An anthology of classical and contemporary poems are introduced by everyday people from across the United States, including pieces by such masters as Shakespeare, Keats, and Dickinson and featuring an accompanying video introduction by one of the editors. 30,000 first printing.

Cult bestseller The Invitation is more than just a poem. It is a profound invitation to a life that is more fulfilling and passionate, with greater integrity. This book is a word-of-mouth sensation, whose truths have resonated with people all over the world, and is now reissued with a beautiful new cover design.

Designed for introductory students, this text represents a fresh approach to the study of poetry. The elements of poetry, both formal and structural aspects, are presented in a simple, highly available language. The text incorporates the latest developments in criticism such as the feminist perspective in an unobtrusive way.

An Invitation to Biblical Poetry is an introduction to the aesthetic dimensions of the ancient poetry of the Bible. It argues that, as art, biblical poems engage their readers in embodied encounters that accomplish intellectual work. It examines how this is achieved through the poems' various techniques of voicing and address, lines, formal patterns, figures such as metaphor, personification, and symbol, and the crucial but elusive dimensions of historical and readerly context. Its broad survey of biblical poetry and accessible style will benefit anyone interested in becoming a better reader of poetry.

The first study to offer an integral theory of love poetry, examining why it is that poetry, even more than other arts, is so consistently associated with romantic love.

Engage diverse learners in your classroom with culturally responsive instruction! This second edition includes new or expanded coverage of Latino students, ELLs, immigrant students, race, and racial identity, and new coverage of standards-based, culturally responsive lesson planning and instruction, differentiated instruction, RTI, and the Common Core State Standards. Bonnie Davis helps all educators: Tailor instruction to their unique student population Reflect on their cultures and how this shapes their views of the world Cultivate a deeper understanding of race and racism in the U.S. Create culturally responsive instruction Understand how culture affects learning

Impossible Desire and the Limits of Knowledge in Renaissance Poetry examines the limits of embodiment, knowledge, and representation at a disregarded nexus: the erotic carpe diem poem in early modern England. These macabre seductions offer no compliments or promises, but instead focus on the lovers' anticipated decline, and—quite stunningly given the Reformation context—humanity's relegation not to a Christian afterlife but to a Marvellian 'desert of vast Eternity.' In this way, a poetic trope whose classical form was an expression of pragmatic Epicureanism became, during the religious upheaval of the Reformation, an unlikely but effective vehicle for articulating religious doubt. Its ambitions were thus largely philosophical, and came to incorporate investigations into the nature of matter, time, and poetic representation. Renaissance seduction poets invited their auditors to participate in a dangerous intellectual game, one whose primary interest was expanding the limits of knowledge. The book theorizes how Renaissance lyric's own fragile relationship to materiality and time, and its self-conscious relationship to making, positioned it to grapple with these 'impossible' metaphysical and representational problems. Although attentive to poetics, the book also challenges the commonplace view that the erotic invitation is exclusively a lyrical mode. Carpe diem's revival in post-Reformation Europe portends its radicalization, as debates between man and maid are dramatized in disputes between abstractions like chastity and material facts like death. Offered here is thus a theoretical reconsideration of the generic parameters and aspirations of the carpe diem trope, wherein questions about embodiment and knowledge are also investigations into the potentialities of literary form.