The Dream Of The Poem

Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time. Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some four hundred poems by fifty-four poets, and including a panoramic historical introduction, short biographies of each poet, and extensive notes. (The original Hebrew texts are available on the Princeton University Press Web site.) By far the most potent and comprehensive gathering of medieval Hebrew poems ever assembled in English, Cole's anthology builds on what poet and translator Richard Howard has described as "the finest labor of poetic translation that I have seen in many years" and "an entire revelation: a body of lyric and didactic verse so intense, so intelligent, and so vivid that it appears to identify a whole dimension of historical consciousness previously unavailable to us." The Dream of the Poem is, Howard says, "a crowning achievement."

The Dream Songs is widely seen as Berryman's masterpiece, an impressively vast and varied collection of poems that is in itself a single, sprawling, ever-shifting poem. The songs in this great work are thus offered in many different tones, moods, and guises, although their form, Berryman's idiosyncratic reworking of the sonnet, remains more or less constant. Combining all of Berryman's earlier 77 Dream Songs (which won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize) and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (which won the 1969 National Book Award), this one-volume edition contains no fewer than 385 entries in what the critic Denis Donoghue has called Berryman's "dream diary." The book also has an index of first lines, an index of titles, and a note by the author.

An example of Poe’s melancholic and morbid poetic pieces, "A Dream Within a Dream" is a poem that pitifully mourns the passing of time. The poet’s own life, teeming with depression, alcoholism, and misery, cannot but exemplify the subject matter and tone of the poem. The constant dilution of reality and fantasy is detrimental to the poetic speaker’s ability to hold reality in his hands. The quiet contemplation of the speaker is contrasted with thunderous passing of time that waits for no man. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, author, and literary critic. Most famous for his poetry, short stories, and tales of the supernatural, mysterious, and macabre, he is also regarded as the inventor of the detective genre and a contributor to the emergence of science fiction, dark romanticism, and weird fiction. His most famous works include "The Raven" (1945), "The Black Cat" (1943), and "The Gold-Bug" (1843).

The eagerly awaited, brilliant, and engaging new poems by Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me The parade for the slain police officer goes past the bakery and the smell of fresh bread makes the mourners salivate against their will. —from "Note to Reality" Are we corrupt or innocent, fragmented or whole? Are responsibility and freedom irreconcilable? Do we value memory or succumb to our forgetfulness? Application for Release from the Dream, Tony Hoagland's fifth collection of poems, pursues these questions with the hobnailed abandon of one who needs to know how a citizen of twenty-first-century America can stay human. With whiplash nerve and tender curiosity, Hoagland both surveys the damage and finds the wonder that makes living worthwhile. Mirthful, fearless, and precise, these poems are full of judgment and mercy.

This title contains Michael Jackson's personal writings and over 100 photographs, drawings, and paintings from his own collection. The book is a personal view of the world around us and the universe within each of us.

Abraham's Promise presents a selection of important writings by noted Jewish philosopher-theologian Michael Wyschogrod, who is widely admired for his singular contributions to Jewish- Christian relations. Including several pieces never published before, this reader aptly captures the broad scope of Wyschogrod's work on Judaism and the Jewish-Christian encounter, collecting seminal essays, articles, and reviews that address such topics as the God of Abraham and the God of philosophy, sin and atonement, Judaism and the land, the Six Day War, Paul on Jews and Gentiles, and the theology of Karl Barth. An introductory essay by editor R. Kendall Soulen sets Wyschogrod's career and writings in context.

In heart-wrenching detail, Louise Halfe recalls the damage done by the residential schools to her parents, her family, and herself in her new poetry collection.