Fyfield books

'Vladimir Mayakovsky' & Other Poems is the only single-volume selection in English to fully represent the work of one of Modernism's vital literary forces. The poems encompass Mayakovsky's pre-Revolutionary surrealism as well as his exclamatory agitprop of the 1920s, by which time he had become the pre-eminent Soviet poet. New translations of key works are included alongside several poems that have never been translated into English before, while an introduction and notes provide helpful contexts and elucidations. Screenplays, dramatic scripts and advertising slogans give a sense of the unusual breadth and invention of Mayakovsky's project, and his skill both as poet and propagandist. 'A poet needs to be good at life as well', he writes; his job is to 'smooth brains with the file of his tongue'. Womack's translations help to revise the predominant image of Mayakovsky as a hectoring egoist, offering a more nuanced impression of a poet whose concern was as much comradeship and intimacy as politics and posterity: 'all of this - do you want it? - I will abandon for one single tender human word.' -- from back cover.

Poems: -- To Helen -- The raven -- The valley of unrest -- Bridal ballad -- The sleeper -- The coliseum -- Lenore -- Catholic hymn -- Israfel -- Dreamland -- Sonnet: To Zante -- The city in the sea -- To one in paradise -- Eulalie -- To F ... s S.O ... d -- To F ... -- Sonnet: Silence -- The conqueror worm -- The haunted palace -- Scenes from Politian -- Poems written in youth: -- Sonnet to science -- Al Aaraaf -- Tamerlane -- A dream -- Romance -- Fairyland -- To ... -- To the river ... -- The lake, To ... -- Song -- Later poems: -- A dream within a dream -- The bells -- To Helen -- A valentine -- An enigma -- To ... -- To my mother -- Eldorado -- To ... -- To M.L.S ... -- For Annie -- Ulalume -- Annabel Lee -- Essays on poetry: -- The poetic principle -- The rationale of verse -- The philosophy of composition.

'This book, ' writes Les Murray, 'presents to British and European readers selections from the work of five leading Australian poets of the generation before mine.' They are, with Judith Wright, A.D. Hope and Gwen Harwood - who are happily available in British editions - key figures in 'a Golden Age of Australian poetry which paradoxically coincided with its greatest marginalisation'. Murray's characteristically vivid and emphatic introductory essays to the poets, of whom he is in a real sense himself made, as heir and successor, and his 'essential' selections from their work, are personal and challenging. He evokes the writers' circumstances, the trajectories of their very different work, and he suggests why their accomplishments have been eclipsed in the wider bourse of English-language literary reputations. The Academy has much to answer for, yet the freedom the poets enjoyed was partly a result of their very neglect by institutions. Murray strikes effectively against 'that imperial trap of exclusion', making the available map of our century's poetry larger and much richer.

A magical glimpse into the legendary age of Arthurian chivalry. Meet a daring damosel from the Golden Age, a brave, fearless woman of whom stories were told and legends woven. Vivian is the fifteen year old grand-niece of the Lady Morgan le Fay, whose tale is inextricably linked with that of Sir Gawain le Jeune, the nephew of that great Gawain, one of King Arthur’s most stalwart Knights... Knightly chivalry is beset by Dark Age barbarity in this richly woven tapestry of heroes and heroines, monsters and saints, temptresses and magicians.

Lovely rhyming ballad set in old England describing the details of an exciting foxhunt from a variety of perspectives. Beautiful color plates and drawings.

As in many households in the late eighteenth century, writing verses was a pastime with the Austen family, and the composition of ingenious riddles and charades provided a source of lively entertainment. This volume of verses by Jane Austen and her family contains all the known poems by Jane herself as well as a selection of work by her mother, her sister Cassandra, four of her brothers, her uncle James, her nieces Anna and Fanny, her nephew James Edward and other relatives. David Selwyn provides an introduction and full explanatory notes; his transcriptions, taken from autograph manuscripts or from the earliest copies, are precise in terms of spelling punctuation and layout.