Secondhand Poetry Collection and Literary Studies Bargain Book Box DSH1105

Secondhand Poetry Collection and Literary Studies Bargain Book Box

Delve into the profound world of verse with this exceptional collection, featuring influential poets from the Romantic era to 20th-century modernism and contemporary voices. This box offers collected works and selected poems from masters like Ted Hughes, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell, alongside vital anthologies and critical studies. Explore the raw power of nature, the complexities of the human psyche, and the evolution of poetic form across continents, from the Australian wilderness to the American confessional movement. Each book is secondhand and may show signs of wear.

1. Collected Poems by Francis Webb
   Francis Webb is one of Australia's most highly regarded and complex poets, known for his intense metaphysical explorations and dramatic monologue style. His work often grapples with themes of madness, spiritual struggle, and historical figures, written with a densely allusive and powerful poetic language. This collected volume offers a comprehensive view of a genius whose demanding verse remains critically revered for its originality and visionary power.

2. Selected Poems by Vincent Buckley
   Buckley's poetry is marked by a rigorous intellectual honesty, a deep engagement with Irish and Australian identity, and a profound sense of place and Catholicism. His verse balances lyrical beauty with a raw, often political, edge, exploring personal relationships, cultural history, and the moral struggles of the modern world. This selection showcases his range and his reputation as a powerful, questioning voice in 20th-century Australian literature.

3. Contemporary American Poetry
   This influential anthology gathers the diverse and dynamic voices that defined mid-20th-century American verse, reflecting the seismic shifts in form and content after Modernism. It includes movements such as the Confessionals, the Beats, and the New York School, showcasing poets who broke free from traditional constraints to explore personal, political, and experimental themes. A vital text for understanding the evolution of the American poetic landscape and its leading figures.

4. Selected Poems by Hugh McCrae
   Hugh McCrae was a significant figure in early Australian poetry, celebrated for his elegant lyrical verse, often characterized by a Renaissance-like delight in beauty, fauns, satyrs, and classical themes. His work possesses a light, musical quality, filled with fantasy and a sense of escape from the harsh Australian reality into a more whimsical, European-inspired world. This selection offers the best examples of his unique, decorative contribution to Australian literature.

5. Selected Poems by Christopher Brennan
   Brennan, one of Australia’s most substantial early modernists, drew heavily on French Symbolism to create a highly intellectual, ambitious, and musical body of work. His poetry is often characterized by grand cycles of verse, exploring themes of lost paradise, spiritual longing, and the search for transcendent meaning within the chaos of the modern world. This volume provides access to the dense, compelling vision of an important, often challenging, poet.

6. Selected Poems by Robert Lowell
   A defining voice of the Confessional movement, Lowell’s poetry is renowned for its intense personal frankness, merging autobiography with history and social commentary. He confronts his struggles with mental illness, marriage, and political upheaval with a raw, unflinching honesty that redefined poetic boundaries in the mid-20th century. This essential selection showcases the powerful, dramatic tension that made him one of America's most influential post-war poets.

7. Selected Poems by Osip Mandelstam (Translated by David McDuff)
   Mandelstam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century, whose lyrical and intellectually dense work led to his brutal persecution and death under the Stalinist regime. His poetry, often deeply rooted in classical and historical reference, is a testament to the power of art against tyranny. This translation captures the precise, tragic beauty and profound resistance embedded within his verse.

8. Lupercal by Ted Hughes
   Hughes’ second major collection, Lupercal, marked his arrival as a vital voice, expanding upon the raw, mythic energy first explored in The Hawk in the Rain. The poems primarily focus on the untamed natural world, using images of predatory animals, landscape, and elemental force to explore primal human instincts and the brute indifference of nature. This volume solidified his reputation for powerful, visceral imagery and his stark vision of existence.

9. The Portable Blake by William Blake
   This comprehensive volume gathers the essential visionary works of William Blake, including Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and excerpts from his complex prophetic books. Blake, a poet, painter, and mystic, created a wholly unique mythology to challenge established religion, reason, and social injustice. This selection allows readers to explore his radical genius and his foundational role in the Romantic movement.

10. Romantic Poets: Blake to Poe (Edited by W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson)
    A comprehensive anthology curated by W.H. Auden that defines the scope and breadth of the Romantic movement, spanning the visionary work of William Blake to the dark intensity of Edgar Allan Poe. This collection is essential for understanding the shift toward individualism, emotion, and the sublime in 19th-century poetry, presenting the defining figures and themes of the era.

11. Collected Poems by James McAuley
    James McAuley was a towering figure in Australian letters, known for his elegant craftsmanship, adherence to traditional forms, and his conversion to Catholicism, which deeply informed his later work. His poetry is marked by lyrical clarity, a strong sense of moral purpose, and a critical engagement with modern intellectual and political trends. This collected volume demonstrates his mastery of form and his lasting contribution to verse.

12. Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound
    Ezra Pound was one of the most controversial and influential figures of the Modernist era, and The Cantos is his epic, sprawling, and complex magnum opus. This selection provides an accessible entry point to the massive, fragmented poem, which incorporates history, myth, economics, and foreign languages. It showcases Pound's revolutionary poetic technique and his ambition to create a poem that encapsulated the entire history and culture of the world.

13. Selected Poems by Ted Hughes
    This collection spans the breadth of Hughes’ career, from his early, visceral nature poems to his later, more reflective and myth-driven works, showcasing his unparalleled command of language and dramatic voice. The volume highlights his central themes: the violence and beauty of the natural world, the mythic undercurrents of human experience, and his profound psychological insights. An essential gathering of one of the 20th century's most significant poets.

14. Wodwo by Ted Hughes
    Wodwo is perhaps Hughes' most experimental and challenging collection, moving beyond the direct animal metaphors of his earlier work into a world of fractured consciousness and mythic transformation. The title piece embodies the sense of a primal, evolving being unsure of its own identity or place in the natural order. The book is a profound exploration of identity, language, and the unsettling boundaries between man and nature.

15. Five Senses by Judith Wright
    Judith Wright is revered as one of Australia’s most important poets, celebrated for her deep sensitivity to the Australian landscape and her pioneering environmental themes. Her work uses precise, lyrical language to explore the relationship between the human psyche, history, and the natural world, often meditating on loss and the memory embedded in the land. Five Senses demonstrates her emotional range and her vital connection to the Australian environment.

16. Selected Poems by Wallace Stevens
    Stevens' poetry is characterized by its philosophical depth, its sophisticated exploration of the relationship between imagination and reality, and its opulent, musical language. His poems frequently grapple with the nature of perception and the necessity of poetry in a secular world, marked by his famous meditations on the "supreme fiction." This selection provides a valuable overview of the intellectual brilliance and aesthetic richness of this major American Modernist.

17. Selected Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Shelley was a central figure in the second generation of Romantic poets, renowned for his radical politics, passionate idealism, and lyrical mastery. His poetry is characterized by soaring ambition, visionary language, and a commitment to freedom, exploring themes of love, nature, and social revolution. This collection includes his most famous lyrical and philosophical odes, demonstrating his profound influence on English verse.

18. Between the Lines: W.B. Yeats's Poetry in the Making by Jon Stallworthy
    This critical study offers a fascinating, in-depth look at the creative process of William Butler Yeats, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Stallworthy meticulously examines the discarded drafts, revisions, and working manuscripts of Yeats's most famous poems, revealing the intense labor and genius behind their final form. This book provides invaluable insight into poetic technique, literary biography, and the arduous path to creating enduring art.