Poetics Of Work

From the acclaimed author of Blue Self-Portrait comes a blistering new novel, written and set during the state of emergency declared in France in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. In the beautiful and traditionally conservative city of Lyon, police and protestors against new labour laws clash in the streets. Lefebvre's anonymous narrator is a poet existing on a diet of cannabis, bananas and books on oppression under the Third Reich. Drawn by the spectre of an overbearing father and spooked by the liveliness of the local far right, they are torn between the push to find a job and the pull to write. The result is this troubling account of how nationalism feeds off late capitalism; a semi-serious treatise in ten lessons, addressed to young poets, and survival guide for the wilfully idle.

Few have written more memorably about the work of poetry and the poetics of work than Juan Ramón Jiménez, winner of a Nobel Prize and discerning teacher of an entire generation of Spanish poets. In this series of aphorisms, Jiménez brings together the elements of perfect work, both in writing and in other realms. Among these elements--the wellsprings of any kind of creation--are instinct and inspiration, memory and forgetting, silence and noise, love and regret. A treasure for poets and writers, The Complete Perfectionist includes helpful commentary by noted translator Christopher Maurer and shows perfection as a process of "becoming" rather than an end product. In these insightful pages, a poet haunted by perfection reveals his methods of writing and revision, and measures the social and ethical dimensions of el trabajo gustoso, or pleasurable work. This revised and expanded edition includes many aphorisms recently published in Spanish and not previously included.

As Lyon is consumed by protests, a darkly comic exploration of the push to be employed and the pull to write.

Of all the writings on theory and aesthetics - ancient, medieval, or modern - the most important is indisputably Aristotle's "Poetics", the first philosophical treatise to propound a theory of literature. The author offers a fresh interpretation of the lost second book of Aristotle's "Poetics".

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, and the Nicomachean Ethics )also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience.

A career-spanning account of the artistry and politics of Bob Dylan’s songwriting Bob Dylan’s reception of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature has elevated him beyond the world of popular music, establishing him as a major modern artist. However, until now, no study of his career has focused on the details and nuances of the songs, showing how they work as artistic statements designed to create meaning and elicit emotion. Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (originally published as Bob Dylan's Poetics) is the first comprehensive book on both the poetics and politics of Dylan’s compositions. It studies Dylan, not as a pop hero, but as an artist, as a maker of songs. Focusing on the interplay of music and lyric, it traces Dylan’s innovative use of musical form, his complex manipulation of poetic diction, and his dialogues with other artists, from Woody Guthrie to Arthur Rimbaud. Moving from Dylan’s earliest experiments with the blues, through his mastery of rock and country, up to his densely allusive recent recordings, Timothy Hampton offers a detailed account of Dylan’s achievement. Locating Dylan in the long history of artistic modernism, the book studies the relationship between form, genre, and the political and social themes that crisscross Dylan’s work. Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work offers both a nuanced engagement with the work of a major artist and a meditation on the contribution of song at times of political and social change.

During a 90-minute flight, a woman looks back on an affair with a composer in a cerebral, feminist, Bernhardian debut.

Focusing on over two hundred plants, this guide assists the gardener in creating gardens of self-sustaining beauty.