Showing titles in Poetry

John Keats was largely unappreciated during his lifetime and died in Rome at the age of 26. Most of his 150 poems were written in just nine extraordinary months in 1819. This selection contains some of his finest works, including the principal "Odes", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Old Meg", and "Much Have I Travelled".

The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness. However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought.

John Keats' letters paint an unforgettably vivid and moving picture of the richly productive but also tragic final years of the poet's life. As he ponders on the nature of the writer's craft, he must first confront his brother's death from tuberculosis and then the imminent prospect of his own, tormented by the fear that he will not live to consummate his relationship with Fanny Brawne.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE A magisterial life of Ted Hughes – identified recently as the only English poet since the First World War with a claim to true greatness and one of Britain’s most important writers – to be published on National Poetry Day by prize-winning...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by award-winning voice actor Martin Jarvis OBE, as well as John Sackville, Maya Saroya and the translator of this edition, David Raeburn. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Denis Feeney. Ovid's sensuous and witty...

Brought to you by Penguin. Sunday Times bestselling author and Instagram sensation Jessica Urlichs returns with a new collection of beautifully observed poems about the ever-evolving journey of motherhood - the hard, the magic, and the fleeting. A mother is born the moment her children are...

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world.

'For myself/ I knew as soon as I could read and write/ That I must be a poet. Even today,/ When all the way from Cambridge comes a wind/ To blow the lamps out every time they're lit/ I know that I must light mine up again.' From his earliest boyhood memories of Highgate and Archibald, his old...

Mary Oliver has published twenty-one volumes of poetry and six books of prose in the span of five decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. With At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver gives her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this...

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful and just as entertaining as it was in the ninth century B.C.,and it casts its spell upon modern listeners with the same raw intensity as it did upon the people of ancient times.

In poyums, Len Pennie has created a collection that is as approachable as it is affecting; whether she's writing letters to her younger self, advocating for women's rights or adapting fairy tales to process an abusive relationship, Len's voice is bold, unashamedly frank and unmistakeably hers. She consciously fuses Scots into her poetry, cleverly ensuring that it is accessible to speakers of both languages.

Everything about the gospel message leads to the cross, and proceeds from the cross. In fact, within the narrative of Scripture, the crucifixion of Jesus is literally the crux of the story—the axis upon which the biblical story turns. But it would be a mistake to think we could sum up the significance of the crucifixion in a tidy sentence or two. That kind of thinking only insulates us from the magnificence of what God has done. In our ongoing quest to make meaning of the cross, we need to recognize that this conversation will never conclude-that there is always something more to be said.

The Canterbury Tales, written near the end of Chaucer's life and hence towards the close of the 14th century, is perhaps the greatest English literary work of the Middle Ages: yet it speaks to us today with almost undimmed clarity and relevance.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), one of the most popular of poets, is celebrated in 2009. Works such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, Crossing the Bar and Tears, Idle Tears have made him an internationally famous figure, and the second most quoted writer of all time (after Shakespeare).

In this personal anthology, Alan Bennett has chosen over seventy poems by six well-loved poets, discussing the writers and their verse in his customary conversational style through anecdote, shrewd appraisal and spare but telling biographical detail. Ranging from hidden treasures to famous poems, this is a collection for the beginner and the expert alike.

A curated compendium of poetry and prose from the award-winning poet Mary Oliver, including the book-length masterpiece The Leaf and the Cloud, the collection What Do We Know, andessays from Long Life—with a foreword by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Postcolonial Love Poem Natalie...

From his remarkable debut The Hawk in the Rain (1957) to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes was a colossal presence in the English literary landscape. He was also admired as a performer of his own work. Tales from Ovid, Ted Hughes' masterful versions of stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, includes those of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe as well as many others.

Who will be the next bishop of Lindchester? That's what everyone's been asking since bishop Paul Henderson resigned in haste and a whiff of scandal. Unseen Things Above rejoins our friends in the diocese as they address themselves to the labyrinthine process of appointing his replacement.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Fifty Poems presents the "top 50" poems of all time. Newly revised, and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets, The Classic Fifty Poems is a feast for poetry lovers.