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Things of the Hidden God
"If I had learned anything during the war, it was that our walk in the sun is brief, and so I resolved to wander from monastery to monastery, a sojourner in the world of last things." So poet and journalist Christopher Merrill tells us near the beginning of this gripping account of the transforming pilgrimages he made to Mount Athos, in Greece, in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "It was time for me to come to terms with the way my life had turned out: the love I had squandered, the misgivings I had about my vocation and my faith, the dread I felt at every turn." In despair and longing to end his spiritual desolation, Merrill became one of a handful of visitors permitted entry ...
Only the Nails Remain
Chronicles Merrill's ten war-time journeys to the Balkans from the years 1992 through 1996. At once a travelogue, a book of war reportage, and a biography of the imagination under siege, this personal narrative takes the reader along on the author's journeys to all the provinces and republics of the former Yugoslavia--Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina--as well as to Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Turkey. Merrill's journeys provide the narrative structure for an exploration of the roles and responsibility of intellectuals caught up in a decisive historical moment, many of whom either helped to incite the war or else bore eloquent witness to its carnage. He offers a literary meditation on war, a portrait of the poetry, politics and the people of the Balkans that will provide insight into the past, present, and future of those war-torn lands. --Adapted from publisher description.
The Forgotten Language
Over 125 poems about nature by 93 poets.
The Global Game
The world?s most popular sport, soccer, is also one of the planet?s prevalent cultural expressions, celebrated and debated as an art form, observed with ritual and passion. Thus it has inspired literary efforts of every sort, from every corner of the globe, by women and men. The writings gathered in this volume reflect the universal and infinitely varied ways in which soccer connects with human experience. Poetry and prose from Ted Hughes, Charles Simic, Eduardo Galeano, G_nter Grass, Giovanna Pollarolo, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature Winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and Elvis Costello?to name but a few?take us to a dizzying array of cultures and climes. From a patch of ground in Missoula, Montana, to a clearing in a Kosovo forest, from the stadiums of Burma and Iran to the northern lights over Greenland to remotest Sierra Leone, these writers show us soccer?s stars and fans, politics and rituals, as well as the game?s power to encourage resistance, inspire faith, and build community.
The Poetry of Men's Lives
Alive with the wisdom, artistry, and emotion of more than 250 poets from nearly one hundred countries, this anthology celebrates the multifaceted experience of contemporary manhood. The lives into which these poems invite us reveal the influences of culture, heredity, personal experience, values, beliefs, wishes, desires, loves, and betrayals. Men are notoriously reluctant to open up and discuss these things; and yet when they do--as in these poems--they tell us about their families, lovers, relationships, political and religious beliefs, sexuality, and childhoods. There is much to learn here about who men are and how they see their worlds. Collects close to three hundred poems, in English o...
The Thinking Woman
Love -- Play -- Work -- Fear -- Wonder -- Friendship.
Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World
A dazzling new anthology of the very best very short fiction from around the world. What is a flash fiction called in other countries? In Latin America it is a micro, in Denmark kortprosa, in Bulgaria mikro razkaz. These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs. Flash has always—and everywhere—been a form of experiment, of possibility. A new entry in the lauded Flash and Sudden Fiction anthologies, this collection includes 86 of the most beautiful, provocative, and moving narratives by authors from six continents, including best-selling writer Etgar Keret, Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, Korean screenwriter Kim Young-ha, Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, and Argentinian “Queen of the Microstory” Ana María Shua, among many others. These brilliantly chosen stories challenge readers to widen their vision and celebrate both the local and the universal.
Self-Portrait with Dogwood
In the course of researching dogwood trees, beloved poet and essayist Christopher Merrill realized that a number of formative moments in his life had some connection to the tree named—according to one writer—because its fruit was not fit for a dog. As he approached his sixtieth birthday, Merrill began to compose a self-portrait alongside this tree whose lifespan is comparable to a human’s and that, from an early age, he’s regarded as a talisman. Dogwoods have never been far from Merrill’s view at significant moments throughout his life, helping to shape his understanding of place in the great chain of being; entwined in his experience is the conviction that our relationship to the ...
The Tree of the Doves
“A unique travelogue” that “explores the nature of terror, its place in the post-9/11 world and how it unites and galvanizes those in the throes of it” (Kirkus Reviews). Using several ageless questions—“Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we do?”—as his point of departure, journalist and award-winning poet Christopher Merrill explores the related issues of terror, modernity, tradition, and epochal transformation. In three extended essays, Merrill observes the performance of a banned ritual in the Malaysian province of Kelatan; traces Saint-John Perse’s epic voyage from Beijing to Ulan Bator in 1921 and relates it to the China of today; and embarks on a trip across the Levant in 2007 in the wake of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Merrill asserts that it is in this trinity of human actions—ceremony, expedition, war: all devised to keep terror at bay—that history is formed, and that the technological, political, environmental, and social changes we are witnessing now presage the end of one order and the creation of another. “Merrill is a ‘writer’s writer’: he spins sentences made of gold.” —Publishers Weekly
I Love Those Earrings
Earrings can talk-of mourning a dead king, supporting a revolution, or resisting an emperor. They have carried the message that a proper Victorian believed in Darwin, and that a woman invited a lover to her bed. Raid the jewelry boxes of the glamorous, legendary, and everyday chic women alike. See what earrings they have worn, when, and why, in ways that bespeak their way of life and personality, and how jewelry carries family and cultural heritage with style. Looking at earrings as tiny sculptures, here are details about gems, settings, and fixtures. Lavishly embellished with over 300 images of jewelry ranging from the Byzantine era to the contemporary artisan, the styles of design, relationships to dress, portraiture and symbolism, and other aspects of adornment are elaborated upon. With research-based anecdotes and her own life in earrings, the author tells a story that will engage anyone interested in celebrities, monarchies, and the barely recorded lives of women of the past, and, of course, anyone who loves beautiful jewelry.
