Richard Hugo, whom Carolyn Kizer has called” one of the most passionate, energetic, and honest poets living,” here offers an extraordinary collection of new poems, each one a “letter” or a “dream.” Both letters and dreams are special manifestations of alone-ness; Hugo’s special senses of alone-ness, of places, and of other people are the forces behind his distinctively American and increasingly authoritative poetic voice. Each letter is written from a specific place that Hugo has made his own (a “triggering town,” as he has called it elsewhere) to a friend, a fellow poet, an old love. We read over the poet’s shoulder as the town triggers the imagination, the friendship is re-opened, the poet’s selfhood is explored and illuminated. The “dreams” turn up unexpectedly (as dreams do) among the letters; their haunting images give further depth to the poet’s exploration. Are we overhearing them? Who is the “you” that dreams?

Poetry. In a clear-cut voice "as simple as ink," Mathias Svalina's THE WINE-DARK SEA vocalizes the urge to write oneself alive. Through this lyric journal of taut poems, each titled The Wine-Dark Sea, Svalina breathes life into overlooked places: the driveway a car turns into at the end of a workday, how a tree holds the dirt, the edge of a page on which "I'd always assumed / I'd die alone." Every poem is a baffled drop, a pulse trying not to be dead, and beneath the spine of each sentence, Svalina hides, carrying us, seeking an exit. It is impossible not to be stained by THE WINE-DARK SEA.

This collection of inspiring poetry includes such favorites as I THOUGHT I SAW A RAINBOW, THE LIGHT SHINING 'ROUND THE WORLD and THE WAR NOBODY FOUGHT. Besides poems inspired by Barack Obama's victory, the collection recalls events of the past including THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE DAY THE TOWERS FELL and THE LAST DAY OF THE CENTURY. The collection includes rhyming poems and many free or blank verse poems and includes an historical perspective. Subjects such as television, advertising, greed, society in general and yes, love, are confronted in an entertaining manner. A conscious effort was also made to distort and, ultimately, obliterate form in some of the poems. In experimenting with the form and wordplay involved, the essentials of poetry are explored. Meant to be entertaining reading, many of these poems will stimulate you and affect your life in a positive manner. THE DAY THE DREAM CAME TRUE and OTHER POEMS is an homage to hope for anyone seeking peace in the world.

Illus. in black-and-white. This classic collection of poetry is available in a handsome new gift edition that includes seven additional poems written after The Dream Keeper was first published. In a larger format, featuring Brian Pinkney's scratchboard art on every spread, Hughes's inspirational message to young people is as relevant today as it was in 1932.

Poetry. "Clearly, these poems are the Chinese fortunes dandelions would dispense, that is, if you woke up too in cities like these that would give Continental Bards a run for their money, and then some, that is, if verse finally managed to gain the upper hand on prose--local banalities upended in an orgy of absurd lyrical excess."--Timothy Liu "'We are all just trying / to make it through yesterday,' writes Matt McBride in this painfully insightful exploration of our twenty-first-century brand of alienation. In poems that are stylish and skewering, with uncommon wit and unsettling resonance, McBride takes on technology, militarism, love, nostalgia, divorce, the ubiquity of advertising, the institution of the presidency, and the ever-expanding surveillance state. This is a deeply sad and strangely fun and totally shining book that has given me, among other things, the best slogan I've heard yet for the current moment: 'no flag is small enough.'"--Natalie Shapero

Basho (1644-94) is perhaps the best known Japanese poet in both Japan and the West, and this book establishes the ground for badly needed critical discussion of this critical figure by placing the works of Basho and his disciples in the context of broader social change.