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This Week’s Book Giveaway

April 18, 2011 by

To help celebrate this year’s National Poetry Month in the United States, The Eternal City: Poemsthis week’s book giveaway is The Eternal City:  Poems by Kathleen Graber.

A 2010 National Book Award Finalist, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber’s collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp.

Chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship, The Eternal City revives Princeton’s tradition of publishing some of today’s best poetry.

“[N]othing short of a revelation. Graber is a new poet that we should have always had but didn’t until just now. Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud, though not in the tricky, needley way of John Ashbery, but like someone very smart and very well-read trying to get to the bottom of every troubling and exciting thought. She thinks about her day to day life, family and friends, their every day goings on, their deaths and big tragedies, and she thinks about big ideas–life, death, meaning–mostly in the same poem. She name-checks some of the big figures of Western thought–Marcus Aurelius and Walter Benjamin, for instance–but does so as if she were talking to or about friends. She manages to do a scholar’s work in these poems without the alienating haughtiness of many scholars. And despite their learned-ness, these are poems anyone could love. . . . If you only read one book of poetry this year, that’s not enough, but start with this one.”–Craig Teicher, Publishers Weekly

Here’s an Authors on Camera feature with Kathleen Graber reading from her book:

Can’t get enough? Then view this interview with the author at Virginia Commonwealth University and/or check out the book’s Facebook page.

To be a part of our weekly book giveaways, LIKE US on Facebook. Once you’ve LIKED US, you are automatically entered for our weekly random draw.

The Eternal City: Poems by Kathleen Graber.

Filed Under: Book Giveaway, Poetry

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Princeton University Press

April 4, 2011 by

The Press is publishing a plethora of new poetry titles this April, so we have a lot to celebrate! We are pleased to announce two important translations, the first annotated critical edition of a major poem by W. H. Auden, and two books in the revived Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. Don’t forget to join the Lewis Center for the Arts later this month for the second biennial Princeton Poetry Festival and you can check out the Press’s poetry offerings here.

Poems Under Saturn: Poèmes saturniens

Paul Verlaine
Translated and with an introduction by Karl Kirchwey

The first complete English translation of the collection that announced Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) as a poet who would come to be regarded as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century writers. This new translation, by respected contemporary poet Karl Kirchwey, faithfully renders the collection’s heady mix of classical learning and earthy sensuality in poems whose rhythm and rhyme represent one of the supreme accomplishments of French verse.

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

W. H. Auden

Edited and with an introduction by Alan Jacobs

This volume–the first annotated, critical edition of the poem–introduces this important work to a new generation of readers by putting it in historical and biographical context and elucidating its difficulties. Alan Jacobs’s introduction and thorough annotations help today’s readers understand and appreciate the full richness of a poem that contains some of Auden’s most powerful and beautiful verse, and that still deserves a central place in the canon of twentieth-century poetry.
New Impressions of Africa

Raymond Roussel
Translated and introduced by Mark Ford

This bilingual edition of Raymond Roussel’s most extraordinary work,  New Impressions of Africa, presents the original French text and the English poet Mark Ford’s lucid, idiomatic translation on facing pages. It also includes an introduction outlining the poem’s peculiar structure and evolution, notes explaining its literary and historical references, and the fifty-nine illustrations anonymously commissioned by Roussel, via a detective agency, from Henri-A. Zo.
At Lake Scugog: Poems

Troy Jollimore

The eagerly awaited collection of new poems from the author of Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was hailed by the New York Times as a “snappy, entertaining book.” A triumphant follow-up, At Lake Scugog demonstrates why the San Francisco Chronicle has called Troy Jollimore “a new and exciting voice in American poetry.”
Carnations: Poems

Anthony Carelli

Often taking titles from a biblical vocabulary, Anthony Carelli’s remarkable debut, Carnations, reminds us that unremarkable places and events–a game of Frisbee in a winter park, workers stacking panes in a glass factory, or the daily opening of a café–can, in a blink, be new.
Filed Under: American Literature, Poetry, Twitter

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

March 25, 2011 by

FACT: Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique is the last work that the French poet, playwright, and novelist Raymond Roussel published during his lifetime. He began drafting it in 1915, but the poem was not to appear until the autumn of 1932, less than a year before its author was found dead in his room at the Grande Albergo e delle Palme in Palermo, Sicily at the age of 56.

New Impressions of Africa
Raymond Roussel
Translated and introduced by Mark Ford

Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was one of the French belle époque’s most compelling literary figures. During his lifetime, Roussel’s work was vociferously championed by the surrealists, but never achieved the widespread acclaim for which he yearned. New Impressions of Africa is undoubtedly Roussel’s most extraordinary work. Since its publication in 1932, this weird and wonderful poem has slowly gained cult status, and its admirers have included Salvador Dalì–who dubbed it the most “ungraspably poetic” work of the era–André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Michel Foucault, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery.

This bilingual edition of New Impressions of Africa presents the original French text and the English poet Mark Ford’s lucid, idiomatic translation on facing pages. It also includes an introduction outlining the poem’s peculiar structure and evolution, notes explaining its literary and historical references, and the fifty-nine illustrations anonymously commissioned by Roussel, via a detective agency, from Henri-A. Zo.

We invite you to read the introduction online at:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9413.pdf

Filed Under: Book Fact Friday, Poetry, Twitter

Lesson #1: Google Kills Creativity, an interview with Andrei Codrescu

March 10, 2011 by

This interview was taped at The Getty in Los Angeles when Andrei gave a lecture on The Poetry Lesson.

For more “Art Lessons” click over to The Getty’s site to view more interview segments on lessons like “Learning requires a blind path toward a labyrinth of bones” and “Laughter and silence as subversive tools for creativity”.

Prepare for the publication of Whatever Gets You Through the Night in June by reading excerpts from Andrei’s earlier PUP books: The Posthuman Dada Guide and The Poetry Lesson.

Filed Under: Art and Architecture, Literature, Poetry, Twitter

“The Eternal City” is NBCC Finalist in Poetry, 2010

January 24, 2011 by

Kathleen Graber’s second collection The Eternal City: Poems–and Paul Muldoon’s first pick in the revived Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets–has been selected as a National Book Critics Circle Finalist in Poetry, 2010.

The collection was also a finalist for the National Book Awards, so many congratulations to Kathleen Graber and Series Editor Paul Muldoon on this second major nomination!

The winners won’t be announced until March 10th, but until then, you can read the official press release from NBCC’s Critical Mass blog here.

Filed Under: Awards, Poetry, Publishing

This Week’s Book Giveaway

January 24, 2011 by

This week, in honor of Robert Burns’s birthday (Jan. 25th, 1759), we are giving away the book, The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography by Robert Crawford. The Bard

No writer is more charismatic than Robert Burns. Wonderfully readable, The Bard catches Burns’s energy, brilliance, and radicalism as never before. To his international admirers he was a genius, a hero, a warm-hearted friend; yet to the mother of one of his lovers he was a wastrel, to a fellow poet he was “sprung . . . from raking of dung,” and to his political enemies a “traitor.” Drawing on a surprising number of untapped sources–from rediscovered poetry by Burns to manuscript journals, correspondence, and oratory by his contemporaries–this new biography presents the remarkable life, loves, and struggles of the great poet.

“Crawford’s Burns, merrily mixing high and low culture, seems eerily contemporary. He shares with great hip-hop artists a genius for catchy, sexy, and memorable rhymes gloriously liberated from the hegemony of standard English.”–New Yorker

Anyone who LIKES us on Facebook is automatically entered in the giveaway. A winner will be randomly drawn this Friday.

The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography by Robert Crawford

Filed Under: Biography, Book Giveaway, Poetry

Edwidge Danticat reading & interview at Queen’s College in NYC – tomorrow!

November 22, 2010 by

If you are near New York City, don’t miss your chance to see Edwidge Danticat TOMORROW at Queen’s College in NYC, in LeFrak Concert Hall. The event will begin at 7pm and is $20 for admission (and free with CUNY student ID!). Danticat will read from her latest work, Create Dangerously, and then will be interviewed by WNYC’s Leonard Lopate.

If you haven’t already, RSVP to the Facebook event, and tell your friends! Hope to see you there!

Date: Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Queens College – LeFrak Concert Hall
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, Queens, New York
More Info: here and here
Filed Under: Events, Literature, Poetry, Twitter

Today: Andrei Codrescu signing books at Labyrinth in Princeton, NJ

November 20, 2010 by

“Intro to Poetry Writing is always like this: a long labor, a breech birth, or, obversely, mining in the dark. You take healthy young Americans used to sunshine (aided sometimes by Xanax and Adderall), you blindfold them and lead them by the hand into a labyrinth made from bones. Then you tell them their assignment: ‘Find the Grail. You have a New York minute to get it.’”

– The Poetry Lesson

If you’re in the Princeton area, swing by Labyrinth Books today to meet Andrei Codrescu and get your copy of The Poetry Lesson signed! The event will begin at 3 PM. Details are below.

Date: Saturday, November 20, 2010 (Today!)
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Labyrinth Books
122 Nassau Street
Princeton, NJ 08542
More Info: Here
Filed Under: Events, Poetry, Twitter

In Praise of Small Presses and Slow Poetry

November 15, 2010 by

Over at the Atlantic, Adam Roberts has been writing a fascinating five-part series about contemporary poetry. In the fourth part of the series, Roberts proposes that contemporary verse might take a cue from the Slow Food and other Slow movements and “help us transition away from monocultural reading habits.” He goes on to praise small presses:

In the world of literary culture, the small press is probably the closest equivalent to your local farmer’s market. (The carrots might look funnier, but, after you’re used to it, they taste about five times better.) There are tons of small presses, spread out over the country, and they’re often run at either no-profit or a loss. These are labors of love—not engaged in the production of commodities for consumption, but something closer to Lewis Hyde’s notion of “the gift.” Hand-sewn chapbooks take time to make, the poems in them take time to read, and the poets (most likely) took a lot of time to write them. Their production occurs on a smaller (and less grandiose) scale, and like the Slow Food and broader Slow Culture movement, they want to restore to us a sense of time that our current world system strips away from us. Perhaps they wouldn’t want to be in the airports, even if we let them. But they can, like the local food economy (which is growing at a spectacular rate, nationally), become viable alternatives with our support.

Princeton University Press hasn’t yet made his list of recommended small presses, but with the return of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, which includes Kathleen Graber’s The Eternal City (a National Book Award finalist), and the new Facing Pages series, you can support what Roberts calls “obscure, high-brow lit”–or come spring, the cheeky offerings of Troy Jollimore’s At Lake Scugog and the lush and spiritual poems in Anthony Carelli’s debut collection Carnations!

You can (and should) read his other posts in the series here, and for more information on Slow Poetry visit the Slow Society site. Don’t forget to savor all of your reading experiences!

Filed Under: Poetry, Publishing, Technology & Media, University Press

Andrei Codrescu visiting Princeton on Nov. 20!

November 13, 2010 by

Hope you can join us at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ next week, where Andrei Codrescu will be reading from and signing copies of his latest book, The Poetry Lesson!

Of The Poetry Lesson, Chris Waddington of the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote, “This genially disillusioned, free-associative romp delivers plenty of pleasures in the course of 118 pages. . . . Faced with time and mortality — the quintessential poetic subjects — Codrescu does what great artists have done for millennia: He tells stories, writes poems, and, yes, he teaches.”

Don’t miss your chance to meet Andrei Codrescu! See event details below.

Date: Saturday, November 20, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Labyrinth Books
122 Nassau Street
Princeton, NJ 08542
More Info: Here

Filed Under: Events, Poetry, Twitter

Comparing cover to content: Andrei Codrescu’s The Poetry Lesson

November 12, 2010 by

A goatskin dream notebook. Hypnosis. Cable TV. These are all objects listed as “Tools of Poetry” in The Poetry Lesson, the latest work by celebrated writer and former teacher, Andrei Codrescu. Neither a memoir nor a novel, but a mixture of both, the book takes readers through the first day of a creative writing course taught by a quirky poet and English professor embarking upon his final semester of teaching before retirement. Along the way, he introduces students to The Tools of Poetry, The Ten Muses of Poetry, and assigns them “Ghost-Companion” poets, all the while regaling them with wild stories from his poetic coming of age in the 1960s and 70s.

The book’s cover, with its pleading skeleton, unyielding title, and otherwise Spartan design, at first seems to contradict its funny, irreverent content. After talking to Book Designer Jason Alejandro, however, it becomes clear that the cover only contributes to the sense of irony and whimsy that pervades The Poetry Lesson. The hint of mystique rising from the apparent contradiction between cover and content inspires readers to pick up the book and start reading–as any well-conceived cover design should do!–and motivated us to ask Jason a few questions about the work that went into this book’s cover design. Click to read the Q&A with Book Designer Jason Alejandro about The Poetry Lesson‘s cover.

The cover of The Poetry Lesson first struck me as grim and almost macabre, with the skeleton on its knees in a supplicatory position. Yet according to the book’s inside flap, The Poetry Lesson is a “hilarious account of the first day of a creative writing course.” What is the relationship between the book’s cover and its content?

I think skeletons are funny-looking. Generally, so are college students.

How do we interpret the cover — is it meant to be ironic, thought-provoking, attention grabbing…?

I’m not convinced that any interpretation is necessary. I believe that a praying skeleton says all that needs to be said about this book.

Where did you find the image for the cover?

The National Library of Medicine’s Historical Anatomies archive via the Internet.

Were there other versions of the book jacket design that you considered before choosing this one?

Indeed there were. The first one was quite literally taking the author’s own description of the book and transposing it onto the cover. He thought there should be “a hand holding a gun, or maybe a baguette.” As we are all well aware, baguettes are simply too passé so I opted for the pistol. The second design makes use of a variety of historical snake oil and curious ointment labels arranged into a collage of sorts. The last one used another historical anatomy illustration, this time in a more contemporary and colorful scheme.

Why and how did you ultimately settle on this design?

It seemed to be everyone’s favorite out of the bunch.

Did the idea for this design come to you easily, or was designing this cover a more challenging process?

The process behind this cover was both challenging and amusing. I was intrigued (and somehow disgusted) by the author’s mention of certain topics or buzz-words in the book description and I used those as a jumping off point for the extensive image research I conducted. Some of those findings ended up in the other proposed covers I created. I had saved this one particular illustration from a few years ago because I wanted to use it on an indie folk music album cover for a friend of mine. Since that never materialized I decided to see what it would look like on a cover.

Did you get Andrei Codrescu’s input while developing the design?

If I remember correctly, we sent Andrei what we felt was the best choice, and he loved it, so we thanked our lucky stars and called it a day.

Finally, what’s your take on the age-old saying, “Never judge a book by its cover?” Should The Poetry Lesson’s cover only be considered in conjunction with the book’s content, or is it able to stand on its own?

Is that really an old saying? I can’t say I’ve heard of it before. In any case, I suppose it can go both ways. When I’ve read a good book, I rarely consider the impact the cover had on me in selecting it. The cover doesn’t change the story or the content within. On the other hand, the specific intent behind book covers is so that the public, the consumer (whether online or in a store), will be attracted to it and make some immediate connection to it, coaxing them to the purchase and (hopefully) read it, right? Of course, I rarely think about this myself when I’m designing. As far as the cover for The Poetry Lesson, I’d like to think that the cover adds some sort of visual interest or mystique to the book. It was after all my job to do that. However, both the book and the cover are able to stand entirely on their own.

As Jason explains, it is not always so important for book’s covers to relate directly to their content. What is important is that they some sort of interest or mystique that reflects the spirit of the story–and represents the collaborative vision of both the author and the book designer. Many thanks to Jason for this cover, and for answering our questions about its design!

Interested in The Poetry Lesson? Want to add your own 2 cents about the cover? Visit the book’s Facebook Page and become a fan!

Filed Under: Literature, Poetry, Princeton University Press, Twitter

Andrei Codrescu at the Sidewalk Cafe, next week

November 11, 2010 by

On November 18, Andrei Codrescu, author of The Poetry Lesson, will share his views on how poetry is written, as part of the Prose Pros programs. Prose Pros pairs two writers, linked by agreement or opposition, and invites them to discuss their writing experiences. Codrescu will be speaking with CA Conrad, author of The Book of Frank, who also has unusual ideas about writing poetry. You won’t want to miss this unique event!

Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 6:30 PM – 7:45 PM
Location: Sidewalk Cafe
94 Avenue A at 6th Street
NYC 10009
More Info: Here
Filed Under: Literature, Poetry, Twitter
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