All These Roads

A passionate believer in the power of art—and especially poetry—to influence and critique contemporary culture, Louis Dudek devoted much of his life to shaping the Canadian literary scene through his meditative and experimental poems as well as his work in publishing and teaching. All These Roads...

Thomas Hood and nineteenth-century poetry

This, the first modern critical study of a lyricist, humorist and social protest poet who was a household name throughout the Victorian period, explores the relationship between Thomas Hood’s playfulness, his liberal politics, and contemporary cultural debate about labour and recreation, literary...

The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark (1876) is a poem by Lewis Carroll. Filled with many of the portmanteau words developed for his poem “Jabberwocky,” The Hunting of the Snark is a delightfully strange tale of mystery and adventure. Often read as an allegory for everything from tuberculosis to the endless q...

Orchard and Vineyard

Orchard and Vineyard (1921) is a poetry collection by Vita Sackville-West. While she is most widely recognized as the lover of English novelist Virginia Woolf, Sackville-West was a popular and gifted poet, playwright, and novelist in her own right. A prominent lesbian and bohemian figure, Sackvil...

Infinite Audition

Part poetry book, part theatre audition resource, Infinite Audition reflects a transmasculine and disabled experience of the world in a voice that is funny, humane and rooted in deep authenticity.Infinite Audition is a work that explores all spoken word poetry can be. The sections range from solo...

Songs for Relinquishing the Earth

WINNER OF THE 1999 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR POETRYSongs for Relinquishing the Earth contains many poems of praise and grief for the imperilled earth drawing frequently on Jan Zwicky's experience as a musician and philosopher and on the landscapes of the prairies and rural Ontario. Songs for R...

Plainchant

Poems that prompt and deepen our attention to the world. 

Power Made Us Swoon

A lyrical journey through family legacies, silenced histories, and the possibilities of transformation, guided by the ruthless, witty, and vulnerable voice of a mythic woman warrior.

Florante and Laura

In the Kingdom of Albania, the noble and brave Duke Florante is tied to a tree. Close to death and losing hope, he begins to recount the events that have led to his current predicament: the death of his father, the suffering of his people, and perhaps even, the loss of the woman he loved.

The Princess

The Princess (1847) is a poem by British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Written before Tennyson was named Poet Laureate, the poem addresses accusations from critics that the poet refused to write on serious subjects, as well as the founding of Queen’s College, London, the first college for women in ...

Martín Fierro

Martín Fierro: An Epic of the Argentine (1923) is an epic poem and accompanying scholarship by José Hernández and Henry A. Holmes. Originally published in two parts, the poem has been praised as a defining work of Argentine literature for its depiction of national identity in relation to the gauc...

Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field

When Lord Marmion, a favorite of the king, becomes enamored by Clara, a rich noble woman, he is willing to stop at nothing to get her attention. Though Clara is engaged to the heroic Sir Ralph De Wilton, and he already has a mistress, Lord Marmion views these issues as minor, and has a plan to ov...

A Place Called No Homeland

Twenty

Twenty (1918) is a poetry collection by Stella Benson. Largely recognized for her work as an activist in the women’s suffrage movement and for her popular novels, Benson was also an accomplished poet. Twenty, her debut volume, is a collection indebted to symbolism in which Benson reflects on her ...

Japanese Death Poems

"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." —Tricycle: The Buddhist ReviewAlthough the consciousness of death is, in most...

Pantun Baba Chan

Pisang mas di-atas peti,Ada dua biji bekembar;Cakap menulis kita mesti,Baru Hidop Bahasa Baba * * * * *A comb of golden bananas,Bear two ripening twins;As we strive to speak and write,Baba Malay will thrive anew.Pantun Baba Chan is a collection of 100 original pantun poems written in Baba Malay o...

Poetry in Australia, Volume I

Poetry in Australia, Volume 1: From the Ballads to Brennan offers a comprehensive exploration of Australian poetry from its colonial beginnings to the early 20th century. This anthology showcases the evolution of a distinct Australian literary voice, blending the rich traditions of English romant...

The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand

The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane is a collection of thirty-five of her best poems, selected with an introduction by Jeanette Lynes. An environmentalist, feminist, and peace activist, M. Travis Lane is known for witty and meticulously crafted poems that explore the el...

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

While traveling to a wedding, a young man is pulled into the eventful narrative of the Ancient Mariner who is compelled to share his story. It’s a miraculous tale about guilt, humanity and one’s capacity to change. The Ancient Mariner notices a young man traveling to a nearby wedding. He abrupt...

The False Laws of Narrative

The False Laws of Narrative is a selection of Fred Wah’s poems covering the poets entire poetic trajectory to date. A founding editor of Tish magazine, Wah was influenced by leading progressive and innovative poets of the 1960s and was at the forefront of the exploration of racial hybridity, mult...

Barking & Biting

Brings together representative works from Sina Queyras's poetic oeuvre. The introduction situates Queyras within the contemporary international field of poetry and poetics and provides explanations of each of Queyras's collections. Queyras's afterword is an example of her work in the field of the...

Guthrie Clothing

Not so much a selected poems as a reshuffle, a sampler from the span of Phil Hall’s published work.Guthrie Clothing is a collage-selection by Hall. Lines, stanzas, and poem-fragments are reworked and patterned into a new sequence, a fresh structure.

Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground

Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground contains thirty-five of F.R. Scott’s poems from across the five decades of his career. Scott’s artistic responses to a litany of social problems, as well as his emphasis on nature and landscapes, remain remarkably relevant. Scott weighed in on many issues im...

Separation Anxiety

A complex and entangled text that explores inherited trauma, the presence of ghosts, interspecies communication, the dream world, grief, and human/animal separation. Weaving wisdom from her shamanic practice and the interstices of language, and in the difficult moments anticipating the deaths of ...

Coming Indoors and Other Poems

This collection of haiku poetry from Bernard Lionel Einbond is a spectacular.Part one includes Rising Darkness, Countenances of the Poor, and The Coming Indoors, then part two concludes with Insomnia in Haiku Form. Each poem expressed paints a simple mental picture of each experience with Bernar...

By Word of Mouth

Dennis Cooley, one of Canada’s most prominent poets, says writing becomes political when you play with certain kinds of voices. His poetry has been influenced and inspired by the prairies and other Canadian poets, but he insists on disturbing the formal poetic inheritance he esteems. His engageme...

Fool

When knowledge is ours at the tap of a key, what is it we’re accumulating, and is it at the expense of another, more intuitive, kind of knowing?The word ‘fool’ derives from the Latin follis, one of whose meanings is ‘empty-headed person’. Such mindlessness is not quite imaginable, but perhaps it...

Automaton Biographies

Modern Australian Verse

Modern Australian Verse, Poetry in Australia, Volume II provides an insightful exploration of Australian poetic evolution from 1930 onwards, capturing the dynamic interplay of style, subject matter, and cultural identity. The anthology prioritizes the emotional resonance and aesthetic enjoyment o...

The More Easily Kept Illusions

Much-loved, cantankerous, and brilliant, Al Purdy galloped across the Canadian literary landscape for decades, grandly embodying the self-taught and hard-living image of the 1960s and ’70s poet. The More Easily Kept Illusions: The Poetry of Al Purdy is a selection of thirty-five poems that includ...

In a Riptide

FEATURED ON CBC'S FRESH AIR WITH DAVID COOPERFunny while serious, wise without being certain, full of feeling and yet rinsed of sentimentality. The characters in Ronna Bloom's new collection In a Riptide are tired, sick, old, fragile, baffled, worried, dying, dead, uncertain, snacking, happy, gen...

Zen Brushpoems

This book of Zen poetry and art blends simple, haiku-like poetry with bold minimalist ink brush drawings.Zen Brushpoems connects the creative insights of Haiku-like poetry with the dynamic interplay of the written word and painted image. This subtle and profound medium of poetic expression has b...

Chinatown Ghosts

The Poetry of Chuya Nakahara

"A landmark book that will redefine Nakahara's place on the international stage." —Paul Perry, novelist and poetThis definitive bilingual edition of Chuya Nakahara (1907–1937) brings the most dynamic voice in Japanese early Modernist poetry to English-language readers. Goat Songs and Songs of Byg...

Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry

This collection of modern Japanese poetry presents carefully selected works for Western readers.The state of Japanese poetry in the twentieth century, its high quality and individuality is clearly shown in this book. The introduction gives a brief, lucid history of poetry in Japan, with the emph...

A Sacrifice of Praise

English speakers have 12 centuries of Christian poetry to draw upon. The examples in this anthology come from all Christian sources including Anglican, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and modern evangelical and reform traditions.

Japanese Death Poems

"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." —Tricycle: The Buddhist ReviewAlthough the consciousness of death is, in most...

Senryu Poems of People

This is a collection of Japanese senryu poetry—a lesser known cousin to haiku poetry.In 1765 Karai Senryu published a selection of tsukeku that reflected his personal taste and humor. This anthology, Yanagidaru, became widely popular and was followed by 22 more of the same title, also compiled b...

Land of the Reed Plains

This collection of Japanese poetry and paintings is a wonderful addition to the collection of any enthusiast of Japanese poetry or culture.Land of the Reed Plains presents a rare and beautiful combination of Japanese lyric genius and artistic mastery. The poetry comes from the Manyoshu, Japan's ...

Face at the Bottom of the World and Other Poems

Face at the Bottom of the World and Other Poems is a collection of Japanese poetry by master poet, Hagiwara Sakutaro.Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) is generally recognized in Japan as the best poet to have emerged since contact was re-established with the outside world. His work represents the a...

Zen Fool Ryokan

This collection of Zen poetry by 19th century Japanese Buddhist monk and hermit Ryokan is a masterful exploration of life and nature.Ryokan's zen poems are celebration of the joys and sadness of everyday life. His spare, direct style is remarkable for its immediacy and intimacy.This bilingual co...

Haiku—The Sacred Art

Takes the mystery and intimidation out of beginning to write haiku as a spiritual practice. Provides helpful hints and step-by-step exercises to broaden and deepen both your haiku artistry and your appreciation of haiku as part of your spiritual life.

POSSESSION

“Angela Ball is a poet wise enough to describe love as ‘a double appetite for seeing.’ Her poems are suffused by a wary disappointment in romantic excitement, but with the piqued attention that accompanies desire she makes the world, so far as this can be done, the object of her desire.”—Williams...

All Occasions

Award-winning poet Walt McDonald is well known for the skill with which he is able to transform ordinary language into poetry. In this, his eighteenth volume of poetry, McDonald returns to familiar explorations of his native Texas landscape and the struggle to integrate wartime experiences into t...

On Earth

Robert Creeley, one of the most significant American poets of the twentieth century, helped define an emerging counter-tradition to the prevailing literary establishment—a postwar poetry originating with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky and expanding through the lives and w...

Before Burns

This superb anthology offers a lively and indispensable collection of poems and songs from the eighteenth century. Here are the poets who created the literary tradition of vernacular directness which Burns drew upon and shared.Before Burns includes a substantial selection from the work of All...

The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975–2005

This definitive collection showcases thirty years of work by one of the most significant American poets of the twentieth century, bringing together verse that originally appeared in eight acclaimed books of poetry ranging from Hello: A Journal (1978) to Life & Death (1998) and If I were writi...

A Hundred Love Poems from Old Korea

Korea's traditional love poetry is little known in the West. This anthology contains examples of all genres: vernacular to long lyrical poems. A witty informative commentary links the poems and sets them in context.

Iron Goddess of Mercy

Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Persiani’s book offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, rev...

The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1921) is a collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. Translated into English by Tagore after he received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, The Fugitive is a powerful collection of poems, dialogues, and songs by a master of Indian literature. “Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitiv...

Spruce to Cedar

Gently disarming poems that explore healing despite the limitations of living in a colonial society.Set in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Vancouver, Lasänmą's debut poetry collection takes the reader from her childhood into adulthood by sharing both warm and harrowing memories as they shap...

The Remedy of Love

“The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the bes...

The Lovers Assistant

“The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the bes...

Printing Virgil

In this work Craig Kallendorf argues that the printing press played a crucial, and previously unrecognized, role in the reception of the Roman poet Virgil in the Renaissance. Using a new methodology developed at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Printing Virgil shows that the press established w...

Net of Fireflies

A Net of Fireflies is a superb collection of classic haiku composed by the leading writers of this delicate but intricate art form.With over three Japanese hundred haiku poems written over five centuries, the book is a thorough introduction to the unique world of Japanese haiku. Thirty-three ful...

Day into Night

"This is a beautiful book for all seasons! Gunther Klinge illustrates that the difference between oriental and western mind is a myth and fantasy. His haiku never startle, never strain."—Book News PreviewsIn this exquisite collection of haiku, accomplished haiku author Gunther Klinge takes us on...

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I (1914) compiles some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s best-known works as a leading poet, playwright, and political thinker of the nineteenth century. As a leading figure among the English Romantics, Shelley was a master of poetic form and tra...

A Companion to Byzantine Poetry

This book offers the first complete overview of Byzantine poetry from the 4th to the 15th century. By bringing together 22 scholars, it explores the development of poetic trends and the interaction between poetry and society throughout the Byzantine millennium; it addresses a wide range of issues...

Edda

"But the king's heart swells, bulging with courage in battle, where heroes sink down…" Over a period of twenty years Snorri Sturluson, scholar, courtier and poet, compiled the prose Edda as a textbook for young poets who wished to praise kings. His work surveys the content, style and metres of t...

The Other Life

Each person lives but a single life—yet this is not wholly true. While our lives progress as a result of the choices we make—this career, that husband, this town, that house—we are left imagining a life we might have lived. If we are defined by our choices, in what ways are we limited by them? Wh...

"So There It Is"

In interpreting contemporary Asian American poetry, it is important to understand the cultural hybridity of Asian America identity, located at the interstices of the fixed identifications ‘American’, ‘Asian American’, and ‘Asian’. This rootedness in more than one culture exposes the inapplicabili...

The Heart of God

"Tagore's life reminds me to take a step back. The time he allowed himself to learn and dream was a commitment of years and decades."—Rupi KaurRabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is thought of as the most important poet of modern-day India. This literary giant's writings have inspired millions of rea...

Roaming through Seductive Gardens

In the field of Nusantaran literary studies, systematic interpretations of individual literary works are still a relatively rare phenomenon. This book shows how such interpretations can be fruitfully produced for traditional Malay literature.Taking his cue from ideas in modern literary theory, an...

Sappho's Lyre

Sappho sang her poetry to the accompaniment of the lyre on the Greek island of Lesbos over 2500 years ago. Throughout the Greek world, her contemporaries composed lyric poetry full of passion, and in the centuries that followed the golden age of archaic lyric, new forms of poetry emerged. In this...

Live Poetry

Given the increasing popularity of literary festivals, open mics, and poetry slams, one could justifiably claim that the English-speaking world is currently experiencing a ‘Live Poetry’ boom. Yet, despite this raised awareness for the aesthetic and social potential of performed poetry, academia h...

The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. Jeffers consciously set himself apart from the poetry of h...

Carmina Archilochi

Carmina Archilochi, translated by Guy Davenport, is a bold and innovative collection that brings the fragments of the ancient Greek poet Archilochos into a modern idiom. Known for his biting invective and vivid imagery, Archilochos' surviving works exist only in fragments, often preserved in gram...

The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. Jeffers consciously set himself apart from the poetry of h...

WAKING BODIES

Yes, it’s safe to go back to poetry. In fact, it’s highly recommended, thanks to Rex Wilder and his engaging first book of poems. Waking Bodies has already been praised by luminaries as diverse as the metrical Richard Wilbur and the asymmetrical Billy Collins for its qualities of pure enjoyment. ...

Speakin O' Christmas and Other Christmas Poems

When he died at just thirty-three years of age, Paul Laurence Dunbar had achieved more than any African American poet before him. Speakin’ O’ Christmas and Other Christmas Poems is a posthumously published collection of his most festive-holiday themed verses, including, “Chrismus is A-Comin’,” “...

Dante in China

In John Barr's poems, the ancient masters encounter the modern world. Dante on a beach in China beholds the Inferno: “Flaring well gas night and day, / towers rise as if to say, / Pollution can be beautiful.” Bach’s final fugue informs all of nature. Villon is admonished by an aging courtesan. Ar...

I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson's Boyfriend

Ron Koertge is a poet who wants to bring his readers nothing but pleasure.

Clouds and Sunshine

Clouds and Sunshine (1920) is a collection of poems by Sarah Lee Brown Fleming. Published during the Harlem Renaissance, Clouds and Sunshine is a powerful work of poetry exploring themes of faith, racial identity, loss, and love in twentieth century America. Recognized as a leading advocate for t...

Olympusville

A new illustrated collection of humorous poetry from YA and poetry master Ron Koertge.

Rorschach Art Too

Stephen Gibson’s poems are the work of a serious, intent, often appalled tourist. The word might look like a putdown, but his subject is the glamour and horror of history, and when it comes to the past, attentive tourism is the best that any of us can hope for. This tourist’s gaze if focused and ...

New and Selected Poems

This edition brings together selected poems from all six previous editions of Frederick Feirstein's poetry published between 1974 and 1997. Feirstein is one of the founders of Expansive Poetry which reaches out to audiences beyond the academy and incorporates free verse, formal, and narrative tec...

The Long Conversation

The Long Conversation combines David Dooley’s books The Volcano Inside and The Revenge by Love to create an extended dialogue between past and present, between stories of everyday life and accounts of historical figures, between the demands and delights of art and those of life, culminating in an...

The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. Jeffers consciously set himself apart from the poetry of h...

Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point concerns memory, cognition, history, and morality, as experienced through the process of aging and as seen largely through a seriocomic lens. The range is wide, from arrestingly dark to downright hilarious—sometimes both at once—and all stages in-between. The poet Jim Daniels has ...

America and Other Poems

America and Other Poems (1853) is a book of poems by J.M. Whitfield. Published while the poet was working as a barber in Buffalo, New York, America and Other Poems captures his sense of poetic form while expressing his belief in the abolition of slavery. In these odes, hymns, and prayers, Whitfie...

Patter

For a couple struggling with infertility, conception is a war against their bodies. Blood and death attend. But when the war is won, and life stares, hungry, in the parents’ faces, where does that violence, anxiety, and shame go? The poems in Patter re-imagine miscarriages as minstrel shows, magi...

North of Boston

North of Boston (1914) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Following the success of Frost’s debut, A Boy’s Will (1913), North of Boston was published in London to enthusiastic reviews from both Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. His success abroad quickly translated to critical acclai...

Meditations of Walt Whitman

This pocket-size book pairs 60 short selections from Whitman’s poems with a relevant quote from a historical or contemporary writer and thinker.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905) is a collection of poems by African American author Paul Laurence Dunbar. Published while Dunbar was suffering from tuberculosis, alcoholism, and depression, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow builds on his reputation as an artist with a powerful vision of faith an...

Spring and All

Spring and All (1923) is a book of poems by William Carlos Williams. Predominately known as a poet, Williams frequently pushed the limits of prose style throughout his works, often comprised of a seamless blend of both forms of writing. In Spring and All, the closest thing to a manifesto he wrote...

Magnolia Leaves

Magnolia Leaves (1897) is a collection of poems by Mary Weston Fordham. Published toward the end of her life, Fordham’s only collection appeared in print with an introduction by Booker T. Washington, who saw in its author an undeniable gift which could prove “[t]he Negro’s right to be considered ...

Leaves of Grass

From one of the most celebrated American poets, Walt Whitman, comes a profound and uniquely written anthology of poems. Leaves of Grass is a rousing collection of poems inspired largely by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s plea for the arrival of a great new American Poet. Originally published in 1855, Whit...

Mountain Interval

Mountain Interval (1916) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Having gained success with his first two collections, both published in London, Frost returned home to New Hampshire and completed his third volume, Mountain Interval. The book opens with “The Road Not Taken,” and th...

how to get over

The reader journeys through these poems, circa 1787 to 2013, and emerges realizing that everything is connected—the ways we live, lie, love, and die—the ways we all get over.

The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar is a comprehensive selection of the iconic writer’s beloved poetry that features his unique rhythm and famous dialect. His work is a beautiful and critical examination of the human spirit. Paul Laurence Dunbar produced an impressive volume of work duri...

Laughing Cult

Inspired by the spirit and approach of Bertolt Brecht's Manual of Piety, the poems of Laughing Cult often employ the structures of ballads, folksongs, and other traditional forms to create miniature sketches marked by romantic ambiguity, occultism, science fiction, and quirky angst. As cool in t...

Render

A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass

A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912) is a poetry collection by Amy Lowell. Published at the beginning of her career as an influential imagist devoted to classical poetic themes and forms, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass is an agile and promising work from a pioneering poet of the early twentieth ce...

Pictures of the Floating World

Published seven years after her debut collection A Dome of Many-Coloured Glasses, Pictures of the Floating World (1919), is another dazzling volume of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Amy Lowell. Divided into two sections; Pictures of the Floating World finds inspiration from both Ja...