Poetry

In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life's work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Oliver is open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments and explores with startling clarity, humor, and kindness the mysteries of our daily experience.

"There isn't a flaw or misstep or a lack of humility on a single page. . . . I invite you to turn to just one page, to any page, and to let what's there wash over you with its beauty, its clarity, its precision, and its delicately balanced emotional weight." --Ted Kooser

"Robert Hedin is one of the quietest, most spiritually sensate poets of our time." --Olga Broumas

"Every poem is a creation myth," writes poet Robert Hedin. This long overdue retrospective, spanning forty years of patient and painstaking work, highlights Hedin's original poems, translations of Norwegian poets, and includes the aphoristic essay "Field Notes." Hedin's poems--elegant, spare, and devoid of artifice--detail themes of Midwestern life, the natural world, ocean liners, and airships. A profound, essential volume.

Unable to Write, I Decide to Move Out with the Finches

This morning I'm going to drag my desk
Out into the backyard and set it down
By the birdbath, near the flowerbed
Overgrown with weeds. And the black
Leather armchair where I like to read
I'll lug out under the two young maples,
Along with the Persian rug, the tall
Goose-necked lamp, the books, the CDs,
Even the huge unruly fern in the corner.
I'm going to haul it all outside, out
Into the open air where it's quiet,
Where I won't be bothered . . .

Robert Hedin is the Founding Director of the Anderson Center for the Arts, and author of eight books of poetry and several translations from the Norwegian. He lives in Red Wing, Minnesota.

A best-selling volume of Pablo Neruda's poetry in an English-Spanish edition.

Pablo Neruda is one of the world's most popular poets, and in The Book of Questions, Neruda refuses to be corralled by the rational mind. Composed of 316 unanswerable questions, these poems integrate the wonder of a child with the experiences of an adult. By turns Orphic, comic, surreal, and poignant, Neruda's questions lead the reader beyond reason into realms of intuition and pure imagination.

This complete translation of Pablo Neruda's El libro de las preguntas (The Book of Questions) features Neruda's original Spanish-language poems alongside William O'Daly's English translations. In his introduction O'Daly, who has translated eight volumes of Pablo Neruda's poetry, writes, "These poems, more so than any of Neruda's other work, remind us that living in a state of visionary surrender to the elemental questions, free of the quiet desperation of clinging too tightly to answers, may be our greatest act of faith."

When Neruda died in 1973, The Book of Questions was one of eight unpublished poetry manuscripts that lay on his desk. In it, Neruda achieves a deeper vulnerability and vision than in his earlier work-and this unique book is a testament to everything that made Neruda an artist.

"Neruda's questions evoke pictures that make sense on a visual level before the reader can grasp them on a literal one. The effect is mildly dazzling [and] O'Daly's translations achieve a tone that is both meditative and spontaneous." --Publishers Weekly

Pablo Neruda, born in southern Chile, led a life charged with poetic and political activity. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the International Peace Prize, and served as Chile's ambassador to several countries, including Burma, France, and Argentina. He died in 1973.

II.

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?

XIV.

And what did the rubies say
standing before the juice of pomegranates?

Why doesn't Thursday talk itself
into coming after Friday?

Who shouted with glee
when the color blue was born?

Why does the earth grieve
when the violets appear?

All of Jane Kenyon's published poems gathered in one definitive collection, now in paperback

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
--from "Twilight: After Haying"

Jane Kenyon is one of America's most prized contemporary poets. Her previous collection, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, published just after her death in 1995, has been a favorite among readers, with more than 80,000 copies in print, and is a contemporary classic.

Collected Poems assembles all of Kenyon's published poetry in one book. Included here are the complete poems found in her four previous volumes--From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance--as well as the poems that appear in her posthumous volumes Otherwise and A Hundred White Daffodils, four poems never before published in book form, and her translations in Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova.