Drawn from the acclaimed New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the articles in this concise new reference book provide a complete survey of the poetic history and practice in every major national literature or cultural tradition in the world. As with the parent volume, which has sold over 10,000 copies since it was first published in 1993, the intended audience is general readers, journalists, students, teachers, and researchers. The editor's principle of selection was balance, and his goal was to embrace in a structured and reasoned way the diversity of poetry as it is known across the globe today. In compiling material on 106 cultures in 92 national literatures, the book gives full coverage to Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, as well as other obscure ones such as Hittite), the ancient middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian), subcontinental Indian poetries (the widest linguistic diversity), Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, and half a dozen others), continental American poetries (all the modern Western cultures and native Indian in North, Central, and South American regions), and African poetries (ancient and emergent, oral and written).

Drawn from the acclaimed New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the articles in this concise new reference book provide a complete survey of the poetic history and practice in every major national literature or cultural tradition in the world. As with the parent volume, which has sold over 10,000 copies since it was first published in 1993, the intended audience is general readers, journalists, students, teachers, and researchers. The editor's principle of selection was balance, and his goal was to embrace in a structured and reasoned way the diversity of poetry as it is known across the globe today. In compiling material on 106 cultures in 92 national literatures, the book gives full coverage to Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, as well as other obscure ones such as Hittite), the ancient middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian), subcontinental Indian poetries (the widest linguistic diversity), Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, and half a dozen others), continental American poetries (all the modern Western cultures and native Indian in North, Central, and South American regions), and African poetries (ancient and emergent, oral and written).

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Cultural Hybridity -- Linguistic Hybridity -- Narrative Hybridity -- Formal Hybridity -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Interviews -- Index.

This textbook teaches the writing of poetry by examining all the major verse forms and repeating stanza forms in English. It provides students with the tools to compose successful lines of poetry and focuses on meter (including free verse), rhythm, rhyme, and the many other tools a poet needs to create both music and meaningfulness in an artful poem. Presenting copious examples from strong poets of the past and present along with many recent student examples, all of which are scanned, each chapter offers lessons in poetic history and the practice of writing verse, along with giving students a structured opportunity to experiment writing in all the forms discussed. In Part 1, Rothman and Spear begin at the beginning, with Anglo-Saxon Strong Stress Alliterative Meter and examine every major meter in English, up to and including the free verse forms of modern and contemporary poetry. Part 2 presents a close examination of stanza forms that moves from the simple to the complex, beginning with couplets and ending with the 14-line Eugene Onegin stanza. The goal of the book is to give students the essential skills to understand how any line of poetry in English may have been composed, the better to enjoy them and then also write their own: the keys to the treasure chest. Rothman and Spear present a rigorous curriculum that teaches the craft of poetry through a systematic examination and practice of the major English meters and verse forms. Under their guidance, students hone their craft while studying the rich traditions and innovations of poets writing in English. Suitable for high school students and beyond. I studied with Rothman in graduate school and went through this course with additional scholarly material. This book will help students develop a keen ear for the music of the English language.—Teow Lim Goh, author of Islanders

This volume lists the work produced on anglophone black African literature between 1997 and 1999. This bibliographic work is a continuation of the highly acclaimed earlier volumes compiled by Bernth Lindfors. Containing about 10,000 entries, some of which are annotated to identify the authors discussed, it covers books, periodical articles, papers in edited collections and selective coverage of other relevant sources.

One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won María Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino. In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin," a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes. Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor," the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.

Long before the adventures of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, Spanish ships reached Virginia's shore. In the centuries that followed, Hispanics and Latinos settled in Virginia to seek new opportunities away from home. The 1980s saw the beginnings of el Nuevo Sur, or the New South, as Virginia's Latin American population surged. Since then, the now-defunct Virginia Center for Latin American Art briefly showcased Virginia's Latino and Hispanic evolving arts heritage. Restaurants like Pollo Campero and La Tasca have joined the local culinary scene, and schools and churches have forged plans for their changing communities. Join author Christine Stoddard as she traces the vibrant history and culture of Hispanics and Latinos in Virginia.