"Levertov's master--more than mastery, because she is one of the originators--of contemporary poetic form, informed with a fierce, generous intelligence, can be frightening." --Ursula Le Guin, Washington Post

Poems of humor, protest, love and wonder, by one of America's most original voices.

Wagner, a German engineer, takes in hand the job of rescuing a floundering construction project in the South American rain forest. But before he reaches the site, his car runs over an emerald green snake--marking him, according to local beliefs, for death.

A classic play by Tennessee Williams in a definitive, author-approved edition. Reality and fantasy are interwoven with terrifying power as two actors on tour—brother and sister—find themselves deserted by the trope in a decrepit "state theatre in an unknown state." Faced (perhaps) by an audience expecting a performance, they enact "The Two-Character Play"—an illusions within an illusion, and "out cry" from isolation, panic and fear. "I think it is my most beautiful play since Streetcar," Tennessee Williams said, "and I've never stopped working on it....It is a cri de coeur, but then all creative work,all life, in a sense is a cri de coeur." In the course of its evolution, several earlier versions of The Two-Character Play have been produced. The first of them was presented in 1967 in London and Chicago and brought out in 1969 by New Directions in a signed limited edition. The next, staged in 1973 in New York under the title Out Cry, was published by New Directions in 1973 The third version (New York, 1975), again titled The Two-Character Play, is the one Tennessee Williams wished to include in New Directions' The Theatre of Tennessee Williams series. It is this version which is presented in this ND paperback.

The Secret Meaning of Things is Lawrence Ferlinghetti's fourth book of poems.

A delightful period piece of Paris in the late 1880's, We'll to the Woods No More (Les lauriers sont coupés) retains its importance as the first use of the monologue intérieur and the inspiration for the stream-of-consciousness technique perfected by James Joyce. Dujardin's charming tale, told with insight and irony, recounts what goes on in the mind of a young man-about-town in love with a Parisian actress. Mallarmé described the poetry of the telling as "the instant seized by the throat." Originally published in France in 1887, the first English translation (by Joyce scholar Stuart Gilbert) was published by New Directions in 1938. In 1957 Leon Edel's perceptive historical essay reintroduced the book as "the rare and beautiful case of a minor work which launched a major movement."