In December 2015, six months before his death at the age of 93, Yves Bonnefoy concluded what was to be his last major text in prose, L'echarpe rouge, translated here as The Red Scarf. In this unique book, described by the poet as "an anamnesis" – a f...

Rainer Brambach, one of the most widely appreciated Swiss poets in the 1950s and '60s, was notorious for walking to the beat of his own drum, denying convention and standing his ground against popular styles and trends. He grew up in Basel and left s...

This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death – completed weeks before Harold Bloom died – shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called "a universe of death". Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of li...

Marked by powerful and evocative prose, Ferenc Barnas's novel tells the fascinating story of a young man's journey through his strange obsessions towards possible recovery. The unnamed narrator is the parasite, feeding off others' ailments, but he is...

John Birtwhistle has said that "one writes each poem just to learn how to write it", and insists that he "doesn't care a dried pea for Artistic Development or Finding One's Own Voice". The result, of course, is that a strongly recognisable voice come...

Throughout her nearly sixty-year career, acclaimed poet Eavan Boland came to be known for her exquisite ability to weave myth, history, and the life of an ordinary woman into mesmerizing poetry. She was an essential voice in both feminist and Irish l...

The poems in 2nd Chance are written in the voice of a doctor; the speaker often imagines he is talking to students, residents, patients, families – anyone who is ill or has witnessed illness and suffering. The poet, Daniel M. Becker, has been a physi...

The poems in The Breathing Place, Calvin Bedient's fifth collection of poetry, take in and move through three areas of consideration. Focusing first on the turmoil of an imperfect world before turning to raging social concerns, the poems finally come...

"Build Me a Boat" gathers a selection of the words that poet Michael Dennis Browne has written for music over the past fifty years. Working with a number of different composers, Browne has ranged widely across forms; what we discover here are lyrics,...

The poems in under the aegis of a winged mind are inspired by the life and times of the jazz composer and pianist Earl "Bud" Powell. Powell was a leading figure in the development of jazz, but throughout his life, he also faced struggles with police...