In "Air's Appearance", Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern...

"All Just", David Herd's second Carcanet collection, makes poems from the fractured phrases and competing idioms of contemporary movement, its translations between public and private spaces. Conversations start and are broken off. Public announcement...

Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world. His poems have earned international acclaim, and his influence on Arabic literature has been likened to that of T. S. Eliot's on English-language verse. T...

Since the publication of his first book in 1953, Yves Bonnefoy has become one of the most important French poets of the postwar years. At last, we have the long-awaited English translation of Yves Bonnefoy's celebrated work, "L'Arriere-pays", which t...

James Harpur's fifth collection journeys into realms seen and unseen, ranging from the landscapes of Ireland to the visionary realms of the mystics. Through the finely textured music of his poems, he explores emotional and spiritual intimacies while...

Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Taking the singular instance of the African American writer to heart, William W. Cook and James Tatum here ar...

"Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it", writes Harold Bloom in "The Anatomy of Influence", "is in the first place literary, that is to say, personal and passionate". For more than half a century, Bloom has shared his profound knowledge of...

Andrew Crozier (1943-2008) was a poet, and an energiser of poetry. A champion of work excluded from the familiar canon, he brought to the English literary landscape of the 1960s and 70s an engagement with the energies of American poetry. As a publish...

The meteoric and turbulent career of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was crammed into four teenage years, in which he wrote two masterpieces, "The Illuminations" and "A Season in Hell", and some wonderful short poems. At nineteen he then turned his back o...

Members of adoption triangles-adoptees, birthparents, and adopting parents-must struggle with difficult and sometimes heartrending issues. Should adopted children be enabled to trace their biological parents? Does the individual's right to self-disco...