A Poetry of Things


Book Description

A Poetry of Things examines the works of four poets whose use of visual and material culture contributed to the remarkable artistic and literary production during the reign of Philip III (1598–1621). Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Juan de Arguijo, and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza cast cultural objects – ranging from books and tombstones to urban ruins, sculptures, and portraits – as participants in lively interactions with their readers and viewers across time and space. Mary E. Barnard argues that in their dialogic performance, these objects serve as sites of inquiry for exploring contemporary political, social, and religious issues, such as the preservation of humanist learning in an age of print, the collapse of empires and the rebirth of the city, and the visual culture of the Counter-Reformation. Her inspired readings explain how the performance of cultural objects, whether they remain in situ or are displayed in a library, museum, or convent, is the most compelling.




A Book of Luminous Things


Book Description

Nobel laureate poet Czeslaw Milosz personal selection of 300 of the world's greatest poems written throughout the ages and around the world.




Fleeting Things


Book Description

Fleeting Things is a reflection on the journey to trust, love and belong. Combining the beauty of prose with the honesty of poetry, this collection reads like a memoir in metaphors. Rachel H draws on her most personal questions about her place in the world, then answers them all in faith and strength. This book was written for anyone who has found home to be a fleeting thing. May it never hold you back.




Georgia O'Keeffe


Book Description

Explores O'Keeffe's unmatched accomplishments in still-life painting in two essays accompanied by reproductions of her work and photographs of her studios.




Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things


Book Description

The incredible life story of one of the 20th century's most important designers, who knew everyone from Hemingway to Picasso. Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things chronicles the life and times of one of the most important, prolific, and, above all, interesting designers and architects of the 20th century. Sottsass (1917-2007), originally trained as an architect and worked as a design consultant for Olivetti, where he developed the iconic Valentine typewriter, before going on to found the Memphis Group in the 1980s, ushering in an era of influential designs in furniture, ceramics and lighting that continue to inspire design minds today with their flamboyance and use of color. Author Deyan Sudjic (Director of London's Design Museum) does not limit his narrative to an examination of Sottsass' iconic designs. Though a native son of Italy, Sottsass cast a shadow of influence on the entire world, traveling extensively over the course of his life and interacting with some of the 20th century's most iconic figures, including Picasso, Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg. Sudjic's writing, complemented by unpublished personal photographs from Sottsass' archive, offers a unique view of Sottsass from the perspective of the world that surrounded him, recounting anecdotes of encounters between the designer and his famous contemporaries. The result is a unique and comprehensive portrait not only Sottsass but of the last 100 years of design in Italy and around the world. Features anecdotes of his encounters with the biggest creatives of the time, and details of his influences and inspirations, documenting the contemporary design scene both in Italy and abroad.




Worldly Things


Book Description

Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry “Sometimes,” Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, “everything reduces to circles and lines.” In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor. But Worldly Things refuses to “offer allegiance” to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. “Let’s create folklore side-by-side,” he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. “All of us want,” after all, “our share of light, and just enough rainfall.” Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics. Additional Recognition: A New York Times Book Review "New & Noteworthy Poetry" Selection A Library Journal "Poetry Title to Watch 2021" A Chicago Review of Books "Poetry Collection to Read in 2021" A Reader's Digest "14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now" Selection A Books Are Magic "Recommended Reading" Selection An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection




Poetry in a World of Things


Book Description

We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a “mental space” between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as “things in themselves”—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance “discovery” of the observable world. In Poetry in a World of Things, Rachel Eisendrath explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a mode of resistance to this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted highly artful descriptions that recovered the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This highly original book reclaims subjectivity as a decidedly poetic and human way of experiencing the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects.




Michael Rosen's Big Book of Bad Things


Book Description

A wonderfully exuberant yet poignant poetry collection from one of Britain's greatest children's poets Michael Rosen. Here are tales of childhood, from the horrors of being late for school, to making a raft, and going to a cafe, as well as poems to ponder - just think, how great would Satnav trousers be! Touching, light-hearted and funny, Michael's poems will delight readers young and old. Former Children's Laureate, Michael continuously promotes the need for children's poetry in our education system, and this collection, first published in 2010, has something for everyone.




Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World


Book Description

“Each poem and illustration shines with a personality all its own.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review) “This book has definitely made an impact on my life.” —Kitt Shapiro, daughter of Eartha Kitt Fresh, accessible, and inspiring, Shaking Things Up introduces fourteen revolutionary young women—each paired with a noteworthy female artist—to the next generation of activists, trailblazers, and rabble-rousers. From the award-winning author of Ada’s Violin and Lifeboat 12, Susan Hood, this is a poetic and visual celebration of persistent women throughout history. In this book of poems, you will find Mary Anning, who was just thirteen when she unearthed a prehistoric fossil. You’ll meet Ruby Bridges, the brave six-year-old who helped end segregation in the South. And Maya Lin, who at twenty-one won a competition to create a war memorial, and then had to appear before Congress to defend her right to create. And those are just a few of the young women included in this book. Readers will also hear about Molly Williams, Annette Kellerman, Nellie Bly, Pura Belpré, Frida Kahlo, Jacqueline and Eileen Nearne, Frances Moore Lappé, Mae Jemison, Angela Zhang, and Malala Yousafzai—all whose stories will enthrall and inspire. This poetry collection was written, illustrated, edited, and designed by women and includes an author’s note, a timeline, and additional resources. With artwork by award-winning and bestselling artists including Selina Alko, Sophie Blackall, Lisa Brown, Hadley Hooper, Emily Winfield Martin, Oge Mora, Julie Morstad, Sara Palacios, LeUyen Pham, Erin Robinson, Isabel Roxas, Shadra Strickland, and Melissa Sweet. A 2019 Bank Street Best Book of the Year Named to the 2019 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List Selected for CCBC Choices Book 2019 Selected as a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2019 Named to the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s 2018 list of Great Books for Kids 2020-2021 South Carolina Picture Book Award Nominee




Bright Dead Things


Book Description

'Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I'm thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.' Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, Bright Dead Things considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth and falls in love. In these extraordinary poems Ada Limón's heart becomes a 'huge beating genius machine' striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. 'I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,' the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, Limón's work is consistently generous, accessible, and 'effortlessly lyrical' (New York Times) - though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt and lived.