The etymological roots of alchemy are found in both the Arabic and Greek languages, and refer to the process of transmutation that leads to a complete reunion with the original divine form. However, the esoteric practice of alchemy stretches all the way to India and China and has been practiced since at least the fourth century.During the Middle Ages, alchemy attracted many of the most prominent scholars of the time. Strongly influenced by the classical theory of the elements, the alchemists based their hypotheses on Aristotle's idea that everything can be created through different proportions of the four elements. From the 19th century onwards, alchemy has been wrongly reduced to a primitive pseudoscience with the sole aim of transmuting base metals into gold. However, this narrow interpretation ignores the true complexity of alchemy and ignores its deep philosophical and religious aspects, as well as its crucial contribution to the development of chemistry.This richly illustrated anthology presents a diversity of perspectives on how reciprocity, metaphysical connections, and the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm form the core of the philosophy of alchemy. Some of the world's most prominent researchers and academics gather to analyze the alchemical worldview and explore how esoteric currents of thought have shaped culture, society and science.

Death is the basic condition of man, the fixed point of our fears and the prerequisite for our aspirations. Ideas about death characterize all cultures and have given rise to both world religions and local myths. In secular environments, however, the existence of death is more obscure. Life-prolonging measures have replaced the idea of death as meaningful in itself or a passage into the unknown. This volume covers the full spectrum of the forms of death with a global span and historical depth; from some of the earliest recorded poetic texts via religious source writings and shamanistic practices to prevailing philosophical and scientific perspectives. In twenty-four essays, Swedish and international experts explore different ways of approaching death. Contributions include Egyptian and Sumerian realms, the ethics of major religions, ancient and modern theories of the soul and consciousness, and artistic and literary representations. At the centre of this richly illustrated anthology is the question of what history can teach us about our own dealings with death and the dead. The book is also available in a Swedish edition.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, so-called esoteric movements became increasingly popular in cultural and intellectual circles in Europe, not least in Sweden. Secret teachings, rituals and practices in alchemy, astrology, occultism and theosophy were predominant, with a belief in correspondences in the cosmos, living nature and transmutations.But esotericism goes back much further in time in Swedish history. Although such esoteric ideas were long considered heresy by the Church and thus driven underground, they have had a significant impact on Swedish culture. In this anthology, we bring together some of Sweden’s foremost experts on the subject to explore the history of esotericism in Sweden and how its rituals, practices and traditions came to influence writers and artists such as August Strindberg, Selma Lagerlöf, Viktor Rydberg, Hilma af Klint, Tyra Kleen and Carl Milles.

Six decades of writing on literature and art by one of the most significant poets of our timeMeditations gathers together in one volume for the first time an extensive collection of the prose work of Barbara Guest (1920-2006), one of the major voices of twentieth century American literature. Known primarily as a poet, Guest worked in many styles, all represented herein: essays, lectures, art criticism, literary and art reviews, as well as forms of fiction, biography, poetic prose, drama, comics, and other mixed-genre pieces. This collection of the poet's prose illuminates Guest's singular genius, highlighting her structural awareness of language and placing her within the vanguard of American poetry. Much of her writing initially appeared in special editions, often through collaborations with visual artists. Lyrical and intellectually soaring, this collection is a treasure of insights into the relationship between language, image, and imagination. Joseph Shafer's introduction provides a meaningful context for sixty years' worth of critical and creative prose by one of America's finest poets.

The Occupant isa collection of persona and prose poems that explores the “inner lives” of common household objects, along with that of “The Occupant” of the house, their human keeper. Taken together, their shifting perspectives engage questions of time, mortality, and the nature of consciousness itself, reminding readers of the beauty and strangeness that lurk under the surface of ordinary thought—the “other world” that, as Paul Éluard noted, “resides in this one.”

Playful love poems to kids, coral reefs, and crowsWinner of the 2024 Cardinal Poetry PrizeFive-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem is the inaugural winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize, selected by renowned poet Robert Pinsky. In free verse and invented poetic forms, Rachel Trousdale explores how the interplay between the mind and body illuminates our most important relationships, whether with other humans, wild spaces, or works of art. Inhabited by crows, yetis, coral reefs, and aliens, these poems playfully examine the intensity and conflict of romantic love; the entropic joys of parenthood; illness and grief; and the ways our physical loves and intangible losses teach us responsibility to the world around us. [Sample Poem]Love Poem With Dereliction of DutyIt's true—I like you more than I like the Marquis de Sade; God that mid-April afternoon in 1995, when I said, "let's take a walk" and you said "sure" and we circled the New Haven Green saying who the hell knows what because if we had seen all this falling in love stuff coming, we would have paid more attention; I just know it took two hours, past the churches and the porn shop and over to the cemetery with all those skull-topped slabs leaning memorially against the brownstone wall; round and round we went like marbles dodging the traps in a game of labyrinth; and finally back to campus through that big stone gate which we entered just as the prof of the philosophy class I was skipping came out and I said oh the pain the pain I can't take it any more and doubled up laughing

Archiving stories of dissonance and curating connection inside the imagined museumThis extraordinary debut poetry collection by Dena'ina poet Annie Wenstrup delicately parses personal history in the space of an imagined museum. Meticulously refined and delicately crafted, Wenstrup's poems weave together the lived experiences of an Alaskan Native person and the histories of unresolved colonial violence in "an authorial reckoning//with what remains." Outside the Museum of Unnatural Histories Ggugguyni, the Dena'ina Raven, and The Museum Curator collect discarded French fries, earrings, and secrets—or as The Curator explains, together they curate moments of cataclysm. Inside the museum, their collection is displayed in installations that depict the imagined Indigenous body. Every artifact contains competing stories, while some display cases are left empty.Into this "distance between the learning and the telling," Wenstrup inserts The Curator and her sukdu'a, her own interpretive text. There, The Curator questions the space between her familial history and colonial constructs of authenticity. In particular, the poems explore how women experience embodiment when they are seen through filters of race, gender, and class: "Always, I've known I embody that which harms me." At the heart of the sukdu'a is the desire to find a form that allows the speaker's story to be heard.Through love letters, received forms, and found text, the poems reclaim their right to interpret, reinvent, and even disregard artifacts of their own mythos to imagine a future that exists despite the series of disasters and apocalypses documented inside the museum. Eventually it begins to dawn on us that this museum may not be separable from the world, and that there may be no exit from its unnatural histories, composed of beauty and foil wrappers, wilderness and contaminated waters. Here, it is up to each one to "decide/who you must become."[Sample Poem]Ggugguyni in the Museum Parking LotI watch her crow. Not as a crow crows but as herself. She's not here for the art. She's here for the minivans that devourdiaper bags, car seats, children. She waits for the doors to retract and expel fruit, Goldfish, and fries. Free for the taking.She scavenges in lurching, crab-like steps. Like me, she won't appear human here. While her legs bring her from one deliciousscrap to another, I work my own inventory. Once my parents named me Swift Raven— a real Indian Princess name.I flew unblinded, my hair in a blue-black braid down my back. Now, I'm ungainly, more harpy than girl. My mouth, a curvecalling for carrion. I'm not here for the art. I'm here for the mirrors, here to unpair earrings and unclasp foil from gum. My beakready to unbind carapace from quiver. Like Ggugguyni, I'm a scavenger lurching from one disaster to another.See how we curate cataclysms' aftermath. While we work, Ggugguyni tells me a story. Once, my grandfather said, a long time agothere was a raven. He opened a door and it was day. Then he drew his wing shut. What Ggugguyni didn't say, but what I heard: oncehe closed the door and it was night. Today I'm telling you this story instead: my mouth is a comma, my mouth is exclamation,my mouth is my body holding open the door. Witness my body create day. See how the light appraises my collection. See how the sunlight exposes how shadow bleached everything white.

New Playlist holds a variety of poetic forms: odes, found, haiku, prose, list, collages, one-liners, sonnets, and more. With his trademark wit and inventiveness, David Trinidad “plays” with these forms as if they were toys. He creates a Wikipedia cento in which each line illustrates how little is known of sixty-five ancient Greek poets. He gives us an itinerary of “Things to Do” in ten 1970s disaster films. He catalogs Sylvia Plath’s recipe cards and all the references to beer in a book by Bernadette Mayer. His subjects are as “fun” as his forms: pop singer Dusty Springfield, Marcel Proust, Bashō, Hollywood movies and actresses, old cartoons, a prom dress thief loose in a girls’ dorm. But “play” does not preclude seriousness, as Trinidad addresses physical scars, encounters with homophobia, and the wonders and wounds of childhood.

"A new edition of Ronald Johnson's masterpiece ARK is a metaphysical poem that could only have been written in our time, of which it displays a new vision. It is a late harvest of seeds sown by Blake, L. Frank Baum, the Bible, and Zukofsky, all in a new architecture, a wholly new voice, and even a new chemistry of words and images. It is for those who can see visions, and for those who know how to look well and be taught that they can see them."—Guy Davenport

How a passion for translation fueled the development of a great American poetSo Much Secret Labor is a window into the work of the great American poet, James Wright, whose love of languages and quest for the "true imagination" helped transform American poetry. The book draws on memoir, archival research, interviews, letters, and previous unpublished journal excerpts, presenting a scrupulous and intimate reading of Wright's work and the translations he insisted were as redemptive in his life as they were crucial to his poetics. At its center is a selection of Wright's translations, both from German and Spanish: poems by Trakl, Rilke, Heine, Vallejo, Lorca, and Neruda, among others, including draft versions discovered among his collected papers that have never been published. It also provides an important assessment of the little known formative influence of German poetry on Wright's own poems. Wright's literary relationship with another great mid-century American poet, Robert Bly, is featured here in a portfolio of unpublished letters, typescripts and holographs. These tell the story of their ardentfriendship and earliest translation collaborations, and situates them in the history of the emergence of poetry of the "true imagination" that they were beginning to explore at that time.

Winner of the 2023 Cave Canem Poetry Prize

Winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry from the 2023 AWP Award Series.

A new collection of poetry from Jan Beatty, author of Body Wars.

Ayn Rand controversially defended rational egoism, the idea that people should regard their own happiness as their highest goal. Given that numerous scholars in philosophy and psychology alike are examining the nature of human flourishing and an ethics of well-being, the time is ripe for a close examination of Rand’s theory. Egoism Without Permission illuminates Rand’s thinking about how to practice egoism by exploring some of its crucial psychological dimensions. Tara Smith examines the dynamics among four partially subconscious factors in an individual’s well-being: a person’s foundational motivation for being concerned with morality; their attitude toward their desires; their independence; and their self-esteem. A clearer grasp of each, Smith argues, sheds light on the others, and a better understanding of the set, in turn, enriches our understanding of self-interest and its sensible pursuit. Smith then traces the implications for a broader understanding of what a person’s self-interest genuinely is, and, correspondingly, of what its pursuit through rational egoism involves. By highlighting these previously underexplored features of Rand’s conceptions of self-interest and egoism, Smith betters our understanding of how vital these psychological levers are to a person’s genuine flourishing.

From Homer to Hatzi-Yavrouda provides a multidisciplinary discussion of the concept of orality in the framework of Greek narrative tradition, from Antiquity to the 21st century.