LXII

I read the primrose and the sea

and remember nothing

I read Arcturus and the snow

and remember nothing

I read the green and white book of spring

and remember nothing

I read the hatred in a man’s eye

Lord, I remember nothing.

Scorn spat at me and spoke

I remember it not

The river was frozen round the ship

I remember it not

I found a secret message in a blade of grass

and it is forgotten

I called my lovers by their sweet names

they are all forgotten.

Where are my lovers now?

buried in me.

The blades of grass, the ships, the scorners?

here in me

The haters in the spring, snow and Arcturus?

here in me

The primrose and the sea?

here in me.

I know what humans know

no less no more

I know how the summer breaks

on Neptune’s shore

I know how winter freezes

the Milky Way

My heart’s home is in Limbo

and there I stay.

Praise Limbo, heart, and praise

forgetfulness

We know what the tiger knows

no more no less

We know what the primrose thinks

and think it too

We walk when the snail walks

across the dew.

I was a rash man in my time

but now I am still

I spoke with god’s voice once

now I am still

Evil made my right hand strong

which now is still

Wisdom gave me pride once,

but it is still.

Lie down poor heart at last

and have your rest

Remember to forget

and have your rest

Think of yourself as once you were

at your best

And then lie down alone

and have your rest.

These things are as time weaves them

on his loom

Forgot, forgetting, we survive not

mortal bloom

Let us give thanks, to space,

for a little room

Space is our face and time our death

two poles of doom

Come dance around the compass

pointing north

Before, face downward, frozen,

we go forth.

LXIII

Thus systole addressed diastole,—

The heart contracting, with its grief of burden,

To the lax heart, with grief of burden gone.

Thus star to dead leaf speaks; thus cliff to sea;

And thus the spider, on a summer’s day,

To the bright thistledown, trapped in the web.

No language leaps this chasm like a lightning:

Here is no message of assuagement, blown

From Ecuador to Greenland; here is only

A trumpet blast, that calls dead men to arms;

The granite’s pity for the cloud; the whisper

Of time to space. 

Poet, short story writer, critic and novelist, Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) has been called the most metaphysical, the most learned, and the most modern of poets. With writing that reflects an intense interest in psychological, philosophical, and scientific issues, Aiken remains a unique influence upon modern writers and critics today. In his lifetime, Aiken received many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1930 and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1954. He served as the Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress from 1950-1952.

Selected Poems contains Aiken's own choice of the best and most representative of his poems, spanning more than forty years of his work. Harold Bloom has contributed a new Foreword to reintroduce Aiken to a new generation of readers. The inclusion of several pivotal poems from previous editions broadens the scope of the work to represent Aiken's legacy.

FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes--and apparently he has not forgotten her.

Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too--from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep. Arriving at a derelict spot in the California desert where the feds are unearthing bodies, Bosch joins forces with Rachel. Now the two are at odds with the FBI...and squarely in the path of the Poet, who will lead them on a wicked ride out of the heat, through the narrows of evil, and into a darkness all his own...

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

"Exuding magic and unbridled creativity on every page, this is a book with the potential to heal more than just fish."—Publishers Weekly

"An enchantingly abstract invitation to ponder poetry."—Kirkus Reviews

"A great book for any age! At this very moment, it feels like one of the best books I've ever bought!"—A Year of Reading blog

Jean-Pierre Siméon is a poet, novelist and dramatist. He is a professor of modern languages and literature who has worked prodigiously in the field of poetry. He has published regularly since 1984 and has received the Antonin Artaud Prize (1984), the Guillaime Apollinaire Prize (1994)and the Max Jacob Prize (2006).

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

A single issue, back copy, of American Scholar.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies.

In 2006, The American Scholar began to publish fiction by such writers as Alice Munro, Ann Beattie, Steven Millhauser, Dennis McFarland, Louis Begley, and David Leavitt. Essays, articles, criticism, and poetry have been mainstays of the magazine for 75 years.

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech, The American Scholar, delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1837, the magazine aspires to Emerson's ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to the affairs of the world as well as to books, history, and science.

Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love. 

A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco. 

Reading and writing poetry as a class assignment can be a rewarding experience―especially when it’s approached in a spirit of fun. This book explains how poets use words imaginatively in rhymed and metered verse as well as free verse. Poems can be humorous or serious, long or very short, joyful or sad―and this instructive, yet fun-to-read book points the way toward composing and reading poems of all kinds. It’s filled with examples from Homer through today. All titles in Barron’s Painless Series are written especially for classroom use for middle-school students.

On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother's stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.

Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family's silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.

Catherine Chung was born in Evanston, Illinois. She grew up in New York, New Jersey and Michigan.  She graduated with a mathematics degree from the University of Chicago, and worked at the think tank The RAND Corporation before attending Cornell University to receive her MFA.

Chung's critically acclaimed debut novel, Forgotten Country, was published in 2012 by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Press. She has also published short stories and essays in The New York Times, The Rumpus, and Granta, and was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize in Poetry.

She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Jentel, and received support for her writing from The Camargo Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation. She was a Picador Guest Professor at The University of Leipzig, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Adelphi University. Catherine is the recipient of a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, a Granta New Voice, and a fiction editor at Guernica Magazine.

In his startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive first novel—first published in 1986 and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback—the author of Vox and The Fermata uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying one’s shoes, The Mezzanine at once defamiliarizes the familiar world and endows it with loopy and euphoric poetry. Nicholson Baker’s accounts of the ordinary become extraordinary through his sharp storytelling and his unconventional, conversational style. At first glance, The Mezzanine appears to be a book about nothing. In reality, it is a brilliant celebration of things, simultaneously demonstrating the value of reflection and the importance of everyday human human experiences.

This is poetry and prose straight from the biggest mouths and hearts in the independent music scene. These are their words. This is their revolution.

King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table are in the middle of a Christmas feast when a green-skinned knight offers them a simple but deadly challenge. A challenge the brave Sir Gawain quickly-and fatefully-accepts. Brilliantly translated by distiguished poet Burton Raffel, this is a lyrical, accessible version of one of the most beloved tales in Arthurian literature.

Burton Raffel has taught English, Classics, and Comparative Literature at universities in the United States, Israel, and Canada. His books include translations of Beowulf, Horace: Odes, Epodes, Epistles, Satires, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar, From the Vietnamese, Ten Centuries of Poetry, The Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich, Mandelstram (with Alla Burago), and Poems From the Old English and The Annotated Milton; several critical studies, Introduction to Poetry, How to Read a Poem, The Development of Modern Indonesian Poetry, and The Forked Tounge: A Study of the Translation Process; and Mia Poems, a volume of his own poetry. Mr. Raffel practiced law on Wall Street and taught in the Ford Foundation’s English Language Teacher Training Project in Indonesia.

An ant to the stars
or stars to the ant—which is
more irrelevant?

Weekend Jet Skiers—
rude to call them idiots,
yes, but facts are facts.

Clamor of seabirds
as the sun falls—I look up
and ten years have passed."
—from "Dawn Notebook"

Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incanta­tory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art—to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.

The bestselling guide to finding your voice, writing poetry, and getting published

Teach Yourself Writing Poetry is a user-friendly and comprehensive guide that will prove indispensable if you're seeking creative guidance, inspiration, and practical advice. Covering everything from mood, style, and tone to learning about poetry on the 'Net, this fully updated edition will help you find your voice. Containing straightforward advice on how to get published, the very latest on prizes, festivals, and performance poetry as well as plenty of useful examples and exercises to try out yourself, it is a thoroughly readable and engaging book.

Friendship is the one gift that grows more beautiful and cherished through the years. This collection of poetry celebrates and honors all the things that friends mean to each other.

This book is full of the memories true friends share: "The day you and I met will always be cherished..."

of the wishes they have for each other: "May happiness beyond measure and love without end grace every corner of your life forever and always..."

of the thoughts they want to express: "I wish I could discover new words to tell you how deeply thankful I am for your never-ending friendship..."

and of the promises they make for life: "I'll always be there, and I'll always care. I will always be your friend."

This is a book for true friends -- the people who remain in each other's heart no matter where life takes them.