Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer and radio host. He has interviewed eight of the last nine American presidents and lectures widely about the presidency and public affairs.
During one of my interviews, Carter told me that he had trouble expressing his emotions outside of his poetry. While Carter is not an outstanding poet, he succeeds here in offering glimpses of his inner life and fraught race relations in the American South. And he explores his relationship with his father, wife, son and others.
The first collection of poetry by former President Jimmy Carter, who shares here his private memories about his childhood, his family and political life, with illustrations by his granddaughter. Always a Reckoning sets a precedent since no other president has published a book of poetry. Gift packaged with ribbon marker. A portion of the proceeds from sales will be donated to charity.
When I was small, a goblin lived in my closet. I was sure of it. At night, I huddled under my blanket, listening to the unexplainable noises coming from my closet. And yet, I also have felt like that monster hiding in the closet—afraid to enter the wide world, afraid of who I might meet and what they might think of me. I have felt different. Misunderstood. This list of monstrous middle-grade books shows how our story monsters are more than metaphors. They are a way to understand ourselves, our big emotions, our daydreams, and our nightmares. I guarantee these books will delight and empower younger and older readers.
Visit Monsterville to discover fun poems for middle-grade readers paired with wondrous illustrations of the monsters that live there.
From a monster house that dances to a hunger monster that eats Dad’s apple crumble, this book feels like an invitation to frolic and feel a range of emotions from gratitude to sadness. I dream in monsters. Do you?
Welcome to Monsterville, where the residents are anything but ordinary. The monsters here are "friendly! thoughtful! shy and scary," much like their human neighbors. Readers will meet a monster house who plays hopscotch and makes the sidewalks quake, laugh at a bubblegum-headed monster's epic tantrum, and cry with a monster called Sadness.
This quirky collection of illustrated poems is a celebration of friendship, emotional intelligence, and creative play as a form of healing.
I’m probably too dishonest to write a real non-fiction book, but the sort of non-fiction book that has some wiggle room for me to “improve” on reality when I think it needs tightening up, or a little more schmaltz—that’s the strange twilight area the books I write live in, and all irresponsible history books dwell in this neighborhood. Remember, kids, as long as you make it clear when you’re lying, it still counts as non-fiction!
Long before people had any tolerance for such nonsense—meaning back in 1822—an anonymous genius published an version of the life of Lord Nelson unlike any other. I mean specifically that this book, Albion, is 234 pages long and contains approximately forty-five impressionistic run-on sentences.
In 1922 such an account of a recent war—compare with David Jones’s strange, difficult WWI prose-poem "In Parenthesis," for example—would be merely audacious, but in 1822, it was completely baffling; which is too bad, because for two hundred years the text has lingered in obscurity. (I have reason to believe I’m the only living human to have read it in its entirety.)
But a pointillist biography of Nelson—as narrated by the great man himself to the angel that bears his soul to heaven after his death at Trafalgar—is exactly what the world has been missing!
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
I’ve worked on the frontlines of the hospital, clinic, and delivery rooms for the last 25 years and in global settings after traumatic disasters…As a physician activist, Justice is my act of service. And yet, the moment I found out my young son had a fatal illness, fighting for Justice felt elusive. Until I started fighting for myself. Until I realized that if I walked back toward my unfathomable pain, I could find something revolutionary... Joy. Now, this work of finding Joy has become my most potent medicine for my patients and myself. It is my mission to make sure everyone knows Joy is accessible. No matter what.
I love this book of poetry because it is so easy to pick up and read one poem like a meditation.
Each one invites the reader to explore Joy in their surroundings and inner world as something that is so accessible to them. I use it almost as a mirror to reflect back to myself my most powerful and Joyful capacity when I have forgotten it. It’s a perfect book for anyone’s bedside or altar.
A celebration of hope. An encounter with grace. A restoration of the heart. A healing of wounds. An anthem of freedom. This illustrated collection of poetry and prose invites you to stumble into the sunlight and delight in the wild and boundless grace you've been given.
Popular Instagram poet and bestselling author Morgan Harper Nichols gives you the ultimate love letter to your mind, heart, soul, and body, reminding you:
There is a purpose in every season
No matter how you want to race through this day or run away from this place, you are invited to live fully-right here,…
So many of the books that spoke to both me and other lesbian and feminist activists in the 1970s–the books that helped us make sense of our lives and of the world–aren’t read much anymore. Times change. Interests change. So that’s natural enough. But damn, I don’t want them to be lost. I’d like to call us back to the passion and the ambition of those ground-breaking times. I want LGBTQ+ writers to work as if our words could change the world, because we never know in advance which ones will.
I knew Jim, so I’m biased, but he was a fine poet–one of the real ones, as another poet said of him.
He isn’t as well known as he should be. He writes simply, honestly, and beautifully. Some of his poems make me want to weep, no matter how many times I read them.
Instead of telling you about the book, I’ll get out of the way and quote from one poem:
“Sometimes I’m their first. / Sweet, sweet men. / I light candles, burn the best incense. / Make them think it’s some kind of temple / and it rather is. // Like this guy who hauled parts for a living, / whatever the hell that means. / He was like caught light through glass, / and so the candles and the incense. / What would you do with a new colt? // He touched my body the way…
The powerful and influential last poems of an unsung master, now again available, with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Mark Doty
James L. White's The Salt Ecstasies―originally published in 1982, shortly after White's untimely death―has earned a reputation for its artful and explicit expression of love and desire. In this new edition, with an introduction by Mark Doty and previously unpublished works by White, his invaluable poetry is again available―clear, passionate, and hard-earned.
The Salt Ecstasies is a new book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, edited by Doty, dedicated to bringing essential books of contemporary American…
I spent my career teaching Classics, mostly at Oxford University, where I was a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Professor of the Classical Tradition. I have worked on the influence of the ancient world on British literature and culture, especially in the Victorian age, and when being a conventional classicist have written mostly about Latin literature and Roman culture. I have also written short books on Jane Austen and Westminster Abbey.
The supreme classic of western literature and all that, but what fascinates me is the paradoxes. Here is a poem about success, victory, and empire, yet it is suffused with grief and melancholy. It is an imperfect poem written by a perfectionist; it wears a sovereign authority, but no epic poem seems more personal. None ends so abruptly, yet the ending seems entirely complete. Virgil is a ‘civilised’ poet, literary, self-conscious, and controlled, but he is also intuitive and instinctive: he finds dark and wonderful places, and who can match his sense of mystery, his power to evoke the indescribable? Dryden’s translation is an English classic, or if you prefer a modern version, I recommend Sarah Ruden.
"The translation is alive in every part. . . . This is the first translation since Dryden's that can be read as a great English poem in itself."-Garry Wills, New York Review of Books
This extraordinary new translation of Vergil's Aeneid stands alone among modern translations for its accuracy and poetic appeal. Sarah Ruden, a lyric poet in her own right, renders the classic poem in the same number of lines as the original work-a very rare feat that maintains technical fidelity to the original without diminishing its emotional power.
Ruden's translation follows Vergil's content faithfully, and the economy and…
I am, like so many other young people (yes, I still think of myself as young!), fascinated with dinosaurs and prehistory, and have been for as long as I can remember. What I really find interesting and engaging is the combination of the fact that they do not exist anymore and therefore are otherworldly with the fact that they are real and actually of this world!
What I really love about this book is the use of poetry and original and engaging illustrations to invite kids into reading. My favorite poem is “Barosaurus,” which does a particularly good job of inviting the young readers to engage their imagination with the book. While not my favorite Douglas Florian book, it is, like the other books from this very talented author and illustrator, well worth the read!
I am a Caribbean-American literary scholar who has spent many years studying, lecturing and writing about the interrelated fields of African Diaspora literature and culture, meaning the creative and theoretical productions of writers from Africa, the United States, Latin America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. I teach a variety of these subjects and enjoy the combinations of politics, creativity, and cultural expression that they contribute. These books provide you with a good cross-section of what is available in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora.
A historical/legal/poetic examination of the way that African bodies were treated and disposed of in the context of transatlantic slavery and how the author simultaneously advances a process of reclamation. NourbeSe provides a meditation in which silence and space advance our understanding of the gravity and horror of the subject which in no way compares with what the unnamed victims experienced. She recalls them and names them into existence.
In November, 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered that some 150 Africans be murdered by drowning so that the ship's owners could collect insurance monies. Relying entirely on the words of the legal decision Gregson v. Gilbert-the only extant public document related to the massacre of these African slaves-Zong! tells the story that cannot be told yet must be told. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant, Zong! excavates the legal text. Memory, history, and law collide and metamorphose into the poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition,…
I live in Scotland, and this book helped me understand its extraordinary history.
Many Scots seek freedom from England, and how the bond was forged is a very current question. Partial answers lie with James VI of Scotland inheriting the crown of England in 1603. Both countries had religious factions, and James commissioned a new Bible to unite the faiths.
This book tells how his translators struck sparks off each other as they crafted every verse. Made during a great flowering of English, the new Bible raised the language to sublime heights. But hard men pushed the peace project into regicide, republic, civil war, and dictatorship. The King James Bible, nevertheless, remains a glory of inspired authorship at a unique moment when God, indeed, seemed to have blessed its words.
A fascinating, lively account of the making of the King James Bible.
James VI of Scotland - now James I of England - came into his new kingdom in 1603. Trained almost from birth to manage rival political factions, he was determined not only to hold his throne, but to avoid the strife caused by religious groups that was bedevilling most European countries. He would hold his God-appointed position and unify his kingdom. Out of these circumstances, and involving the very people who were engaged in the bitterest controversies, a book of extraordinary grace and lasting literary appeal was created:…
So many of the books that spoke to both me and other lesbian and feminist activists in the 1970s–the books that helped us make sense of our lives and of the world–aren’t read much anymore. Times change. Interests change. So that’s natural enough. But damn, I don’t want them to be lost. I’d like to call us back to the passion and the ambition of those ground-breaking times. I want LGBTQ+ writers to work as if our words could change the world, because we never know in advance which ones will.
Beginning with O came out in the 70s, when a feminist or lesbian poet could fill an auditorium, and often did. Broumas's poems are physical, compelling, and intelligent, like this one, which reaches for a forgotten language from a time when women were whole and unafraid of their power.
Again, let me get out of the way and quote: “I work / in silver the tongue-like forms / that curve around a throat // an arm-pit, the upper / thigh, whose significance stirs in me / like a curviform alphabet / that defies // decoding, appears / to consist of vowels, beginning with O, the O- / mega, horseshoe, the cave of sound. / What tiny fragments // survive, mangled into our language. / I am a woman committed to / a politics / of transliteration, the methodology // of a mind / stunned at the suddenly / possible shifts…
Imaginative and uninhibited, Beginning with O is the 72nd volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets
This is a book of letting go, of wild avowals, of unabashed eroticism; at the same time it is a work of integral imagination, steeped in the light of Greek myth that is part of the poet's heritage and imbued with an intuitive sense of dramatic conflicts and resolutions, high style, and musical form.
