"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us. In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

Gathers Poe's essays on the theory of poetry, the art of fiction, the role of the critic, leading nineteenth-century writers, and the New York literary world.

"David Orr is no starry-eyed cheerleader for contemporary poetry; Orr’s a critic, and a good one. . . . Beautiful & Pointless is a clear-eyed, opinionated, and idiosyncratic guide to a vibrant but endangered art form, essential reading for anyone who loves poetry, and also for those of us who mostly just admire it from afar." —Tom Perrotta Award-winning New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr delivers an engaging, amusing, and stimulating tour through the world of poetry. With echoes of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, Orr’s Beautiful & Pointless offers a smart and funny approach to appreciating an art form that many find difficult to embrace.

Excerpt from Poems, Essays and Opinions, Vol. 1 of 2: Being Selections From Writings in the "Mirror of the Time," From August 7th, 1850, to the End of February, 1851 I must own myself rather a follower of the impulse of truth than the satisfied owner of a suppressed or stagnant conviction. I have spoken as I have thought, and have therefore made enemies amongst the bigoted and worth less. But with this do I console myself, that to make no public enemies would be but a conviction of the imbecility of a writer. In conclusion, I would merely observe, that the con tents of these pages are very slightly altered in any respect, since their original appearance in the Mirror of the Time. Of the hurry in which they were necessarily written, the dates, which include all the contributions, af ford a sufficient evidence. The corrections are chiefly verbal and typographical, and such as I was compelled to make, owing to the journalistic form in which the Essays were first printed. I may add, I trust without the imputation of arrogance, that these writings have undoubtedly suggested much to many writers of the hour, who have, however. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

All American Poem embraces the ecstatic nature of our daily lives. Introduction by Tony Hoagland.