A New Directions paperbook

"This enlarged edition of Selected Poems by Father Merton are for the most part lyrical and devotional, but the group of poems from Emblems shows the poet's increasing engagement with life outside the monastery and his strong concern for modern social issues. This volume offers a more representative sampling of the work of a prominent Catholic poet and one of the most vital American poets of the 20th century.".

The Crack-Up tells the story of Fitzgerald's sudden descent at the age of thirty-nine from glamorous success to empty despair, and his determined recovery. Compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death, this revealing collection of his essays as well as letters to and from Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos tells of a man with charm and talent to burn, whose gaiety and genius made him a living symbol of the Jazz Age, and whose recklessness brought him grief and loss.

Rimbaud, born in 1854, started to write at an early age. By 17 he had written his most famous poem, 'The Drunken Boat'. He then embarked on a turbulent homosexual relationship with the poet Verlaine, from which came some of their most original work, including A Season in Hell and Illuminations. Rimbaud rejected writing at the age of 20. After years of travelling and gun-running in Africa, he died in 1891, aged 37.

Brief, but challenging essays in which the author looks candidly and without illusion at the world that man has made. Though he sees dark horizons, his ultimate answer is one of Christian hope. The majority of these essays are as relevant today as when they were originally published. Perhaps a sad statement on our world, but it makes for a powerful and simultaneously companionable reading experience. [[MountainShelby's Reviews], GoodReads, Mar 09, 2017]

New Directions has long published poet William Carlos Williams' entire body of short fiction as The Farmers' Daughters (1961). This new edition of The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams contains all fifty-two stories combining the early collections The Knife of the Times (1932), Life Along the Possaic (1938) with the later collection Make Light of It (1950) and the great long story, "The Farmers' Daughters" (1956). When these stories first appeared, their vitality and immediacy shocked many readers, as did the blunt, idiosyncratic speech of Williams' immigrant and working-class characters. But the passage of time has silenced the detractors, and what shines in the best of these stories is the unflinching honesty and deep humanity of Williams' portraits, burnished by the seeming artlessness which only the greatest masters command.

Conceived as a convenience to those readers who are themselves concerned with doubt and faith. The Stream & The Sapphire presents a compact thematic grouping of thirty-eight poems, originally published in seven separate volumes. The earliest poem here dates from 1978, and though the sequence is not wholly chronological, "it does," as Denise Levertov remarks in her brief Foreword, "to some extent, trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith, a movement incorporating much of doubt and questioning as well as affirmation."

The welfare worker, Dougal Douglas, causes trouble for the residents of an industrial suburb when he becomes involved in their private lives.