One of the chief functions of poetry in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was to praise gods, people and things. Heroes and kings were glorified in many varieties of praise, and the arts of encomium and panegyric were codified by classical rhetoricians and later by writers on poetry. J. A. Burrow's study spans over two thousand years, from Pindar to Christopher Logue, but its main concern is with the English poetry of the Middle Ages, a period when praise poetry flourished. He argues that the 'decline of praise' in English literature since the seventeenth century, which has meant that modern readers and critics find it hard to appreciate this kind of poetry. This erudite but accessible account by a leading scholar of medieval literature shows why the poetry of praise was once so popular, and why it is still worth reading today.

At an early age, Olga Sedakova began writing poetry and, by the 1970s, had joined up with other members of Russia's underground second culture' to create a vibrant literary movement - one that was at odds with the political powers that be. This conflict prevented Sedakova's books from being published in the U.S.S.R., they were only available as hand written books. But now Sedakova has published 27 volumes of verse and prose. This is a unique introduction to her work, bringing together a memoir-essay and two poetic works.'

"What a strange and intense book this is! David Blair has a wild, restless imagination and he uses language like saw, a hammer, a velvet whip. He can write incredibly tender (and original) love poems and enfilading satirical poems, as well as many of the many other "kinds" of poems between those poles, and they all seem entirely at home, indeed, need to be in this book together. His music, his diction, his refusal to use (ever!) cliches, his syntax all drive his poems and their hearts forward. That is where his poems go: forward. He will be in the company of the best poets of his generation." --Thomas Lux "Nothing can remain horizontal or vertical for long" might as well be David Blair's mini ars poetica. A commitment to the pleasures and terrors of change, you might say. I have been reading Blair's poems for about ten years now--struck always by his unique pitch and tone, the tensile muscularity of his syntax and vibrational accents. His diction is totally unboxed. He reminds me a bit of August Kleinzahler or John Yau in this--a karaoke of urban hullabaloo sung slightly off the beat, all for the sake of swing....David Blair's acceptance of the world is signaled by his stylishness, provoked by the people and things he encounters. His brain knows that it's living in an animal body. And it moves among all these other minds and bodies in motion. Changed by the smallest of changes. Unbalanced but at ease. This poet's energy reminds me of Edwin Denby's comments about De Kooning's paintings from the 1930s: "He wanted everything in the picture out of equilibrium except spontaneously all of it...a miraculous force and weight of presence moving from all over the canvas at once." These poems wantthat, too. --David Rivard, /Boston Review/ "David Blair's work is both public and discreet, somewhere between black box theatre and a blind date with an utterly beguiling stranger. His poems are dinner parties, intimate and sumptuous, arranged with great care and yet full of unforeseen turns: the pope gives way to 'the first red coils of the peonies' and a the hair of a lost aviator becomes 'brown, fibrous light.' How refreshingly unlike contemporary poetry this book is; a pleasure. --D. A. Powell

English speakers have 12 centuries of Christian poetry to draw upon. The examples in this anthology come from all Christian sources including Anglican, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and modern evangelical and reform traditions.

Rodney Gómez's Arsenal With Praise Song somehow manages to yoke together lament and celebration, reproach and veneration across the borders of eras and nations. Set in the stark desert landscape of the México-U.S. border all too familiar to so many refugees and migrants, these poems scrutinize human bodies and the body of the earth as the sites of great injustices and violences-political, social, and spiritual-and as the vehicles that carry our collective legacy generation to generation.

Jane Hirshfield, the award-winning author of THE OCTOBER PALACE and editor of WOMEN IN PRAISE OF THE SACRED, presents a scintillating new volume of poems to be published to coincide with the hardcover release of NINE GATES, the author's primer on the reading and writing of poetry.

Former Poet Laureate Robert Hass 1979's Praise, the writers second volume of poetry.