Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar

Staff Pick

Beautifully at home in language, Akbar communicates a boundless warmth and intimacy through his poetry, even as he faces his pain: dissecting imperialism, racism and Islamophobia, addiction recovery, and the struggle for a path to goodness in the life we’re given. With his spiritual awareness, formal experimentation, and talent for line breaks, Akbar instantly became one of my favorite poets, and I highly recommend reading Pilgrim Bell with his debut novel Martyr! as the poetry and prose illuminate each other in beautiful and surprising ways. 

Pilgrim Bell: Poems By Kaveh Akbar Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781644450598
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Graywolf Press - August 3rd, 2021

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Staff Pick

This is the great epic of soldiers and soldiering--a 3,000-year-old story that could have come from today’s headlines.  Emily Wilson's new translation is as musical and clear as her superb rendering of The Odyssey and is a genuine pleasure to read, bringing to vivid life bravery, loyalty, nobility, love, fear, pettiness, vainglory, folly, shocking violence, and, above all, grief and loss.  That we know Achilles will die and the men, women, and children of Troy will be killed or enslaved in the poem's aftermath makes the struggles of the Greeks and Trojans one of the great examinations of the human condition: a story of real nobility and deep pathos that stays in the head and heart.  In Wilson’s lovely blank verse, it is also, like the original, a tremendous work of art.

 

The Iliad By Homer, Emily Wilson (Translated by) Cover Image
By Homer, Emily Wilson (Translated by)
$39.95
ISBN: 9781324001805
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 26th, 2023

Tell it Slant by John Yau

Staff Pick

 

Tell It Slant. Sound familiar? Yau's title is a double-entendre that references Emily Dickinson's famous line "Tell all the truth but tell it slant--" (often taken as advice for the aspiring poet), but also slyly alludes to a rise in anti-Asian American violence, particularly in Yau's hometown of New York City (check out the epigraphs). It's also a lovely book that engages deeply with Yau's knowledge of the visual arts world, enacting dialogues with genre fiction and delivering those explorations through the observations and adventures of a cast of poetic personae drawn in part from Chinese and American literary traditions. Overall, the book is funny, politically incisive, sad, and thoughtful, more often than not -- all at the same time.

Tell it Slant By John Yau Cover Image
$22.95
ISBN: 9781632431257
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Omnidawn - October 6th, 2023

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