The Condition of Secrecy by Inger Christensen

Staff Pick

The celebrated Scandinavian writer, Inger Christensen, is made accessible to English-language readers with this newly translated and beautifully published collection of a selection of her essays (and one brilliant poem): The Condition of Secrecy. The essays span the Cold War and its immediate aftermath (1960s through the 1990s), and in them we find disillusionment regarding the follies of a humankind hell-bent on war and nuclear destruction. But we also find hope embedded in Christensen’s writing and in her attachment to the natural world, which comes across with so much beauty and precision of language it reminds us that humans are still capable of creating light, even in the darkness.

 

 

Condition of Secrecy By Inger Christensen, Susanna Nied (Translated by) Cover Image
By Inger Christensen, Susanna Nied (Translated by)
$16.95
ISBN: 9780811228114
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: New Directions - November 27th, 2018

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

Staff Pick

Mary Ruefle manages to bring magnificent literary criticism into dialogue with insights about universal experience (fear, memory, sentimentality) in that way only a poet can. For anyone who is engaged in the poetry world, this collection will have you marking up or dog-earing just about every page. The way she says such simple things can strike so true that you wonder how no one else has said it that way to you before. For instance, about writing she says, “I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say…but now I know I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.” I cannot recommend this collection enough; it’s one of those books I will return to over and over again.

Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures By Mary Ruefle Cover Image
$25.00
ISBN: 9781933517575
Availability: Not On Our Shelves—Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Wave Books - August 7th, 2012

The Annotated African American Folktales - Henry Louis Gates, Maria Tatar

Staff Pick

Mychal Denzel Smith is both urgent and hilarious as he goes from Dave Chapelle to Lebron James, and from male masculinity to the role of the strong black woman deserving more respect. He speaks about mental illness & LGBTQ in the black community, subjects that are considered too taboo to be discussed. But he has the strength and knowledge to raise the discussion about these topics and make you want to hear more. Running a thread throughout about the horrors and struggles of constantly seeing our young black men & women killed by the authorities sworn to protect us, he is yet another amazing voice speaking up. And he needs to be heard.

 

The Annotated African American Folktales (The Annotated Books) By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Editor), Maria Tatar (Editor) Cover Image
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Editor), Maria Tatar (Editor)
$39.95
ISBN: 9780871407535
Availability: Special Order—Subject to Availability
Published: Liveright - November 14th, 2017

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