"In A Matter of Blue, we read that blue is what we would like to cultivate, something that clings to bees' feet and the poet's lips, something that can be used as a basis for composition or creation, something that is inherent in the gaze of the dark-eyed women . . ."--Dawn Cornelio

A Matter of Blue is the most successful book by Maulpoix, author of over 25 French collections of poetry and the rightful heir to the 150-year tradition of French prose poetry.

Jean-Michel Maulpoix (www.maulpoix.net) is director of a quarterly literary journal and...

This collection of 106 poems by 44 female Tang-era poets is the most comprehensive of its kind. Poets are organized based on their status in Tang dynasty society: women of the court, women of the household, courtesans and entertainers, and women of religion. While each poet's concerns vary with their social status, common thematic threads include heartbreak and the mysteries of the natural world. Thumbnail biographies of each poet and notes regarding individual poems complete this important collection.

Jeanne Larsen has published poetry, three novels set in China, and a book...

The writing of Felipe Benitez Reyes, a significant contributor to the Spanish Postmodern esthetic, speaks to issues of voice, persona, and the possibilities of fiction. Probable Lives won the 1996 National Book Award in Spain, the 1996 National Critics' Award in Spain, and the City of Melilla International Prize. A book of heteronyms, the character-poets in Probable Lives read as forgotten or unknown twentieth-century authors, all "rediscovered" and compiled by an anthologist who is also the creation of Reyes. Probable Lives tweaks the notion of identity in ways that...

The Clean Shirt of It marks the first English translation of a full-length poetry title by acclaimed Brazilian poet Paulo Henriques Britto. As translator Idra Novey writes in her introduction, "No other contemporary Brazilian poets write like Britto. At least not with such a keen sense of the relationship between form and content, or pop culture and high art."

Paulo Henriques Britto has received Brazil's most prestigious prizes for literature and translation. He lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he teaches at Catholic University.

Idra Novey lives in New...

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis later moved to Lebanon and became a pivotal figure in the new poetry of the late 1960s. With the publication of Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs in 1963--widely viewed as a watershed moment in Arabic poetry--Adonis forged a new set of possibilities for Arabic poetry, writing in traditional meters but infusing them with modernist rhythms, styles, and conceptual complexities.

Translators Adnan Haydar (University of Arkansas in Fayetteville) and Michael Beard (University of North Dakota) co-edit a series of books, Middle East Literature...

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis later moved to Lebanon and became a pivotal figure in the new poetry of the late 1960s. With the publication of Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs in 1963--widely viewed as a watershed moment in Arabic poetry--Adonis forged a new set of possibilities for Arabic poetry, writing in traditional meters but infusing them with modernist rhythms, styles, and conceptual complexities.

Translators Adnan Haydar (University of Arkansas in Fayetteville) and Michael Beard (University of North Dakota) co-edit a series of books, Middle East Literature...

Novica Tadic is Serbia's leading poet and the linguistic heir to Vasko Popa. With this translation, US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Simic brings the full range of Tadic's dark beauty to light:

I dream how on a flat surface
I set down knives of various
shapes and sizes.
Already there are so many of them
I can't count them,
or see them all. Someone's being done in
by those knives.

Novica Tadic has won most major Serbian literary awards, including the prestigious Laureat Nagrade....

As tropical as it is topical, this landmark anthology gives voice to three powerful women poets from the Dominican Republic. Together they present a wide array of linguistic and stylistic elements, and they address shared political and cultural issues that illuminate what it means to be a woman in the modern-day Dominican Republic. Translator Judith Kerman, who began the anthology as a Senior Fulbright Scholar, notes that "contemporary women poets from the Dominican Republic are the most underserved group when it comes to English-language translations." This anthology remedies that...

From his first book of poems, Chessboards of Hours (1995), Ales Steger has been one of Slovenia's most promising poets. The philosophical and lyrical sophistication of his poems, along with his work as a leading book editor and festival organizer, quickly spread Steger's reputation beyond the borders of Slovenia. The Book of Things is Steger's most widely praised book of poetry and his first American collection. The...