The brilliant and immensely prolific Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is known the world over for his accomplished works in an astoundingly wide range of genres: fiction, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays. During the final year of his life, while suffering from the painful illness that would eventually end in his death, Tagore completed four volumes of poetry that expressed the emotional turmoil of facing one's own imminent extinction. Appearing here for the first time in English is a selection of these extraordinary poems that captures as closely as possible the beauty and subtlety of Tagore's original Bengali verses. A marked departure from Tagore's earlier work, these poems are, as the translators say, "so compact that it is almost as if [he]...were going beyond words, as if language no longer suffices, and yet, of course, the language radiates meaning." Poised between life and death, Tagore is awed by the beauty of this world and glimpses in it the presence of the infinite ("Such splendor illuminates a deathlessness/ hidden in the everyday by our senses' limits"). At other times, "alone by sorrow's last window," he is gripped by the sheer terror of experiencing the relentless approach of death. Tagore was so weak at the end that he had to dictate his poems. Although the pain was often excruciating and the fear and anger overwhelming, he still exulted in life. In these poems, from his deathbed, he conveys the intense joy of living and his ultimate triumph over death.

Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems

Literature & Fiction

Tagore, Rabīndranāth

Barker, Wendy

Tagore, Saranindranath

Poetry

George Braziller, Inc.

Deeply personal as well as visionary and funny, this collection is reminiscent of both Plath and Thoreau.

Way of Whiteness

Wings Press

In a haunting and, ultimately, stunning, sequence of poems in varied lyrical forms, Wendy Barker's Gloss develops a narrative that poses questions about her mother's unusual, seemingly privileged, British background. The poems of this gripping book are punctuated by short syllabic meditations on a Chinese scroll picturing a lone man paddling up a long river toward mountains. These little poems serve as tension-building breaks between lineated, conversational poems and prose poems that describe shiny yet tarnished pieces of family silver and snippets of family memories. Throughout, these poems "gloss" the underlying meanings of stories passed down through generations, as the book slowly builds to reveal disturbing facts that had long been hidden. Ultimately, though the book may, at first glance, seem to be validating the British mother's colonial background, with a family history involving a lucrative import-export firm, Barker makes it clear that the damages done by colonialism can cause painful familial as well as global damage.

Gloss

Saint Julian Press, Inc.

Poems' Progress features poems from various stages of Barker's career, each of which is accompanied by an informal, conversational essay on the background and process of writing and rewriting the poem. Including examples of drafts and revisions, the book offers a rare and unique insight into one poet's processes.

Poems' Progress

Absey & Company

Poetry. Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by Alice Friman. Barker's poems capture what life is like on the other side of the English teacher's desk, how she reacts to her students' lives and their genuine if not always reverential responses to the literature she aspires to teach. Barker's poems are funny, frightening, moving, and playful (as shown by the title's reference to Wallace Stevens' famous poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." "It would be easy to say this is a book about teaching—it is!—but it's also a book about how our experience of reading humanizes us and shapes our experience of the world and other people."—Kevin Prufer "In this classroom, no one is exempt. Not the students, not the reader, and—bless her—not the teacher."—Alice Friman

One Blackbird at a Time

BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

Weave: New and Selected Poems showcases poems from Barker's long career that includes selections from her seven previous full-length collections, as well as new work. The collection features a wide range of subjects and themes, notable among them the poet's perspectives as an educator (especially in the very real-world concerns of the urban English classroom), surprises and wonders in her family's past and present, and the hope, fear, and trenchant wit with which she sees the world around us.

Weave: New and Selected Poems

Ostriker, Alicia

BkMk Press

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