TOLSTOY CALLED THE ILIAD A miracle; Goethe said that it always thrust him into a state of astonishment. Homer's story is thrilling, and his Greek is perhaps the most beautiful poetry ever sung or written. But until now, even the best English translations haven't been able to re-create the energy and simplicity, the speed, grace, and pulsing rhythm of the original.

In Stephen Mitchell's Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful.

Mitchell's Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after the Iliad was first written down, to the detriment of the music and the story. Omitting these hundreds of interpolated lines restores a dramatically sharper, leaner text. In addition, Mitchell's illuminating introduction opens the epic still further to our understanding and appreciation.

Now, thanks to Stephen Mitchell's scholarship and the power of his language, the Iliad's ancient story comes to moving, vivid new life.

The ecstatic, spiritual poetry of Rumi is more popular than ever, and The Essential Rumi continues to be far and away the top-selling title of all Rumi books. With the addition of many new poems and a new introduction, The Essential Rumi is now clearly the definitive, and most delightful selection of Rumi?s poetry.

Leonard Cohen is one of the great writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of our time. Book of Longing is Cohen's eagerly awaited new collection of poems, following his highly acclaimed 1984 title, Book of Mercy, and his hugely successful 1993 publication, Stranger Music, a Globe and Mail national bestseller. Book of Longing contains erotic, playful, and provocative line drawings and artwork on every page, by the author, which interact in exciting and unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is timeless, meditative, and at times darkly humorous. The book brings together all the elements that have brought Leonard Cohen's artistry with language worldwide recognition.


From the Hardcover edition.

This timeless poem-more than 2,700 year old-still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amid devastation and destruction as it moves inexorably to its wrenching, tragic conclusion. Readers of this epic poem will be gripped by the finely tuned translation and enlightening introduction.

Translated by Robert Fagles
Introduction and Notes by Bernard

If The Iliad is the world''s greatest war epic, then The Odyssey is literature''s grandest evocation of everyman''s journey though life. Odysseus''s reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

Translated by Robert Fagles
Introduction and Notes by Bernard Knox

Robert Fagles''s stunning modern-verse translation-available at last in our black-spine classics line

The Odyssey is literature''s grandest evocation of everyman''s journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, renowned translator Robert Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer''s original in a bold, contemporary idiom and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the general reader, and to captivate a new generation of Homer''s students.

This vigorous translation of the poet''s journey through the circles of hell re-creates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante''s poem had for his contemporaries. Musa''s introduction and commentaries on each of the cantos brilliantly illuminate the text.

Translated with Notes and an Introduction by Mark Musa

One of the great innovative figures 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 one book.  First published in 1855 with only twelve poems, it was greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the wonderful gift . . . the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."  Over the course of Whitman''s life, the book reappeared in many versions, expanded and transformed as the author''s experiences and the nation''s history changed and grew.  Whitman''s ambition was to creates something uniquely American.  In that he succeeded.  His poems have been woven into the very fabric of the American character.  From his solemn masterpieces "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom''d" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the joyous freedom of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Song of the Open Road," Whitman''s work lives on, an inspiration to the poets of later generations.

Translated with an Introduction by Andrew George.

- E. V. Rieu''s translation of The Odyssey was the first Penguin Classic

This volume represents the accumulated richness of fifty years'' work by one of Canada''s most important poets, Patrick Lane. Here, the reader can see how he developed from an engaged recorder of hard experience-even traumatic violence-into a master poet whose meditations on nature, human frailty, and love allow him to balance the world''s suffering with stunning moments of transcendent beauty and a vision of peace. He expresses himself in a variety of forms and tones--in turn despairing and rejoicing, tender and brutal, imagistic and elegiac, deeply personal and universal. As Nicholas Bradley observes, in an afterword written for this volume, "The journey that Lane''s works trace has been long and hard, but, as this collection demonstrates, his poems achieve both understanding and grace."

Edited by two distinguished scholars of Canadian literature, this long-overdue book gathers a lifetime of work. Ranging from Letters from a Savage Mind (1966) to Witness (2010), this collection contains more than four hundred poems (many revised for this publication) and demonstrates the breadth of Lane''s achievement.

Immortal Poems

Here is the most inclusive anthology of verse ever published at so low a price. It contains not only the best-known works of the British and American masters but also the verse of the most brillant poets of our own day. Oscar Williams, who compiled Immortal Poems, was a distinguished editor and poet in his own right, of whom Robert Lowell wrote in the Sewanee Review: "Mr. Williams is probably the best anthologist in America today."