Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In this, her thirteenth book of verse, the author of "The Dream of a Common Language" and "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" writes of war, oppression, the future, death, mystery, love and the magic of poetry.

"Adrienne Rich's poetry has long engaged critics in questions about the nature of poetic art, the character of poetic tradition, and the value of poetry as a political and cultural activity. At the same time, it has attracted many general readers, largely because it expresses the personal, social, and intellectual crises faced by feminists during the last thirty years." "In this study, Alice Templeton looks at the ways in which feminist thinking has influenced Rich's poetics while, simultaneously, her poetic practice has shaped her feminist conceptions. Templeton begins by exploring the tensions between epic, eulogistic, and lyric claims made in the poems collected in Diving into the Wreck (1973). She then examines the strategies Rich uses in subsequent collections to test and refine her feminist thinking. Templeton focuses, in particular, on the "dialogic moments" of cultural participation that Rich's poetry provides for the poet and the reader. These "moments," Templeton argues, can dispel myths of social determinism even as they implicate readers in an ethically charged communal bond." "By demonstrating the contributions that Rich has made both to feminist thinking and to our ways of reading poetic tradition, The Dream and the Dialogue treats Rich as a poet of ideas and places her work solidly in the context of contemporary literary theory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Spanning the time of colonial America through the present day, Poets for Young Adults examines the lives and works of seventy-five poets that are read and loved by teens. Readers will discover an eclectic mix of poets and their styles, from the modern songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Tupac Shakur, to the nineteen sixties icons Jack Kerouac and Sylvia Plath, to such traditional poets as Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake. Poets from all multicultural backgrounds are included, many of whom wrote about the immigration and/or protest experiences, from Colonial through contemporary times. Over half of the poets are women, and more than one third are women of color. Poets include: -Maya Angelou -Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua -Anne Bradstreet -Lewis Carroll -E.E. Cummings -Emily Dickinson -Bob Dylan -Ralph Waldo Emerson -Paul Fleischman -Robert Frost -Nikki Giovanni -Langston Hughes -Paul Janesczko -Myra Cohn Livingston -Ogden Nash -Naomi Shihab Nye -Joyce Carol Oates -Lydia Omolola Okutoro -Gary Soto -Phillis Wheatley -Ray Anthony Young Bear

Exploring the interrelatedness of the poetry of three American women writers

During and in the aftermath of the dark period of the Holocaust, writers across Europe and America sought to express their feelings and experiences through their writings. This book provides a comprehensive account of these writings through essays from expert scholars, covering a wide geographic, linguistic, thematic and generic range of materials. Such an overview is particularly appropriate at a time when the corpus of Holocaust literature has grown to immense proportions and when guidance is needed in determining a canon of essential readings, a context to interpret them, and a paradigm for the evolution of writing on the Holocaust. The expert contributors to this volume, who negotiate the literature in the original languages, provide insight into the influence of national traditions and the importance of language, especially but not exclusively Yiddish and Hebrew, to the literary response arising from the Holocaust.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In this stunning volume of epic breadth, Michael Schmidt connects the lives and works of more than 300 poets over the last 700 years--spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean, all sharing the English language. Schmidt reveals how each poet has transformed "a common language of poetry" into the rustic rhythms and elegiac ballads, love sonnets, and experimental postmodern verse that make up our lyrical canon. A comprehensive guided tour that is lively and always accessible, Lives of the Poets illuminates our most transcendent literary tradition.