Poetry From The Deep

Several poems that create a combustion of word combinations.

With something of a poetry renaissance currently under way worldwide, there is now, more than ever, a need for a solidly-based methodology for interpreting poems: something more empirical than traditional ‘lit-crit’ approaches, and something more linguistically-informed than the version of ‘postmodernism’ rampant in certain Anglophone universities. The latter approach, which tends to allow the individual reader to do what he/she likes with a poetic text, is inadequate to interpret modernist poetry, whose English-language precursors may be found in the late Romantics; its pioneers were already writing (in France) as early as 1840. What is so different about the modernists? Most importantly, their works are monumental, in that they are strongly resistant to deconstruction. Contributing to this resistance is the fact that they are built around two deep-level propositions, each of which generates a set of indirectly-signifying images, sharing the same internal structure, but having a different vocabulary. Thus, they do not signify according to linear narrative, but according to these propositions—and the relation between them—which may be reconstructed by a careful comparison of images on the textual surface. Every text—as subject-sign—refers to an intertextual object-sign, which is usually another poem, but may also be a film or other form of art. Mediating between these two signs is their reader-constructed interpretant, which completes the semiotic triad. As this book shows, the novelty of this sign is thrown into relief by the contrast it makes with a lexical counterpart from the reader’s experience, which differs from the interpretant in structure. The book’s inclusion of French and Japanese, as well as English poems, shows that deep-level signifying mechanisms may well be universal, with considerable research and pedagogical implications.

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize * Poet Laureate of the United States * * A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * * A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself To lift you past the rungs of your crib. What Would your life say if it could talk? —from "No Fly Zone" With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation.

Book Description: This poetry book speaks of self-doubt, anxiety, self-worth, and self-love. Self love comes from within, but so many factors can affect it throughout different stages in life. The poems inside, long and short, talks about one young woman's journey of self love and how she still struggles with it even when she's at her best.

Every person reacts to his or her emotions. Some reveal their emotions openly, but others commit these sentiments to a place within. Poet Jay Reynolds calls this place “the deep.” Emotions are sent there to be locked up, with no hope of ever being seen or felt again. It is now time to descend the staircase into the deep where we rediscover hopes and heartaches and give them life. Poems from the Deep is the result of Reynolds making his own descent into the place of forgotten feeling. For him, words rose from the deep about relationships, seasons of life, and nature as he awakened from an emotional sleep. He touches upon this life-altering discovery in “Songs of the Deep:” Songs of the deep rise in my sleep When the night has a hold on me In words of rhyme arranged so neat Their cadence sets a melodic beat Through spirit and soul, they resound Whether a soaking timbre or cascading sound To swell and fade all thru the night in rolling shimmering waves To bring me peace in which to sleep or turbulence about me surround. Poems take the reader on a journey within, walking through depths of feeling to summon renewal. Reynolds invokes the senses in a subtle way that is both impactful and refreshing. May you come and take a walk in this place of remembered feeling, intense healing, and the newness of life lived with eyes—and heart—wide open.

“His best work yet . . . astute, contemplative, and deeply moving.” —Washington Post Mark Doty’s poetry has long been celebrated for its risk and candor, an ability to find transcendent beauty even in the mundane and grievous, an unflinching eye that—as Philip Levine says—“looks away from nothing.” In the poems of Deep Lane the stakes are higher: there is more to lose than ever before, and there is more for us to gain. “Pure appetite,” he writes ironically early in the collection, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” And the following poem answers: Down there the little star-nosed engine of desire at work all night, secretive: in the morning a new line running across the wet grass, near the surface, like a vein. Don’t you wish the road of excess led to the palace of wisdom, wouldn’t that be nice? Deep Lane is a book of descents: into the earth beneath the garden, into the dark substrata of a life. But these poems seek repair, finally, through the possibilities that sustain the speaker aboveground: gardens and animals, the pleasure of seeing, the world tuned by the word. Time and again, an image of immolation and sacrifice is undercut by the fierce fortitude of nature: nature that is not just a solace but a potent antidote and cure. Ranging from agony to rapture, from great depths to hard-won heights, these are poems of grace and nobility.

SOUND THE DEEP WATERS is a beautiful anthology of poetry and art by women from the Victorian Age. Divided into four sections: Love's Bitter Sweets, Moments of Delight, Dreams and Realities, and Last Songs, this gift-sized book contains works by poets such as Christina Rossetti, Emily Jane Bronte, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and is illustrated with Pre-Raphaelite images. Pamela Norris has skillfully selected paintings and poems that put the reader into the heart of the Victorian world, and the result is a lovely selection that can serve as an introduction to Romantic poetry, or as a keepsake for readers who already appreciate the poetry of the era.