The Fire of Joy: Roughly 80 Poems to Get by Heart and Say Aloud by Clive James (Editor)

$35.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Essentially, this is Clive James' desert island poems: a selection of his favourite verse and a personal commentary on each.The Fire of Joy was the final book Clive James completed before his death in 2019. It takes its title from the French expression Feu de Joie, which refers to a military celebration when all the riflemen of a regiment fire one shot after another in a wave of continuous sound: it is a reminder that the regiment’s collective power relies on the individual, and vice versa.In this book, James has chosen a succession of English poems, exploding in sequence from Chaucer to the present day; they tell the story of someone writing something wonderful, and someone else coming along, reading it, and feeling impelled to write something even more wonderful. After a lifetime, these are the poems James found so good that he remembered them despite himself. In offering them to you, the main purpose of this book is to provide ammunition that will satisfy your urge to discover, learn and declaim verse.As well as his selection of poems, James offers a commentary on each: whether this is a biographical, historical or critical introduction to the poem, or a more personal anecdote about the role a particular poem has played in James’s life, these mini essays provide the joy of James’s enthusiasm and the benefit of his knowledge. Full of the flashing fires of poems you will not be able to forget, this book will ignite your passion and leave you with a contagious crackle rattling in your ears. ...Show more

A Little History of Poetry by John Carey

$30.95 AUD

Category: Poetry | Series: Little Histories Ser.

A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered an d valued. It does not always work--over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem "great" in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world's poems--and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing. ...Show more

Home Body by Rupi Kaur

$25.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

rupi kaur constantly embraces growth, and inhome body , she walks readers through a reflective andintimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of ofis a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself -reminding readers to fill up on love , acceptance, community,family, and embrace change. illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark,rest here. i dive into the well of my bodyand end up in another worldeverything i needalready exists in methere’s no needto look anywhere else else -home ...Show more

Beowulf - A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

$28.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

"The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualizes the tale." - Barbara VanDenburgh, USA TodayNearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf —and fifty years after t he translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world— there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history—Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation. ...Show more

Rainforest by Eileen Chong

$28.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Mind of poetry, breath of calligraphy, sweep of painting.

Apparently by Joanne Burns

$24.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

The poems collected in apparently appear like visions, intensely experienced but barely real. Where does a poem come from? Over four sections this question is considered. The first section gathers poems spring-boarding from the clues and solutions to crossword puzzles; the second recounts unsettling dre ams in the form of prose poems or microfictions; 'dial', the longest section, acknowledges the bewildering sense of daily time and the dizzying spectacle of social and worldly matters contained within. Finally, from a more restful or relaxed vantage, 'the random couch' presents a number of drifting poems, written while the poet was lounging on the sofa. Joanne Burns is Australia's pre-eminent satirical poet, and her poems are remarkable for their verve and humour and word-play, and the way in which their linguistic resonances suddenly confound your expectations.Her most recent poetry collections published by Giramondo are amphoraand brush, which won the 2016 NSW Premier's Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. Her work has been taught in high schools, and produced for radio, television, performance and theatre ...Show more

All the Sonnets of Shakespeare (HB) by William Shakespeare; Paul Edmondson (Editor); Stanley Wells (Editor)

$27.95 AUD

Category: Poetry

How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least thirty years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epi logues, and as part of their poetic texture. This ground-breaking book assembles all of Shakespeare's sonnets in their probable order of composition. An inspiring introduction debunks long-established biographical myths about Shakespeare's sonnets and proposes new insights about how and why he wrote them. Explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases of every poem and dramatic extract illuminate the meaning of these sometimes challenging but always deeply rewarding witnesses to Shakespeare's inner life and professional expertise. Beautifully printed and elegantly presented, this volume will be treasured by students, scholars, and every Shakespeare enthusiast. ...Show more

An Open Book by David Malouf

$29.95 AUD

Category: Poetry

This is only David Malouf's third new poetry volume in nearly 40 years, so it is a significant publishing event. As one of Australia's greatest living poets, Malouf continues to meditate and reflect on themes of mortality and memory. The poems in An Open Bookare attentive and evocative, vital and beauti ful, revisiting and reimagining some of the key themes that have resonated with readers over his impressive career. Like the 'small comfort of light . . . as night comes on', Malouf's new poems hold close the precious and tender. Only a few of these poems have ever been published, so most of the collection will be completely new to readers everywhere. An Open Bookwill be the literary gift of the Christmas and summer of 2018. ...Show more

Painting Red Orchids by Eileen Chong

$30.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Green Shadows and Other Poems by Gerald Murnane

$24.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Gerald Murnane turns to poetry at the end of his literary career, writing frank, disarming poems that traverse the rich span of his life. I esteem / above all poems or passages of prose / those that put a lump in my throat. - Gerald Murnane, 'The Darkling Thrush' Gerald Murnane, now in his eightieth yea r, began his writing career as a poet. After many years as a writer of fiction, he only returned to poetry a few years ago when he moved to Goroke, in the Western Districts of Victoria, after the death of his wife. The forty-five poems collected here are in a strikingly different mode to his fiction - without framing or digressions, and with very few images, they speak openly to the reader of the author's memories, beliefs and experiences. They are for this reason an important addition to his internationally recognised body of fiction, most recently Border Districts and Collected Short Fiction, published by Giramondo. The poems include tributes to his mother and father and to his family, and to places that have played a formative role in his life, like Gippsland, Bendigo, Warrnambool, the Western Districts, and of course Goroke. Especially moving are his poems dedicated to authors who have influenced him - Lesbia Harford and Thomas Hardy, William Carlos Williams, Henry Handel Richardson, Marcel Proust, and with particular force, the eighteenth-century poet John Clare, who gives the collection its title, revered 'not only for his writings / but for his losing his reason when / he was forced from the district he had wanted as his for life.' Praise for Gerald Murnane: 'A strong case could be made for Murnane...as the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of.' - New York Times 'No living Australian writer, not even Les Murray, has higher claims to permanence or a richer sense of distinction.' - Sydney Morning Herald ...Show more

Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings

$27.95 AUD

Category: Poetry

At the time of his death in 1962 E.E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited Bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentie th-century revolution in literary expression. He is recognized on the one hand as the author of some of the most beautiful lyric poems written in the English language, and on the other as one of the most inventive American poets of his time. This is the first selection from the poems of E.E. Cummings to be published since 1959, three years before his death. The one hundred and fifty-six poems selected by Richard S. Kennedy, Cummings's biographer (Dreams in the Mirror), are arranged in twelve sections, with introductions by Kennedy for each section. Also included are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published. The selection includes most of the favorites plus many fresh and surprising examples of Cummings's several poetic styles. The corrected texts established by George J. Firmage have been used throughout. ...Show more

The Flame (PB) by Leonard Cohen; Adam Cohen (Introduction by)

$30.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world. Featuring poems, excerpts from his private notebooks, lyrics, and hand-drawn self-portraits, The Flame offers an intim ate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist.A reckoning with a life lived deeply and passionately, with wit and panache, this collection is a valedictory work. ...Show more