“ This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. ” ― Rumi
Born in Jamaica and now making her home in the United States, Claudia Rankine writes poems that draw breath from alienation -- from her home, her body, her mind. Hailed by Robert Hass as "a fiercely gifted young poet," Claudia Rankine has welded the cereb
In her third collection of poems, Claudia Rankine creates a profoundly daring, ingeniously experimental examination of pregnancy, childbirth, and artistic expression. Liv, an expectant mother, and her husband, Erland, are at an impasse from her reluctance
Poetry in America is flourishing in this new millennium and asking serious questions of itself: Is writing marked by gender and if so, how? What does it mean to be experimental? How can lyric forms be authentic? This volume builds on the energetic tension
"To think of creativity in terms of transcendence is itself specific and partial—a lovely dream perhaps, but an inhuman one."It is not only white writers who make a prize of transcendence, of course. Many writers of all backgrounds see the imagination a
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin’s 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generati