Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses

Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
Author: Laura Salah Nasrallah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 100940573X

This book shows how Ancient Christians both used curses and criticized them in ancient Mediterranean religion and society.

Spells of Solemn Songs

Spells of Solemn Songs
Author: Fasasi, Khabyr Alowonle
Publisher: Kraft Books
Total Pages: 89
Release: 2016-12-19
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9789183240

Spells of Solemn Songs is a collection of poems that raises strident voices of confrontation against the bastardisation of the space on political, economic, religious and foreign fronts as well as condemns without fear the lacklustre attitudes of some apathetic figures. It further redirects minds to some ideal African ethos and humane values that engender communal and social well-being and oneness. Carved in a language so mellifluous and so unreservedly resolute, its matchless rhythimic cadence enhances easy reading, flow and comprehension while critically challenging the readers’ perception of the world around.

The Lost Words

The Lost Words
Author:
Publisher: Edition Peters
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2022-05
Genre: Music
ISBN:

The Lost Words by composer James Burton takes its inspiration and text from the award-winning 'cultural phenomenon' and book of the same name by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris: a book that was, in turn, a creative response to the removal of everyday nature words like acorn, newt and otter from a new edition of a widely used children's dictionary. Both the book and Burton's 32-minute work, which is written in 12 short movements for upper-voice choir in up to 3 voice parts (with either orchestral or piano accompaniment), celebrates each lost word with a beautiful poem or 'spell', magically brought to life in Burton's music. At its heart, the work delivers a powerful message about the need to close the gap between childhood and the natural world. Burton's piece was co-commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society for the Hallé Children's Choir and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The piano accompaniment version was premiered at the Tanglewood Festival in 2019 by the Boston Symphony Children's Choir, of which Burton is founder and director. The Hallé Children's Choir will premiere the orchestral version of the full work in Manchester, UK, post-pandemic. Vocal Score Co-commission by Boston Symphony and Hallé Concerts Society for their respective Children's Choirs. Two versions - with orchestral or with piano accompaniment. The vocal score is the same for both versions. James Burton is a composer but also a conductor. He is conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and choral director of the Boston Symphony. The book The Lost Words, exquisitely designed, has won multiple awards and is an international best-seller. The vocal score includes Jackie Morris's beautiful imagery in its cover design.

Curses

Curses
Author: Lee Rudolph
Publisher: Alice James Books
Total Pages: 75
Release: 2016-05-30
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1938584864

"Lee's poems are like places. I enter them and he talks to me there. I hear his voice. The rare quality is how full these places seem of things and feelings but without crowding me. Rather they make me believe I'm really there. I like Lees poems a lot." —Dick Lourie

The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara

The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
Author: Frank O'Hara
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 626
Release: 1995-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780520201668

Available for the first time in paperback, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara reflects the poet's growth as an artist from the earliest dazzling, experimental verses that he began writing in the late 1940s to the years before his accidental death at forty, when his poems became increasingly individual and reflective.

Dirae - A Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana

Dirae - A Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana
Author: Boris Kayachev
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2024-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 191453543X

The Dirae is a curse uttered, in bucolic hexameters, by an Italian farmer against his former estate confiscated to enable the settlement of Caesarian veterans in the aftermath of the battle of Philippi: this commentary is the first work, in eighty years, to offer a systematic exploration of the poem within the literary and historical context of the Late Republic. At the heart of the volume is a freshly edited Latin text, based on a thorough reappraisal of manuscript evidence and earlier textual scholarship, which in particular aims to restore the poems stanzaic organisation, gravely distorted in the course of transmission. Besides providing an account of the manuscripts and an overview of the poems structure and contents, the introduction discusses at length the Diraes engagement with other poetic texts and traditions, first of all with its sibling the Lydia, but also, crucially, with Greek bucolic, before considering its reception in Virgils Eclogues and later Augustan poetry; it sheds new light too on the Diraes links with Hellenistic curse poetry and with the ritual tradition of inscribed curses. Endorsing a composition period shortly after the poems dramatic date (springsummer of 41 BC) and tentatively reviving the old attribution to Valerius Cato, the introduction also explores the Diraes engagement with the political events and narratives of one of the most dramatic moments of Roman history. The line-by-line commentary provides exegesis of the poems textual, linguistic, literary and historical aspects, with the English translation offering a further point of orientation.

The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick

The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick
Author: Tom Cain
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 826
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0191549843

Robert Herrick has long been one of the best loved of English lyric poets. Known through the centuries as the author of 'Gather ye rosebuds', he also wrote, as this new edition shows, hundreds of songs, epigrams and longer poems equally worthy of attention. Volume I of this new edition of Herrick's work contains Hesperides, Herrick's only published collection. As well as the commentary on Hesperides, volume II contains the fifty-nine surviving manuscript poems which can be firmly attributed to Herrick, and on which his reputation was based before 1648. It is an ambitious and original attempt to recover for the first time the history of Herrick's corpus of manuscript poetry, and to identify how his poems circulated, and who his copyists and readers were. By establishing the type of sources to which they had access and the nature and quality of the poems these sources contained, and through the histories of transmission that accompany every poem, this volume offers a significant body of evidence that deepens our critical understanding not only of Herrick's poetry, but of the mechanics of scribal publication and the culture of reading, writing and performing poetry and music in early modern England. Where, as is often the case, a musical setting survives this is also printed, along with a commentary on the setting, in a form which is designed to encourage the performance of the lyrics.