Poetry

The first volume contains work by Rafael Alberti (Spain) Ingeborg Bachmann (Austria) Rubèn Dario (Nicaragua) Günter Eich (Germany) Gunnar Ekelöf (Sweden) J.V. Foix (Spain) Angel González (Spain) Jorge Guillén (Spain) Hagiwara Sakutarõ (Japan) Hayashi Fumiko (Japan) Figyes Karinthy (Hungary) Artur Lundkvist (Sweden) Jackson Mac Low (USA) Osip Mandelshtam (Russia) João Cabral de Melo Neto (Brazil) Henri Michaux (Belgium) O.V. de Milosz (Lithuania/France) Ágnes Nemes Nagy (Hungary) Amelia Rosselli (Italy) Rocco Scotellaro (Italy) Takahashi Mutsuo (Japan).

    Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this passionate and authoritative new study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of nineteenth-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the eve of his two-hundredth birthday, still speaks to our time. He indicates how we as modern readers might "realize"— that is, not only grasp cognitively, but feel, experience—the promethean metaphors central to the poet's intensely "sculpted" life. The Pushkin who emerges from Bethea's portrait is one who, long unknown to English-language readers, closely resembles the original both psychologically and artistically.     Bethea begins by addressing the influential thinkers Freud, Bloom, Jakobson, and Lotman to show that their premises do not, by themselves, adequately account for Pushkin's psychology of creation or his version of the "life of the poet." He then proposes his own versatile model of reading, and goes on to sketches the tangled connections between Pushkin and his great compatriot, the eighteenth-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin. Pushkin simultaneously advanced toward and retreated from the shadow of his predecessor as he created notions of poet-in-history and inspiration new for his time and absolutely determinative for the tradition thereafter.

Charles Baudelaire is often regarded as the founder of modernist poetry. Written with clarity and verve, Baudelaire's World provides English-language readers with the biographical, historical, and cultural contexts that will lead to a fuller understanding and enjoyment of the great French poet's work.Rosemary Lloyd considers all of Baudelaire's writing, including his criticism, theory, and letters, as well as poetry. In doing so, she sets the poems themselves in a richer context, in a landscape of real places populated with actual people. She shows how Baudelaire's poetry was marked by the influence of the writers and artists who preceded him or were his contemporaries. Lloyd builds an image of Baudelaire's world around major themes of his writing--childhood, women, reading, the city, dreams, art, nature, death. Throughout, she finds that his words and themes echo the historical and physical realities of life in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. Lloyd also explores the possibilities and limitations of translation. As an integral part of her treatment of the life, poetry, and letters of her subject, she also reflects on published translations of Baudelaire's work and offers some of her own translations.

A biography of the legendary poet and dramatist and Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book of the Year, 2003   Lorca's theater, like that of Strindberg and Tennessee Williams, voices his personal dilemmas, not least his homosexuality. This study of all his plays examines the way in which the dramatist's life was transformed into high art through influences as varied as Surrealism and Greek tragedy. In an attempt to cover as many aspects of Lorca's theater as possible as well as the time in which he lived, Gwynne Edwards deals not only with the plays themselves but includes material on the social and political character of the 1920s and 1930s, on the cultural background, on Lorca's friendships with Dali and Bunuel in particular, and on the performances of the the plays in his lifetime and afterwards. Lorca is by far the best-known and most popular Spanish dramatist in the UK, the U.S., and other English-speaking countries, not to mention Europe. Anyone who wants to know more about Lorca will find it in this volume--not only students in academic institutions and drama schools, actors, or theater directors; this is a long overdue biography for the general reader.

Analyzes Hesse's major novels, comments on many of his short stories, and considers his critical and autobiographical writings.

Columbia Essays on Modern Writers

This book offers an analysis of Paz's political thought, arguing that it is rooted in two separate and often antagonistic traditions, Liberalism and Romanticism. Grenier shows that Paz's political thought is best approached not so much by looking at the specific positions Paz took in the issues of his day, but rather by uncovering the core values at the heart of Paz's political philosophy. From Art to Politics gives not only a better understanding of Paz's thought, but also a discussion of the political culture and democratization of Mexico. The book takes a novel look at issues such as the relations between art and politics, the role of intellectuals, and the penchant of academics for "machination" theories in the area of art and culture. The result is an account of Paz's work that is both more focused and more ambitious than those offered in previous books on Paz's politics.

Here is a wonderfully rich introduction to the work of the great mystical poet, featuring the leading literary translations of his verse. Translators include Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, Andrew Harvey, Kabir and Camille Helminski, Daniel Liebert, and Peter Lamborn Wilson. The Rumi Collection also includes a biography of Rumi by Andrew Harvey, as well as an introductory essay by Kabir Helminski on the challenges of translating Rumi into English.