Nature writing, as Thoreau knew, can be deeply subversive because it points to ways of living that diverge fundamentally from dominant attitudes. Thoreau would have welcomed these essays by America's most important nature writers, for in exploring our intrinsic relationship with the earth, they also consider our alienation from nature and how that alienation is manifested.The book's principal focus is on the possibilities of being at home on the earth: Finding place, reinhabitation, and becoming native.The collection begins with essays by N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, who accentuate the links between culture and nature. Other essays speak to the loss of place and to being stewards of nature and of bioregionalism, nativeness, and of interdependent communities, be they in rural areas or urban neighborhoods. Several essays address how our current ideologies of growth and individualism run counter to a sustainable relationship to the land and to each other. In the final three essays, Gary Snyder critiques various views of nature, Alice Walker articulates a vision of a responsive universe, and Linda Hogan celebrates the interaction of nature and human habitation. The contributors' views, writings, and contexts are variegated, but all share a sense that human identity is intimately tied to the land one lives on. And as in an ecosystem, the collection's great diversity yields abundant riches.At Home on the Earth represents the cutting edge of environmental thinking in the United States today. Throughout, the interactions between humans and nature convey a politics of hope, one sustained by faith in place itself. As Gary Snyder writes, "We are all indigenous to this planet, this mosaic of wild gardens we are being called by nature and history to reinhabit in good spirit."

"The Best American Essays, International Edition", presents highly regarded contemporary authors at their best. The essays are thematically arranged and selected from the popular trade series of the same name. They also cover common rhetorical modes, including narration and argumentation, providing instructors optimal flexibility with respect to course approach. In the introduction, Robert Atwan offers an overview of various types of essays to prepare students for the readings that follow. To further prepare students, 'Essayists on the Essay' offers insightful commentaries about the genre from many of today's top writers.

Product Description: For The Term of His Natural Life (1874) Clarke's book is a both a ripping yarn and a novelisation of life as a convict in Australia. The tale follows Rufus Dawes, convicted for a murder that he did not commit. The novel was based on Clarke's research and a visit to the penal settlement of Port Arthur, Tasmania...read more

An essay that explores the theme of illness and why it has never been a subject of literature.

The college version of The Best American Essays, Fourth Edition, is a collection of essays for first-year composition courses, loosely arranged by broad aims of discourse, including narrative, informative, and argumentative essays. In addition to its rhetorical organization, the reader also offers flexibility for instructors who prefer a thematic or alphabetical organization. The editor introduces students to various types of essays, followed by commentary from well-known writers on such subjects as "Essayists Must Tell the Truth" and "Essays Are Not Scientific Documents."

Find biographical information on more than 130,000 modern novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction writers, journalists and scriptwriters. Sketches typically include personal information, contact information, career history, writings, biographical and critical sources, authors' comments, and informative essays about their lives and work. A softcover cumulative index is published twice per year (included in subscription).

Paul Celan (1920-1970) stands as one of the greatest post-war European poets. Celan's prose is as thought-provoking as, and less familiar than, his poetry. The writings and aphorisms on poetry and art illuminate the sources of his language.

Collects stories, essays, articles, and interviews by the late author of Women in Their Beds, in a treasury that includes her personal thoughts on the art of writing and her acceptance speech for the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal for Literature. Reprint.

Harold Bloom's Shakespeare examines the sources and impact of Bloom's Shakespearean criticism. Through focused and sustained study of this writer and his best-selling book, this collection of essays addresses a wide range of issues pertinent to both general readers and university classes: the cultural role of Shakespeare and of a new secular humanism addressed to general readers and audiences; the author as literary origin; the persistence of character as a category of literary appreciation; and the influence of Shakespeare within the Anglo-American educational system. Together, the essays reflect on the ethics of literary theory and criticism.

Product Description: Breakfast Served Any Time All Day collects forty years of writings on poetry in one essential volume by master of American letters Donald Hall.Praise for Breakfast Served:". . . the essays in this book are engaging, passionate, strange, and unified...read more

The celebrated nature writer and essayist shares his observations of the wonders of the natural world in a collection of writings that center on the state of Michigan, discussing such topics as turtles, sasquatch, the intelligence of crows, and more.

Product Description: A wise, absorbing, and surprising introduction to poetry written in English, from one of England's leading poetsJames Fenton is that rare scholar "not ashamed to admit that he mostly reads for pleasure" (Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books)...read more

A collection of essays by the popular science columnist for the Los Angeles Times reports on the most recent discoveries in physics, cosmology, mathematics, astronomy, and more to reveal the complex nature of the universe and how it is tied to art, politics, and humanity. Reprint. 20,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: Illuminating Eco covers the range of British scholarship on the prolific literary and theoretical work of Umberto Eco. With essays by scholars such as Michael Caesar and David Robey, the volume provides an overview of current research being carried out by a new generation of academics...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Collection of non-fiction prose provides a look at another facet of the American novelist's literary talent

The former editor-in-chief of The Source serves up a hard-hitting memoir of his life covering the hip-hop scene, from out-of-control parties to suicide and gun-toting violence, in a thought-provoking study of one of today's most influential art forms. Reprint.

The latest offering in the Poets on Poetry series from acclaimed poet, critic, and National Endowment for the Arts' chairman Dana Gioia, Barrier of a Common Language collects essays on British poets and poetry spanning the past two decades. Gioia ignited a national debate on the relevance of poetry in 1991 when he published an essay in the Atlantic titled "Can Poetry Matter?" The essay was expanded into a book of the same name and went on to become one of the best-selling books of contemporary poetry criticism in the 1990s. In Barrier of a Common Language Gioia addresses the current disconnect between British and American poetry, the result of America's growing postwar self-sufficiency in its intellectual concerns and concomitant patronizing attitude toward Britain. Writes Gioia, "Today . . . most American readers are not only unfamiliar with current British poetry, but modestly proud of the fact. They do not dissemble, but urbanely flourish their ignorance as an indisputable sign of discrimination." Whether British poetry ever regains the importance in Anglo-American literary traditions it had fifty years ago, Gioia believes, will depend on the quality of service it receives from critics, poets, editors, and anthologists who alone can make it accurately heard and understood. Poet, critic, and acclaimed author of Can Poetry Matter? Dana Gioia is one of America's leading contemporary men of letters. Winner of the American Book Award, Gioia is internationally recognized for his role in reviving rhyme, meter, and narrative in contemporary poetry.

Product Description: With their trademark humor and home-spun practicality, the Litchfield Area Writers Group is at it again with their newest collection of writings called A View From the Verandah. This small group of writers effectively capture life in Central Minnesota with this newest collection of poignant and memorable snapshots of rural Minnesota...read more

Product Description: A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.In this fourth collection of reflections on writing and the writing life, the late William Stafford's lifelong refusal to separate his work from the task of living responsibly -- "What a person is shows up in what a person does" -- rings clear...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)