Edwin Arlington Robinson was a prolific American poet during the 1920s. This book approaches one of the critical features of Robinson’s poetry, often overlooked by critics, which is his method of narration. Narration is one of the crucial points in Robinson’s poetry that puzzles his critics. Robinson’s poems are portraits that include characters, setting, a method of narration and all other points that fit any narrative piece. This book takes as its point of departure the idea that unless Robinson’s narrative approach is discussed, no proper understanding of his poems will be achieved. The book deals with the influence of New England and Puritanism on the poet’s life and works. The book studies the poet’s shorter and longer poems. It also includes the study of his masterpiece ‘The Man Against the Sky.’

This notebook is a bridge between technical manuals on how to write haiku poetry and collections of haiku. There are two hundred haiku and senryu poems from w. f. owenâÂÂs last several years of writing. As a professor of interpersonal communication and an award-winning haiku writer, the author presents commentaries, perceptions, brief stories and haibun that are intended to help authors new to this art compose their poems. Included are first-place poems from the Harold Henderson Haiku Contest (2004) and the Gerald Brady Senryu Contests (2002, 2003) sponsored by the Haiku Society of America.

Over the past thirty years, narrative poems have made a comeback against the lyric approach to poetry that has dominated the past century. Drawing on a decade of conferences and critical seminars on the topic, The Contemporary Narrative Poem examines this resurgence of narrative and the cultural and literary forces motivating it. Gathering ten essays from poet-critics who write from a wide range of perspectives and address a wide range of works, the collection transcends narrow conceptions of narrative, antinarrative, and metanarrative. The authors ask several questions: What formal strategies do recent narrative poems take? What social, cultural, and epistemological issues are raised in such poems? How do contemporary narrative poems differ from modernist narrative poems? In what ways has history been incorporated into the recent narrative poetry? How have poets used the lyric within narrative poems? How do experimental poets redefine narrative itself through their work? And what role does consciousness play in the contemporary narrative poem? The answers they supply will engage every poet and student of poetry.

Conversations with Dana Gioia is the first collection of interviews with the internationally known poet and public intellectual, covering every stage of his busy, polymathic career. Dana Gioia (b. 1950) has made many contributions to contemporary American literature and culture, including but not limited to crafting a personal poetic style suited to the age; leading the revival of rhyme, meter, and narrative through New Formalism; walloping the “intellectual ghetto” of American poetry through his epochal article “Can Poetry Matter?”; helping American poetry move forward by organizing influential conferences; providing public service and initiating nationwide arts projects such as Poetry Out Loud through his leadership of the National Endowment for the Arts; and editing twenty best-selling literary anthologies widely used in American classrooms. Taken together, the twenty-two collected interviews increase our understanding of Gioia’s poetry and poetics, offer aesthetic pleasure in themselves, and provide a personal encounter with a writer who has made poetry matter. The book presents the actual voice of Dana Gioia, who speaks of his personal and creative life and articulates his unique vision of American culture and poetry.

This work is the first volume of critical essays devoted to the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Although Jeffers was likened to some of the greatest figures in the literary world, his work was controversial. His preoccupation with violence and sexuality was denounced by some, his alleged blasphemy by others. Condemned by moralists, Marxists, and Cold Warriors alike, Jeffers fell into obscurity until his death in 1962. Included are nine original essays by leading Jeffers scholars.