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3 books match the query 'Swann, Brian'
Poetry Comes Up Where It Can
Brian Swann
University of Utah Press, 2000
The poems in this anthology first appeared in The Amicus Journal, the quarterly publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Selected by the journal’s poetry editor, Brian Swann, they represent a broad array of responses to the natural world—from warning to celebration—by some of the nation’s most distinguished poets. Included is work by American poets Wendell Berry, Michael Dorris, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Pattiann Rogers, and William Stafford, as well as work from poets in Australia and Mexico. All grapple with issues of nature and the environment from the perspective of the final decade of the millennium.
These poems remind us that we can be dazzled both by nature and by the poetry that explores the natural world.
Song of the Sky
Versions of Native American Song-PoemsBrian Swann
University of Massachusetts Press, 1993
“Swann's ‘concrete’ renderings of the poems are visually striking and are meant to embody the notions of silence and cycle that are so important in Native American culture. . . . [He] does a fine job of encouraging readers to return to return to these original songs and poems from a culture that most latter-day Americans know far too little about.”—Anne Bromley, Georgia Review
Based on the work of anthropologist collectors, this compendium of more than 100 Native American chants and songs revises and updates a prior edition out of print since 1989. ‘These poems are not translations,’ argues Swann. They're versions that have gone through ‘a series of mediations and filters and exist somewhere between the individual lyric voice’ and a diverse, multileveled Native American imaginative-mystical identity. Whether versions, translations, or poems, whether sung at a Crazy Dance, potlatch, corn-grinding, or curative or marriage ceremony, whether celebrating buffalo, maize, red fox, or tobacco, these works capture the ‘otherness’ of the primeval spirit of the Native American fusion of natural and supernatural, animal and deity. Originally performed aloud, these ‘verbal artifacts’—which are sometimes breathtakingly pure, sometimes obscure—reveal that there can be no conventional or single notion of ‘the Indian.’”—Library Journal
The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto
A Bilingual EditionAndrea Zanzotto
University of Chicago Press, 2007
Andrea Zanzotto is widely considered Italy’s most influential living poet. The first comprehensive collection in thirty years to translate this master European poet for an English-speaking audience, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto includes the very best poems from fourteen of his major books of verse and a selection of thirteen essays that helps illuminate themes in his poetry as well as elucidate key theoretical underpinnings of his thought. Assembled with the collaboration of Zanzotto himself and featuring a critical introduction, thorough annotations, and a generous selection of photographs and art, this volume brings an Italian master to vivid life for American readers.
“Now, in [this book], American readers can get a just sense of [Zanzotto’s] true range and extraordinary originality.”—Eric Ormsby, New York Sun
“What I love here is the sense of a voice directly speaking. Throughout these translations, indeed from early to late, the great achievement seems to be the way they achieve a sense of urgent address.”—Eamon Grennan, American Poet