A landmark work of cultural history--now in paperback--by one of our best critics and chroniclers: the story of how four young poets reinvented literature and turned New York into the art capital of the world.
Greenwich Village, New York, circa 1951. Every night, at a rundown tavern with a magnificent bar called the Cedar Tavern, an extraordinary group or painters, writers, poets, and hangers-on arrive to drink, argue, tell jokes, fight, start affairs, and bang out a powerful new aesthetic. Their style is playful, irreverent, tradition-shattering, and brilliant. Out of these friendships,...

David Lehman's second book in the Poets on Poetry series confirms his stature as one of our leading literary figures. He is also a literary critic with a rare ability to elucidate thorny ideas and controversial issues in a way that is both entertaining and instructive.
The Big Question leads off with a major essay explaining and exploring the concept of postmodernism. The next sections include pieces about poetry and fiction, lives and letters, and criticism and controversy.
Other "big questions" addressed include political correctness, the genre of literary biography, academic...

For twenty years, the Poets on Poetry series, under the editorship of Donald Hall, has provided readers with a variety of prose reflections, interviews, essays, and other works by America's leading contemporary poets. With Written in Water, Written in Stone, Martin Lammon celebrates the longevity and literary success of the series by gathering together exemplary selections from many of its volumes. Organized by theme ranging from language and form, politics and poetry, to the literary industry, Written in Water, Written in Stone offers a remarkable survey of the salient issues...

This book restores to print two important verse-essays on the art of poetry by one of America's most honored poets. "Trial of a Poet" was born of Karl Shapiro's serving on the jury that awarded the first Bollingen Prize in Poetry, voting on moral grounds against giving the prize to the winner, Ezra Pound. "Essay on Rime" confronts the confusions Shapiro found in poetry in general and in the work of many specific, noted poets.
Shapiro wrote this 2072-line blank-verse meditation on "the treble confusion / In modern rime" in 1945, when he was thirty and serving a stint with the U.S. Army in...

The Best American Poetry 1995 once again highlights the dazzling spectrum of style and subject matter to be found in the art today. Guest editor Richard Howard's accent is on discovery and surprise, and he has gleaned the most inventive and searching writing from a wide variety of literary journals. The themes and imagery here are indisputably "American," as our best poets continue to mine personal as well as communal experience for their work. Now in its eighth year, this series has established itself as a rich and vibrant source of new poetry -- celebrated in bookstores and on...

The appearance of The Best American Poetry every September is an eagerly awaited rite of fall -- as evidenced by soaring sales and terrific reviews. The popularity of the series is "ample proof that poetry is thriving" (The Orlando Sentinel), and this year's volume will dazzle and delight, instruct and inspire. Under the guiding vision of master poet John Hollander -- one of America's most erudite literary minds -- The Best American Poetry 1998 spotlights the imaginative power and insight of our finest poets at the fin-de-siecle. Diverse in form and method, the poems...

Now in its ninth year, The Best American Poetry is universally acclaimed as the best anthology in the field. The compilation includes a diverse abundance of poems published in 1995 in more than 40 publications ranging from The New Yorker to The Paris Review to Bamboo Ridge.

Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, The Best American Poetry is the one indispensable volume for readers eager to follow what's new in poetry today. Sales continue to grow and plaudits keep coming in for this "high-voltage testament to the vitality of American poetry" (Booklist). Selected by prizewinning guest editor James Tate, the seventy-five best poems of the year were chosen from more than three dozen magazines and range from the comic to the cosmic, from the contemplative to the sublime. In addition to showcasing our leading bards -- such as John Ashbery, Jorie Graham,...

Following in the footsteps of such poets as Emily Dickinson, William Stafford, and Frank O'Hara, David Lehman began writing a poem a day in 1996 and found the experience so rewarding that he continued for the next two years. During that time, some of these poems appeared in various journals and on Web sites, including The Poetry Daily site, which ran thirty of Lehman's poems in as many days throughout the month of April 1998.
For The Daily Mirror, Lehman has selected the best of these "daily poems" -- each tied to a specific occasion or situation -- and telescoped two...

Started in 1997 by poets David Lehman and Star Black, the KGB Bar poetry series is widely recognized as the hottest and perhaps the best reading series in New York. Located in the hip East Village KGB Bar, these Monday-night readings boast a fantastic variety and quality of internationally known poets from Charles Simic, Molly Peacock, and Katha Pollit to Marie Howe, Mark Strand, and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Now Lehman and Black have gathered work from the first three seasons into a wonderful anthology. Together with a generous supply of photographs and anecdotes from contributors on the most...