Since the publication of Hazmat, a book about the life of the body—short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize—J. D. McClatchy’s poetry has increasingly taken up the life of the soul. Now in verse as quicksilver as it is authoritative, he returns to themes he has touched on before, but from a new or unusual perspective—focusing on the frame rather than the picture, the tear rather than the sorrow.The title poem captures the nervous energy and aloneness surrounding the figure of Mercury, while the stunning long poem “Sorrow in 1944” tells the tale of the grown child of Madame Butterfly. McClatchy’s impulse is to tell the story after the story, the minor opera in the shadows of a great one that nonetheless tells its own tale of the heart, bearing its own measure of tragedy and hope.With its emotional range, maturity, and formal elegance, Mercury Dressing is the finest work to date from one of our most significant poets.Mercury DressingTo steal a glance and, anxious, seeHim slipping into transparency—The feathered helmet already in place,Its shadow fallen across his face(His hooded sex its counterpart)—Unsteadies the routines of the heart.If I reach out and touch his wing,What harm, what help might he then bring?But suddenly he disappears,As so much else has down the years . . .Until I feel him deep insideThe emptiness, preoccupied.His nerve electrifies the air.His message is his being there.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal is one of the modern era's most important writers, but his fame as Richard Strauss's pioneering collaborator on such operas as Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten has obscured his other remarkable writings: his precocious lyric poetry, inventive short fiction, keen essays, and visionary plays. The Whole Difference, which includes new translations as well as classic ones long out of print, is a fresh introduction to the enormous range of this extraordinary artist, and the most comprehensive collection of Hofmannsthal's writings in English. Selected and edited by the poet and librettist J. D. McClatchy, this collection includes early lyric poems; short prose works, including "The Tale of Night Six Hundred and Seventy-Two," "A Tale of the Cavalry," and the famous "Letter of Lord Chandos"; two full-length plays, The Difficult Man and The Tower; as well as the first act of The Cavalier of the Rose. From the glittering salons of imperial Vienna to the bloodied ruins of Europe after the Great War, the landscape of Hofmannsthal's world stretches across the extremes of experience. This collection reflects those extremes, including both the sparkling social comedy of "the difficult man" Hans Karl, so sensitive that he cannot choose between the two women he loves, and the haunting fictional letter to Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he can no longer write. Complete with an introduction by McClatchy, this collection reveals an artist whose unusual subtlety and depth will enthrall readers.

A volume of approximately three dozen plays includes The Alcestiad, Our Town, and a previously unpublished Alfred Hitchcock screenplay, Shadow of a Doubt, in a collection that also restores to print a key selection of Wilder's theatrical essays.

A series of mystical poems explores the author's experiences communicating through a Ouija board with a spirit named Ephraim who guides the poet through a series of conversations with W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, Plato, and others.

An authoritative anthology of Civil War poetry and songs includes pieces by such writers as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and John Greenleaf Whittier, in a collection that reflects on such topics as the rise and fall of the Confederacy, the fight against slavery, and the assassination of Lincoln.

Product Description: They have inspired poets and challenged translators through the centuries. The odes of Horace are the cornerstone of lyric poetry in the Western world. Their subtlety of tone and brilliance of technique have often proved elusive, especially when--as has usually been the case--a single translator ventures to maneuver through Horace's infinite variety...read more

Presents an audio collection of great love poems, accompanied by a book with the text of the poems.

Presents an audio collection of poems on the subject of marriage, accompanied by a book with the text of the poems.

A collection of photographic and literary portraits of the homes of some of America's top writers includes coverage of such figures as Ernest Hemingway, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and Robert Frost; in a volume complemented by discussions of how their living environments reflected their creative processes and inner lives.

A definitive compilation of prose works by the distinguished author and poet features essays, interviews, and intimate reminiscences, covering such topics as fellow authors Truman Capote, M. F. K. Fisher, Dante, and Cavafy, as well as reflections on the people and places of Greece, his coming of age as a gay man, his travels in Europe, and his family legacy.