World Poetry

A work that has inspired generations, this new edition of Letters to a Young Poet features a fresh translation of Rilke's 10 classic letters, along with the missing letters from the young poet himself.

1879, Mississippi. Young dreamer Lettie may have her head in the stars, but her body is on a covered wagon heading westward. Her father, Thomas, promises that Nebraska will be everything the family needs: an opportunity to claim the independence they’ve strived for over generations on their very own plot of land. But Thomas’ hopes—and mouth—are bigger than his ability to follow through. With few supplies and even less money, the only thing that feels certain is danger.

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

Sophisticated wit and intense emotion, religious fervor and erotic sensuality, delight in life’s pleasures and fascination with death, are all to be found in the paradoxical poetry of John Donne. One of the foremost metaphysical poets, Donne’s ingenious metaphors and inspired use of language has earned him affection and reverence in near equal measure to Shakespeare.

La produzione in versi più conosciuta di Giacomo Leopardi. La raccolta si divide in quattro fasi: la prima riguarda temi erotici, il suicidio, la natura e il senso della vita; la seconda tratta i piccoli e i grandi idilli; la terza è dedicata alla donna di cui Leopardi si innamorò, Fanny Targioni Tozzetti; la quarta e ultima fase comprende infine due canzoni sepolcrali, la "Palinodia", il capitolo "I nuovi credenti", "La ginestra" e "Il tramonto della Luna". Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837) è stato un filosofo, filologo, poeta e scrittore italiano.

The prolific writings of Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, continue to inspire a devoted international following and have transformed modern Arabic literature. In this volume of early writings, Gibran’s simple yet lyrical style crosses from prose to poetry and yields insight into his dedication and inner vision of beauty, including the tale of a strange hermit in “The Tempest”, the discovery of love lost to war in “The Mermaids”, and the long voyage of sea and soul in the prose poem “Between Night and Morn”.

How did the greatest poets in history make the world anew? And what can we learn from the magic, wisdom and humour of their poetry? From the genius of the Ancient Greeks through to the love poetry and metaphysics of the Renaissance, through to the New York poets of the 20th century, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest writers of the human age.

The moving true story of how young Ukrainian Jewish piano prodigies Zhanna (alias “Anna”) and her sister Frina outplayed their pursuers while hiding in plain sight during the Holocaust. A middle grade nonfiction novel-in-verse by award-winning author Susan Hood with Greg Dawson (Zhanna’s son).

For every moment in your life there is a poem. In Dancing by the Light of the Moon, we have a remarkable collection of over 250 best-loved poems in the English-speaking world. Allow Gyles Brandreth to be your guide to not only the wonders of poetry - and there are many - but also its practical uses in everyday life.

In World War I, possibly the most horrific modern war, two soldier poets put down their thoughts in poetry telling us much about wars and the people who fight them. This is a wonderful production with a very timely subject.

A collection of the finest work of one of America's best-loved poets. Despite Dickinson's prolific writing, fewer than a dozen of her poems were published during her lifetime. Critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet. Read by Julie Harris.

These masterly poems span the whole of Nabokov's career from "Music", written in 1914, to the short, playful "To Vera", composed in 1974. The works are newly translated by Dmitiri Nabokov, and include "The University Poem", an extraordinary autobiographical poem in which Nabokov recalls his life in Cambridge, with its crooked alleys and age-old gates, teas at the vicar's and British girls. Included to are such poems as "To Russia" ("Will you leave me alone! I implore you!), the enchanting "Eve", and verse about America, sport, love, and poetry itself.

The Only Worlds We Know is a nuanced and tactile look at both sobriety and what comes after. Patient meditations on loss and the land where the people we love live and are also buried.

The Knight's Tale of medieval wars and chivalry is the first tale told to the pilgrims as they set out to Canterbury. It concerns Theseus, returning from fighting at Thebes, and two brother knights Palamon and Arcite, imprisoned but yearning for their loves. But the real hero of this recording is Richard Bebb who, with the help of Professor Derek Brewer, the leading expert on Chaucerian pronunciation, make the original Middle English not only comprehensible to the modern ear, but exciting.

This is a selection of works by three famous Irishmen: Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. It includes: the short story by Bram Stoker, "Dracula's Guest"; Oscar Wilde's poem "Humanitad" and three versions of his "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"; and finally, an early collection of poetry called The Rose by W. B. Yeats. There is a general introduction by the writer and actor Tim Dalgleish and other additional material.

Nafsi is a collection of poetry and prose, calling you to a spiritual revolution. This compelling work examines the conflict between the soul and the body: its desires, its pain, its love, and its hope. Through poetic allure, this collection will speak directly to your soul, in a way that is hauntingly beautiful.

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." And Ralph Waldo Emerson found Leaves of Grass "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed," calling it a "combination of the Bhagavad Gita and the New York Herald."

Over four decades, Carolyn Forché's visionary work has reinvigorated poetry's power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, inquiries, and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to each other. Her first new collection in 17 years, In the Lateness of the World is a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of 45 poems by English poet William Blake. "Songs of Innocence" is the first part of the collection and appeared in 1789 with engraved illustrations by Blake. The second part, "Songs of Experience", also illustrated, was added in 1794 when Blake published the whole under the full title of Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

>"The Raven" is an appropriate supernatural poem for the Halloween period. First published in 1845, it has long been a favourite of Edgar Allan Poe enthusiasts. Expertly voiced by Phillip J. Mather, this performance brings a musicality to the language of the poem, luring the listener into the desolate scene and keeping him spellbound as the tale unfolds.