Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in Poetry

It's never been easy to be a hero. When Beowulf arrives at Hrothgar's hall, he discovers that the hall is beset by Grendel, an evil creature that kills and pillages with impunity. Beowulf, in heroic fashion, bests Grendel in combat, then follows Grendel back to his lair to finish the job.

Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous - that mystery some of us hope toward in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power - illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments.

In her arresting collection, urgently relevant for our times, poet Emily Jungmin Yoon confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on Korean so-called “comfort women” who were forced into sexual labor in Japanese-occupied territories during WW II. In wrenching language, A Cruelty Special to Our Species unforgettably describes the brutalities of war and the fear and sorrow of those whose lives and bodies were swept up by a colonizing power, bringing powerful voice to an oppressed group of people whose histories have often been erased.

A commonwealth institution and popular local television personality who is also the announcer, ambassador, and poet laureate for Fenway Park, Dick Flavin has entertained audiences with his incredible poetic talent and abiding love for the Red Sox before countless home games for more than 20 years. Now this legendary talent's poems are gathered together for the first time in this keepsake volume.

Engaging closely with the violence, oppression, and injustice that she witnessed in her lifetime, Muriel Rukeyser was one of the seminal poets of the mid-twentieth century. Closely informed by issues relating to equality, social justice, feminism, and Judaism, her impassioned poetry was often seen as a mode of social protest, but it was also heralded for its deep emotional impact. The Essential Muriel Rukeyser represents the curation of Rukeyser’s most enduring and urgent work, gathered in one volume that spans the many decades of her life and career.

Black men are changing society and the world through mastery, innovation, and inspiration at a pace never seen before. In awe of the myriad ways in which Black men are using their vision and power to remake culture and society, spoken word artist Harold Green began writing odes recognizing the extraordinary accomplishments of a series of Black men, which he shared on his Instagram account—tributes that went viral and became a social media sensation. Black Oak brings together many of these popular odes with original works written for this collection.

Poet in the New World has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

New York Times best-selling author J. A. Jance's heartrending collection of poetry and essays recounts a dark chapter of her own life, her first marriage to an alcoholic - a powerful look at the emotional cost of addiction and an inspiring story of courage and triumph in the wake of crushing defeat.

In her striking collection of poems, Zoë Hitzig investigates how we seek certitude, power, and domination over the natural world and one another. Hitzig brings a scientific rigor to her poetry, as well as a raucous energy and willingness to allow her work to exist in states of uncertainty and precariousness. The result is an original voice that is incisive and unsparing, but also passionate and tender. Her poems probe the authority of language, exploring the surprising and powerful resonances that can be found among words and ideas.

Relations punctures the human illusion of separation. New and established storytellers reshape the narratives that divide and subjugate, revealing the truth of our shared humanity despite differences in language, identity, class, gender, and beyond. This vital anthology is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s striking vision of a meeting place of perspectives, centered in the African and diaspora experience.

Deeply personal but also expansive in its imaginative scope, Nouns & Verbs brings together 35 years of writing from Campbell McGrath, one of America’s most highly lauded poets. Offering a hint of where he’s headed while charting the territory already explored, McGrath gives us startlingly inventive new poems while surveying his previous work - lyric poems, prose poems, and a searing episodic personal epic, “An Odyssey of Appetite”, exploring America’s limitless material and spiritual hungers.

Here to Stay is a collection of honest, searing, and evocative poems interspersed with short personal narratives. Deeply intimate, these works explore how to exist in the space between the familiar and the unknown, between the safety of silence and the desire to share. Highlighting the significant insights of undocumented poets, this brilliant compendium challenges misconceptions of what it means to live and write as an undocumented person in modern America.

Touching on themes from perceptions of beauty to the betrayals of the body, from what it means to give consent to how we grapple with demons internal and external, Woman, Eat Me Whole is an entirely fresh and powerful look at womanhood and personhood in a shifting world. Moving between Ghana and the United States, Diaka probes those countries’ ever-changing cultural expectations and norms while investigating the dislocation and fragmentation of a body—and a mind—so often restless or ill at ease.

With breathtaking lyricism and a vulnerability that pierces the heart, April Gibson journeys through the emotional abysses, the daily pleasures, the frustrations, and the joys of being a Black woman living with chronic illness. Gibson offers a unique perspective on “the body,” viewing disability and healthcare through both feminist and socio-economic lenses filtered by race and faith. Through gorgeous sensory language that migrates memories, from carefree innocence to the ravages formed in its absence, Gibson bears witness to grief, courage, and resistance to redefine herself on her own terms.

Side Notes from the Archivist is a preservation of Black culture viewed through a feminist lens. The Archivist leads listeners through poems that epitomize youthful renditions of a Black girl coming of age in Philadelphia’s pre-funk ’80s; episodic adventures of “the Black Girl” whose life is depicted through the white gaze; and selections of verse evincing affection for self and testimony to the magnificence within Black femme culture at-large.

The existential magnitude, deep intellect, and playful subversion of St. Thomas-born, Florida-raised poet Nicole Sealey’s work is restless in its empathic, succinct examination and lucid awareness of what it means to be human. The ranging scope of inquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast—at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential—is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet.

Romeo and Juliet has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

At the dawn of human civilization, a blind prophet foretold the coming of one who would transform American literature forever, thrilling millions with his prose and debauching thousands with the meltingly seductive rhythm of his poetry. Now he has arrived. His name is Neal Pollack, the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, and he walks among us.

Looping exultantly through the overlapping experiences of girlhood, Blackness, sex, and personhood in America, award-winning essayist and poet Kendra Allen braids together personal narrative and cultural commentary, wrestling with the beauty and brutality to be found between mothers and daughters, young women and the world, Black bodies and white space, virginity and intrusion, prison and freedom, birth and death.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most insightful observers of the human heart and mind, and, with her acute social consciousness, one of the most insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history. Oates is perhaps best known for her prodigious output of novels and short stories, many of which have become contemporary classics. However, Oates has also always been a faithful writer of poetry. American Melancholy showcases some of her finest work of the last few decades.