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Crucible is a collection of poems by award-winning poet Daniel Bosch. The poems break easily into two sections. In the first, a set of ironic, emulative "Homages & Elegies," Bosch playfully apostrophizes poets living and dead, as if it took two not only to tango, but to write a poem. He wrestles with Dickinson, grooves with the glacial wit of Frost (belatedly), waltzes with Walcott's ghost (prematurely), mimics Mandelstam, picks apples with Sappho, and shares a transcontinental flight with Brodsky. Each poem is carefully measured; some are composed by meticulous inversion of their precursor's poetic strategy. Literary but by no means prudish, these poems look back-and forward-to a time when ...
"The Science of Wine does an outstanding job of integrating 'hard' science about wine with the emotional aspects that make wine appealing."--Patrick J. Mahaney, former senior Vice President for wine quality at Robert Mondavi Winery "Jamie Goode is a rarity in the wine world: a trained scientist who can explain complicated subjects without dumbing them down or coming over like a pointy head. It also helps that he's a terrific writer with a real passion for his subject."--Tim Atkin MW, The Observer
Despite the denigrating revelations of his published letters, Philip Larkin looms larger than ever, both as an English national icon and as a championed voice of postwar English poetry. Philip Larkin, Popular Culture, and the English Individual seeks to move beyond the decades-long preoccupation with Larkin’s reputation and canonical status, approaching Larkin instead as part of a persevering cultural phenomenon through which the traditionally distinguished individual is reconstituted in the company of the ordinary and the interchangeable. It tracks how Larkin’s poetic texts negotiate and engage with representations of popular culture at a time when notions of celebrity, authenticity, and cultural authority were newly (and deeply) unsettled by rock and roll, and when cultural capital had become a coveted substitute for diminished imperial wealth. From his unprecedented f-bombs to his cultivation of a familiar, comedic personality, this book examines how Larkin realigns common social practices and popular art forms—be it attending a church service, watching television, or enjoying a concert—to the isolated, knowing gaze of the individual.
From its earliest inception with modified cars painted in modest black and white to the logo-covered stock cars that race today, fans get the inside track on NASCAR and the people who turned it into a multi-million dollar industry. Lively biographies of the greatest drivers on the motorway are featured, including legends, young up-and-comers, and the courageous women who have been fearless pioneers in this traditionally male-dominated sport. This enthralling package comes fully loaded with stunning color photographs and riveting text that will make readers feel as if they are sitting in the pole position at the Daytona International Speedway.
Since 2000, black squatters have forcibly occupied white farms across Zimbabwe, reigniting questions of racialized dispossession, land rights, and legacies of liberation. Donald S. Moore probes these contentious politics by analyzing fierce disputes over territory, sovereignty, and subjection in the country’s eastern highlands. He focuses on poor farmers in Kaerezi who endured colonial evictions from their ancestral land and lived as refugees in Mozambique during Zimbabwe’s guerrilla war. After independence in 1980, Kaerezians returned home to a changed landscape. Postcolonial bureaucrats had converted their land from a white ranch into a state resettlement scheme. Those who defied this ...
Jennifer Clarvoe’s second book, Counter-Amores, wrestles with and against love. The poems in the title series talk back to Ovid’s Amores, and, in talking back, take charge, take delight, and take revenge. They suggest that we discover what we love by fighting, by bringing our angry, hungry, imperfect selves into the battle. Like a man who shouts for the echo back from a cliff, or the scientist who teaches her parrot to say, “I love you,” or the philosopher who wonders what it is like to be a bat, or Temple Grandin’s lucid imaginings of the last moments of cattle destined for slaughter, the speakers in these poems seek to find themselves in relation to an ever-widening circle of unknowable others. Yearning for “the sweet cool hum of fridge and fluorescent that sang ‘home,’” we’re as likely to find “fifty-seven clicks and flickering channels pitched to the galaxy.” Song itself becomes a site for gorgeous struggle, just as bella means both “beautiful” and “wars.”
There is a saying among winemakers that "great wine begins with dirt." Beginning from this intriguing premise, The Winemaker's Dance embarks on an eye-opening exploration of "terroir" in one of the greatest places on earth to grow wine—California's Napa Valley. Jonathan Swinchatt and David G. Howell weave a tale that begins millions of years ago with the clash of continental plates that created the Napa Valley and go on to show how this small region, with its myriad microclimates, complex geologic history, and dedicated winemakers, came to produce world-class wines. A fascinating look at the art and science of winemaking and the only comprehensive book that covers Napa's geology, history, ...