city lights books us (909 results)

Paperback. Condition: Used; Very Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books.

Paperback. Condition: Used; Very Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books.

Paperback. Condition: Used; Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books.

Paperback. Condition: New. Published to celebrate forty years of City Lights publishing, which began with the letterpress printing of this book in 1955. It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book, and it has been reprinted twenty-one times, having never been out of print. The original edition contained the first twenty-seven poems to which the author has now added eighteen new verses. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Books, author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World, among numerous other books, has been drawing from life since his student days in Paris where he frequented the Academie Julien and where he did his first oil painting.

Paperback. Condition: New. In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work.

Paperback. Condition: New. The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition.2014 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten correctionsfound in a first-edition copy at the University of Coloradoas well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has assembled a text with over one hundred emendations, resulting in the first version of Tender Buttons that truly reflects its author's intentions. These changes are detailed in Perlow's "Note on the Text," which describes the editorial process and lists the specific variants for the benefit of future scholars. The book includes facsimile images of some of Stein's handwritten edits and lists of corrections, as well as an afterword by noted contemporary poet and scholar Juliana Spahr. A compact, attractive edition suitable for general readers as well as scholars, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition is unique among the available versions of this classic text and is destined to become the standard.Gertrude Stein (18741946) was one of the most important and innovative American writers of literary modernism, as well as one of the great art collectors and salon hosts of the period. A pioneering lesbian writer, Stein lived most of her life in Paris but became a celebrity in the United States with the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).Seth Perlow teaches English at Oklahoma State University.Juliana Spahr teaches writing at Mills College."Tender Buttons was recently reissued by City Lights Books, to mark the centennial of a volume that broke language barriers, acknowledging hungers to see more. It challenged with inspired daring."--Barbara Berman, The Rumpus"For the centennial of this masterpiece, Seth Perlow has given us much the best edition of the poem, based on Stein's manuscript and corrections she made to the first edition. Punctuation, spelling, format, and a few phrases are affected and most especially the change in the capitalization of the section titles. 'The difference is spreading.'"--Charles Bernstein, University of Pennsylvania, author of Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions"Happy 100th birthday, TENDER BUTTONS. You are as explosive, tantalizing, and delicious as you were on the day you were born. Your birthday gift from Seth Perlow and Juliana Spahr is a beautiful new edition that will carry you into your next century, the best edition ever. Your birthday gift from all of us who love literature and culture is to buy this edition for ourselves and all our friends. Congratulations to all."--Catharine R. Stimpson, Professor, New York University, and co-editor of the two-volume Gertrude Stein: Writings published by the Library of Amer.

Paperback. Condition: New. "In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change. The result is a fierce and provocative book."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History "Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene presents, without extraneous bullshit, what we must do to survive on Earth. It's a powerful, useful, and ultimately hopeful book that more than any other I've read has the ability to change people's minds and create change. For me, it crystallizes and expresses what I've been thinking about and trying to get a grasp on. The economical way it does so, with such clarity, sets the book apart from most others on the subject."--Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy "Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster.While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A critical intervention."--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "Concise, elegant, erudite, heartfelt and wise."--Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire "War veteran and journalist Roy Scranton combines memoir, philosophy, and science writing to craft one of the definitive documents of the modern era."--The Believer Best Books of 2015 Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter.From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself .and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life. In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nat.

Paperback. Condition: New. Spontaneous poetry by the author of On the Road, gathered from underground and ephemeral publications; including "San Francisco Blues," the variant texts of "Pull My Daisy" and "American haiku." HERE DOWN ON DARK EARTH before we all go to Heaven VISIONS OF AMERICA All that hitchhikin All that railroadin All that comin back to America --Jack Kerouac Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, and a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Cody, Pomes All Sizes (City Lights) and Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights).

Paperback. Condition: New. Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno writes in his introduction to Destruction of the Jaguar that "The Books of Chilam Balam are the only principal surviving texts of the ancient Maya. Written in the Mayan language but in European script, they are generally considered to be transcriptions and recompilations from memory of material originally contained in the hieroglyphic books, all of which were apparently destroyed by the Spaniards.As they stand now, they are a curious and fascinating combination of prophecy, history, chronology, ritual and mythology." Here is an English translation that captures the unparalleled beauty of one of the great pre-Columbian masterpieces. This stirring, prophetic poetry haunts our own times. "The Destruction of the Jaguar is Mayan surrealism, dark with jungle shadows and bright with macaw plumage. It is the savage song of a world turned to dust, and in Sawyer-Laucannos voice, it echoes loud and long for the first time in centuries."--Mark Dery, Chicago Tribune Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno lives in Montague, Massachusetts, with his wife, the poet Patricia Pruitt, and their little white dog, Salty.In 2007 he was guest writer at the first Mussoorie Writers' Festival in India. His books include E.E. Cummings: A Biography (Methuen Publishing, 2005) and The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960 (City Lights, 2001).

Paperback. Condition: New. "what a poetand the clear water is thickwith bloody blows on its head.I embraced a cloudBut when I soaredit rained."-Frank O'Hara, "Mayakovsky" (1954)Mayakovsky's is one of the most compelling voices in twentieth-century Russian poetry. Born in 1893, he joined the Futurist movement in 1912 and soon established himself as one of Russia's major poets. In 1917, he rallied to the Russian Revolution and remained the indisputable leader of its artistic avant-garde until his suicide in 1930.Many of the poems in this book are translated for the first time into English. Accompanying the poems are rare drawings and lithographs by Mayakovsky and his circle, found in private collections of futurist books.

Paperback. Condition: New. Widely acclaimed for his lyrical language and innovative verse, Aaron Shurin brings the prose poem into new richness and complexity in Citizen. Through shape-shifting sentences and sensuous imagery he explores the nuances of civic and domestic life, the twists and turns of desire, and the mysterious shimmer of objects. Traveling across the borders of cities and the boundaries of form, he crafts a dazzling vision of daily life as a citizen of the imagination. "His writing folds the mundane and the mythic in with deep images of personal archetype. The passing moments in which the poems possessed Shurin are held fresh to the page in a dazzled string of trigger-touches. They hint of lingering spiral passages, personal journeys, which lie just below such occasions."--Patrick Dunagan,The Critical Flame "Aaron Shurin writes piercingly lovely poetry that's multidimensional and insists on being read aloud, though its eloquence is equally powerful on the page without sound, with that enclosed, attentive ear that can turn poetry into meditation.Shurin's name has been linked with masters like Jorie Graham and Michael Palmer. But his songs have a grace that's his alone."--The Rumpus "Aaron Shurin, in Citizen, deliriously revels in sensual images, sly wisdom and rumbling pauses. Shurin's brilliant book--his eleventh--suggests how a lengthy career allows a poet the room to roam, stretching the limits of what his poems can be."--K.M. Soehnlein, author of Robin and Ruby "Citizen's lyrics are a fine mixture of the crisp and the luxurious if such a combination is possible. With only two or three exceptions, no poem is more than a page long. Things go quickly. The poet gets in, does his work, and gets out. However within that space is a carnival of language, and the reader loves the short wild ride, in part because Shurin revels in the glory of words. He knows they can take us places and entertain, and he allows them to (read: makes them) do both.the whole book, is an embrace of the fantastic."--Dean Rader, The Huffington Post "Lyrical and sketched with lush strokes of purpose and panache, these densely evocative paragraphs demonstrate a wide range of moods and desires.It would be difficult to find a piece in Shurin's tightly constructed bounty that doesn't reiterate the beauty of his cerebrally-interpreted text, but there are indeed standouts and, conversely, some pages that could possibly rise above the heads of more inexperienced poetry fanatics."--The Bay Area Reporter "These agile prose poems by Aaron Shurin wander and leap sensually from bed, to lover, to home, to natural wonders, both personal and universal. The individual words of each poem collide and mingle, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes with a purposeful dissonance. Citizen is a lyrical and affirming look into the vibrant life of San Francisco and into the mind of one of its most accomplished poets."--World Literature Today "In Citizen, Shurin seamlessly tackles many aspects of life. Oft.

Paperback. Condition: New. From inside her cell in the wall of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, Alix, a young Parisian recluse, observes a tumultuous world of thieves and scoundrels, rebels, heretics, and pilgrims. Set during the Hundred Year's War and based on the historical figure of Alix la Bourgotte, Sealed in Stone, traces the intersecting lives of a vagabond Turkish sailor, a Bohemian intellectual, the amazing Alix, and a young rebel from Lombardy who finds himself powerfully drawn to her. "Toni Maraini's Sealed in Stone, an allegorical novel set in the heart of medieval Paris, radiantly portrays the triumph of the soul over the darkness of existence. An extraordinary achievement." --Lucia A. Blackstone ".a strange and necessary novel." --Alberto Moravia Toni Maraini is an Italian poet, novelist, and art critic. She grew up in an literary family in Sicily, and has lived in Paris, London, Casablanca, and New York. She currently lives in Rome.

Paperback. Condition: New. Meditations, rhapsodies, elegies, confessions, and mindful chronicle writings filling inward and outward space thru mid-Seventies decade. Mind Breaths: Australian songsticks measure oldest known poetics, broken-leg meditations march thru Six Worlds singing crazy Wisdom's hopeless suffering, the First Noble Truth, inspiring quiet Sung sunlit greybeard soliloquies, English moonlit night-gleams, ambitious mid-life fantasies, Ah crossed-legged thoughts sitting straight-spine paying attention to empty breath flowing 'round the globe;' then Dharma elegy and sharp-eyed haiku. Pederast rhapsody, exorcism of mid-East battlegods, workaday sad dust glories, American ego confession and mugging downfall Lower East Side, hospital sickness moan, hydrogen Jukebox Prophecy, Sex come-all-ye, mountain cabin flashes, Buddhist country western chord changes, Rolling Thunder snowballs, a Jersey Shaman dream, Father Death in a graveyard near Newark, Poe bones, two hot hearted love poems: Here chronicled mid Seventies' half decade inward and outward Mindfulness in many Poetries."Allen Ginsberg's poems of the 1970's are a marvel, his new book, "Mind Breaths," presenting a half dozen poems, probably more, that are first-rate Ginsberg.The poems are there-on the page, in the book. They are called "mind breaths." No need to speak of kinds, qualities, degrees, the intellect's inevitable meanderings. The poems exist. Think of all the millions of things that might have gone otherwise, so that they might not exist. Our times are bleak enough, heaven knows, but at least we have this." --Hayden Carruth, New York Times Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian emigre, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind and fade in Orient awhile.Carl Solomon to whom "Howl" is addressed, is a intuitive Bronx dadaist and prose-poet.".

Paperback. Condition: New. In these renegade stories, set in Cuba during the hard times following the collapse of the Soviet Union, people go to work only to find that their jobs no longer exist. They joke and tell stories from the past, live aimlessly, uncertain about what the future holds. While living in this state of suspension, Ponte's dynamic characters create their own startling worlds. Departing from both the utopian-political and the romantic-baroque styles of past Cuban literature, Ponte deftly sketches a picture of a contemporary Cuba that is very different from the stereotype of Caribbean life, full of music and dance and colorful celebration. An old man and a six-year-old prodigy have a rendezvous to play chess at a forlorn railroad station. Randomly riding trains, a woman keeps company with a strange assembly of men. An unemployed historian falls in love with an enigmatic astrologer, and the two live out their tragedy in the streets of Havana as homeless vagrants. A father and son take an aimless stroll after lunch to see the whores along the Malecon, Havana's seaside promenade.A young man, one of the last Cuban students to go to the Soviet Union on a foreign-study program, returns to Havana, where he explores his identity-looking at childhood photos with his grandfather, spending time with old friends, and obsessively seeking news of a woman he had known and loved in Russia. In a style both lucid and translucent, Ponte shapes intricate stories of self-discovery and metaphysical revelation in spare and allusive prose. About the Authors Antonio Jose Ponte was born in 1964 in Matanzas, Cuba, and studied at the University of Havana. He worked for some years as an engineer, and then as a screenwriter. In addition to writing short stories and fiction, Ponte has published prize-winning collections of poetry and essays. His work has been published in France, Germany, and Spain. This is his first book to be published in the United States. Cola Franzen is the translator of over twenty books, including Poems of Arab Andalusia, Dreams of the Abandoned Seducer by Alicia Borinsky, and Horses in the Air by Jorge Guillen (recipient of the Academy of American Poets Harold Morton Landon Translation Award 2000). Review "In his first book to be published in the U.S.,Ponte gives readers a short collection of six elliptical stories from inside the Cuban revolutionary experience, closer in spirit to the fiction of Eastern European dissidents than to that of Caribbean fabulists. Unlike exiled writers who see the island as either a mythical homeland or a political cause, Ponte paints a picture that will strike the U.S. reader as surreal in its simplicity." --Publisher's Weekly Ponte raises unease to an art, stripping Cuban spirituality to the bone. His work is so quiet that one can begin to hear the real dynamics, usually just out of reach." --Elizabeth Hanley, Partisan Review.

Paperback. Condition: New. Winner of the American Book Award, the Palestine Book Award and Arrowsmith Press's 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry PrizeNational Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Finalist"Written from his native Gaza, Abu Toha's accomplished debut contrasts scenes of political violence with natural beauty."-The New York TimesIn this poetry debut Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege in Gaza, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a profound humanity.These poems emerge directly from the experience of growing up and living in constant lockdown, and often under direct attack. Like Gaza itself, they are filled with rubble and the ever-present menace of surveillance drones policing a people unwelcome in their own land, and they are also suffused with the smell of tea, roses in bloom, and the view of the sea at sunset. Children are born, families continue traditions, students attend university, and libraries rise from the ruins as Palestinians go on about their lives, creating beauty and finding new ways to survive.Accompanied by an in-depth interview (conducted by Ammiel Alcalay) in which Abu Toha discusses life in Gaza, his family origins, and how he came to poetry.Praise for Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear:"Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishingly gifted young poet from Gaza, almost a seer with his eloquent lyrical vernacular . His poems break my heart and awaken it, at the same time. I feel I have been waiting for his work all my life."-Naomi Shihab Nye"Though forged in the bleak landscape of Gaza, he conjures a radiance that echoes Milosz and Kabir. These poems are like flowers that grow out of bomb craters and Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishing talent to celebrate."-Mary Karr"Mosab Abu Toha's Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear arrives with such refreshing clarity and voice amidst a sea of immobilizing self-consciousness. It is no great feat to say a complicated thing in a complicated way, but here is a poet who says it plain: 'In Gaza, some of us cannot completely die.' Later, 'This is how we survived.' It's remarkable. This is poetry of the highest order."-Kaveh Akbar.

Paperback. Condition: New. Full of wit and wonder, these prose poems, meditations, and narratives open onto rare and unexpected vistas of history and myth, language, and the art of writing. ".one of the most distinguished and enigmatic of modern Greek poets, full of Platonic wisdom. His originality of temperament is a most singluar thing.[his] new book is splendid." --Lawrence Durrell "The purpose of the book is twofold: first, to revise certain aspects of nationalist modernism, and secondly, to radicalize Greek modernism by undermining continuity and tradition.Valaoritis's revision primarily concerns the continuity and validity of tradition as expressed in the "myth of Greekness." -Panayiotis Bosnakis, Journal of Modern Greek Studies Nanos Valaoritis was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1921, of Greek parents. He has lived in Athens, Paris, and the United States. One of Greece's most distinguished contemporary writers, he is the author of novels, plays, and poetry, and was twice awarded the Greek national poetry prize.

Paperback. Condition: New. A conjuration of ancient consciousness aimed at rehumanizing our contemporary cyborg condition."Referring to the American continent, 'Abya Yala' ('land of life') is a pre-Columbian term of the Guna people of Panamá and Colombia. Harrison wrestles with language, racism, and humanity in political and spiritual poems."-Publishers Weekly, Most Anticipated Poetry Books, Spring 2024"Abya Yala"-"land of life" or "land of vital blood"-is a Pre-Columbian term of the Guna people of Panamá and Colombia to refer to the American continent and more recently has signified the idea of a decolonized "New World" among various Indigenous movements. In Isthmus to Abya Yala, Panamanian American poet Roberto Harrison summons a mythic consciousness in response to this political and spiritual struggle. In his poems, with mystic fervor, Harrison finds phonetic unities concealing conceptual oppositions he must transcend. Invoking "mobilian" as an ur-language against racism and toward an all-inclusive humanity-in opposition to the "mobile" of phone-mediated existence-the poems of Isthmus to Abya Yala burn with a visionary ardor that overpowers rationality through an intensive accumulation of imagery. They even sometimes manifest as visual poems in the form of drawings he calls "Tecs," opposing the dominance of technology to the advocacy of pan-Indian nationhood by 19th century Shawnee leader Tecumseh. "Tecumseh Republic" is the poet's name for a new post-racial, post-national, post-binary, post-colonial, holistic and earth-oriented society with no national borders, with Panamá, the isthmus, as its only entry and exit.

Paperback. Condition: New. A Regional Independent Bookstore Bestseller!An urgent call for the political transformation needed to address the common causes of climate change, COVID-19, and racism." . . . some big titles will address emergencies that have outlived Trump. The Path to a Livable Future by Stan Cox, explores the connections among the many crises of the past year and a half."-Dorany Pineda, Los Angeles Times2020 was a year defined by crisis. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about the urgency of addressing climate change, but it took COVID-19 to demonstrate clearly that the future of human life on Earth is interconnected and at risk. While the virus quickly spread across the globe, extreme weather events compounded the suffering and economic catastrophe. In the U.S., public demonstrations of outrage over the murder of George Floyd expanded to include a growing awareness of the pandemic's disproportionate impact on communities of color. In cities around the world, people took to the streets to protest racial inequity in all of its forms.In The Path to a Livable Future, Stan Cox makes plain the connections between the multiple crises facing us today, and provides an inspired vision for how to resolve them. With a deeply informed, clear to-do list, Cox shows us how we can work together to address the climate emergency, white supremacy, and our vulnerability to future pandemics all at once. Our future depends on it."An iconoclast of the best kind, Stan Cox has an all-too-rare commitment to following arguments wherever they lead, however politically dangerous that turns out to be."-Naomi Klein"Cox lays out a refreshingly grounded roadmap for the survival of all life on earth, based on up-to-date science, and anchored in the racial justice imperative."-Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, author of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land "Above all, he shows that a healthy, just, sustainable future is possible if we reduce our ecological footprint and share the earth's gifts equitably. For this we need to organize, resist, imagine, and forge another path together."-Vandana Shiva, author of Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology.

Paperback. Condition: New. "One of Turkey's most interesting modern writers."--Booklist When the Emperor of Byzantium orders the destruction of all religious paintings and icons, Constantinople is thrown into crisis. Fear grips the monastery where Andronikos, a young monk, is thrown into a spiritual crisis. Amidst stirrings of resistance he decides to escape, leaving behind his beloved Ioakim, who must confront his own crisis of faith and decide where to place his allegiance. The dualities of dogma and faith, individual and society, East and West, are embodied in a story of prohibited love and devotion to the unseen. Bilge Karasu (1930--1995) was born in Istanbul. Often referred to as "the sage of Turkish literature," during his lifetime he published collections of stories, novels, and two books of essays. "The 'other' is usually construed as a person or society removed from 'us' by space. But Karasu has chosen to study his 'other' across the divide of time, pushing readers to compare the profound identity crises engulfing individuals in ancient Byzantium to those in the early Turkish Republic.In doing so, Karasu shows the futility of separating ourselves from 'others' -- and the social upheaval that results when we do."--Time Out Istanbul.

Paperback. Condition: New. The original American surrealist returns in a new edition of the 1967 classic."I am eager to do a book of yours," Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote to Philip Lamantia in Nerja, Spain in 1966. "What about SELECTED POEMS OF PHILIP LAMANTIA?" The missive came at the right time, as Lamantia had recently reembraced the surrealism of his youth and sought to publish his current work alongside his key poems of the 1940s, when the then-15-year-old poet was published by war-exiled leader of the Surrealist Movement, André Breton. For Breton, the young poet was a new Rimbaud, but Lamantia also became known as a poet of the Beat Generation, participating in the 1955 Six Gallery Reading where Allen Ginsberg debuted "Howl." A pioneer of San Francisco's psychedelic culture, Lamantia reemerged through City Lights at the crest of the Summer of Love.Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia reflects each facet of the poet's development up to the point of its publication. "Revelations of a Surreal Youth (1943-1945)" includes the incendiary poems from his teenage years which brought him early avant-garde fame, including his signature "Touch of the Marvelous." "Trance Ports (1948-1961)" covers the Beat years, evincing increasing involvement with mysticism, esoterism, and religion. Finally, "Secret Freedom (1963-1966)" heralds his return to surrealism, cementing his countercultural bona fides with the LSD-fueled "Blue Grace," the zig-zagging Kundalini-inspired "What Is Not Strange?" and the Aquarian Age ode "Astro-Mancy," which prefigures his later engagement with Native American culture.This new edition includes an afterword by poet and editor Garrett Caples, recounting the book's genesis through correspondence between Lamantia and Ferlinghetti and including archival images. A much-needed restoration to the Pocket Poets Series of today, Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia glows like a red-hot coal still burning with the revolutionary fervor of its time.

Paperback. Condition: New. Volume 21 in the City Lights Spotlight Poetry Series: A searing indictment of anti-Black social and political violence by British Jamaican poet and leading scholar of Afro-pessimism D.S. Marriott.A book that turns Blackness into a question of reading, of inscribing and decoding Blackness in poetry, Before Whiteness ranges from medieval Beowulf to contemporary UK grime. Born in Britain but now living in the U.S., D.S. Marriott trains his analytical gaze on grim American subjects like the Middle Passage and lynchings, yet also finds inspiration in African American poets and artists. The book ends with "Another Burning," a mournful elegy for the victims of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London and stirring rebuke of the structural racism of contemporary UK society."In Before Whiteness, Marriott inhabits the names we remember, such as Lester Young and Dambudzo Marechera, and victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, names we never knew. All of them people who have no place at the table where the Human family feasts. 'Blackness /' Marriott reminds us, 'wasn't in the language-we saw it / being evacuated / but we still inhabited / the ashes.' These are not poems for the faint of heart, or those in need of denouncements. But with the evocative language of a wordsmith and the fearless insights of a philosopher, these poems guide us through the inner life of social death."-Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism"The mature poetry of the British-Caribbean poet D. S. Marriott is often possessed by a majestic full-throatedness, but Before Whiteness makes audible his more intimate tone, the sound of an approachable vulnerability. Before whiteness comes infancy, a time before language and the impingement of the white world, but this writing also stands in the face of whiteness, can stand against whiteness. Its words may be placed on white ground, the long history of English verse, but also are hauled from a dense Black record of suffering, resistance and joy. . Only a great poet's writing can be at once so rich with echoes, so exacting in its thought, and so emotionally open."-John Wilkinson, author of My Reef My Manifest Array and Lyric in Its Times.

Paperback. Condition: New. One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Poetry Books for Spring 2023Metamorphoses springs from Ovid's epic poem to explore the slipperiness of identity, its propensity for change and transience. In poems that shift registers from travelogue to elegy, from nature documentary to a simple record of the realities of daily life,  Evan Kennedy focuses on transformation, personal and collective, in an empire in decline, in a world transfigured by ecological upheaval. With a range of reference from Roman household Gods to San Francisco poetic titans to musical celebrities like Madonna and Bob Dylan, Metamorphoses confronts change as an inevitable molecular process.

Paperback. Condition: New. Voted a Best Poetry Book of the Year by Library JournalIncluded in Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Poetry Books of the YearOne of LitHub's most Anticipated Books of the Year!A State of the Union from the nation's first Latino Poet Laureate. Trenchant, compassionate, and filled with hope."Many poets since the 1960s have dreamed of a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too. Many poets have tried to create such an art: Herrera is one of the first to succeed."-New York Times"Herrera has the unusual capacity to write convincing political poems that are as personally felt as poems can be."-NPR"Juan Felipe Herrera's magnificent new poems in Every Day We Get More Illegal testify to the deepest parts of the American dream-the streets and parking lots, the stores and restaurants and futures that belong to all-from the times when hope was bright, more like an intimate song than any anthem stirring the blood."-Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times Magazine"From Basho to Mandela, Every Day We Get More Illegal takes us on an international tour for a lesson in the history of resistance from a poet who declares, 'I had to learn . . . to take care of myself . . . the courage to listen to my self.'  You hold in your hands evidence of who we really are."-Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition"These poems talk directly to America, to migrant people, and to working people. Herrera has created a chorus to remind us we are alive and beautiful and powerful."-José Olivarez, Author of Citizen Illegal"The poet comes to his country with a book of songs, and asks: America, are you listening? We better listen. There is wisdom in this book, there is a choral voice that teaches us 'to gain, pebble by pebble, seashell by seashell, the courage.' The courage to find more grace, to find flames."-Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf RepublicIn this collection of poems, written during and immediately after two years on the road as United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera reports back on his travels through contemporary America. Poems written in the heat of witness, and later, in quiet moments of reflection, coalesce into an urgent, trenchant, and yet hope-filled portrait. The struggle and pain of those pushed to the edges, the shootings and assaults and injustices of our streets, the lethal border game that separates and divides, and then: a shift of register, a leap for peace and a view onto the possibility of unity.Every Day We Get More Illegal is a jolt to the conscience-filled with the multiple powers of the many voices and many textures of every day in America."Former Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera should also be Laureate of our Millennium-a messenger who nimbly traverses the transcendental liminalities of the United States . . ."-Carmen Gimenez Smith, author of Be Recorder.

Paperback. Condition: New. Finalist for the Republic of Consciousness PrizeFamily Album is Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán's rollicking follow-up to her acclaimed English-language debut, Poso Wells.Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected-and often highly compromised-forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In this collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, she teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of national identity. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador's place on the world stage.From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe's map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the Galápagos Archipelago, to a night with the husband of Ecuador's most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbitt, this series of cracked "family portraits" provides a cast of picaresque heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what's happened: they've learned a great deal about a country whose more well known exports-soccer, coffee and cocoa-mask an intriguing national story that's ripe for the telling.One of The Millions Most Anticipated Books for 2022!"Ecuadorian writer Alemán's sparkling collection (after the novel Poso Wells) brims with humor and adventure."-Publishers Weekly"Plays with tropes ranging from the Robinson Crusoe story to the classic betrayed-wife setup to wrestle with the impossible-to-decode oddness of human life, which old stories can only hide for so long."-Lily Meyer, NPR"It takes a rare and talented writer to create a cast of characters who each feel so unique, distinct, and whose stories unravel unexpectedly while also feeling inevitable, exactly right. Thoughtful and subversive, with Family Album, Alemán has given us a gift."-Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl"Divers, adventurers, wrestlers, athletes: a diverse array of people come to light in these stories to insist again and again in challenging the weight of the written letter. Gabriela Alemán's stories inhabit the past to work through its possible versions. Her characters understand that History is a form of desire and the truth is not a house but a patina covering a place that has ceased to exist."-Yuri Herrera, author of A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire"Gabriela Alemán's stories unravel a rich and intriguing universe in which nothing, and no one, is what it seems."-Pilar Quintana, author of The Bitch"These stories are like lizards lying on rocks in the sun. When you try to pick one up it darts away and disappears. Sometimes a tail comes off in your hand or the thing bites your fingers and drops of blood decorate the rock. Best read while listening to Julio Jaramillo sing 'Amor sin Esperanza' and 'Hojas Muertas.'"-Barry Gifford, author.

Paperback. Condition: New. WINNER of the Republic of Consciousness Prize!Abandoned by her husband, marooned by an epic snowstorm, a mother gives birth to her third child. Her sense of entrapment turns into a desperate rage in this unblinking portrait of a woman whose powerlessness becomes lethal.Lojman tells, on its surface, the domestic tale of a Kurdish family living in a small village on a desolate plateau at the foot of the snow-capped mountains of Turkey's Van province. Virtually every aspect of the family's life is dictated by the government, from their exile to the country's remote, easternmost region to their sequestration in the grim "teacher's lodging"-or lojman-to which they're assigned. When Selma's husband walks out one day, he leaves in his wake a storm of resentment between his young children and a mother reluctant to parent them. Written in startling, raw prose, this novel?-?the author's first to be translated into English?-?is reminiscent of Elena Ferrante's masterful Days of Abandonment, though its private dramas are made all the more vivid against an imposing natural landscape that exerts a powerful, life-threatening force. In short, propulsive chapters, Lojman spins a domestic drama crystallized through the family's mental and physical claustrophobia. Vivid daydreams morph with cold realities, and as the family's descent reaches its nadir, their world is transformed into a surreal, gelatinous prison from which there is no escape.

Paperback. Condition: New. This is an account of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Buddhism, a method of mediation and enlightenment that was developed by the great Indian teacher Nagarjuna. In a collaboration between the Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel and her friend, the Tibetan lama Aphur Yongden, these teaching are presented clearly and elegantly, intended for the layman who seeks a way to practice and experience the realization of oneness with all existence. ".this is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism that has been written. Specifically, it is a wonderfully lucid account of the Middle Way method of enlightenment worked out by the great Indian sage Nagarjuna." --Alan Watts, The Book "The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden, is always on my night stand. I return to it again and again in different stages of my life." --Marina Ambramovic "David-Neel herself is often relegated to the ranks of "women adventurers" this despite the production of some forty-odd books, several of which have wielded an extraordinary influence."--Harry Oldmeadow, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia Alexandra David-Neel was born in 1868 in Paris. In her youth she wrote an incendiary anarchist treatise and was an acclaimed opera singer; then she decided to devote her life to exploration and the study of world religions, including Buddhist philosophy. She traveled extensively to in Central Asia and the Far East, where she learned a number of Asian languages, including Tibetan. In 1914, she met Lama Yongden, who became her adopted son, teacher, and companion. In 1923, at the age of fifty-five, she disguised herself as a pilgrim and journeyed to Tibet, where she was the first European woman to enter Lhasa, which was closed to foreigners at the time. In her late seventies, she settled in the south of France, where she lived until her death at 101 in 1969.

Paperback. Condition: New. "Ah," said Hassan, "I don't believe in the world. There's another world where life is different."These are stories of that world. The word m'hashish (equivalent in Moghrebi of "behashished" or "full of hashish") is used not only in a literal sense, but also figuratively, to describe a person whose behavior seems irrational or unexpected. The tales here deal with some of the possible results, desirable and questionable, of being in that state.Mohammed Mrabet was born in Tangier in 1936. Since meeting in the early 1960's, Paul Bowles has taped and translated numerous strange legends and lively stories recounted by Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (novel), The Lemon (novel), The Boy Who Set Fire (stories), Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (stories), The Beach Café and Look and Move On (autobiography) and The Big Mirror (novella). After moving back to Tangier after living in New York for four years, Mrabet resumed his role as a fisherman and began painting. He continues to paint while living in the Souani area of Tangier.

Paperback. Condition: New. Rebelling against the contraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men. Her encounters with the other students mdash; as well as the male and female corpses in the autopsy room-intensify her dissatisfaction with and search for identity. She realizes men are not gods as her mother had taught her, that science cannot explain everything, and that she cannot be satisfied by living a life purely of the mind.After a brief and unhappy marriage, she throws herself into her work, becoming a successful physician, but at the same time, she becomes aware of injustice and hypocrisy in society. Fulfillment and love come to her at last in a wholly unexpected way.". . . Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el Saadawi, one of the leading Egyptian feminist writers, reveals the contradictions embedded in women's self-oppressive struggle against patriarchy."-Khadidiatau Gueye, Research in African Literatures (Indiana University Press)Nawal el Saadawi, born in 1931 in Kafr Tahla, Egypt, is an Egyptian physician, psychiatrist, author and activist. She is the founder and president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. In 2004 she won the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe. In 2005 she won the inana International Prize in Belgium. In 2010 she won the Sean MacBride Peace Prize from the International Peace Bureau. She has written and published other novels, memoirs, plays, non-fiction and short stories including Woman at Point Zero, The Hidden Face of Eve and The Fall of the Imam.

Paperback. Condition: New. Playing opportunely with realism and fiction, the sensational young Cuban writer Pedro de Jesus interlinks six stories in an inventive narrative of psychological darkness and sexual intricacy. In this tour de force of alienation and transgression, he captures the disaffected existence of a certain segment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters on the fringes of contemporary Cuban society "The new Reinaldo Arenas."--El Pais "All of the stories in Cuentos frigidos are very interesting and imaginative, full of dark humor and subtle insights." -Emilio Bejel, author of Gay Cuban Nation "Sex is a preoccupation and, as the King of Siam would say, 'a puzzlement' in this debut collection of six coy, elusive stories from a young Cuban fiction writer .witty and accomplished." -Kirkus Reviews "Despite the title, there is nothing frigid about these tales--what appears to be coldness is all on the surface.True, the characters of these six interrelated stories are often uncomfortable with their sexuality and sometimes believe they would be happier if they weren't so horny all the time, and true, too, Pedro de Jesus makes use of the cerebral and distancing forms of postmodern fiction, although he cannot resist descending into a realism he has been taught to disparage--in short, the stories are the product of a young man who believes that his libido is getting in the way of his art but nevertheless cannot hide his old-fashioned passion for love stories." -The Review of Contemporary Fiction Pedro de Jesus was born in 1970 in Fomento, Cuba and studied at the University of Havana. In addition to writing short stories, de Jesus has published essays, and a novel, Sibilas en Mercaderes. Frigid Tales has been published in Spain and his work has appeared in anthologies in Germany, France, and Italy. Dick Cluster is the author of Obligations of the Bone and other fiction. He has translated Mirta Yanez's Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women as well as Alejandro Hernadez Diaz, Sonia Rivera-Valdes, Aida Bahr, and Antonio Jose Ponte.

Paperback. Condition: New. "Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy." Many of Ginsberg's most famous poems. Wake-up nightmares in Lower East Side, musings in public library, across the U.S. in dream auto, drunk in old Havana, brooding in Mayan ruins, sex daydreams on the West Coast, airplane vision of Kansas, lonely in a leafy cottage, lunch hour on Berkeley, beer notations on Skid Row, slinking to Mexico, wrote this last night in Paris, back on Times square dreaming of Times Square, bombed in NY again, loony tunes in the dentist chair, screaming at old poets in South America, aethereal zigzag Poesy in blue hotel room in Peru--a wind-up book of dreams, psalms, journal enigmas and nude minutes from 1953 to 1960 poems scattered in fugitive magazines here collected now book. ".make no mistake, Reality Sandwiches, 1953-60 .is genuine poetry, and Ginsberg's commitment marks his superiority over more graceful and refined but tepid craftsmen." --Robert D. Spector, Poetry Quarterly Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian emigre, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J.To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind and fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, Kaddish, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.