During the 1910s and 1920s, the Philadelphia waterfront was home to the most durable interracial, multiethnic union seen in the United States prior to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) era. For much of its time, Local 8's majority was African American and included immigrants from Eastern Europe as well as many Irish Americans. In this important study, Peter Cole examines how Local 8, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), accomplished what no other did at the time. He also shows how race was central not only to the rise but also to the decline of Local 8, as...

Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time.

Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some...

This volume is the first UK publication by Peter Cole, an acclaimed American-Israeli poet and translator. The book reprints the entire contents of his two US collections, Rift (1989) and Hymns & Qualms (1998) under one set of covers and enables a new readership to get to know a remarkable and most original voice. As US poet Forrest Gander observed: "The keenness of his mind and the moral seriousness of his work astonish .... the exquisite specificity of his diction and the intricacy of his prosody are without parallel among the poets of his - and my - generation."

The first American publication of a major Palestinian poet, whose international festival readings attract vast audiences.