Relationships—partings/reconciliations, solidarities/ruptures, trust/betrayal, exposure/withdrawal—are the deep fabric of this forceful work. In the intimate address of "Axel Avákar," the black humor of "Quarto," and the underground journey of "Powers of Recuperation," compressed lyrics flash among larger scenarios where images, dialogues, blues, and song spiral into political visions. Adrienne Rich has said, "I believe almost everything I know, have come to understand, is somewhere in this book." from "Ballade of the Poverties" There's the poverty of wages wired for the funeral you Can't get to the poverty of bodies lying unburied There's the poverty of labor offered silently on the curb The poverty of yard sale scrapings spread And rejected the poverty of eviction, wedding bed out on street Prince let me tell you who will never learn through words There are poverties and there are poverties.

Sensual, earthy love poems that formed the basis for the popular movie Il Postino, now in a beautiful gift book perfect for weddings, Valentine's Day, anniversaries, or just to say "I love you!" Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda’s love poems caused a scandal when published anonymously in 1952. In later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner’s oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images that reveal in gentle lingering lines an erotic re-imagining of the world through the prism of a lover’s body: "today our bodies became vast, they grew to the edge of the world / and rolled melting / into a single drop / of wax or meteor...." Written on the paradisal island of Capri, where Neruda "took refuge" in the arms of his lover Matilde Urrutia, Love Poems embraces the seascapes around them, saturating the images of endless shores and waves with a new, yearning eroticism. This wonderful book collects Neruda’s most passionate verses.

“Certain lines had become like incantations to me, words I’d chanted to myself through sorrow and confusion” —Cheryl Strayed, Wild “The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman’s heart and mind in language for everybody—language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to. . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this.”—Boston Evening Globe

Poems can teach us in ways that surpass other forms of understanding, especially when the subject concerns matters of the heart. When the heart’s whispers are too faint for us to hear in ordinary ways, poetry can speak to us with another kind of eloquence. From the leap of joy that a couple takes on their wedding day to a fiftieth wedding anniversary that acknowledges the deep connection that a life together can bring, marriage takes us on a journey that passes through seasons and stages, peaks and valleys. This book honors that journey through twenty poems that celebrate and illuminate some of these major stages and provides not only inspiration for the journey but also solace and wisdom. Roger Housden, the author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life, provides essential insights into the poems, creating a collection of reflective prose and poetry that makes this an inspirational guidebook as much as a volume of poetry. In Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage, Roger Housden offers poems and essays that will give voice to your heart, offering up words and wisdom not just for special occasions but to act as friends and guides to refer to throughout the life of a marriage.

Pablo Neruda's two books - 100 Love Sonnets and Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair are kept in one book.

DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains is an edgy and erotic investigation of comic book bad boys. These poems employ a language that is highly technical and dense, but it becomes witty, intimate and even tender in its specificity. These poems address the results of abuses of power and taken together present a case study in the pathology of villainy. Praise for Thumbscrews: "Natalie Zina Walschots [is] a writer who engages with the aesthetics of sadomasochism in order to generate elegant, sensual poetry that writhes inside the shackles of its own linguistic constraint... [she] treats each poem as a miniature, theatrical tableau--a 'passion play, ' in which she forces language to submit to her will, beating its grammar into a stupor of ecstatic nonsense."--Christian Bok, The Poetry Foundation