An illuminating look at the many forms of poetry's essential excellence by James Longenbach, a writer with "an ear as subtle and assured as any American poet now writing" (John Koethe) "This book proposes some of the virtues to which the next poem might aspire: boldness, change, compression, dilation, doubt, excess, inevitability, intimacy, otherness, particularity, restraint, shyness, surprise, and worldliness. The word ‘virtue' came to English from Latin, via Old French, and while it has acquired a moral valence, the word in its earliest uses gestured toward a magical or transcendental power, a power that might be embodied by any particular substance or act. With vices I am not concerned. Unlike the short-term history of taste, which is fueled by reprimand or correction, the history of art moves from achievement to achievement. Contemporary embodiments of poetry's virtues abound, and only our devotion to a long history of excellence allows us to recognize them." –from James Longenbach's preface The Virtues of Poetry is a resplendent and ultimately moving work of twelve interconnected essays, each of which describes the way in which a particular excellence is enacted in poetry. Longenbach closely reads poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Bishop, and Ashbery (among others), sometimes exploring the ways in which these writers transmuted the material of their lives into art, and always emphasizing that the notions of excellence we derive from art are fluid, never fixed. Provocative, funny, and astute, The Virtues of Poetry is indispensable for readers, teachers, and writers. Longenbach reminds us that poetry delivers meaning in exacting ways, and that it is through its precision that we experience this art's lasting virtues.

Poems inspire our trust, argues James Longenbach in this bracing work, because they don't necessarily ask to be trusted. Theirs is the language of self-questioning—metaphors that turn against themselves, syntax that moves one way because it threatens to move another. Poems resist themselves more strenuously than they are resisted by the cultures receiving them. But the resistance to poetry is quite specifically the wonder of poetry. Considering a wide array of poets, from Virgil and Milton to Dickinson and Glück, Longenbach suggests that poems convey knowledge only inasmuch as they refuse to be vehicles for the efficient transmission of knowledge. In fact, this self-resistance is the source of the reader's pleasure: we read poetry not to escape difficulty but to embrace it. An astute writer and critic of poems, Longenbach makes his case through a sustained engagement with the language of poetry. Each chapter brings a fresh perspective to a crucial aspect of poetry (line, syntax, figurative language, voice, disjunction) and shows that the power of poetry depends less on meaning than on the way in which it means—on the temporal process we negotiate in the act of reading or writing a poem. Readers and writers who embrace that process, Longenbach asserts, inevitably recoil from the exaggeration of the cultural power of poetry in full awareness that to inflate a poem's claim on our attention is to weaken it. A graceful and skilled study, The Resistance to Poetry honors poetry by allowing it to be what it is. This book arrives at a critical moment—at a time when many people are trying to mold and market poetry into something it is not.

At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Useless Virtues, T. R. Hummer's seventh book of poetry, is a wide-ranging series of forays into metaphysical territory. Its presiding inquiry concerns the dependency of our consciousness and our spirit on the untrustworthy powers of language. How often and how deeply is our faith -- in words, if not in gods -- misplaced, destructive, glorious, redemptive? How can we know? This powerful collection is fueled by the desire to answer these impossible, indispensable questions. The centerpiece of the book, Axis, takes as its terrain the thought of Martin Heidegger, and through this brilliant and controversial figure the nature of identity, of humanity, is contemplated. The poem is, finally, a lyrical farewell to the poet's father and to his generation -- the generation for which World War II was the great defining destiny -- and hence to that century we called 19. In these poems we find the almost sensual allure of direst possibility. From a woman who, during lovemaking, envisions strangling her lover, to a Pernod drinker whose dark imaginings recall the absinthe addicts of an earlier era -- mortality and loss, as well as human failing, are hovering presences. Philosophic and searching, traditional yet bold, Useless Virtues is the work of a master poet at his best.

From the author of FIRST PRIZE, a thriller about an indomitable American businessman whose integrity is pitted against the machinations of three governments. Merritt Fury, an American entrepreneur, savors his return to glamorous Hong Kong to meet with his itinerant business partners, until the irrational behavior of some of them sours his interest in the firm. Harry Briscoe, a senior partner whose business acumen Fury admires, offers his colleagues an ultimatum: agree to pay for the expansion of the firm's tungsten mine, or dissolve the partnership. Fury argues against the scheme, but Briscoe & others seem impervious to reason. And Fury soon realizes that he is the least welcome of all among Briscoe's partners. When Fury decides to stay in the partnership, he learns just how unwelcome he is. He is attacked in his hotel room, almost assassinated by a British secret agent, & courted by Amber Lee, a beautiful government economist who packs an automatic pistol. And when he is kidnapped, he grasps that he is the pivotal factor in a double conspiracy, & that the deadly conflict between his own integrity & the pragmatism of his colleagues could change the future of Hong Kong.

Without a vision for femininity and virtue, Christian womanhood will not survive the twenty-first century. The time has come to sing the praises of motherhood, to extol the blessings of beautiful girlhood, and to cast a vision for hearth and home. Poetry and prose are crucial components in this mission of vision communication. Beall Phillips seeks to revive this vision. In ''Verses of Virtue'' she draws from some of the most heart-warming and inspirational verses from Scripture, America's illustrious past, and even antiquity to provide women with a volume brimming with encouragement.

ValuPlus-Poems focus on behavioral tendencies ranging from human beings to animals. They tend to extol virtues like perseverance, steadfastness, obedience to laws of nature and man at all levels of governance, reciprocity, tolerance that upholds harmonious living together in peace. Others include cooperation between great and small, act of doing to others what one wants others to do to one in return, sense of appreciation, situation of not all that glitters is gold, some sort of interplay of cultural differences with their diverse norms and many more. Let us leave the area of literary appreciation and critiquing to those doing technical analysis of the poems. This summary therefore pays attention to making references to where the virtues come to light in the poems in general. Whether the reading is for pleasure or for literary study, it is going to make useful impact on any reader. The framework of the poems cuts across international boundaries and cultures. Perseverance Seasons of Long Night epitomizes readiness to persevere in the face of challenging or daunting situation. At the end of a dark night, is always a glorious dawn of a new day. A Season, Not For Ever is in line with this virtue. In the Cats Nocturnal Privilege, there is no other place where perseverance comes to the fore better than how the cat uses its soft- padded feet to lay in wait for its kill. The cat never complains over how long it takes either the insect or the mole to emerge from its hole. The cats instinct causes it to endure any frustrating wait until it is able to pounce on the prey as it eventually emerges. The life of anyone who perseveres and bears his or her burden with equanimity is likely to be shinning example to others. Steadfastness Searching tries to condition our mind into resolutely pursuing what one desires or tries to achieve as set goal. The poem emphasizes that searching is an age long phenomenon. It states, Mans age long searching intent brought various stages of development one does not because of apparent difficulty call it quit. Quitters are never usually able to become champions no matter how easy it takes to win the laurel. The lack of steadfastness tends to bog them leaving them with no option than throwing in the towel. In Circumstantial Homelessness the lesson is that of resilience or steadfastness. In spite of vicissitudes of life, the affected person will not see any justification for abandoning what was so close to the persons heart. Oftentimes the experience may be extremely grave but such person, like ball, goes down and bounces back wiser and stronger. Obedience to Laws of Nature In Mother and Child the lesson of life is showing the role mothers as they are endowed to play in the life of their children. A single father or surrogate parent is also expected to perform this role as assigned to a childs mentor. In Teenage, parents are to virtuously guide their teenagers along the path of wisdom. Indeed, this is the stage when a growing child goes through transition from childhood to respectable adulthood. It is vital for parents to speak goodness into the life of the up and coming teenagers. They lead, counsel and educate them with respect to start making decisions on their own. At that stage of life, parents must not make the mistake of ordering the teenagers around. They are no more the toddlers of a decade ago. Parents and mentors are to watch it that they do not provoke their teenagers. Teenagers tend to believe that they are ready to function as full-grown adults but the biological significance of their age often times prevent such. So also, Marriage of Souls tends to fulfill natures need for couples to be equally yoked partners in marriage. People believe that it is in this stead that marriage and family can be successful. Guiding and guarding the teenagers are natures demand on parents and adults. In The Boss there is need