The essential work of Mallarmé, collected in a bilingual French and English edition.

The reputation of Rainer Maria Rilke has grown steadily since his death in 1926; today he is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century. This Modern Library edition presents Stephen Mitchell’s acclaimed translations of Rilke, which have won praise for their re-creation of the poet’s rich formal music and depth of thought. “If Rilke had written in English,” Denis Donoghue wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “he would have written in this English.” Ahead of All Parting is an abundant selection of Rilke’s lifework. It contains representative poems from his early collections The Book of Hours and The Book of Pictures; many selections from the revolutionary New Poems, which drew inspiration from Rodin and Cezanne; the hitherto little-known “Requiem for a Friend”; and a generous selection of the late uncollected poems, which constitute some of his finest work. Included too are passages from Rilke’s influential novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and nine of his brilliant uncollected prose pieces. Finally, the book presents the poet’s two greatest masterpieces in their entirety: the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. “Rilke’s voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. Mitchell’s versions more clearly than in any others,” said W. S. Merwin. “His work is masterful.”

Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865) was the most widely read and respected pre-Civil War American woman poet in the English-speaking world. In a half-century career, Sigourney produced a wide range of poetry and prose envisaging the United States as a new kind of republic with a unique mission in history, in which women like herself had a central role. This edition contributes to the current recovery of Sigourney and her republican vision from the oblivion into which they were cast by the aftermath of the Civil War, the construction of a male-dominated American “national” literary canon, and the aesthetics of Modernism. In this Broadview edition, a representative selection of poetry and prose from across her career illustrates Sigourney’s national vision and the diversity of forms she used to promote it. In the appendices, letters and documents illustrate her challenges and working methods in what she called her “kitchen in Parnassus.”

Pulitzer Prize - winning poet Donald Justice displays his command of diverse voices and literary forms in these wide-ranging. often surprising selections - some never before collected. There are elegiac poems and stories conjuring people and places from a distant childhood, tributes to literary figures such as Wallace Stevens and Cesar Vallejo, portrayals of asylum patients and the desolution of old men, and critical essays on the power of art to ward off death. The poet's virtuosity in many forms is evident in the structured perfection of a sestina or a villanelle, free verse of various kinds, the rich prose of a short story, or the careful analysis of an essay. His personality - especially his love for music - and his creative method come through strongly, particularly when he treats the same theme in multiple genres. The ending of one story, for example, is retold as a poem; a prose memoir is summarized twice over in a group of poems. These exemplary selections reflect four decades of writing by a master now at the height of his powers.

A bilingual collection of poetry by the German poet considered by many the major European poet since 1945 features a selection of lyrics, previously unpublished poems, and essays and speeches dealing with his Jewish heritage, alienation from society, and the nature of writing. Reprint.

Chiara Matraini (1515–1604?) was a member of the great flowering of poetic imitators and innovators in the Italian literary heritage begun by Petrarch, cultivated later by the lyric poet Pietro Bembo, and supplanted by the epic poet Torquato Tasso. Though without formal training, Matraini excelled in a number of literary genres popular at the time—poetry, religious meditation, discourse, and dialogue. In her midlife, she published a collection of erotic love poetry, but later in life her work shifted toward a search for spiritual salvation. Near the end of her life, she published a new poetry retrospective. Mostly available in only a handful of rare book collections, her writings are now adeptly translated here for an English-speaking audience and situated historically in an introduction by noted Matraini expert Giovanna Rabitti. Selected Poetry and Prose allows the poet to finally take her place as one of the seminal authors of the Renaissance, next to her contemporaries Vittoria Colonna and Laura Battiferra, also published in the Other Voice series.