Poetry. With setting moons, talking tulips, and the peacefulness found in a horse's mane, the poems in Christian Schlegel's debut collection HONEST JAMES might be as difficult to describe as the layered notes of an ancient perfume. "A famous notion twirled and froze. I made it mine. / Again it twirled." This unabashedly lyrical collection, which never shies away from rhyme, includes various cameos, including Goethe in its second section, with the end result being what John Ashbery calls "one of the strangest books of poetry to come along in some time." "In Christian Schlegel's HONEST JAMES you'll find literary mannerism lightly wielded, gesture for its own sake, a bit of lace at the cuff. The title a reference to Wordsworth's Prelude reflects the antiquing and old world light in these pages. Schlegel knits his syntax to invite the savor of the micro-novelistic vignettes he evokes. Period mood is produced with snippets of Latin and German, a few variations on Goethe. Were it not for his tendency to slip into four-beat rhythm and use rhyme, one could think these poems fragments of memorable lines torn from pre-twentieth-century European fiction. Time to dim the sconces and start dreaming." Jennifer Moxley "One of the strangest books of poetry to come along in some time, Christian Schlegel's HONEST JAMES seems to draw inspiration from the back corridors and anterooms of poetry. One senses echoes of Kipling, Browning, Landor, even Robert W. Service, and other late 19th-century hot shots, but it doesn't seem to be a question of Schlegel taking cues from other poets, rather his magpie-like attraction to bits of history imbedded in forgotten texts. In a note he tells of using a volume of 'plain prose translations' from Goethe 'consulted sparingly and departed from liberally.' Students of the archaic will find much to detain them here. It's as though a new process of influencing has been unearthed." John Ashbery "Of equal parts wariness and devotion, music and restraint, wit and loss, these moving poems mark Christian Schlegel as a poet with an astonishing feel for the English language, a living relationship with its literatures, and the gift of a precise wisdom." Susan Wheeler"

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

A father and husband's meditation on love, adolescence, and the mysterious mechanisms of poetic creation, from the acclaimed poet. The poet's art is revealed in stages in this "making-of" book, where we watch as poems take shape--first as dreams or memories, then as drafts, and finally as completed works set loose on the world. In the long poem "Must We Mean What We Say," a woman reader narrates in prose the circumstances behind poems and snippets of poems she receives in letters from a stranger. Who made up whom? Chiasson, an acclaimed poetry critic, has invented a remarkable structure where the reader and a poet speak to one another, across the void of silence and mystery. He is also the father of teenaged sons, and this volume continues the autobiographical arc of his prior, celebrated volumes. One long section is about the age of thirteen and the dawning of desire, while the title poem looks at the crucial age of fifteen and the existential threat of climate change and gun violence, which alters the calculus of adolescence. Though the outlook is bleak, these poems register the glories of our moment: that there are places where boys can kiss each other and not be afraid; that small communities are rousing and taking care of each other; that teenagers have mobilized for a better world. All of these works emerge from the secretive imagination of a father as he measures his own adolescence against that of his sons and explores the complex bedrock of marriage. Chiasson sees a perilous world both navigated and enriched by the passionate young and by the parents--and poets--who care for them.

The debut poetry collection by the actor, director, and writer James Franco I’m a nocturnal creature, And I’m here to cheat time. You can see time and exhaustion Taking pay from my face— In fifty years My sleep will be death, I’ll go like the rest, But I’ll have played All the games and all the roles. —from “Nocturnal” “There’s never been a book quite like this. Hollywood — fame, celebrity, the promise of becoming an artist — is the beast at its center. Franco knows it like Melville knows whaling. Hollywood in this book devours its young. Obsessed with myths about its own past, it can be survived only by finding a vantage point that is not Hollywood. Bold yet subtle, fearless yet disarming, Franco has made a book you will never forget.” — Frank Bidart, winner of the Bollingen Prize in American Poetry “A star-studded cast moves like ghosts across the screen of James Franco’s poetic consciousness, imbuing the writing with scenes of icons who are also humans replete with sorrow and presence in our own psyches. James Dean, Monica Vitti, Catherine Deneuve, Sal Mineo, Heath Ledger, pass and fade. The author has a wonderful self-reflexive insouciance about his own fame and roles inhabited, from Hart Crane to Allen Ginsberg to Harvey Milk’s lover. Franco is a gifted contemporary Renaissance kind of guy, surveying the waterfront of illusion, suffering, and impermanance. We leave the movie theater a little wiser.” — Anne Waldman, poet, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation "Bleak and unsentimental but blessedly free of self-indulgence, these poems give the feeling of being absolutely essential."—Library Journal "Galvin [has] the virtues of precise observation and original language . . . a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make [each] poem an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review In his first collection in seven years, James Galvin expands upon his signature spare and gnomic lyric as he engages restrained astonishment, desire, and loss in a confessional voice. Whether considering masterpieces of painting or describing the austere landscape of his native Wyoming ranchlands, Galvin turns to highly imagistic yet intimate narratives to rain down compassion within isolation. From "On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses": On starless, windless nights like this I imagine I can hear the wedding dresses Weeping in their closets, Luminescent with hopeless longing, Like hollow angels. They know they will never be worn again. Who wants them now, After their one heroic day in the limelight? Yet they glow with desire In the darkness of closets. James Galvin passionately depicts the rural American West and the interactions between humans and nature in his best-selling memoir The Meadow and his novel Fencing the Sky. Galvin is also the author of several volumes of poetry and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He divides his time between Iowa and Wyoming.

A book-length poem evokes the horror, anguish, and brutality of 20th century history.