Recommendations based on "The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry (Poets On Poetry)"

W.B. Yeats's Selected Poems is edited with an introduction and notes by Timothy Webb in Penguin Modern Classics. Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats in his love affairs, politics and poetry. From his youth in the 1880s, a fertile dreamer rediscovering and remaking the Irish tradition, he grew into a great and innovative poet of the twentieth century. This selection of Yeats's work includes the final book from the unjustly neglected narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin and a number of lyrics from Yeats's work as poetic dramatist. This edition breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozen poems in alternative versions; in many other cases it provides significant variants, so that Yeats's struggle to revise his poetry can be experienced with unusual immediacy. It also includes explanatory and textual notes for each poem. W B Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the 'sedentary toil' of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939. If you enjoyed Selected Poems, you might like The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, also available in Penguin Classics. 'A compelling poetic presence ... together with Joyce, Yeats made modern Irish poetry possible' Timothy Webb

This collection of forty-eight short pieces on Venice showcase Joseph Brodsky at his very best: witty, intelligent, moving and elegant. Looking at every aspect of Venice, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures the magnificence and beauty of the city, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many winters, as he remembers friends, lovers and enemies he has encountered.Watermark is an unforgettable piece of writing, and a wonderful portrait of a remarkable, unique city.

An Instant New York Times BestsellerThe author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Kind of Woman returns with a collection of erasure poems created from notes she received from followers, supporters and detractors—an artform that reclaims the vitriol from online trolls and inspires readers to transform what is ugly or painful in their own lives into something beautiful.“I'm sure you could benefit from jumping on a treadmill”“Women WANT a male leader . . . It’s honest to god the basic human playbook”These are some of the thousands of messages that Kate Baer has received online. Like countless other writers—particularly women—with profiles on the internet, as Kate’s online presence grew, so did the darker messages crowding her inbox. These missives from strangers have ranged from “advice” and opinions to outright harassment.At first, these messages resulted in an immediate delete and block. Until, on a whim, Kate decided to transform the cruelty into art, using it to create fresh and intriguing poems. These pieces, along with ones made from notes of gratitude and love, as well as from the words of public figures, have become some of her most beloved work.I Hope This Finds You Well is drawn from those works: a book of poetry birthed in the darkness of the internet that offers light and hope. By cleverly building on the harsh negativity and hate women often receive—and combining it with heartwarming messages of support, gratitude, and connection, Kate Baer offers us a lesson in empowerment, showing how we too can turn bitterness into beauty.

A year with the sensual, mysterious, and deeply spiritual poetry of Rumi, in a translation featuring 15 debut poems—365 poems for your daily dose of inspiration, spiritual healing, and deep self-reflectionThis stunning collection is a divine journey across each month of the year, offering 365 daily poetry reflections that with leave you both breathless and hopeful. Poet Coleman Barks has played a central role in making the Sufi mystic Rumi the most popular poet in the world, and in this volume, he brings Rumi’s words to life, allowing their beacon of light to allow us to reconnect with ourselves, and others, by recognizing the divine in the sublime, in the ordinary, and in us all.Full of contemplation and deeply moving and profound prose, these poems allow readers to start each day fully present and aware of all the beauty around us, and the innate power and strength we each hold—in every moment of every day. Take a moment for yourself with this daily dose of innate wisdom and positive affirmations for self-love, compassion, and trust in the divine power of the universe and our place in it.“The poetry feels like it belongs to all. When Rumi died in 1273, members of all religions came to the funeral. Wherever you stand, his words deepen your connection to the mystery of being alive.” – Coleman Barks 

Richard Kenney's The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, the winning volume in the 1983 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, was selected from among 650 entries in this annual competition. All of one species whose origin is the sonnet, Kenney's poems ring many changes through that form, reflecting, as they do, a personal evolution in the poet's life. "The Hours of the Day"--the first of four chapters--is a long meditative sequence set in Vermont; here the square-shaped poems become the crown glass windowpanes of the farmhouse itself. "First Poems" follows next, a group of eight lyrics, ending with the poem that titles the book. "Heroes," a narrative quartet, with two poems from history and two from life, concerns itself with the shaping of all tales, from source to first telling. Finally, "Notes from Greece" chronicles certain thoughts and adventures there, notably a visit to the Byzantine monastic communities that ring the peninsula of Mt. Athos. Born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1948, Richard Kenney received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1970. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Hudson Review, American Scholar, Poetry, The Yale Review, Carolina Quarterly, and New England Review.

The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental." Tidal A moth hove out of fog. All I heardwas the incessant dissolvingof the surf, attenuated, drawnthrough eggshell, bone and ashas through the walls of another room. After dark, before a glass, in a hall reeling with shadows, a pair of eyes resolved. At lastthey shone: they shonelike phosphorescent moons.

The Romanticism that emerged after the American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 represented a new flowering of the imagination and the spirit, and a celebration of the soul of humanity with its capacity for love. This extraordinary collection sets the acknowledged genius of poems such as Blake's 'Tyger', Coleridge's 'Khubla Khan' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' alongside verse from less familiar figures and women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. We also see familiar poets in an unaccustomed light, as Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley demonstrate their comic skills, while Coleridge, Keats and Clare explore the Gothic and surreal.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

An “astounding” (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems – Winner of the National Poetry Series CompetitionIn this ­­­powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet’s personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madness attempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax’s innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it.

“Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.” — The New YorkerThis magnificent volume gathers the published verse of Allen Ginsberg in its entirety, a half-century of brilliant work from one of America’s greatest poets.A chief figure among the Beats, Ginsberg changed the course of American poetry, liberating it from closed academic forms with the creation of open, vocal, spontaneous, and energetic postmodern verse in the tradition of Whitman, Apollinaire, Hart Crane, Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Ginsberg’s raw tones and attitudes of spiritual liberation also helped catalyze a psychological revolution that has become a permanent part of our cultural heritage, profoundly influencing not only poetry and popular song and speech, but also our views of the world.

The classic volume by the distinguished modern poet, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, showcases an esteemed artist's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world.