Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Poetry

One of the most influential poets in Chinese history, Ai Qing is mostly unknown to American readers, but his work has shaped the nature of poetry in China for decades. Born between the fall of imperial Manchurian rule and the establishment of the Communist People’s Republic, Ai Qing was at one time an intimate of Mao Zedong. He would eventually fall out with the leader and be sentenced to hard labor during the Cultural Revolution, when he was exiled to the remote part of the country known as “Little Siberia” with his family, including his son, Ai Weiwei.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary". Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation....

Piercy has long been known for her political poems, and here we have her thoughts on illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, president-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language - it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life.

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?

When Opus Posthumous first appeared in 1957, it was an appropriate capstone to the career of one of the most important writers of the 20th century. It included many poems missing from Stevens' Collected Poems, along with Stevens' characteristically inventive prose and pieces for the theater. Now Milton J. Bates, the author of the acclaimed Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self, has edited and revised Opus Posthumous to correct the previous edition's errors and to incorporate material that has come to light since original publication.

Whether it's the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them - of us - poetry can save.

The poems in Yanyi’s latest book suggest that we enter and exit our old selves like homes. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our lives that is both ours and not ours. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. Yanyi conjures the beloved both within and without us: the beloved we believe we know, the beloved who is never the person we imagine, and the beloved who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them.

"Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca" ("God squeezes, but He doesn't strangle")—the epigraph of Machete—sets the stage for a powerful poet who summons a variety of ways to endure life when there's an invisible hand at your throat. Tomás Morín hails from the coastal plains of Texas, and explores a world where identity and place shift like that ever-changing shore.

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

A breathtaking collection of love poems from one of our great contemporary poets - stunning odes of obsession, loss, and the desire for a renewed self.

Jonah Mixon-Webster works at the intersections of space and the body, race and region, sexuality and class. Stereo(TYPE), his debut collection of poetry, is a reckoning and a force, a revision of our most sacred mythologies, and a work of documentary reporting from Mixon-Webster’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, where clean tap water remains an uncertainty and the aftermath of racist policies persist.

Brooks Haxton has been writing for years about the connections between human beings and the creatures we find fascinating. Mister Toebones, his new collection, draws its title from a nickname Haxton gives to a daddy longlegs he sees at his father's grave. In another poem, the poet and his mother, in search of a swimming hole, find a copperhead rearing to strike, about to birth its live young. Elsewhere, waist-deep in the Mississippi River, under the Atlantic Ocean, on the cracked ice of a frozen pond, even in outer space, the poet explores forces that seem past endurance.

A reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, Angel & Hannah is the sweeping, unforgettable story of an interracial couple in 1990s New York City who are determined to protect their love against all odds. Told across the changing seasons, Angel & Hannah holds all of the tension and cadence of blank verse while adding dynamic and expressive language rooted in a long tradition of hip-hop and spoken word, creating new and magnetic forms.

It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto's leaders 24 hours to turn over 10 Jews to be hung to "avenge" the deaths of the 10 sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto's rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning.

Michael Faudet's whimsical and often erotic writing has captured the hearts and minds of literally thousands of people from around the world. He paints vivid pictures with intricate words and explores the compelling themes of love, loss, relationships, and sex. All beautifully captured in poetry, prose, quotes, and little short stories.

Michael Faudet's latest book takes the listener on an emotionally charged journey, exploring the joys of falling madly in love and the melancholy world of the brokenhearted. Beautifully captured in poetry, prose, and short stories, Faudet's whimsical and sometimes erotic writing has captured the hearts and minds of thousands from around the world.

Michael Faudet's latest book explores the fine line between love and loss, the fragility of relationships, self-empowerment, and social commentary. Every piece taking the listener to a world of conflicting emotions, where nothing is what it seems and beautiful dreams come to life. All exquisitely captured in a thought-provoking collection of poetry, prose, and short stories.

Michael Faudet's latest book delves deeper into the meaning of love, the intricacy of relationships, self-empowerment, seduction, and sex. Taking the listener on a whimsical and sometimes heartbreaking journey, where fantasy and reality collide. Cult of Two is much more than just a beautiful collection of poetry, prose, and short stories. It is a compelling invitation to confront and explore the conflicting emotions that live within all of us.

Ruskin Bond’s Book of Verse brings together the poetry of one of India’s best-loved writers. This charming collector’s edition is a treasury of poems on love and nature, travel, humour, and childhood and will be a lasting source of delight to listeners.

In this delightful collection, Ruskin Bond introduces us to the Dehradun he knows intimately and loves unreservedly - the town in which he had spent many years of his childhood and youth. A town which, when he knew it, was one of pony-drawn tongas and rickshaws; a town fond of gossip but tolerant of human foibles; a town of lush lichi trees; charming winter gardens and cool streams; a small town; a sleepy town; a town called "Dehra".