Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Poetry

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance, containing the lion's share of information that survives today about the gods and heroes of pre-Christian Scandinavians, their unique vision of the beginning and end of the world, etc.

Gothic master Edgar Allan Poe's complete works are collected in this multivolume set by Blackstone Audio. Here are his short stories, detective fiction, and poems in all their mysterious and macabre glory. Also included are Poe's literary reviews and editorial musings, comprising an often caustic analysis of the poetry, drama, and fiction of the period.

This revised and expanded edition of The Essential Rumi includes a new introduction by Coleman Barks and more than 80 never-before-published poems. Through his lyrical translations, Coleman Barks has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of listeners, making the ecstatic, spiritual poetry of 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi more popular than ever.

True power is living the realization that you are your own healer, hero, and leader. Inward is a collection of poetry, quotes, and prose that explores the movement from self-love to unconditional love, the power of letting go, and the wisdom that comes when we truly try to know ourselves. It serves as a reminder to the listener that healing, transformation, and freedom are possible.

More than 100 years after his birth, Pablo Neruda's poetry is as vital and beloved as ever. This collection presents 50 of the most essential poems by one of history's greatest poets in dynamic new translations, the result of an unprecedented collaboration among a team of poets, translators, and the world's leading Neruda scholars.

One of the great innovators in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his masterpiece, written in a pure, uninhibited style, combining sensual and mystical sensibilities. Its bold, joyous voice, its expansive optimism, and its transcendental vision made it uniquely American.

This book is a collection of Gibran's words on how to live. Here are his thoughts on what it means to live in community and solitude and what gives life meaning, along with his often prescient views on government, organized religion, wealth, and commerce. Gibran's sensibility feels contemporary. He did not recognize any ultimate authority outside of the human soul: "It were wiser to speak less of God, whom we cannot understand and more of each other, whom we may understand."

Ovid's sensuous and witty poem brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation, often as a result of love or lust, in which men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome.

This collection of timeless British and American poems is an experience to be treasured. The readings, by brilliant classic actors Alexander Scourby, Nancy Wickwire, and Bramwell Fletcher, are presented in the order they appear in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Third Edition, and are selected for their ability to delight. The poetry is also among the most anthologized verse in the English language.

Byron's exuberant masterpiece tells of the adventures of Don Juan, a handsome and charming young man naturally gifted with the ladies. After his first illicit love affair at the age of 16 in his native Spain, he is exiled to Italy. Following a dramatic shipwreck, his exploits take him to Greece, where he is sold as a slave, and to Russia, where he becomes a favorite of the Empress Catherine, who sends him on to England.

One of the most distinctive periods in English poetry was the age of Romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force

The Aeneid is one of the greatest works in all of world literature. It is filled with mythology, history, and archaeology; it is infused with patriotism, religious feeling, and pathos; it is rich in adventure and romance. As the story begins, a storm shipwrecks Aeneas and his Trojan followers near Carthage in North Africa. There, Aeneas falls in love with Dido, queen of Carthage. But the gods order him to leave for Italy. In despair, Dido commits suicide. Upon finally reaching Italy, Aeneas goes down into the lower world and learns about his future descendants, the Romans.

In the 1970s, Frank Lucas was the king of the Harlem drug trade, bringing in over a million dollars a day. He lived a glamorous life, hobnobbing with athletes, musicians, and politicians, but Lucas was a ruthless gangster. He was notorious for using the coffins of dead GIs to smuggle heroin into the United States, and, before being sentenced to 70 years in prison, he played a major role in the near death of New York City.

William Butler Yeats, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only one of the greatest poets of the 20th century but one of the most widely read. The landscape, myths, legends, and folklore of his homeland lie at the heart of his poetic imagination, and the unique musicality of Ireland adds to the richness of his verse. But the themes of his poetry are universal and timeless: the conflict between life and death, love and hate, and the meaning of man’s existence in an imperfect world.

At the end of his life, William Blake (1757-1827) gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought to his work a new and intense interest and acclaim.

William Wordsworth (1770 -1850) is one of the most popular and enduring of the English poets. His poetry is beloved for its deep feeling, its use of ordinary speech, and its celebration of nature and of the beauty and poetry in the commonplace. Together with his friend, the poet and political activist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped launch the romantic age in English literature. These poems demonstrate the astonishing range and beauty of Wordsworth’s work and his sustained, coherent vision.

Un gran éxito desde el mismo momento de su publicación en 1924, cuando el autor contaba con tan solo diecinueve años, Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada causó un fuerte revuelo en la conservadora sociedad chilena debido a su franco retrato de la relación del autor con dos mujeres. Se convirtió inmediatamente en una de las colecciones de poesía más leídas, estableciendo a Neruda como una de las más singulares voces de la poesía en español del siglo XX.

Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems are the most celebrated of the Nobel Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating listeners with earthbound images and reveling in a fiery reimagining of the world. Mostly written on the island paradise of Capri (the idyllic setting of the Oscar-winning movie Il Postino), Love Poems embraces the seascapes surrounding the poet and his love, Matilde Urrutia, their waves and shores saturated with a new, yearning eroticism.

Originally privately published in Paris, Three Stories and Ten Poems holds an interesting history. The three stories, “Up in Michigan", “Out of Season”, and “My Old Man”, were first seen in this collection, but “Up in Michigan” was banned and not considered publishable in America until 1938 because of its blatant sexuality. In addition, this original publication of the three stories is all that remains of Hemingway’s early works after his suitcase containing the originals was stolen.