"Keith Waldrop was a National Book Award winning poet, and one of this country’s finest translators from the French. His translations include work by Charles Baudelaire, Edmond Jabès, and Claude Royet-Journoud. For over fifty years, he operated, along with his wife Rosmarie Waldrop, the small press Burning Deck. For his work promoting French literature, he was awarded the rank of 'Chevalier des arts et des letters' by the French government. In addition to his literary work, he was also a brilliant collagist, and a beloved mentor to many, including myself, who passed through Brown University’s MFA program in Literary Arts." -- Jerrold Shiroma
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by
This compelling selection of recent work by internationally celebrated poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences--"Shipwreck in Haven," "Falling in Love through a Description," and "The Plummet of Vitruvius"--in a virtuosic poetic triptych. In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings. Waldrop, a longtime admirer of such artists as the French poet Raymond Queneau and the American painter Robert Motherwell, imposes a tonal override on purloined materials, yet the originals continue to show through. These powerful poems, at once metaphysical and personal, reconcile Waldrop's romantic tendencies with formal experimentation, uniting poetry and philosophy and revealing him as a transcendentalist for the new millennium.
Analogies of Escape by
Poetry. "Will we escape analogy," Claude Royet-Journoud asked. Does ANALOGIES OF ESCAPE answer this question? Or does it rather use that famous line as the enigma for a set of variations--a theme always there, under the interplay of verse and prose, but never actually sounded? The author of these "analogies," in any case, finds all analogies, all answers, questionable.
"I read The Seven Storey Mountain when I was about 13. It had a profound effect on the way I approach and engage with the Divine. Although Merton later said that the book was written when he was a very young man and he no longer recognized the man who had written the book, I think that that is what makes the book such a good read for young persons grappling with their spirituality." -- Olivia Olivares
The Waters of Siloe by
From the author of The Seven Storey Mountain, this book looks at an order of Catholic monks dating back to eleventh-century France. "The word 'Trappist' has become synonymous with 'ascetic' and definitely indicates a monk who leads a very hard life. But . . . Penance and asceticism are not ends in themselves. If monks never succeeded in being more than pious athletes, they do not fulfill their purpose in the Church. If you want to understand why the monks lead the life they do, you will have to ask, first of all, What is their aim?" In his bestselling memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain, Catholic poet, theologian, and mystic Thomas Merton chronicled his journey to becoming a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky. In The Waters of Siloe, he provides an enlightening account of the Cistercian Order, better known as the Trappists. With clarity and wisdom, Merton explores the history of the Cistercian Order from its founding in 1098, its development and waning, and the seventeenth-century reforms by the Abbé de Rancé, which began the second flowering that continues today. Throughout, Merton illuminates the purposes of monasticism and its surprising resurgence in America and elsewhere. "Only Thomas Merton could have written single-handed this history of Trappist monks, for it is a work of diverse gifts and skill, an ardent collaboration of scholar and story-teller, priest and poet." --The New York Times
Contemplation in a World of Action by
Monastic and religious life
Spiritual life -- Catholic Church
"I believe I started to read Edgar Allan Poe when I was in high school. I fell in love with his way of describing death and love. Usually, the two are intertwined in his poems and stories. My favorite poem, "A Dream Within a Dream," made me feel as though someone finally understood my perception of reality and the afterlife. Fun fact: in my college years I did the UCDC program and was able to visit his home in Philadelphia and his tomb in Baltimore. It truly felt like a dream within a dream." -- Maria Martínez
The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by
All of Poe's best works, designed with a smaller format for easy portability.
The Best of Poe [Graphic Novel] by
This Graphic Novel Series features classic tales retold with attractive color illustrations. Educatiors using the Dale-Chall vocabulary system adapted each title. Each 70 page, softcover book retains key phrases and quotations from the original classics. Introduce literature to reluctant readers and motivate struggling readers. Students build confidence through reading practice. Motivation makes all the difference. What's more motivation then the expectation of success?
"John Keats was the only poet I enjoyed reading in my college English Lit class in 2006. He has a way of putting strong emotions and feelings into words.
My favorite lines:
'I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you.'
'I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days -- three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.'"
-- Kelli Breland
"The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all."
-- The Road, 2006
The Border Trilogy by
From the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winner and one of America's greatest writers: available together in one volume, the three novels of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning and bestselling Border Trilogy constitute a genuine American epic. "An American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century." --San Francisco Chronicle Beginning with All the Pretty Horses and continuing through The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, McCarthy chronicles the lives of two young men coming of age in the Southwest and Mexico, poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow and humor, The Border Trilogy is a masterful elegy for the American frontier. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
The Road by
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). * From the bestselling author of The Passenger A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food--and each other. The Roadis the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
"I first read Gabriel García Márquez's famous Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) in college. I remember it being very challenging at first, but as I learned more Spanish and practiced, I started to really appreciate how clearly and accessible his writing was for me as a learner. When I studied abroad and took a Latin American Literature course at the Universidad de Sevilla in 2006, I read Doce cuentos peregrinos and really was captivated by a story called "La luz es como el agua."
I also had the privilege of visiting the Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin in 2019 during a librarian conference and seeing some of the Gabriel García Márquez Papers including his old iMac computer that he used to write on." -- Bronwen Maxson
Cien años de soledad or One Hundred Years of Solitude has been translated into at least 46 languages with millions and millions of copies sold worldwide. Here is a Chinese-language version that is a graphic novel.
Bai nian gu ji 百年孤寂 / 加布列·賈西亞·馬奎斯 [Graphic Novel] (Chinese translation) by 
Doce cuentos peregrinos by
"Los doce cuentos de este libro fueron escritos en el curso de 18 anos, en un largo proceso de creacion a partir de unas notas sueltas apuntadas en un cuaderno de escuela."
"Did you ever have a nightmare so bad that you invented a brand-new book genre to process the dream you had? Mary Shelley did just that with her book, Frankenstein, during a vacation trip when she and her friends were stuck inside due to bad weather. I had first read Frankenstein as part of class, since then have spent countless hours thinking about this book." -- Carol Wilson
The Last Man by
A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, 'The Last Man' is Mary Shelley's most important novel after 'Frankenstein'. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.
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