A classic of Modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, the pieces poke fun at mullahs, t...

Dominique Edde met novelist and playwright Jean Genet in the 1970s. And she never forgot him. "His presence", she writes, "gave me the sensation of icy fire. Like his words, his gestures were full, calculated and precise... Genet's movements mimicked...

Son of the famous Thomas Mann, homosexual, drug-addicted, and forced to flee from his fatherland, the gifted writer Klaus Mann's comparatively short life was as artistically productive as it was devastatingly dislocated. Best-known today as the autho...

For Rod Mengham sculpture and painting exist in the world the way poems do. He invokes the Polish sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, who believes that sculpture must be understood as part of the world around it. In "Chance of a Storm", poetry is language that...

In her foreword to "All The Poems" (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, "Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write 'poetic' prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of even...

"People break my heart. Every single one of them does". In settings that range from rural fishing communities to the urban capital, the stories of "Cabin, Clearing, Forest" are a lyrical road map to the human landscape of contemporary Alaska. In "Blu...

From "Clayfeld's Farewell Epistle to Bob Pack" Beneath this mellow harvest moon, I can still picture you – a boy content just fishing with his father from a ledge above a foaming stream. The flailing trout you caught is packed in gleaming ice; the pi...

Recorded during Jorge Luis Borges's final years, this second volume of his conversations with Osvaldo Ferrari provides a wide-ranging reflection on the life and work of Argentina's master writer and favorite conversationalist. In "Conversations: Volu...

R. F. Langley is known for his meticulous observation of the natural world and his highly original voice. This volume brings together his two previous Carcanet collections, "Collected Poems" (2000) and "The Face of It" (2007), along with his celebrat...

This World and That One Sometimes you defy it, I am not that, watching a stranger cry like a dog when she thinks she's alone at the kitchen window, hands forgotten under the running tap. The curtains blow out, flap the other side of the sill. In you...