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  Swansdown

  Donald Platt

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  In SWANSDOWN, the poet Donald Platt makes a study of lifeís inevitable transitions, from loveís astonishing evolutions, to aging and its attendant losses. With the poem "Cloud Study" Platt brings his own mortality into view. Returning to a painting by Constable, he considers his own perspective, sitting by the Liffey, tending an injured knee. Young mothers, lovers, and runners pass, reminding the poet of who he once was and how quickly life, like weather, shifts. "Two minutes later, // The clouds would have taken on a different cast of light and shape / just like the thunderheads / now piling up above the Liffey."Platt advises: "To approach old age, one needs a new harsher style." And yet these poems are proof of the softness that may follow life's harshest reckonings, like the wisps of hair on his beloved brother's head as he lies dying, "fine / as milkweed silk. / His head a split / dried pod whose seeds / wind will scatter." The poems of Swansdown point us to a "larger landscape," they are the clouds "that scud across the blue escutcheon of sky. . . Sun's blazon through rain rampant.""One of the finest American poets working today," writes poet and editor Adrian Matejka, "A writer of unparalleled lyric and formal integrity." It is indeed these qualities that gird Platt for this masterful eighth collection.

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  The Odyssey

  Homer

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  Homer is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.Odyssey is a classic poem written by Homer that consists of 12.110 verses. It is unique already in that it has reached our days in its original form. This poem is a genuine revelation of the poetic thought of ancient Hellas. ... After the Trojan War, most of the survived Greek leaders returned by sea to Troy. However, after numerous troubles, only the chosen ones could have stayed alive. One of them - the cunning king Odysseus – was wandering in the sea for almost ten years... Pretty illustrations by Elena Odarych provide you with new impressions from reading this legendary story.

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  Life Raft

  Fin Kennedy

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  – Every man for himself.
  – I'd say we're better off sticking together.
  In a mysterious dystopia, against a backdrop of war, a life raft filled with children is adrift at sea – their passenger liner sunk by an unknown and unseen enemy.
  As darkness falls and their rations dwindle, fear, superstition and madness start to take hold. Hours turn into days, and it becomes clear that not all of them will make it back to dry land alive...
  Life Raft is a thrilling contemporary adaptation of The Raft of the Medusa, Georg Kaiser's 1945 play, written during his exile from Nazi Germany, and inspired by a terrifying true story.
  Written by Fin Kennedy in collaboration with Bristol Old Vic's acclaimed Young Company, and originally performed by them under the direction of Melly Still, this large-cast play for young actors is a dark study in the psychology of survival – and an urgent allegory for our times.
  This definitive edition of the play is accompanied by a series of interactive games specially created by award-winning games designer Tassos Stevens, allowing young people a deeper exploration of the play's themes, and the opportunity to create their own new stories inspired by the scenario.

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  The Black Man's Lament or How to...

  Amelia Opie

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  Amelia Alderson, an only child, was born on the 12th November 1769 in Norwich, England. 
  After the death of her mother on New Year’s Eve 1784 she became her father's housekeeper and hostess. 
  The young Amelia was energetic, attractive, and an admirer of fashion.  She spent much of her youth writing poetry and plays and putting on local amateur theatricals.  At 18 she had published anonymously ‘The Dangers of Coquetry’. 
  Amelia married in the spring of 1798 to the artist John Opie at the Church of St Marylebone, in Westminster, and together they lived in Berners Street where Amelia was already living. 
  Her next novel in 1801 ‘Father and Daughter’, was very popular even though it dealt with such themes as illegitimacy, a socially difficult subject for its times.  From this point on published works were far more regular.  The following year her volume ‘Poems’ appeared and was again very popular.  Novels continued to flow and she never once abandoned her social activism and her call for better treatment of women and the dispossessed in her works.  She was also keenly involved in a love of society and its attendant frills. 
  Encouraged by her husband to write more she published Adeline Mowbray in 1804, an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery.  
  Her husband died in 1807 and she paused from writing for a few years before resuming with further novels and poems.  Of particular interest was her short poem ‘The Black Man's Lament’ in 1826.  Her life now was in the main spent travelling and working for charities and against slavery.  She even helped create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich which organised a parliamentary petition of 187,000 names of which hers was the first name. 
  After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom.  
  Amelia Opie died on the 2nd December 1853 in Norwich.  She was 84.

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  Elegies & Laments - Poetic...

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas...

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  In these more modern time perhaps our first thoughts of an Elegy or a Lament is for someone’s passing.  Wreathed in grief and death we think of a headstone on a silent grave and the memories that shelter within our hearts, slowly receding from one generation to the next, as an often lonely voice extols the virtues and traits of the one who has passed. 
   
  But these two very early forms of poetry, dating back to at least Ovid and probably further, are also surprising in their lyrical touch.  These are not just mournful and sad but also whimsical or rich with celebration and tribute as they journey through joy, laughter, love, tears and comfort. 
   
  Our Classic Poets, who have specifically chosen to include the form in the title of their work, include the likes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, Aphra Behn, Rainer Maria Rilke, Radclyffe Hall and many others of equal measure are always surprising in their views, their analysis and their sharing of words and thoughts, offering feelings that mirror our own and provide a balm of many hues for our wounded and tender souls. 
   
  1 - Elegies and Laments - An Introduction 
  2 - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray 
  3 - The Lament of Swordy Well by John Clare 
  4 - An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins by John Cunningham 
  5 - Lament by Rainer Maria Rilke 
  6 - Elegy - Supposed to Be Written in Barnet Churchyard by George Townsend 
  7 - Elegy by Thomas Chatterton 
  8 - A Lament by Radclyffe Hall 
  9 - An Elegy by Ben Jonson 
  10 - Laeta - A Lament by HP Lovecraft 
  11 - Angellica's Lament by Aphra Behn 
  12 - Amores - Book I Elegy V - Corinna in an Afternoon by Ovid 
  13 - Morning Lament by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
  14 - The Wind's Lament by John Morris-Jones 
  15 - Noon Day Elegiacs by T W Rolleston 
  16 - Midnight Lamentation by Harold Munro 
  17 - February. An Elegy by Thomas Chatterton 
  18 - Elegy in April and September by Wilfred Owen 
  19 - Elegy by Anna Seward 
  20 - Autumn Elegy by Leslie Norris 
  21 - Elegy on the Year 1788 by Robert Burns 
  22 - Elegy for an Enemy by Stephen Vincent Benet 
  23 - An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog by Oliver Goldsmith 
  24 - Pointless It Is To Lament by Narsinh Mehta 
  25 - To the Beloved Dead - A Lament by Alice Meynell 
  26 - The Slave's Lament by Benjamin Cutler Clark 
  27 - The Slaves Lament by Robert Burns 
  28 - A Lament by Katharine Tynan 
  29 - The Going of the Battery (Wives Lament November the 2nd 1899) by Thomas Hardy 
  30 - Lament in 1915 by Harold Munro 
  31 - An Elegy on the Death of Llywelyn ab Gruyffyd by Gruffydd ap Yr Ynad Coch 
  32 - Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady by Alexander Pope 
  33 - Elegy on a Lady Whom Grief for the Death of Her Bethrothed Killed by Robert Seymour Bridges 
  34 - Lament by Edna St Vincent Millay 
  35 - The Mother's Lament For Her Infant by Lucretia Maria Davidson 
  36 - Elegy on the Death of Mr Phillips by Thomas Chatterton 
  37 - Lament for the Poets, 1916 by Francis Ledwidge 
  38 - Lament for Thomas McDonagh by Francis Ledwidge 
  39 - Elegy on the Earl of Rochester by Anne Wharton 
  40 - Elegy on William Shakespeare by William Basse 
  41 - Adonais - An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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  Why Fathers Cry at Night - A...

  Kwame Alexander

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  This powerful memoir from a #1 New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist features poetry, letters, recipes, and other personal artifacts that provide an intimate look into his life and the loved ones he shares it with. In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. He explores his own relationships—his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his second wife. Alexander attempts to deal with the unravelling of his marriage and the grief of his mother's recent passing while sharing the solace he found in learning how to perfect her famous fried chicken dish. With an open heart, Alexander weaves together memories of his past to try and understand his greatest love: his daughters. Full of heartfelt reminisces, family recipes, love poems, and personal letters, Why Fathers Cry at Night inspires bravery and vulnerability in every reader who has experienced the reckless passion, heartbreak, failure, and joy that define the whirlwind woes and wonders of love.

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