The Battle of Kosovo cycle of heroic ballads is generally considered the finest work of Serbian folk poetry. Commemorating the Serbian Empire's defeat at the hands of the Turks in the late fourteenth century, these poems and fragments have been known for centuries in Eastern Europe. With the appearance of the collections of Serbian folk poems by Vuk Stefanovic Karasdzic, the brilliance of the poetry in the Kosovo and related cycles of ballads was affirmed by poets and critics as deeply influential as Goethe, Jacob Brimm, Adam Mickiewicz, and Alexander Pushkin. Although translations into...

"A Gathering of Ways" is John Matthias first collection of poems since the publication of his warmly received "Northern Summer" collection in 1985. The book consists of three long poems dealing with the geography, geology, prehistory, and history of two places closely identified with Matthias work, the East Anglian region of Britain and the American Midwest, and a third place that provides the book with a new and deeply resonant setting: those parts of southern France and northern Spain through which run the famous pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.
An East Anglian Diptych...

A unique voice among contemporary American poets, John Matthias has compiled here a major new collection, his first volume of poetry since the publication in 1995 of his retrospective collections of shorter and longer poems. Divided into three sections, "Pages" begins with thirty short poems that range in subject from Ovid and Akhmatova to remembered friends and family. The second part is the experimental and expansive title section, engaging a sometimes humorous and sometimes horrifying sequence of contradictions and non sequiturs. The final section of the volume is a poetic pastiche of...

A unique voice among contemporary American poets, John Matthias has compiled here a major new collection, his first volume of poetry since the publication in 1995 of his retrospective collections of shorter and longer poems. Divided into three sections, "Pages" begins with thirty short poems that range in subject from Ovid and Akhmatova to remembered friends and family. The second part is the experimental and expansive title section, engaging a sometimes humorous and sometimes horrifying sequence of contradictions and non sequiturs. The final section of the volume is a poetic pastiche of...

Suggests both continuity and change. This title features two sections that continue the idiom of Turns (1975) and include many poems on English themes. It contains the two concluding sequences that chart voyages across the Atlantic.

A selection from John Matthias' previous works, together with a group of poems written since 1980. It includes three epistolary poems. It culminates in the title poem, a personal and historical meditation set in Scotland.

A selection from John Matthias' previous works, together with a group of poems written since 1980. It includes three epistolary poems. It culminates in the title poem, a personal and historical meditation set in Scotland.

Trigons derives its title from an obscure Roman ball game mentioned by Petronius in Satyricon. The word also has meanings in the fields of music, astrology, gemology, architecture, poetics, and comic book illustration, all relevant to this book that is sub-titled 'Seven Poems in Two Sets and a Coda'.