While there have been countless books written about Detroit, none have captured its incredible musical history like this one. Detroit artists have forged the paths in many music genres, producing waves of creative energy that continue to reverberate across the country and around the world. This anthology both documents and celebrates this part of Detroit's history, capturing the emotions that the music inspired in its creators and in its listeners. The range of contributors speaks to the global impact of Detroit's music scene--Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and poet laureates all come together in this rich and varied anthology.

(Book). Art Song: Linking Poetry and Music is a follow-up to author Carol Kimball's bestselling Song: A Guide to Art Song Style and Literature . Rather than a general survey of art song literature, the new book clearly and insightfully defines the fundamental characteristics of art song, and the integral relationship between lyric poetry and its musical settings. Topics covered include poetry basics for singers, exercises for singers in working with poetry, insights into composers' musical settings of poetry, building recital programs, performance suggestions, and recommended literature for college and university classical voice majors. The three appendices address further aspects of poetry, guidelines for creating a recital program, and representative classical voice recitals of various descriptions. Art Song: Linking Poetry and Music is extremely useful as an "unofficial" text for college/university vocal literature classes, as an excellent resource for singers and voice teachers, and of interest to all those who are fascinated by the rich legacy of the art song genre.

Song of the Simple Truth (Canción de la verdad sencilla) is the first bilingual edition of Julia de Burgos' complete poems. Numbering more than 200, these poems form a literary landmark—the first time her poems have appeared in a complete edition in either English or Spanish. Many of the verses presented here had been lost and are presented here for the first time in print. De Burgos broke new ground in her poetry by fusing a romantic temperament with keen political insights. This book will be essential reading for lovers of poetry and for feminists.

The poems in Lauren Clark's debut book, Music for a Wedding, move fluidly and unforgettably between the rituals of monogamy, death, loneliness, and the body in search of what might last forever. In the abandonment of those who die and those who leave, Clark's speakers are orphic in their use of song as a mode of enduring the hours. Like sybils, Clark's poems make the entrails of what's left behind luminous, even if what is presented is darkness, "that low velvet we make / within ourselves". Their poetry is at once free of the formalities associated with lyric poetry and full of its own novel shapes that only Clark could devise. Their poetry queers our understanding of poetics and what a book of poems can be by dwelling in intimate corners of the self that may seem otherwise insensate without their taking us in to witness such depths. In Clark's hands, the whole of the world--in poetry and on the ground--is preternatural, requiring of us dedication and devotion. But not to the usual rituals of mourning and prayer. Rather, "darkness is to remind [us] what [we] could not see before", that in the absence of being with others, the only true devotion left is grief.

In 1877, Ruskin accused Whistler of ’flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Was he right? After all, Whistler always denied that the true function of art was to represent anything. If a painting does not represent, what is it, other than mere paint, flung in the public’s face? Whistler’s answer was simple: painting is music - or it is poetry. Georges Braque, half a century later, echoed Whistler’s answer. So did Braque’s friends Apollinaire and Ponge. They presented their poetry as music too - and as painting. But meanwhile, composers such as Satie and Stravinsky were presenting their own art - music - as if it transposed the values of painting or of poetry. The fundamental principle of this intermedial aesthetic, which bound together an extraordinary fraternity of artists in all media in Paris, from 1885 to 1945, was this: we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of art in another medium. Peter Dayan traces the history of this principle: how it created our very notion of ’great art’, why it declined as a vision from the 1960s and how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.

This “powerfully absorbing” biography of 17th century Welsh poet George Herbert brings essential personal and social context to his immortal poetry (Financial Times). Though he never published any of his English poems during his lifetime, George Herbert has been celebrated for centuries as one of the greatest religious poets in the language. In this richly perceptive biography, author and theologian John Drury integrates Herbert’s poems fully into his life, enriching our understanding of both the poet’s mind and his work. As Drury writes in his preface, Herbert lived “a quiet life with a crisis in the middle of it.” Beginning with his early academic success, Drury chronicles the life of a man who abandons the path to a career at court and chooses to devote himself to the restoration of a church in Huntingdonshire and lives out his life as a country parson. Because Herbert’s work was only published posthumously, it has always been difficult to know when or in what context he wrote his poems. But Drury skillfully places readings of the poems into his narrative, allowing us to appreciate not only Herbert’s frame of mind while writing, but also the society that produced it. He reveals the occasions of sorrow, happiness, regret, and hope that Herbert captured in his poetry and that led T. S. Eliot to write, “What we can confidently believe is that every poem . . . is true to the poet’s experience.” “It is hard to imagine a better book for anyone, general reader or seventeenth-century aficionado or teacher or student, newly embarking on Herbert.”—The Guardian, UK

The Poetry and Music of Joaquín Sabina: An Angel with Black Wings is a thoroughly researched exploration of the life, music, and song lyrics of the celebrated Spanish singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina. Often called "the Spanish Dylan," Sabina has established his own highly poetic space over the course of his forty-plus years as a recording artist. Using selected song lyrics from his fifteen studio and three major live albums, Daniel J. Nappo analyzes Sabina's use of antithesis, simile, metaphor, synesthesia, rhyme, and other rhetorical and poetic devices. Nappo also devotes a chapter to Sabina's ability as a narrator and concludes the book with a comparison of Sabina's best work with that of the American singer-songwriter and Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan.