Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us/>/>The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with "this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world" in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who "check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked" to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: "We name things/ to know where we are. " Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. "It's true things fall apart." Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up."/>/>Sample Text/>/>HYPER-VIGILANCE/>/>Hilarious,/>/>the way a crab's slender/>eye-stalks/>stand straight up/>/>from its scuttling/>carapace—/>/>the way vigilance/>takes many forms?/>/> */>/>That bird check-marks morning/>once more/>/>like someone who gets up/>to make sure/>/>the door is locked./>/> */>/>I sound/>like I know/>what I'm talking about./>/>I sound like a comedian.

Evocative photographs and essay illuminate early American gravestones. Gravestones are colonial America's earliest sculpture and they provide a unique physical link to the European people who settled here. Carved in Stone book is an elegant collection of over 80 fine duotone photographs, each a personal meditation on an old stone carving, and on New England's past, where these stones tell stories about death at sea, epidemics such as small pox, the loss of children, and a grim view of the afterlife. The essay is a graceful narrative that explores a long personal involvement with the stones and their placement in New England landscape, and attempts to trace the curious and imperfectly documented story of carvers. Brief quotes from early New England writers accompany the images, and captions provide basic information about each stone. These meditative portraits present an intimate view of figures from New England graveyards and will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Americana and fine art photography.

A Black poet performs a shamanic soul retrieval of the seven-hundred-year-old diasporic Black arts traditionContinuing her search for a neotropical mythos in this brilliant second collection, poet fahima ife articulates various scenes of subduction. Spoken in quiet recognition and grounded in desire, Septet for the Luminous Ones imagines a lush soundscape textured in oblique spiritual fusion of the Taíno and Yoruba. Or, what it sounded like coming together for the first time, and what it sounds like ever after, breathless, diaspora calling. Similar to the incidents in Maroon Choreography, what resounds in these poems is an ecstatic love song of the Caribbean Americas, of the main lands and islands, shaped and reshaped as breathwork, ritual, communion, and fantasy. In essence, the collection speaks to raise the vibrational frequencies of all beings on Earth through a pulse of Black English.[sample poem]preface to a twenty-volume spiritual ascentneoromanticismthe seven players, and our consortsi am like a radio, channel of my own

The definitive edition of the complete work of a master Caribbean poet The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire's celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Césaire's poetic ouvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poésie, Théâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet's early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire's aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire's poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies.

First critical biography of this visionary artist written by a dance scholar.Simone Forti, groundbreaking improvisor, has spent a lifetime weaving together the movement of her mind with the movement of her body to create a unique oeuvre situated at the intersection of dancing and art practices. Her seminal Dance Constructions from the 1960s crafted a new approach to dance composition and helped inspire the investigations of Judson Dance Theater. In the 1970s, Forti's explorations of animal movements expanded that legacy to launch improvisation as a valuable artform in its own right. From her early forays into vocal accompaniment to her News Animations, Forti has long integrated gesture and text into compelling performances that consistently stretched the boundaries of dance to layer abstract movement with story-telling and political commentary. Her "Land Portraits" series brought an immersive ecological experience to New York City stages in the 1980s, and she is a beloved teacher and mentor whose Body, Mind, World workshops have inspired dancers around the world. In this beautifully written book, author Ann Cooper Albright braids archival research, extensive interviews, and detailed movement analyses of Forti's performances to provide the first kinesthetically-informed and critically-nuanced history of Forti's multifaceted and extensive career.

Incantation and elegy shine through one another in this extraordinary poetic memoirWhen poet Danielle Vogel began writing meditations on the syntax of earthen and astral light, she had no idea that her mother's tragic death would eclipse the writing of that book, turning her attention to grief's syntax and quiet fields of cellular light in the form of memory. Written in elegant, crystalline prose poems, A Library of Light is a memoir that begins and ends in an incantatory space, one in which light speaks. At the book's center glows a more localized light: the voice of the poet as she reflects, with ceremonial patience, on the bioluminescence of the human body, language's relationship to lineage, her mother's journals written during years of estrangement from her daughter, and the healing potential of poetry. A mesmerizing elegy infused with studies of epigenetic theory and biophotonics, A Library of Light shows that to language is to take part in transmission, transmutation of energy, and sonic (re)patterning of biological light.[sample poem]When we are. When we are there, we lay togetherand cover ourselves with our voices. When we areten, we are also twenty-one. We speak of breathing,but this is a thing we cannot do. When we areseven, we are also eighteen. When we are eighteen,we begin our bodies. But we are unmappable,unhinged. A resynchronization of codes, thecrystalline frequencies of stars, seeds, vowels, lyingdormant within you. We are the oldest dialect. Asound the voice cannot make but makes.

The definitive guide to a major African American poet. This volume promises to be the definitive guide to Calvin C. Hernton's unparalleled poetic career, re-introducing readers to a major voice in American poetry. Hernton was a cofounder of the Umbra Poets Workshop; a participant in the Black Arts Movement, R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall, and the Antiuniversity of London; and a teacher at Oberlin College who counted amongst his friends bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Odetta. As a pioneer in the field of Black Studies, Hernton developed a theoretical and practical pedagogy with lasting impact on generations of students. He may be best known as an anti-sexist sociologist, following in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois, but Hernton viewed himself, above all, as a poet. This volume includes a generous selection of Hernton's previously published poems, from classics like the often anthologized "The Distant Drum" to the visionary epic The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong, reprinted in full for the first time since 1964, alongside uncollected and unpublished material from the Calvin C. Hernton papers at Ohio University, a new critical introduction, and detailed notes, chronology, and bibliography. [sample poem] The Distant Drum I am not a metaphor or symbol.This you hear is not the wind in the trees.Nor a cat being maimed in the street.I am being maimed in the streetIt is I who weep, laugh, feel pain or joy.Speak this because I exist.This is my voiceThese words are my words, my mouthSpeaks them, my hand writes.I am a poet.It is my fist you hear beatingAgainst your ear.

The first bilingual edition of this radically original work Aimé Césaire's masterpiece, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. This long poem was the beginning of Césaire's quest for négritude, and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. Commentary on Césaire's work has often focused on its Cold War and anticolonialist rhetoric—material that Césaire only added in 1956. The original 1939 version of the poem, given here in French, and in its first English translation, reveals a work that is both spiritual and cultural in structure, tone, and thrust. This Wesleyan edition includes the original illustrations by Wifredo Lam, and an introduction, notes, and chronology by A. James Arnold.

A chapbook from Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout on climate change.Notice is the product of a life-long interest in natural sciences by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout. The collection draws poems from her previous books calling our attention to how language frames and shapes our relationships to climate and kin. The title is a call to take heed of the signs coming to us daily. "Notice" can be read as a noun or a verb. As a noun it might be thought of as a public warning. The author has selected poems that respond in various ways to the environmental crisis which we all see developing and about which we don't seem to be able to take appropriate action. The poem "Preparedness," for instance, hazards a wild guess about the cause of this failure to act. Some of the poems here address the problem directly. In others the focus is broader or the approach more subtle. There are even a few poems in which the author allows for something like hope.

Stone Breaker is an in-depth, accessible biography of a true American polymath, James Gates Percival. A poet, linguist, and unstable savant, Percival was also a brilliant geologist who walked thousands of miles crisscrossing first Connecticut and then Wisconsin to lay the foundation for the work of generations of Earth scientists. Exploring the confluences of literature, art, and geology, Kathleen L. Housley reveals how one of most famous poets of the 1820's became a renowned geologist with his groundbreaking 1843 work Report on the Geology of the State of Connecticut. 35 color images include historic photographs and paintings of the Connecticut landscape."A wonderful, carefully researched biography of this deeply impressive, multidisciplinary intellectual."~John Hay, associate professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas"Housley's insightful and readable biography illuminates the potent combination of poetry and science that defined Percival's undeservedly neglected life and works, offering a new perspective on this critical moment when the true scale of the Earth's history was coming into focus."~Clare Stainthorp, author of Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet

An insider's eight-decade overview of South India's 20th century classical music culture. This book offers an account of Carnatic music culture drawing on the knowledge of T. Sankaran, a musician raised in an illustrious non-Brahmin devadasi family, and his long affiliation with cultural institutions including All India Radio (AIR) and the Tamil Isai Sangam (Tamil Music Academy). Sankaran examines the cultural and social matrix in which Carnatic music was cultivated and consumed in mid-twentieth century India, including the ways that musicians negotiated caste politics and the double standard for male and female musicians. The memoir provides insight into the way AIR worked as a modern, bureaucratic institution, and how the opening of government music colleges interacted with caste politics and the shifted womens' participation in public performance. The book is polyvocal, as Sankaran's writing is interwoven with passages from Daniel Neuman's book The Life of Music in North India, which inspired Sankaran's project, as well as transcripts from interviews with Sankaran by Matthew Allen. Includes rare archival photos.

Considers allegory as a catalyst of transformative thinkingAllegorical Moments is a set of essays dedicated to rethinking allegory and arguing for its significance as a creative and critical response to sociopolitical, environmental, and existential turmoil affecting the contemporary world. Traditionally, allegorical interpretation was intended to express an orthodoxy and support an ideology. Hejinian attempts to liberate allegory from its dogmatic usages. Presenting modern and contemporary materials ranging from the novel to poetry to painting and cinema to activist poetry of the Occupy movement, each essay in the book "begins again" with different materials and from different perspectives. Hejinian's generative scholarship looks back to experimental modernism and forward into a future for a vital, wayward poetry resistant to the crushing global effects of neoliberalism.

Indispensable volume of previously unavailable poetry by an American master Be Brave to Things shows legendary San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer at the top of his form, with his blistering intelligence, painful double-edged wit, and devastating will to truth everywhere on display. Much of the poetry here has never before been published, but the volume also includes much out-of-print or hard to find work, as well as Spicer's three major plays, which have never been collected. Here one finds major unfinished projects, early and alternate versions of well-known Spicer poems, shimmering stand-alone lyrics, and intricate extended "books" and serial poems. This new cache of Spicer material will be indispensable for any student of 20th century American poetry, proffering a trove of primary material for Spicer's growing readership to savor and enjoy. "When your body brushed against me. . ." When your body brushed against me I rememberedHow we used to catch butterflies in our handsDown in the garden.We were such patient childrenFollowing them from flower to flowerWaiting and hoping.With our cupped hands we used to catch themAnd they answered us with a soft tickleFor they never stopped flying.In bed I remembered them and cried forThe touch of their fast wings, the impatienceOf their bright colorsI am too old for such gamesBut even tonight, now your body has reminded me of butterfliesI lie here awake, pretending.

Ride along with choreographer Allison Orr and her civic collaborators as they reflect on their dances togetherIn 2001, Allison Orr made a dance with 13 City of Austin firefighters. Over the next 20 years, her unique practice of collaborating with city employees flowered into civic storytelling through movement at public pools, tableaus of power line workers shimmying up 40' poles in front of 5000 people, and intricate choreography of trash trucks on a misty tarmac. Part memoir, part guide, the artist reflects on her major collaborations and shares interviews with people she's made dances with over the past two decades. Power line workers, sanitation workers, and firefighters reflect on their memories of performing with Forklift and the lasting impact those dances made. Alongside larger conversations in the arts, Orr offers a look at how to create community-based art projects, how the creative process can bring people together to address civic issues, and the beauty of choreographing the day to day. An appendix and online companion include budget information, full cast and crew lists, participant survey results, and more.

Listening to the dissonances of nature and nationhood in modern Iceland. During the past three decades, Iceland has attained a strong presence in the world through its musical culture, with images of the nation being packaged and shipped out in melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. What 'Iceland' means for people, both at home and abroad, is conditioned by music and its ability to animate notions of nature and nationality. In six chapters that range from discussions of indie rock ballads to 'Nordic noir' television music, Dissonant Landscapes describes the capacity of musical expression to transform ideas about nature and nationality on the northern edges of Europe.

Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection reminds us that the elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a work of love In Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection, we find, in the poet's words, that "the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world." For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, "a holding open." In Gizzi's voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. One of our foremost practitioners of the lyric, Gizzi here extends his mastery of the form. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also - as it has been for centuries - a mode of love poetry as well. "This new poetry," Kamau Brathwaite has written about Gizzi, "taking such care of temperature - the time & details of the world - meaning the space(s) in which we live - defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. A way of writing about hope." [sample poem] Creely Song all that is lovely in words, even if gone to pieces all that is lovely gone, all of it for love and autobiography as if I were writing this hello, listen the plan is the body and all of it for love now in pieces all that is lovely echoes still in life & death still memory gardens open onto windows lovely, the charm that mirrors all that was, all that is, lovely in a song