In the first comprehensive selection and translation of Dulce María Loynaz's poetry, James O'Connor invites us to hear the haunting voice of Cuba's celebrated poet, whom the Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez terms in his Foreword, "archaic and new...tender, weightless, rich in abandon." Widely published in Spain during the 1950s, Loynaz's poetry was almost forgotten in Cuba after the Revolution. International recognition came to her late: at the age of ninety she was living in seclusion in Havana when the Royal Spanish Academy awarded her the 1992 Cervantes Prize, the highest literary accolade in the Spanish language. The first English publication of her work, Absolute Solitude contains a selection of poems from each of Loynaz's books, including the acclaimed prose poems from Poems with No Names, a selection of posthumously published work.

Featuring 118 contributions from 57 writers in 26 countries, with many of the contributions reflecting the diverse backgrounds and cultures of the writers, and all writing in their own unique style, LONELY - A Collection of Poetry and Prose on Loneliness and Being Alone, is an extraordinary, unique and eclectic mixture of both traditional and modern verse, and short prose, from writers around the world. Focusing on just about every aspect of loneliness and being alone, and covering topics as diverse as old age, bereavement, abandonment, divorce, entrapment, unrequited love, depression, trauma, failure and addiction, as well as the more abstract and esoteric, LONELY is already being acclaimed worldwide for its diversity and mix of writers and styles.

Poet Luis (Lucho) Hernández is legendary in his native Peru, and virtually unknown outside it. His short, tragic life–haunted by addiction and periodic reclusion in rehabilitation centers–and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, have made him a cult figure. Exceptionally gifted in his youth, his only three books of poetry were published by the time he was twenty-four. Until his untimely death at age thirty-six in Argentina, Luis Hernández didn’t publish another book. Yet, he did not fall silent. He wrote in cheap, school-boy notebooks, filling them with poems, musical notations, quotes (attributed and unattributed), notes to himself, translations, musings, clippings from newspapers and comic strips, and drawings, all in different colored pencils and pens. The present selection of Hernández’s poetry, the first ever in English, is drawn from these notebooks. All the original texts have been transcribed directly from the manuscript sources, correcting errors and mistranscriptions that have crept into a number of the published versions. Several poems are published here for the first time in any language. These moving poems are born under the sign of Melancholy and Nostalgia. Hernández’s unique voice evokes an irrevocably distant past from a desolate site in the present. Happiness and joy, love and fulfillment, are remembered in poetic scraps and fragments, recollected in silence, contemplated in sadness, solitude, and dream.

A fresh translation of the classical Buddhist poetry of Saigyō, whose aesthetics of nature, love, and sorrow came to epitomize the Japanese poetic tradition. Saigyō, the Buddhist name of Fujiwara no Norikiyo (1118–1190), is one of Japan’s most famous and beloved poets. He was a recluse monk who spent much of his life wandering and seeking after the Buddhist way. Combining his love of poetry with his spiritual evolution, he produced beautiful, lyrical lines infused with a Buddhist perception of the world. Gazing at the Moon presents over one hundred of Saigyō’s tanka—traditional 31-syllable poems—newly rendered into English by renowned translator Meredith McKinney. This selection of poems conveys Saigyō’s story of Buddhist awakening, reclusion, seeking, enlightenment, and death, embodying the Japanese aesthetic ideal of mono no aware—to be moved by sorrow in witnessing the ephemeral world.

"Forging through this voluminous collection is akin to visiting at length with a charismatic, if highly disturbed, relative. Generally, the poems start out presenting facades of well-mannered normalcy, e.g., brief narratives or odes to nature and the sea, but then something shifts and goes terribly right. A sentence turns odd and powerful; a quiet, streak of insanity emerges; a young girl leaves her scent upon a young boy's body. Sometimes a poem pops up that is dangerous from start to finish, such as "The Suicide Eaters" or "Drunks," about a reading at a V.A. hospital for recovering addicts and alcoholics. Smith is highly conscious of word choice. He tinkers with grammar and rhythm just enough to be utterly engaging, leaving the reader exhausted after the visit, but wiser for the effort."- Publishers weekly.

A collection of poems which capture the experience of solitude- by day or night, in the city or in the country, in waking or in dreams. There are contented reveries, expressions of loneliness and despair, reflections on mind and soul, and meditations recorded in the stillness of the night. Poets can be said to be the custodians of the interior life, and from Sappho's "Tonight I've watched" to Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" and from Yeats's communion with 'the deep heart's core' in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" to Bei Dao's veneration of "Ordinary Days", some of the most indelible poems from every time and culture have grown out of the aloneness inherent in the poet's art. And for readers who either seek or escape from solitude,all of the poets in this anthology - from Sappho and Callimachus to Mark Strand and Richard Wilbur - offer words to console and inspire. They remind us that in cultivating solitude we explore the limits of our imaginations and realize our mostprofound feelings and needs.