Harvard University Press - POETRY

Zeus in the Odyssey

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

J. Marks
This book makes the case that the plot of the Odyssey is represented within the narrative as a plan of Zeus, Dios boulê, that serves as a guide for the performing poet and as a hermeneutic for the audience. The “Zeus-centric” reading proposed here offers fresh perspectives on the tenor of interactions among the Odyssey’s characters.
Paperback May 2008

The Oral Palimpsest

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Christos Tsagalis
Oral intertextuality is an innate feature of the web of myth, whose interrelated fabrics allow the audience of epic songs access to an entire horizon of story variations. The Oral Palimpsest argues that just as the discarded text of a palimpsest still carries traces of its previous writing, so the Homeric tradition unfolds its awareness of alternate versions as it reveals signs of their erasure.
Paperback March 2008

Sappho in the Making

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Dimitrios Yatromanolakis
This book offers the first interdisciplinary and in-depth study of the cultural practices and ideological paradigms that conditioned the politics of the "reading" of Sappho's songs in the early and most pivotal stages of her reception. Yatromanolakis investigates visual representations and ancient texts in their synchronic and diachronic multilayeredness to trace the discursive nexuses that defined the making of "Sappho" in the late archaic, classical, and early Hellenistic periods.
Paperback March 2008

Sugata Saurabha

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Todd T. Lewis
Edited by Subarna Man Tuladhar
Chittadhar Hrdaya
The poem was composed by the greatest modern writer in Newari language, Hrdaya (1906– 1982), while he was imprisoned by the autocratic strongly pro-Hindu Rana regime that governed Nepal from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In nineteen long cantos, the Sugata Saurabha tells of the life of the Buddha, following the traditional accounts, but situates it in the strongly local context of Newar and Nepali Buddhism.
Hardcover March 2008

A Garland of Satire, Wisdom, and History

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Jan Ziolkowski
Edited by Bridget K. Balint
This book brings into print editions, translations, and commentaries for more than two dozen unique poems (in Latin) from the late eleventh and early twelfth century, preserved in Houghton Library's anthology known as MS Lat 300. This book offers unparalleled access to the anthology, previously unavailable in English.
Paperback January 2008

The Canon

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

Constantine Cavafy
Translated by Stratis Haviaras
Foreword by Seamus Heaney
This volume of 154 poems by Constantine Cavafy is the entire body of work by the artist widely considered a master of modern Greek poetry. Published here in the original Greek, with a new English translation by the noted poet Stratis Haviaris on each facing page, and with a foreword by Seamus Heaney, The Canon is Cavafy, familiar and fresh, seen through new eyes, yet instantly recognized.
Paperback November 2007

Our Secret Discipline

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST

Helen Vendler
The fundamental difference between rhetoric and poetry, according to Yeats, is that rhetoric is the expression of one's quarrels with others while poetry is the expression (and sometimes the resolution) of one's quarrel with oneself. This is where Vendler's Our Secret Discipline begins. Through exquisite attention to outer and inner forms, Vendler explores the most inventive reaches of the poet's mind.
Hardcover November 2007

The Moral Resonance of Arab Media

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Flagg Miller
The Moral Resonance of Arab Media studies contemporary Arab political poetry, providing insights into how modern Arab media forms are shaped by language and culture. Through an examination of the lives and works of individual poets, singers, and audiences, it shows how tribalism becomes a resource for critical reform when expressed in tropes of community, place, person, and history.
Paperback September 2007