Embodied Discourse, Embodied Practice
Central to the human experience both as a definer of identity and as a means for social interaction, bodies - real or imagined, individual or collective - are also essential to our perception of what surrounds us. Starting with the earliest records of human expression, bodies have been at the core of manifold discourses spanning from epistemology and religion to art and literature, creating connections between the myriad aspects of human experience while separating the phenomenal and the metaphysical realms. At the same time, they have also functioned as a privileged site for practices aimed at controlling, disciplining, and punishing individuals, groups of people, or entire nations.This volume brings together scholars from philosophy, art history, literature, linguistics, gender studies, religious studies, and history to discuss discourses and practices connected with the body as they relate to Japan.
Litt矇ratures camerounaises
Les r矇flexions contenues dans cet essai 矇valuent les fondements litt矇raires du devoir de m矇moire ? l'endroit des figures r矇f矇rentielles et de l'Histoire du Cameroun. Elles participent donc de l'inscription de la m矇moire et de la normalisation des politiques du pardon dans la psych矇 des Camerounais.
What Remained Unsaid
What Remained Unsaid is a deeply moving collection of poems that beautifully captures the unspoken emotions of the human heart. Originally written in Hindi by Usha Kiran and thoughtfully translated into English by Dr. Shakuntala Prasad, this book bridges languages while preserving the soul of its expressions.This collection explores themes of love, longing, memories, relationships, loneliness, and the silent conversations we carry within ourselves. Each poem reflects real-life emotions-simple yet profound-making it relatable to readers from all walks of life.The poetic journey takes you through moments of joy, pain, nostalgia, and hope, encouraging readers to pause and reflect on the feelings that often remain unspoken.
Shakespeares Philosophical Theatre
Is Shakespeare a philosophical playwright or not? T S Eliot suggests he is not, a point of view which this work disagrees with. The reason he has not been identified as a philosophical artist is because of the modern philosophical view of aesthetics, which is at odds with both Aristotelian and Kantian views. Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalytical concepts are used to analyse the "enveloping" qualities of his productions as well as the aesthetic result. Shakespeare has an awareness of what happens in life when the balance of the mind of an agent is disturbed by mental illness and he demonstrates the grasp of this problem in several of his most famous plays. He also has a deep understanding of the psychology of the tyrant and the large-scale consequences which follow from this. Kant argues that beauty and the sublime are "symbols of morality" a judgement that requires an analysis of both symbolism and the metaphysics of morality if it is to be fully understood. Shakespeare's work is described as "cosmopolitan", and this attractive characteristic is linked to what is described as the "hidden plan" for civilisation: a plan aiming at the Aristotelian hylomorphic essence-specifying-definition of man as a "rational animal capable of discourse". The commentaries of Wilson Knight and Harold Bloom are also philosophically evaluated from a philosophical point of view.
Twitching Hour
Twitching Hour is a lyrical, philosophically driven stage play by Baruch Menache that unfolds across a single night in a city bar, where memory, desire, faith, and moral inheritance collide. Set against a shifting landscape of conversation, music, and ritual, the play explores the tension between intention and truth, intimacy and estrangement, and the burden of legacy carried through generations.Structured as a sequence of poetic acts rather than conventional scenes, Twitching Hour follows an ensemble of characters-musicians, lovers, skeptics, and witnesses-whose dialogue moves according to the rhythm of thought rather than linear exchange. Language drifts, fractures, and reassembles, revealing the inner lives of those caught between youth and age, belonging and exile, hope and resignation. A pianist becomes both narrator and confessor, while couples test the limits of love, responsibility, and self-knowledge under the quiet pressure of time.The play draws from existential philosophy, modernist theater, and lyric poetry, placing it in conversation with works by Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, and contemporary experimental drama. Themes of consciousness, sacrifice, generational inheritance, and moral ambiguity recur throughout, making Twitching Hour especially resonant for audiences interested in psychologically driven theater and introspective storytelling.Designed for intimate stages and ensemble casts, Twitching Hour is a meditation on what remains unsaid, what is inherited without consent, and how meaning emerges in the spaces between words-at the edge of night, just before morning.
Festival of Doom
A modern literary drama told in poetic cadence-Festival of Doom is a journey through friendship, longing, loss, and the fragile truths that bind people together.Set across wandering roads, taverns, farmlands, and the spirited festival that gives the book its name, this theatrical narrative follows Davenport, Cody, and Donnatella as they travel through strange towns and stranger fates. Their encounters-by turns humorous, lyrical, cynical, and tender-reveal the inner storms that mark every soul in search of meaning.Blending philosophical dialogue, lyric storytelling, and the emotional sweep of a stage play, Baruch Menache crafts a world where every line carries metaphor, memory, and myth. Characters collide, depart, return, and fracture, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions about devotion, identity, and the cost of companionship.From roadside inns to grand festivals, from budding affection to breaking hearts, Festival of Doom explores the delicate threads of human connection-and the distance between what is spoken, felt, and silently endured.Perfect for readers who enjoy: - Lyrical fiction and philosophical theatre- Poetic dialogue and character-driven drama- Journeys marked by introspection and emotional tension- Literary works in the spirit of allegory and mythmakingA haunting, elegant, and deeply human tale-one that lingers long after the final page.
Initiation into the Mysteries
The present volume offers an interdisciplinary collection of twenty-four studies to readers interested in the religious, philosophical and artistic aspects of initiation. In itself, the concept of initiation presupposes that there is an initiator, someone to be initiated, and secret rite or knoweledge-in short, a mystery-into which the elect few would be admitted and which must not be revealed to the rest. Initiation is thus very personal, as it encompasses-in Christian theology at least-an encounter with God but also involves a communal experience. While in European context, initiation is an essentially Christian idea, not all the papers of the present volume turn to the Christian tradition for sources. Hermetism, Neoplatonism, pre-Christian paganism and Renaissance esotericism also find a place among the studies published here. Religion and philosophy are not the only viewpoints adopted by our authors, however; the section on art and litterature discusses initiation as it appears on stage, in novels, short stories, and drama as well as poetry, especially in modern European literature.
Endangered Literature
The present publication focuses on the examination of literary diversity. One the one hand it deals with the litarature of various endangered languages (especially that of the Sami), and develops first considerations in constructing a comparative paradigm for mapping the vulnerability of literary processes. On the other, this books pays attention to thematic, formal and stylistic aspects of contemporary translingual literary productions. Special attention is here given to the latest developments in the Finnish literary field. The foci of endangerment and translingualism require addressing several other related literary phenomena such as literary ecology, 矇criture multiculturelle, code-switching or intercultural dialogism in present day world literature.
Rhetorical Preaching
The goal of this book is to demonstrate that sermons are "rhetorical" speeches by nature. The simplest argument is that it would be difficult to imagine a sermon without intent, and all international speeches are rhetorical by definition. This work focuses on the fact that rhetoric, as the intrinsic cohesive power of speech, is not a question of form, style or representation but a practical skill based on "common sense" that produces effective speech in the most optimal way possible.
Living Through Extremes in Process Drama
Living trough extremes in process drama is an exploration of integrating Edward Bond's theatre theory and practice into the "living trough" approach to process drama. Adam Bethlenfalvy examines the basic components of the "living trough" approach to drama trough the analysis of the practice of Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton, Cecily O'Neill and David Davis. Trough a series of drama lessons, the author explores how participants can be supported in making drama of depth on their own with moments that dislocate dominant social explanations from within the narrative, urging those watching or participating to make their own meanings of events in the drama. Trough the book does not offer ready-made solutions, it offerts some exciting new recognitions coming from re-kindling the connection between theatre and drama education.
DeepRed Vol 4 #1
DeepRedmagazine returns with an ALL NEW issue from the priginal sstaff!"Well, DEEP RED is ALIVE! Ready to take on all comers. We'll continue to change, experiment, and refine our format. We want to be consistently challenging, fresh, exciting and unpredictable. We want to champion the neglected, underrated, and unheralded talents out there who burn with the same fire that lights us up." -Chas Balun
Wilshire Pointe
Some nightmares begin the moment you wake up.For as long as she can remember, Shelby Jones has felt that something about her life is incomplete.Then a chilling message appears: Shelby Jones, your entire life is a lie.The fragile sense of normalcy she has built begins to unravel. She finds herself drawn into an unlikely circle of friends: River - the arrogant, star quarterback and campus royalty who knows how to command attention. Jared Mitchell - effortlessly handsome, introverted, and far more guarded than he appears. Alice Whitman - quietly manipulative, mysterious, and tied to one of the most powerful families connected to the town of Wilshire Pointe.Then the nightmares begin. Not ordinary nightmares, but ones that are dark and almost impossible to shake. Ones that will shortly bleed into her reality.Strange disturbances ripple through the quiet town. Whispers follow Shelby wherever she goes. And beneath the polished surface of Wilshire Pointe lies a past deliberately buried.As Shelby and her friends search for answers, they uncover fragments of a hidden history tied to something darker-a mystery steeped in secrets, where nightmares begin crossing into the real world and nothing is as it seems.The nightmares are not random. They are calling to her, leading her toward a truth that may finally reveal who she really is.And whatever has been sleeping beneath Wilshire Pointe has been waiting a very long time to wake.
Genetic Joyce
An introduction to the fascinating world of Joyce's manuscriptsThis book shows how the creative process of modernist writer James Joyce can be reconstructed from his manuscripts. Daniel Ferrer offers a practical demonstration of the theory of genetic criticism, the study of the manuscript and textual development of a literary text. Using a concrete approach focused on the materiality of Joyce's writing process, Ferrer demonstrates how to recover the process of invention and its internal dynamics.Using specific, detailed examples, Ferrer analyzes the part played by chance in Joyce's creative process, the spatial dimension of writing, the genesis of the "Sirens" episode, and the transition from Ulysses to Finnegans Wake. The book includes a study of Joyce's mysterious Finnegans Wake notebooks, examining their strange form of intertextuality in light of Joyce's earlier forms of note-taking. Moving beyond the single author perspective, Ferrer contrasts Joyce's notes alluding to Virginia Woolf's criticism of Ulysses with Woolf's own notes on the novel's first episodes.Throughout this book, Ferrer describes the logic of the creative process as seen in the record left by Joyce in notebooks, drafts, typescripts, proofs, correspondence, early printed versions, and other available documents. Each change detected reveals a movement from one state to another, a new direction, challenging readers to understand the reasons for each movement and to appreciate the wealth of information to be found in Joyce's manuscripts.
The ADIX
In The ADIX, Shana Marlayna Chow opens a story where truth is not philosophical - It is visceral, intrusive, and impossible to ignore.Adrian Tames was six years old when the world stopped behaving normally. Words no longer sounded like words. They split open. Curled back. Revealed what lived beneath them. Every lie came with a vision - sharp, involuntary, undeniable.It was never imagination. It was inheritance.Hidden within the folds of history lies an ancient bloodline born in Athens at the dawn of democracy - the ADIX, seekers of Truth, marked by a gift that exposes deception as clearly as memory. Their existence traces back to the gods themselves, to a bargain struck in the shadows of Greek mythology. For centuries, they have moved quietly through wars, presidencies, betrayals, and revolutions - never seen, never known.But truth was never meant to stand alone.Opposing them is a darker lineage, born of Hades and forged in corruption - men and women whose lies are not merely believed, but irresistible. Between these two bloodlines, a silent war has shaped the course of civilization.And then there is Laurel.He can see every lie - except hers - the one person Adrian cannot read. The one truth that refuses to surface. The one presence that unsettles everything he thought he understood about his gift, and about himself.Greek mythology meets forbidden romance in this tightly woven psychological thriller about secrecy, legacy, restraint, and the unbearable weight of knowing too much.Truth is a weapon. Some are born to wield it - But even truth has blind spots.
Greatest Works of Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days (Deluxe Hardbound Edition Boxed Set)
Dive into Jules Verne's timeless classics in a boxed set featuring 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Explore the depths of the ocean, journey to the Earth's core, and race around the globe with captivating stories of adventure, imagination and discovery in this engaging collection. Escape into a world of adventure with Jules Verne's unforgettable stories. Includes three of Jules Verne's most famous and enduring works.Explores diverse and intriguing settings, from the depths of the ocean to the Earth's core.Features iconic characters such as Professor Lidenbrock, Phileas Fogg, and the enigmatic Captain Nemo, who push the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding.Showcases the themes of exploration, scientific curiosity, the human spirit and the power of determination.These timeless classics continue to resonate with readers of all ages, transcending time and cultural boundaries.
English Literary Criticism
English literary criticism presents a structured examination of how critical thought in England developed alongside creative writing and gradually shaped literary understanding. The book explores criticism as an evolving discipline, emerging later than imaginative literature yet becoming essential to interpreting poetry and drama. Early foundations reveal tentative judgments rooted in tradition, while later periods show growing confidence in analysis and evaluation. Attention is given to the tension between classical standards and innovative expression, illustrating how critics responded to changing artistic ambitions. The discussion highlights criticism as both a guide for readers and a dialogue with writers, influencing taste, form, and interpretation. By tracing shifts in judgment and method, the book emphasizes criticism as a living practice shaped by cultural change, intellectual debate, and artistic progress. Overall, it offers an insightful account of how literary evaluation matured into a disciplined framework that deepened engagement with literature and refined the relationship between creative genius and thoughtful assessment.
Is There a Law of Happiness?
There are thingsyou do not learn.You remember them.Not in the mind, but somewhere underneath.This book is not a thought.It is a movement through questions, through loss, through silence, through what remainswhen you stop trying to hold.Some pages you will understand.Others will understand you.This essay resides at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, offering a profound exploration of human happiness and its place within the arc of our lives. It examines how happiness emerges, recedes, and returns, and seeks to understand the underlying reasons for these shifts. Central to the work is an inquiry into the nature of time what it is, how it is perceived, and how it shapes our emotional and cognitive experience.Drawing on insights from the human nervous system, as well as subtle, often imperceptible influences within our environment, the book reveals dimensions of happiness that are not immediately visible. It invites the reader on an introspective journey, navigating the intricate relationship between time, inner life, and the experience of well-being.Ultimately, this work challenges conventional notions of time, proposing that time, as understood within these pages, differs fundamentally from the way it is commonly perceived. It is both a philosophical reflection and a psychological investigation into the essence of human happiness and the depths of the inner self.
The Coyote Chronicles
The Coyote Chronicles is Denes' second collection of short essays. Coyote Tracks, Volume 1 (published in 2013) was the first. This is a continuation of his thoughts, observations, perspectives, evaluations, dissertations, regurgitations, and quiet incantations. A few entries included here are the result of cross pollination, having been extracted from novels he'd previously written; but the great majority of this work is published here in hard copy for the first time.There are truths, half-truths, lived experiences, and recommendations for living contained in these pages; some of which you will embrace, and some you will most certainly reject. That is (obviously) your prerogative. But if you were ever to ask me personally for my most important key in regards to living a satisfying life I would simply want to tell you, "Make your bed when you get up in the morning, because it all starts there."
Fugitive Tilts
Ishion Hutchinson turns his poetic sensibility to questions of home, displacement, and memory in his beautiful and searingly brilliant prose debut. In Fugitive Tilts, the poet Ishion Hutchinson turns to prose to create an incomplete biography of love: love of poetry, discovered in childhood; love of home, with its continual disconnections and returns; and love of the works and artists--from Treasure Island, to John Coltrane, to the Jamaican music of his youth--that look over him with an angel's aura. Drawing inspiration from Derek Walcott's notion that "the sea is history," Fugitive Tilts is suffused with the sea, present whether Hutchinson is recalling a trip to Senegal or memorializing his grandmother in a meditation on a painting by ?douard Vuillard. With this fresh, archipelagic sensibility Hutchinson confronts the fraught questions of inheritances and influences, "acknowledging," in his words, "something outside our view." These essays, varied in their forms and ranging across time and place, allow Hutchinson to build a space from which the suffering of the past and the present can be reckoned with and survived.
Firewood Happens
Begin on the journey of the six time award winning author Mike Lein in the book that began his cabin series. Firewood happens is a fun and identifiable short story collection for anyone who loves the outdoors, lakes, bon fires and north country. Mike is known across the north country for many published stories of cabin life with dogs, boats, relatives, friends, and other assorted shady characters. He brings all these together in "Firewood Happens."
The Space Between Blinks
The steady movement of a working day can feel like a quiet current, carrying thoughts forward at an even pace. This passage is written to provide a consistent block of text that maintains a calm and neutral tone without leaning into imagery or symbolism. It simply offers a stream of sentences arranged in a clear and direct manner. The purpose is not to tell a story or deliver a message but to create a stable field of language that fills space in a predictable way. Each sentence is shaped to be straightforward and free of unnecessary detail. The text continues with the same measured rhythm, ensuring that the overall length remains useful for any task requiring a specific byte count. There are no hidden meanings or emotional turns. It is simply a practical construction of words arranged to meet a requirement. The lines move along with a sense of quiet order, allowing the reader to pass through them without interruption. This approach keeps everything smooth and even, which is ideal when the content itself is secondary to the size. The text maintains its pace, offering a consistent surface from beginning to end. It does not attempt to persuade or entertain. It only aims to exist as a dependable block of language. As it continues, the structure remains unchanged, holding the same tone and rhythm. This helps ensure that the final result is balanced and uniform. The sentences remain steady, neither expanding too far nor contracting too quickly. The goal is simply to reach the required length while keeping the language plain and accessible. The passage moves forward with this intention, maintaining clarity and simplicity. It offers a neutral experience, free from tension or emphasis. The words follow one another in a calm sequence, forming a continuous thread that stretches across the needed space. This steady progression ensures that the text fulfills its purpose without drawing attention to itself. It is a quiet and functional piece of writing, created to meet a specific need. As it approaches the end, it keeps the same tone, the same pace, and the same sense of quiet order. Nothing shifts or rises. It simply completes its path and comes to a gentle close.
Wilshire Pointe
Some nightmares begin the moment you wake up.For as long as she can remember, Shelby Jones has felt that something about her life is incomplete.Then a chilling message appears: Shelby Jones, your entire life is a lie.The fragile sense of normalcy she has built begins to unravel. She finds herself drawn into an unlikely circle of friends: River - the arrogant, star quarterback and campus royalty who knows how to command attention. Jared Mitchell - effortlessly handsome, introverted, and far more guarded than he appears. Alice Whitman - quietly manipulative, mysterious, and tied to one of the most powerful families connected to the town of Wilshire Pointe.Then the nightmares begin. Not ordinary nightmares, but ones that are dark and almost impossible to shake. Ones that will shortly bleed into her reality.Strange disturbances ripple through the quiet town. Whispers follow Shelby wherever she goes. And beneath the polished surface of Wilshire Pointe lies a past deliberately buried.As Shelby and her friends search for answers, they uncover fragments of a hidden history tied to something darker-a mystery steeped in secrets, where nightmares begin crossing into the real world and nothing is as it seems.The nightmares are not random. They are calling to her, leading her toward a truth that may finally reveal who she really is.And whatever has been sleeping beneath Wilshire Pointe has been waiting a very long time to wake.
Titian Blue
This book is a sequence of art-centred verse-essays written from the viewpoint of an author whose responses to the painting or the artist in question are often prompted, triggered, provoked, or in some other way strongly affected by the author's reading.
Pass-Through Place
Ride along with Jenna Brack as she explores the vast and varied Kansas landscape, a place some consider flat and uninteresting. In this collection of personal essays that unfold as a coming-of-age memoir, Brack reveals how the land and people of Kansas have been catalysts for growth, healing, and identity. As Brack passes through wheatfields, historic ice storms, or the sprawling Flint Hills, she also travels through her own inner landscape of longing and loss. Together, these essays spotlight Kansas as much more than a pass-through place, and instead as a formative place of resilience and hope. Brack's storytelling invites us to consider how our own pass-through places are infused with meaning-even how they might carry us home.
Hemingway's Art of Revision
In Hemingway's Art of Revision, John Beall analyzes more than a dozen pieces of the author's celebrated short fiction, with a focus on manuscripts and typescripts, as part of a broader examination of how Ernest Hemingway crafted his distinctive prose through a rigorous process of revision. Ranging from two vignettes in the first version of In Our Time through early touchstones such as "Indian Camp" and "The Killers" to later masterpieces including "Fathers and Sons," Beall's study considers the modernist influences, aesthetic choices, and experimental effects that characterized Hemingway's approach to the short story. Revisions to "Big Two-Hearted River," for example, were not simply cuts and omissions, but involved adding paragraphs to slow down the narrative and represent Nick Adams's careful observations of fish as he watched their shadows on the river. For "A Way You'll Never Be," Hemingway's revisions developed Nick's interior monologues, manic lecture about grasshoppers, and wacky sense of humor to show the character restoring a sense of emotional balance despite his traumatic memories of being wounded. By drawing attention to the meticulous omissions, additions, and replacements that shaped these texts, Beall reveals how extensively and richly Hemingway revised his drafts. Hemingway's Art of Revision gives a detailed view of a great prose stylist at work.
Quilt of Words
Historically, the Southwest has attracted people with yearnings for freedom and adventure, people who define themselves as individuals. Unlike their husbands and brothers, women in the Southwest did not, for the most part, subdue and tame the land; but their character and individuality were manifested as they lived with and improved upon conditions as they found them. Their fascination with their way of life and the need for self-expression led them to write of their experiences, providing them with a creative outlet and offering those who came later a unique window into the past. A Quilt of Words won the Border Regional Library Association 1989 Southwest Book Award for literary excellence and enrichment of the cultural heritage of the Southwest. It was also awarded the National Federation of Press Women first prize for history in 1989.
Authority
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award Many worry that criticism is suffering from a crisis of authority. In a world where everyone's a critic, what is criticism for? Since her canonical essay "On Liking Women," the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a leading public intellectual and a bold cartographer of the new landscape of taste itself.Authority brings together sharp, illuminating essays on everything from musical theater to sci-fi novels, as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of personal essays first published in the magazine n+1. Throughout, Chu defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, charging fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with complacent humanism and modeling how the left might brave the culture wars with both its faculty of judgment and its sense of justice intact. In two magisterial new essays, Chu offers a fresh intellectual history of criticism's crisis of authority, tracing the surprisingly political contours of the discipline from its origins in the Enlightenment to our present age of social media. The desire to recover some lost authority, she argues, is neither new nor particularly freeing. Rather than being taken in by an endless cycle of trumped-up emergencies over the state of our culture, Authority makes a compelling case for how to do criticism in light of the actual crises, from climate change to rising authoritarianism, that confront us today.
Carrie Revisited
REVISED AND EXPANDED!Carrie Revisited: The Legacy of Stephen King's Girl with a Frightening Power is a remarkable anthology featuring essays from a distinguished group of writers offering their unique perspective on the novel's lasting impact on popular culture, the publishing world, and the horror genre.Adding to the depth of this collection is an essay by Stephen King himself, sharing the fascinating story of how Carrie was written. King's personal insights provide an intimate look into the creation of his groundbreaking debut and its journey to becoming a cultural touchstone.Rounding out this special project is a 40-page black and white artwork gallery with Carrie-inspired illustrations from 20 talented artists. Each piece vividly captures the essence of the novel, bringing new life to the haunting story of a girl with extraordinary powers.Carrie Revisited is an essential volume for fans of Stephen King, horror enthusiasts, and art lovers alike. Discover the enduring influence of Carrie and experience the rich tapestry of reflections and interpretations that continue to shape our understanding of this unforgettable tale.
Virtuosity
This Element examines how contemporary poets reimagine virtuosity as a mode of poetic performance. It sees virtuosity not as a fixed attribute but a strategic choice - one a poet may enter at specific moments, in specific forms, to heighten the reader's experience. Certain forms are themselves virtuosic, inviting expectations of difficulty, display, and compositional drama. Through readings of Paul Muldoon, Tyehimba Jess, and Joyelle McSweeney, the Element explores how poetic virtuosity stages not just skill, but stakes: a charged interplay of technique and expressivity. These poets embrace formal extravagance and linguistic excess, making visible the labour of composition while risking the charge of style over substance. Drawing on a nineteenth-century lineage of debates in music and art, the Element traces how poetic virtuosity confronts crisis. In doing so, it rethinks poetic form as an aesthetic of risk, outpouring, and resistance.
How to Think Like a Poet
'An entertaining guide to the rhyme and reason of poetry' -- The Idler How history's most influential and inspiring poets - from Homer and Sappho to Shakespeare and Frank O'Hara - can teach us to better understand the world. How did the greatest poets in history make the world anew? And what can we learn from the magic, wisdom and humour of their poetry? From the genius of the Ancient Greeks through to the love poetry and metaphysics of the Renaissance, through to the New York poets of the 20th century, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest writers of the human age. Through short, biographical portraits, poet and writer Dai George provides an entertaining introduction to the great works of poetry, and a welcoming guide to how we can read them. He addresses questions poets have grappled with: How can we truly describe the world? How can we express love, grief or friendship? How can poetry help us to understand justice, dreams or anger? This book paints vivid pictures of a global selection of renowned poets throughout history: from Sappho, Li Bai and Rumi, to William Shakespeare and John Donne, to Frank O'Hara, Pablo Neruda and Sylvia Plath. George also re-examines the canon, traditionally dominated by Western, white and male poets, and bring to light major figures from other important cultures and communities, including China, India and the Caribbean.
The Real Thing Strange
As poet and critic Empson did more than anyone to re-shape the practice of literary interpretation with his extraordinary powers of insight, verbal analysis, and deeply searching reflective commentary. Christopher Norris has been reading, teaching, and writing about Empson for the past five decades and here returns to one further engagement in a sequence of poems that range over many aspects of its subject's richly creative, intellectually adventurous, and - in the best sense - eccentric career. That sense will be brought into sharper focus as the reader is introduced, through these formally structured rhyming and metrical verses, to a creative-critical mind unlike any other in its complex inter-connectedness and capacity for yoking together diverse areas of thought and experience in new, revelatory ways. That Norris's poetry owes a great deal to Empson in formal, thematic and intellectual terms will be evident to anyone who has read Seven Types or the slim but sharply distinctive verse output of his rather short-lived poetic career. Many commentators have started out by declaring Empson undoubtedly a genius yet ended up by confessing their inability to say just where - in which of his manifold gifts - that genius principally lies. With his poems Norris hopes to make good the claim through a different, generically more flexible and creative-exploratory line of approach.
Berlin and the BBC
Founded in 1922, the BBC developed strong connections with Germany from the start, focused particularly on Berlin. The first Director-General of the BBC John Reith, wanted to broadcast 'high' culture to British radio audiences and often selected Berlin orchestral music for the early live performances of the BBC. The BBC in Berlin contributed to British attitudes towards the Third Reich. During the Second World War, the BBC developed its German Service aimed at listeners across German-speaking regions, but with much of the content derived from and focused on Berlin. And after 1945, the BBC set up in the occupied part of the city, becoming a key institution in the cultural politics of the Cold War, both westwards- facing, in transmitting news and features from West Berlin to British and world listeners (and later TV viewers); and also DDR-centred with the continuing activity of the BBC German service. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 were hugely significant moment for the BBC.As one of the few international cultural institutions that remained in situ in the city throughout the Weimar years, the Third Reich, the era of divided Germany through to reunification and the return of the capital to the city, the BBC is a potentially revealing case-study of how British-German relations changed over time. This collection of essays will create a fuller understanding of how German culture has been presented to English-speaking audiences, and how, conversely, British national identity and memory has been formed by images and stereotypes of Germany.
Where Have All The Pennies Gone
"Where Have all the Pennies Gone" is a collection of my post Covid articles from the pages of The Oakland Press. My favorite pre-Covid articles can be found in my first book, "A Thought for Your Pennies".My firm, The Society for Lifetime Planning", celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025. So much has changed over the 40 years. The financial markets have been in and out of crisis mode numerous times, and yet many of the stock market indexes hover near their all-time highs. People are living longer than ever and many fear outliving their money. Over the last 40 years, saving for retirement has shifted from corporate America onto the shoulders of individuals. Few, if any, companies still offer pension plans to their employees.Not only have pension plans disappeared, but the penny is no longer in production and will fade away in the coming years. AI is reshaping the world as we know it, so each one of us needs to anticipate that in the next few years the world will evolve like never before. Government rules and guidelines seem to change every year. The investment world, driven by technology, seems to change by the minute. While much has changed, what remains constant is the good, solid, practical advice offered in these columns.I often tell people we live in a Yoyo (You're On Your Own) world. I think you will find this book both helpful and enjoyable.
Unraveling Threads
A memoir-in-essays that, in its exploration of language, family ties, and Taiwanese history, distills how the handmade holds memory, inheritance, and the work of caretaking. "Tactile memory feels like it is the easiest to lose," brenda Lin writes in Unraveling Threads. But in these exquisite essays, she demonstrates just how the tactile bolsters personal, familial, and cultural memory. From the remnant of a baby's umbilical cord to the antique hand-embroidered baby carriers her mother collects, Lin shows us how the tactile and handmade connect parents and children, homeland and diaspora, and give texture to caregiving's many forms. As Lin writes, the radical for thread forms the basis of Chinese characters for women's work, for practice through repetition, for inheritance. Threads form the mesh in the stent that keeps her father's heart working. And yuan, the red thread of fate, is the first word she translated for her future husband. When Lin returns to Taiwan after decades away, this time with her young family, the threads of creativity and caretaking become the warp and weft of the continual process of homecoming. These essays on motherhood, language, art, and diaspora will resonate with anyone who has experienced the process of returning to, or building, a home.
The Left-Hander's Survival Guide
The Left-Hander's Survival Guide explores what it means to live slightly out of alignment with a world designed for someone else.Most everyday systems quietly assume right-handedness - from desks and scissors to handwriting, watches, and the polite way to pass someone a fork. For the roughly ten percent of us who favour the other hand, this leads to a lifetime of small adjustments: some inconvenient, some amusing, and occasionally revealing.Through a series of personal essays, writer and designer Phil Rawlings reflects on the quiet art of adaptation. From smudged crayons in childhood classrooms to reversed guitars, Nepalese greetings, running tracks, and the stubborn elegance of fountain pens, each chapter explores how people learn to navigate systems that weren't quite built for them.What begins as a book about left-handedness gradually becomes something broader.It's about orientation - and how we all learn to adapt when the world is built slightly differently than we are.Warm, reflective, and often humorous, The Left-Hander's Survival Guide is a thoughtful meditation on creativity, culture, memory, and the small adjustments that quietly shape our lives.
Essays of His Later Years
A firsthand account of the history of the political and cultural issues of the Mubarak era by Naguib Mahfouz, the greatest writer of the time, offering insight into his political beliefs that are often opaque in his fiction.Although he had largely stopped writing fiction by the end of the 1980s, Naguib Mahfouz continued to pen essays for al-Ahram newspaper, offering letters of advice and reflection to his beloved Egyptian public. His steady outpouring was not to be stopped until his attempted assassination in 1994, when a young man, in the grip of religious extremism, stabbed the author in the neck.In the years approaching the attack, Mahfouz wrote with empathy and forgiveness for those who turn in desperation to terrorism. These remarkably prescient essays display a mature and measured reaction to the increasingly violent world Mahfouz perceived around him. With their unwavering commitment to tolerance, democracy, and hope in dark times, his essays feel as pertinent today as they were thirty years ago.Essays of His Later Years is the last of four volumes in which Mahfouz's non-fiction is translated into English for the first time.
Last Time Around
Steven Moore's My Back Pages compiled most of the essays and reviews he had written through 2016; this new volume gathers the shorter pieces he has published since then, along with some previously uncollected writings. While the last volume focused on modern literature, this one ranges from Gilgamesh to medieval novels to books published within the last year. There are essays on old favorites (Gaddis, Pynchon, Coover, Theroux) and on new discoveries, such as an obscure Elizabethan novel and some little-known female postmodernists. Also included is a selection from the many interviews Moore has given over the years, in which he discusses his background, his motives and working methods, and his favorite authors. As the title suggests, Last Time Around closes out Moore's fifty-year career as a devoted literary critic.
