Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon

Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon
Author:
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2015-06-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1942683014

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 of poetry translation, Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao. She teaches in the creative writing program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II
Author: Lily Xiao Hong Lee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 764
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317515617

This volume of the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women completes the four-volume project and contains more than 400 biographies of women active in the Tang through Ming dynasties (618-1644). Many of the entries are the result of original research and provide the only substantial information on women available in English. Of note is the inclusion of a large number of women who reached positions of authority during this period as well as women artists and writers, especially poets, during this period of increased female literacy and more liberal social attitudes to women's cultural roles. Wherever possible, entries incorporate translations of poems and sometimes prose works so as to let the women speak for themselves. The book also includes a multitude of entertainers and actresses. The volume includes a Guide to Chinese Words Used, a Chronology of Dynasties and Major Rulers, a Finding List by Background or Fields of Endeavor, and a Glossary of Chinese Names. It will prove to be a useful tool for research and teaching.

This Number Does Not Exist

This Number Does Not Exist
Author: Mangalesh Dabral
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2016-06-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1942683138

An attentive critique on contemporary reality—modernity, capitalism, industrialization—this first United States publication of Mangalesh Dabral, presented in bilingual English and Hindi, speaks for the dislocated, disillusioned people of our time. Juxtaposing the rugged Himalayan backdrop of Dabral's youth with his later migration in search of earning a livelihood, this collection explores the tense relationship between country and city. Speaking in the language of deep irony, these compassionate poems also depict the reality of diaspora among ordinary people and the middle class, underlining the big disillusionment of post-Independence India. "Song of the Dislocated" With a heavy heart we left tore away from the ancestral home mud slips behind us now stones fall in a hail look back a bit brother how the doors shut themselves behind each one of them a room utterly forlorn Mangalesh Dabral was born in 1948 in the Tehri Garhwal district of the Himalayas. The author of nine books of poetry, essays, and other genres, his work has been translated and published in all major Indian languages and in Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Polish, and Bulgarian. He has spent his adult life as a literary editor for various newspapers published in Delhi and other north Indian cities, and has been featured at numerous international events and festivals, including the International Poetry Festival. The recipient of many literary awards, he has also translated into Hindi the works of Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal, Yannis Ritsos, Tadeusz Rozewicz, and Zbigniew Herbert. Dabral lives in Ghaziabad, India.

Classical Chinese Poetry

Classical Chinese Poetry
Author: David Hinton
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 597
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1466873221

“A magisterial book” of nearly five hundred poems from some of history’s greatest Chinese poets, translated and edited by a renowned poet and scholar (New Republic). The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature. This rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton’s book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet’s work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poets. “David Hinton has . . . lured into English a new manner of hearing the great poets of that long glory of China’s classical age. His achievement is another echo of the original, and a gift to our language.” —W. S. Merwin

Praises & Offenses

Praises & Offenses
Author: Aída Cartagena Portalatin
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-06-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1938160940

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 omission with poetry that is smart, edgy, and groundbreaking.

Flowers of a Moment

Flowers of a Moment
Author: Ko Un
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-06-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1938160894

“Bodhisattva of Korean poetry, exuberant, demotic, abundant, obsessed with poetic creation . . . Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.”—Allen Ginsberg "Korea's greatest living Zen poet."—Lawrence Ferlinghetti Flowers of a Moment is a treasure trove of more than 180 brief poems by a major world poet at the apex of his career. A four-time Nobel Prize nominee,Ko Un grew up in Korea during the Japanese occupation. During the Korean War, he was conscripted by the People's Army. In 1952, he became a Buddhist and lived a monastic life for ten years. For his activism confronting South Korea's dictatorial military government, he was imprisoned and tortured. He has published more than one hundred volumes of poetry, essays, fiction, drama, and translations of Chinese poetry. At sunset a wish to become a wolf beneath a fat full moon

The Book of Things

The Book of Things
Author: Ales Steger
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 82
Release: 2010-10-19
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1934414743

From his first book of poems, Chessboards of Hours (1995), Aleš Šteger 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 Šteger's reputation beyond the borders of Slovenia. The Book of Things is Šteger's most widely praised book of poetry and his first American collection. The book consists of fifty poems that look at "things" (i.e. aspirin, chair, cork) which are transformed by Šteger's unique poetic alchemy. Translator Brian Henry is a distinguished poet, translator, editor, and critic. From Publisher’s Weekly: Steger’s efforts sometimes bring to mind such Western European figures as Francis Ponge and Craig Raine, who also sought to make household things look new and strange. Yet Steger brings a melancholy Central European sense of history- his objects tend to remember, or cause, great pain: “It pours, this poisonous, sweet force,” Steger writes of “Saliva,” “Between teeth, when you spit your own little genocide.” (Nov.) From Guernica, a Magazine of Art and Politics: It is a rare treat to have an English translation before the ink has dried on the original. By which I mean, a mere five years after the book’s Slovenian publication, Brian Henry has brought these poems to life for those of us not lucky enough to read Slovenian. Henry’s translations are impressive for sheer acrobatics.

Chinese Funerary Biographies

Chinese Funerary Biographies
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2019-12-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295746424

Tens of thousands of epitaphs, or funerary biographies, survive from imperial China. Engraved on stone and placed in a grave, they typically focus on the deceased’s biography and exemplary words and deeds, expressing the survivors’ longing for the dead. These epitaphs provide glimpses of the lives of women, men who did not leave a mark politically, and children—people who are not well documented in more conventional sources such as dynastic histories and local gazetteers. This anthology of translations makes available funerary biographies covering nearly two thousand years, from the Han dynasty through the nineteenth century, selected for their value as teaching material for courses in Chinese history, literature, and women’s studies as well as world history. Because they include revealing details about personal conduct, families, local conditions, and social, cultural, and religious practices, these epitaphs illustrate ways of thinking and the realities of daily life. Most can be read and analyzed on multiple levels, and they stimulate investigation of topics such as the emotional tenor of family relations, rituals associated with death, Confucian values, women’s lives as written about by men, and the use of sources assumed to be biased. These biographies will be especially effective when combined with more readily available primary sources such as official documents, religious and intellectual discourses, and anecdotal stories, promising to generate provocative discussion of literary genre, the ways historians use sources, and how writers shape their accounts.

House Inspections

House Inspections
Author: Carsten René Nielsen
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2011-10-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1934414700

"These poems do much more than blur the line between illusion and reality: they evoke that vibrant contradiction of dreaming in which the real and unreal exist in perfect simultaneity."—The Georgia Review Theatre A man performs whole days from his life as a drama, each day at home in his apartment. He goes to great lengths to be as realistic as possible, walking around the apartment and tending to day-to-day business. Only at night, when he sits by himself in the kitchen, does he peek now and then at the window to glimpse his audience. He won't completely abandon the notion that someone is out there. It's like when you stand on the landing, in front of a closed door, and you can't help thinking that someone is watching through the peephole. With a dozen poems previously published in The Paris Review, Carsten René Nielsen is already a familiar name to US poetry readers. These dark prose poems—reminiscent of Charles Simic—map out a uniquely European territory with chilling, cinematic clarity. Award-winning Danish poet Carsten René Nielsen is the author of nine books of poetry, including his US debut The World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors (2007). His poems appear in The Paris Review, Agni, Circumference, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Aarhus, Denmark. David Keplinger's poetry awards include the Colorado Book Award, T.S. Eliot Prize, an NEA fellowship, and grants from the Danish Arts Council. He directs the MFA program at American University in Washington, DC.

The Living Theatre

The Living Theatre
Author: Bianca Tarozzi
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1942683529

In this first US publication of celebrated Italian poet Bianca Tarozzi, narrative poems (presented bilingually in both English and the original Italian) carry us through the poet's childhood memories of World War II under Mussolini, harsh post-war conditions, and mid-century changes that transformed Italian life, specifically for women. A unique figure in contemporary Italian poetry, Tarozzi draws significant influence from acclaimed American poets—Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill—interweaving powerful subjects with humor and heart. After: you have packed the suitcase, shut off the gas, turned all the lights out, locked the window and the big outside door, when you lean against a wall, afraid of falling, and wait, expecting the vehicle, the means that will transport you far away, when the sky sails clear, blue, and annihilating above the overpass, and you have no past or future, in that empty moment poetry pitches its tent. Bianca Tarozzi was born in Bologna in 1941. Her father was a political prisoner under Mussolini, and then a Senator after the war. She received a degree from Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and taught English and American Literature for many years at the University of Verona. The recipient of numerous literary honors, she has translated into Italian the works of Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Richard Wilbur, A. E. Housman, Denise Levertov, and Louise Gluck. Also the author of many books of poetry, she began writing poems in 1947, and continues to this day. She currently splits her time between Venice and Milan, Italy.