Poetry History Criticism category: 2222 books

The William Blake Project presents the newest work in Blake studies by an international gathering of scholars; the collection grew out of a series of interrelated investigations of Blake’s ‘Composite Art’ through a festschrift, a symposium, an exhibition, and an exhibition catalogue. Despite more...

Russia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the...

This collection of specially-commissioned essays by experts in the field explores key dimensions of Robert Frost's poetry and life. Frost remains one of the most memorable and beguiling of modern poets. Writing in the tradition of Virgil, Milton, and Wordsworth, he transformed pastoral and georgic...

When Edward Thomas died at Arras in 1917 few people thought of him as a poet. Yet in the two years before his death, after a lifetime writing prose, Thomas wrote some of the most enduring poems of his day: poems of war, nature, friendship, despair and exultation. Andrew Motion's pioneering study of...

This book provides provocative information on poetry written in response to the most revolutionary set of events seen in Britain since the 1640s: 'Peterloo', a peaceful protest that became a massacre; 'Cato Street', a government scripted rebellion; and the 'Queen Caroline Controversy', when the estranged wife of George IV tried to claim her crown.

The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature features more than fifty short essays on specific writers and literary trends from the Qing period (1895–1911) to the present. The volume opens with thematic essays on the politics and ethics of writing literary history, the formation of the canon,...

Although readers of prose fiction sometimes find descriptive passages superfluous or boring, description itself is often the most important aspect of a poem. This book examines how a variety of contemporary poets use description in their work. Description has been the great burden of poetry. How do...

“Traces the ways that Cuban poets dealt with issues of national identity, reflected in their views of Afrocubanismo, often in response to historical changes in public and official opinions on the most visual manifestation of Afro-Cuban culture: carnival.”—Choice “Uncovers a wealth of literary...

For fifty years, world-class poets have come to the village library in Katonah, New York to read for the Katonah Poetry Series. For close to 25 of those years, Billy Collins has curated the series. Psychologist and poet Andrew Kuhn interviewed 21 of these poets before their readings, asking probing...

The enduring power of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry rests with his claim that all we need for a better life on earth is already given to us, in the here and now. In twenty-six engaging and accessible essays, Ulrich Baer’s The Rilke Alphabet examines this promise by one of the greatest poets in any...

• First published in hard cover by W.W. Norton in 1993 • Sold through its print run of 2,500 copies •Well-known and respected as poet and essayist, Dunn’s book should get reviews in prominent journals •Less expensive paperback version may make it more attractive for college course adoptions...

Focusing on the significance of place, connection and relationship in three poets who are seldom considered in conjunction, Rory Waterman argues that Philip Larkin, R.S. Thomas and Charles Causley epitomize many of the emotional and societal shifts and mores of their age. Waterman looks at the foundations...

A reader-friendly miscellany of essays, appreciations, reviews, and conversations, published in newspapers and literary magazines over the past ten years, these are pieces that will resonate equally with the lay poetry lover and the specialist. This collection explores all aspects of a life in poetry: reading it, writing it, teaching it, editing it, publishing it, reviewing it.

Avocations collects the best of Sam Hamill's prose on poetry over the  last 18 years, presenting insightful readings of Kenneth Rexroth, Denise  Levertov, Odysseas Elytis, Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, John Logan and  many others together with critical commentary on poetry in translation  and the practice of poetry in general.