ANVIL PRESS POETRY

THE AXION ESTI
When Odysseus Elytis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy's citation singled out The Axion Esti, first published in 1959, as 'one of twentieth-century literature's most concentrated and richly faceted poems.' It can be seen both as a secular oratorio, reflecting the Greek heritage and the country's revolutionary spirit, and also as a kind of autobiography, in which the spiritual roots of the poet's very individual sensibility are set in the wider philosophical context of the Greek tradition. In his evocation of e...
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ELYTIS: SELECTED POEMS
This representative selection from the work of one of modern Greece’s most fascinating poets was made shortly after his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979. It is drawn from all periods of his distinguished career and traces his development from early surrealism, in which he transforms French influence into a distinct personal voice and mythology, through the dramatic style of The Axion Esti with its blend of spirituality and earthiness, up to the later work in which he experiments with new modes for expressing his perennial th...
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(P/B) SONG OFFERINGS
The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 primarily for this work, parts of which he had rendered into the lucid, grave English prose of prayer. Although he wrote over 40 books of poetry, this is the only one whose name is known outside the subcontinent. Tagore’s most famous work deserves to be seen as it appeared in the Bengali - a series of jewels, the whole with the authority virtually of a holy book, and each one a metaphysical delight. Joe Winter’s complete translation, the first ...
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(P/B) BEYOND THE WALLS
Hikmet’s poetry combines passion and simplicity with sophistication, producing work of enduring significance. He was both a superb narrative and lyric poet; his immense and continuing popularity in Turkey testifies to his common touch. This extensive selection translated by Richard McKane and Ruth Christie ranges from his epic poem ‘Sheikh Bedreddin’ to the moving prison poems addressed to his wife. The book is introduced by the leading expert on Turkish literature, Talat Sait Halman, former Professor of Turkish Literature at Princeton and...
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(P/B) THE SCATTERED PAPERS OF PENELOPE
In Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke's poetry the body, myth, the soul, nature and language are deeply entangled concepts. Yet her poetry is passionate and direct: 'I am not interested in distorting reality when I play with language.' With translations by such notables as Rae Dalven, Edmund Keeley and Kimon Friar as well as the editor and others, this is the most complete picture yet of this major Greek poet. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE POEMS OF GEORG TRAKL
This collection of Trakl's essential poetry contains the two books published in his lifetime, Gedichte (Poems, 1913) and Sebastian im Traum (Sebastian in a Dream, 1914), together with the later poems published in the magazine Der Brenner which might have formed the nucleus of a third collection. His starkly beautiful, musical poems are rightly regarded as being among the early twentieth century's most original poetry. From a life marred by drug addiction and breakdowns, he created work of great depth and power, brought hauntingly to life i...
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(P/B) A SEASON IN HELL
A Season in Hell is one of the great works of modern literature. It is published here in a bilingual edition together with many of the verse poems which Rimbaud wrote between March 1870 and August 1872. A Season in Hell was Rimbaud’s literary testament, his apology and a contribution to the mythology of his time. Norman Cameron’s masterly translations capture the shape and spirit of these extraordinary works. (From the publisher)...
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(H/B) POEMS OF PAUL CELAN
Paul Celan is among the most important German-language poets of the century, and, in George Steiner’s words, ‘almost certainly the major European poet of the period after 1945.’ Language, Celan said, was the only thing that remained intact for him after the war. His experiences of the war years and of the loss of his parents are the recurrent themes of his poetry. In the end they led as well to his suicide by drowning in 1970. Michael Hamburger’s extensive selection of Celan’s poems is presented in facing-text form, prefaced by an illumina...
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(P/B) TURNING-POINT
While Rilke has been perhaps more widely translated into English than any other modern poet, the emphasis has always been on 'major works' - the New Poems volumes, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet Rilke produced many more poems which had little or no airing beyond the confines of his workshop. Michael Hamburger argues in his perceptive and entertaining introduction that these poems are not inferior to the poems in the collections that form the accepted corpus; rather that they merely failed to fit in with Rilke's wish to form a de...
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(P/B) COLLECTED POEMS
Anthony Hecht described Donald Justice as ‘among other things, the supreme heir of Wallace Stevens.’ This memorial volume of his complete poetry testifies to his subtle and enduring brilliance. With painterly vividness and plainspoken elegance he endeavoured to make the local views which his titles often evoke - ‘Bus Stop’, ‘Men at Forty’, ‘Dance Lessons of the Thirties’ - part of the literary heritage from which he so often took solace and inspiration. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) SELECTED POEMS
J.L. Gili's selection of Lorca's poems in Spanish, with his own unassuming prose versions as guides to the originals, first appeared in 1960. With its excellent introduction and selection it remains a perfect introductory guide to the great poet. The book is ideal for newcomers to Lorca who know, or are prepared to grapple with, a little Spanish. It influenced a generation of readers and poets, including Ted Hughes who first encountered Lorca through this book. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) POEMS
Francois Villon was born in Paris in 1431. His life was blighted by destitution and ill health, robbery and murder, torture and exile. While we do not know what became of Villon after his 32nd year, the poems he produced in just six years capture in forceful, intelligent and candid verse the low and high life of Paris. They constitute a body of work with few rivals in the literature of his own country or in that of any other. His work was greatly admired by Ezra Pound, who ranked him with Sappho and Catullus in his pantheon of great lyric ...
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(P/B) ROMAN ELEGIES
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is mainly known to the English-speaking world as the author of the poetic drama Faust. In Europe - as poet, dramatist, novelist, art critic, literary theoretician, travel writer, author of a treatise on light and colour, and prolific correspondent - he is regarded as the supreme Romantic literary figure. This selection is a classic introduction to one of the giants of European literature. It collects all the beautifully crafted versions Michael Hamburger has made over many years from all periods of Go...
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(P/B) I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
Walt Whitman (1819-92) is the authentic voice of democratic America. After a childhood in Brooklyn, he spent many years in and around Manhattan and Washington, where he witnessed troops returning from the Civil War and tended wounded soldiers in the camp hospitals. Whitman's broad humanity, his love of cities (especially Manhattan), his sympathy with all conditions of people, and his visionary - even prophetic - sense of the reality of the American dream make him as much a poet for our time as he was for the time of the American Civil War ...
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(P/B) SEFERIS: COMPLETE POEMS
'In their final form, these translations carry the accumulated authority of the previous editions, the admiration that has justly accrued to them, and more distantly, the sanction of the poet himself.' (RODERICK BEATON, MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION) George Seferis (1900-1971) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. Truthful and magical, his poetry has captivated both Greek and foreign readers. Aptly described by Charlotte Du Cann as 'the unlocker of ancient stones and sea voyages', Seferis was for Peter Levi 'one of the great...
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(P/B) THE CAPTAIN'S VERSES
Pablo Neruda wrote the poems in Los versos del capitan as a celebration of his love for his third wife, Matilde Urrutia - a love affair that is itself celebrated in the acclaimed film Il Postino. Originally published anonymously in 1952 to spare his second wife's feelings, this bilingual edition is the book's first publication in Britain. Brian Cole's translations display all the qualities of vivid imagery, sensuousness, simplicity and passion for which Neruda's poetry is famous. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) COMPLETE POEMS
'Popa's imaginative journey resembles a Universe passing through a Universe. It has been one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made' - Ted Hughes Vasko Popa is one of the great post-war European poets. From surrealist fable to traditional folk-tale, from personal anecdote to tribal myth, Popa's poetry embodies in an original form the most profound imaginative truths of our age, precisely located in the reality and history of Serbia, in the heart of Central Europe. His Complete Poems is an essential ...
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(P/B) POEMS FROM THE DIWAN
Yehuda Halevi, who wrote both secular and devotional poems, is considered one of the finest poets in post-biblical Hebrew literature. Suffused with warmth, moving easily between the mundane and the otherworldly, and, above all, delicately elegiac, the poet's voice cuts across all the literary genres and religious modes on which he drew. Born in the second half of the 11th century, Halevi wandered in his youth between Muslim and Christian Spain before settling in Cordoba around 1110. Towards the end of his life, to the amazement and conster...
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(P/B) AMORGOS
Nikos Gatsos’s profoundly mysterious and magnetic poem Amorgos, named after a Greek island he never visited and written during the Nazi occupation, is the single work on which his reputation rests. It is a wonderful incantation on the theme of loss and hope - a unique blend of surrealism, symbolism and folk song - lyrical and erotic, sometimes celebratory, sometimes bitter. It was much admired by the Nobel laureates Odysseus Elytis and George Seferis, and was hugely influential on the postwar generation of Greek poets. However, after its p...
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(P/B) THE COMPLETE VERSE
"Les Fleurs du mal" (1861) was the first great modern work of poetry and one of the few books of poems to become an international bestseller. This edition contains all of Baudelaire's poetry in verse with Francis Scarfe's scrupulous and inventive prose translations at the foot of the pages. Together with his detailed and authoritative introduction, this presentation makes an ideal edition both for the student and for the general reader who wishes to tackle the French original with a reliable prose guide at hand. The companion volume, "Par...
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