frances greatest poets has been published in a single volume: the sensual and passionate glow of Charles Baudelaire, the desperate intensity and challenge of Arthur Rimbaud, and the absinthe-tinted symbolist songs of Paul Verlaine.

To bring the essence of these three giants of modern poetry to the American public, Joseph M. Bernstein, a noted interpreter and translator of French literature, has selected the most representative of their writings and presented them along with a biographical and critical introduction.

"Not to know these three poets", he points out, "is to deprive oneself of a pleasure as rare as it is indispensable to any real understanding of the aims and direction of modern literature.

The volume includes Arthur Symons' unabridged translation of Flowers of Evil and the Prose Poems of Baudelaire; Louise Varese's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell and Prose Poems from "Illuminations"; J. Norman Cameron's translation of the verse from the Illuminations; and a representative selection from Verlaine's verse translated by Gertrude Hall and Arthur Symons.

Customer Reviews:

poets of evil.......1999-02-19

I think I have a better instinctual understand of these "decadents" who were the clear marking of the break between the old aesthetic rationality and the surrealism, symbolism, etc. that followed--those who actually blend the periods, smudge and blur the two worldviews, like Poe and Blake and, here, Baudelaire do. I like Baudelaire's phantasmagoria, his exoticism put in service of delivering a concrete insight. And I especially like it when the poetic histrionics of "Flowers of Evil" give way to the fascinating prose poems--like "The Confiteor of the Artist" or the marvellous war-against-poetry volley "The Courteous Marksman." Other fine ones (reminding me also of Lovecraft)--"The Evil Glazier," "At One O'Clock in the Morning," "Solitude." There's misanthropy, insight and occult broodishness here of the most useful sort.

Rimbaud and Verlaine didn't grip me as strongly--I appreciate that they stretched artistic boundaries, but what they have done intrinsically I don't find as rich. Rimbaud's religious ravings and visions I find intelligent but obscurant (like Wallace Stevens)--he's doing some constructive deconstruction, but it's hardly readable (though I do like the more coherent symbolism of the famed "Drunken Boat"). And Verlaine, while he has the occasional dead-on whimsical insight, is a bit too florid in verbiage, classical in form, and even conventional for me. With these latter two poets, I think my concern with translated poetry also must come in at full force--this sort of wordplay and deliberate suggestiveness must be highly dependent on the nuance of the original words, and must therefore lose something considerable in English.--J.Ruch

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Baudelaire's sensitivity and despair revealed
The classic translation.
poems in prose
Baudelaire Vents His Spleen at the Outside World
Make sure to get the Varese translation!

Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook)
Charles Baudelaire
Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811200078

Customer Reviews:

Baudelaire's sensitivity and despair revealed.......2007-06-06

I am almost finished reading this. I found the picture on the cover of "Paris Spleen" scintillating, with Baudelaire's debased-looking image peering out of the cover (my husband said it looked "honest"). I always thought of Baudelaire as a decadent and sardonic man of sorts, but after reading some of his writings here, I can say he was very sensitive and profound in many ways, and, like myself and others, he wished to "escape" the daily world and the daily rut of the city he belonged to. At best, his despair is something akin to the world-weariness of Poe.

The classic translation........2006-09-13

An elegant, accurate, and readable translation of this wonderful little book that can revolutionize your way of seeing and thinking. Some newer, and in some ways, better translations have appeared since this one became the "standard," but it's still a good buy and a sure bet for reading pleasure.

poems in prose.......2001-04-18

Yes, Baudelaire, himself told to his friend Troubat:"These are The flowers of evil again, but with more freedom,much more detailes, and much more mockery". Noone before Baudelaire has ever concepted the poem in prose which would express so many special, original and protesting sensations. This urban, very personal poetry is a product of the metropolitan noisy atmosphere, and as it is surrounded with fog of overpopulated, but yet unexplored areas.This poetry expresses more than the actual meaning of the words is telling.Spleen is created of prose and pure poetry, of the reflection of the analytical spirit and intuitive introspection.The apostle of pain and depression,Baudelaire is the one who analyzes his own and other people's sins, expresses himself as a moralist in this book as well.

Baudelaire Vents His Spleen at the Outside World.......1999-04-01

The book that helped me overcome my prejudice against poetry--I carried "Paris Spleen" around with me for a couple of weeks after I first read it, and kept turning back to certain poems as I went about my daily errands. Even though it's nearly 150 years old it seems as timely and contemporary as it must have seemed when it was first published--absolutely top-notch.

Make sure to get the Varese translation!.......1998-12-28

This is a wonderful book -- Baudelaire's prose poems perfectly capture the spirit of 19th century Paris as it rushes into modernism. Don't be seduced by prettier editions of this book -- it is crucial to get the Varese translation! Also, Walter Benjamin's early to mid twentieth century critique of Baudelarie should not be missed.

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One of Simic's Best
Yet Another Rave (YAR)
Finest Living Poet
Mind-bogglingly good.
Shaking hands with Simic himself

The World Doesn't End
Charles Simic
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156983508

Amazon.com

Yugoslavian-born Charles Simic, who came to the U.S. in 1954, is known as a creator of poetic fantasy. In this volume, he constructs bizarre, startling and entertaining visions in short descriptive sentences that pile one incongruous turn upon another, building images that are fresh and full of surprise. Like the river in one poem which flows backward, the power of Simic's inner world derives from turning logic on its head and taking a look from another direction. This collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990.

Book Description

In this collection, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, Charles Simic puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak himself in antiquity. Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful poems and poems-in-prose he lets the reader see through them.

Customer Reviews:

One of Simic's Best.......2006-02-01

The World Doesn't End surprised me in many ways. It was unlike any other volume of his work I have yet read. I was so enthralled I read it cover to cover twice in the first week after I received it. I would have to say that this volume and Simic's "A Wedding in Hell" are two of my favorite volumes of poetry by any poet. Simic has a gift for combining the grotesque/bizarre with the everyday and condensing them down into compact poems that evoke the experience of lucid dreams. I highly recommend this small book!

Yet Another Rave (YAR).......2005-11-11

It hardly seems worthwhile for me to review this book since literally every blurb of it I've read here has been a 5-star rave. Nonetheless, I felt like I should add my $0.02US.

I may be unfairly biased, as this slim volume was my first introduction to Mr. Simic's work. Maybe if I'd read, say, "Walking the Black Cat" I would feel the same way about it, but be that as it may, I can safely say that "The World Doesn't End" is one of the best books I've read in any genre. I clearly remember the experience of reading it for the first time. Mr. Simic's tone is so direct and intimate that he immediately draws you in and then, when he's got you where he wants you, he proceeds to completely take you apart. The ground slips from under your feet. Tiny bombs explode in the foundational tissues of your cortex. Realigments occur.

My only regret is that I can never have the same experience again because... I've already read the damned book! Will someone please figure out a way to erase my memory so that I can go back and do it again? Simic. Are you working on this?

Finest Living Poet.......2005-02-02

A truly original mystical poet. Reading this book was expensive for me, leaving me no choice but to order numerous, Charles Simic books.

Mind-bogglingly good........2004-03-09

Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990)

Charles Simic won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The World Doesn't End, and it is blessedly easy to see why. This collection (which, despite its subtitle, is mostly prose poems, with a few "regular" poems thrown in for good measure) could easily be a primer for the aspiring poet on exactly how to write a prose poem. (Would that more who attempt it had read this!) In the days when prose poetry has fallen so far from the poetic tree that a new subgenre, "flash fiction," had to be invented for the mass of the unpoetic claptrap, Simic gives us a book full of wonderful tall tales, flights of fancy, and utterly poetic language, all without ever once straying from the idea that what he is writing in these small pieces is, in fact, poetry.

"The dog went to dancing school. The dog's owner sniffed vials of Viennese air. One day the two heard the new Master of the Universe pass their door with a heavy step. After that, the man exchanged clothes with his dog. It was a dog on two legs, wearing a tuxedo, that they led to the edge of the common grave. As for the man, blind and deaf as he came to be, he still wags his tail at the approach of a stranger." --untitled (p. 40)

The World Doesn't End caused me to re-evaluate my ideas on what poetry is. Perhaps it is not, as Eliot would have it, language elevated; perhaps, instead, it is language as it should be. The standard as opposed to the elevation, the diction we should be striving for in our daily lives.

The finest book of poetry to cross my desk since Reznikoff's classic By the Waters of Manhattan half a decade ago. Must reading for poetry fans, and engaging stuff in prose form for those who don't do poetry. Just think of it as the best flash fiction ever written. In any case, whatever you have to do to convince yourself to do so, read this book. *****

Shaking hands with Simic himself.......2003-03-14

In a time when many critics despise the prose poem, brushing it aside, refusing to accept such work into the usual canon of lyric poetry, Charles Simic defies all boundaries, combining prose form with a lyrical quality often absent in accepted "lyric" verse.
Simic's world of fantasy and surrealism don't come off as dreamy as one might think. If anything, he is somewhat of a journalist, reporting on events, images, people, animals, gypsies, etc., but from a purely personal perspective, a perspective we all can identify with because we see the world in similar fashion.
There are few poets more intimate than Simic. When looking through his eyes, which have seen and survived much, one can't get closer to one of contemporary poetry's strongest voices.

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Finally, Marinetti in English

Selected Poems and Related Prose
F. T. Marinetti
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300041039

Book Description

F.T. Marinetti (1876-1944) is widely known as the founder of Futurism, an early twentieth-century cultural revolution. This volume, a translation of more than forty poems and prose works by Marinetti, presents premier examples of his rich poetic creations, many for the first time in English. The collection represents the entire span of the poet's career, and it includes Marinetti's early lyrical works, poems of battle, "Words in Freedom," and love poems to his wife. There is also a biography of Marinetti and a critical review of his poetic accomplishment.

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Finally, Marinetti in English.......2002-11-27

An interesting compilation of Marinetti's best texts and poems, translated for the first time into English. It will help us to understand why Marinetti can be called the founder of literary avant-garde.

One Hundred and One Famous Poems with a Prose Supplement

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One Hundred and One Famous Poems with a Prose Supplement

Manufacturer: The Cable Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000BWHERY

Product Description

A delightful treasury of the poems most popular in 1929. Among poets included are: Longfellow, Emerson, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Holmes, and many more. All of the poems really stir the present day memory including "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "In Flanders Field".

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