Since 1964, when Louisiana State University Press published its inaugural book of verse (Miller Williams’s A Circle of Stone), its poetry list has grown exponentially—191 books by 93 poets—into a program that inspires understandable pride in those associated with it. Two collections have won the Pulitzer Prize—The Flying Change (1986), by Henry Taylor, and Alive Together (1996), by Lisel Mueller. Another book by Mueller, The Need to Hold Still (1980), won the National Book Award, while several other LSU titles have been finalists for that distinction, most recently The Fields of Praise (1997), by Marilyn Nelson, and The Vigil (1993), by Margaret Gibson. Dozens more have been recognized for their excellence through a host of various honors. The Press publishes the winner of the annual Walt Whitman Award, given by The Academy of American Poets for a first collection; and in 1996 it launched the Southern Messenger series in collaboration with Dave Smith, bringing two shining works into the fold each year. The appearance of The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren in 1998 meant for the Press the realization of a long, dearly held dream. To mark this thirty-five-year-old tradition as the century and millennium turn, and to offer a sampling of its richness, The Yellow Shoe Poets, a retrospective anthology, was compiled under the editorship of George Garrett, a longtime colleague of the Press and the author of eight poetry volumes. (Say “the LSU poets” real fast with a southern drawl and you get the ridiculously wonderful moniker that poet Elizabeth Seydel Morgan’s young friend innocently mistook for this noble band. It’s an image Brendan Galvin has appropriated to a perfect fit in his poem “Yellow Shoe Poet,” written on behalf of his fellow “yellow shoes” across the years.) All 173 poems are taken from LSU Press books and were selected by the poets themselves, if living. Arranged alphabetically by author, they consist of at least one poem from every poet published by the Press. Goethe’s admonition that “one ought every day at least, to read a good poem” can find no better starting point than in The Yellow Shoe Poets.

A collection of fourteen poems describes animals of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including a red donkey, a purple puppy, and a blue turtle.

A fusion of east and west, high culture, popular culture, and ancient Chinese history mark this distinguished collection.

Translation is a journey - a journey undertaken by the text, hopping around the world and mischievously border-crossing from one language to another, from one culture to another. For a translator, this journey can become a truly creative engagement with the otherness of the source text, an experience of self-discovery leading to understanding and enrichment, and ultimately towards a new text. This singular literary 'experiment' intends to magnify the idiosyncrasy of this translational journey. In the process translation reveals itself as an increasingly creative activity rather than simply a linguistic transfer. This volume consists of twelve translations of one poem: 'Les Fenêtres' by the French poet Apollinaire. The translators embarking on this project, all from different backgrounds and working contexts (poets, professional translators, academics, visual artists), were asked to engage with the inherent multimodality of this poem - inspired by Robert Delaunay's Les Fenêtres series of paintings. The result is a kaleidoscopic diversity of approaches and final products. Each translation is accompanied by self-reflective commentary which provides insight into the complex process and experience of translation, enticing the reader to join this journey too.

Poetry is one of the best instruments for self-expression, and Jax King, a young non-binary author in search of their authentic self, plays that instrument beautifully. This Is My Coming Out Poem is a collection of poetry focused on queer identity, love and heartbreak, personal growth, mental illness, and gender transition—with an emphasis on ideas, rather than imagery. “Maybe sometimes / You have to lose yourself completely / Before you can be found”—from Jax’s poem “Identity.” Rendered in twenty-five poems of varying length, each is evocative of the intelligence, creativity, and humor of the author, as suggested by these titles: “My Depression: The Amazing Rational Parrot” “My Body Is Not My Friend” “Bong Hits and Tinder Swipes” “The Four Rules of Gun Safety” “To the Man Who Works at Jiffy Lube” “A Survival Guide for the College Queer on Winter Break” This book will be of interest to readers of queer literature, aged mid-teen and up. LGBTQ+ folks, young adults, and fellow poets going through a difficult time, navigating the additional stresses of queer youth, perhaps even contemplating suicide, may particularly find themselves reflected in these poems, as they search for their own authentic self.

Poetry, Signs, and Magic brings together in a single volume fourteen new and previously published essays by the eminent Renaissance scholar and literary critic Thomas M. Greene. This collection looks back toward two earlier volumes by Greene, his first essay collection The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature, and Poesie et Magie, whose theme is here explored again at greater length and depth, from linguistic and literary critical perspectives. Greene argues that certain poetic gestures draw their peculiar strengths by serving as vestiges of poetry's ancestral acts - magic, prayer, and invocation. Poetry, in other words, feigns an earlier power, but in this diminishment there occurs a verbal subtlety, and figural poignancy, commonly associated with art's aesthetic pleasures. Greene employs his well-known skills as a close reader to texts by a range of writers including a variety of contemporary theorists. in diverse contexts the distinction between disjunctive and conjunctive linguistics, dual theories of sound and meaning of crucial importance to Plato and Aristotle, to Catholic and Protestant debates on the sacraments, to the more recent skeptical methodologies of Derrida and de Man. Thomas M. Greene was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale University.