<div> <i>OBERIU </i>is an anthology of short works by three leading Russian absurdists: Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, and Nikolai Zabolotsky. Between 1927 and 1930, the three made up the core of an avant-garde literary group called OBERIU (from an acronym standing for The Union of Real Art). It was a movement so artfully anarchic, and so quickly suppressed, that readers only began to discover its strange and singular brilliance three decades after it was extinguished?and then only in <i>samizdat</i> and émigré publications. <br /> <br /> Some called it the last of the Russian avant-garde, and others called it the first (and last) instance of Absurdism in Russia. Though difficulty to pigeon-hole, <i>OBERIU</i> and the pleasures of its poetry and prose are, with this volume, at long last fully open to English-speaking readers. Skillfully translated to preserve the weird charm of the originals, these poems and prose pieces display all the hilarity and tragedy, the illogical action and puppetlike violence and eroticism, and the hallucinatory intensity that brought down the wrath of the Soviet censors. Today they offer an uncanny reflection of the distorted reality they reject. </div>
<div> <i>Speculative Formalism</i> engages decisively in recent debates in the literary humanities around form and formalism, making the case for a new, nonmimetic and antihistoricist theory of literary reference. Where formalism has often been accused of sealing texts within themselves, Eyers demonstrates instead how a renewed, speculative formalism can illuminate the particular ways in which literature actively opens onto history, politics, and nature, in a connective movement that puts formal impasses to creative use. <br /> <br /> Through a combination of philosophical reflection and close rhetorical readings, Eyers explores the possibilities and limits of deconstructive approaches to the literary, the impact of the ?digital humanities? on theory, and the prospects for a formalist approach to ?world literature.? The book includes sustained close readings of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Yeats, and Wallace Stevens, as well as Alain Badiou, Paul de Man, and Fredric Jameson. <br /> </div>
<div> <i>The Middle Included</i> is the first comprehensive account of the Ancient Greek word <i>logos</i> in Aristotelian philosophy. <i>Logos</i> means many things in the Aristotelian corpus: essential formula, proportion, reason, and language. Surveying these meanings in Aristotle?s logic, physics, and ethics, Ömer Aygün persuasively demonstrates that these divers meanings of <i>logos</i> all refer to a basic sense of ?gathering? or ?inclusiveness.? In this sense, <i>logos</i> functions as a counterpart to a formal version of the principles of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle in his corpus. Aygün thus shifts Aristotle?s traditional image from that of the father of formal logic, classificatory thinking, and <i>exclusion</i> to a more nuanced image of him as a thinker of <i>inclusion</i>. <br /> <br /> <i>The Middle Included</i> also explores human language in Aristotelian philosophy. After an account of acoustic phenomena and animal communication, <i>Aygün</i> argues that human language for Aristotle is the ability to understand and relay both first-hand experiences and non-first-hand experiences. This definition is key to understanding many core human experiences such as science, history, news media, education, sophistry, and indeed philosophy itself. <i>Logos</i> is thus never associated with any other animal nor with anything divine?it remains strictly and rigorously secular, humane, and yet full of the wonder. </div>
<div> A comprehensive English-language edition of verse by the Austrian poet <br /> <br />An undeniable aura surrounds the name of Georg Trakl, a poet of intense inner vision and originality whose work stands alongside that of Yeats, Valéry, and T. S. Eliot. Besides Rilke, his more famous admirers include Karl Kraus and Martin Heidegger. The distinctive tone of Trakl's work-especially admired by his patron Ludwig Wittgenstein-is autumnal and melancholy. Trakl was writing at a time of spiritual and social disintegration on the eve of the First World War, when personal values and perceptions tended to be subsumed in a more generalized anguish and exaltation. Neo-romantic, early modernist, his rich, vitally sensuous poetry can be seen to mark the transition from impressionism to expressionism, but at the same time transcends such categories. Trakl's poetry has previously only been available in English in short selections or in anthologies. This bilingual edition, the most comprehensive to date, gives readers the chance to get to know Trakl's work more fully than ever before. <br /> </div>
<div> Chicago?s famed Field Museum of Natural History is home to a collection of thirty million geological and biological specimens that enchant and dazzle two million visitors of all ages each year. Based on a true story, <i>Rosie the Tarantula: A True Adventure in Chicago?s Field Museum </i>is a beautifully illustrated introduction to the Field?s treasures through the eyes of Rosie, a member of the museum?s live arachnid collection. <br /> <br /> Several years ago, Rosie went on an expedition to the wonders of the Field?s soaring halls, such as Sue the Tyrannosaurus rex, as well as the secret specimens of animal fossils and human artifacts hidden away in drawers, cabinets, and bins. Renowned Field Museum artist-in-residence Peggy Macnamara brings the marvels of the museum to vivid life in a set of gorgeous and meticulously accurate watercolors. Peggy?s daughter Katie narrates the story of this restless arachnid in rhyme ideal for reading aloud to children. <br /> <br /> A keepsake quality book that will delight budding young scientists and their families, <i>Rosie the Tarantula</i> provides a colorful, interactive experience with one of Chicago?s foremost cultural institutions. This one-of-a-kind book is rounded out by fascinating notes for adult readers, and other fun features for further reading. </div>
<div> Kim O?Neil?s debut collection, <i>Fever Dogs,</i> is a fictional biography of three generations of women. It begins at the turn of the twenty-first century with Jean, a young woman at an impasse. Romantically adrift, in a dying profession, she decides that to make herself a future, she must first make herself a past. <br /> <br /> To deal with a violent history, Jean?s mother has violently erased it. Starting from a bare outline that includes an unspoken death, a predatory father, and a homeless stint, Jean reconstructs the life her mother, Jane, might have lived. But origin stories can never completely cover their tracks: like Jean?s story, Jane?s cannot be told apart from that of her own mother. <br /> <br /> What follows is a set of stories spanning nearly a century in response to questions the narrator wishes she had asked her mother and to which she has disjointed answers at best. In the absence of answers, the narrator, in various points of view, invents them. As the stories progress backward in time, the footholds in fact grow fewer and the shift to fabulism greater. But in her attempt to unravel her mother's origin and her own, Jean finds that the stories she invents?like the dogs who run through them as witnesses, allies, and objects of desire?serve as well as any other in the makeshift task of authoring a life. </div>
<div> Set mainly in California's Central Valley, Manuel Muñoz's first collection of stories goes beyond the traditional family myths and narratives of Chicano literature and explores, instead, the constant struggle of characters against their physical and personal surroundings. Usually depicted as the lush and green world of rural quiet and tranquility, the Valley becomes the backdrop for the difficulties these characters confront as they try to maintain hope and independence in the face of isolation. <br /> <br /> In the title story, a teenage boy learns the consequences of succumbing to the lure of a town outsider; in "Campo," a young farm worker frantically attempts to hide his supervision of a huddle of children from the town police, only to have another young man come to his unexpected rescue; in "The Unimportant Lila Parr," a father must expose his own secrets after his son is found murdered in a highway motel. From conflicts of family and sexuality to the pain of loss and memory, the characters in <i>Zigzagger</i> seek to reconcile themselves with the rural towns of their upbringing?a place that, by nature, is bordered by loneliness. </div>
<div> The Hispanic Malcolm X. Writer. Activist. Civil rights attorney. Obese, dark-skinned, and angry. Man with a surplus of personality. Man of vision. All the above describe Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. El Paso-born, Acosta became a leading figure in the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, winning landmark decisions in civil rights cases as an attorney. As a tireless writer and activist, he had a profound influence on his contemporaries. He seemed to be everywhere at once, knowing everyone in "el movimiento" and involving himself in many of its key moments. Tumultuous and prone to excess, he is the Samoan in Hunter S. Thompson's <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.</i> In 1974, after a last phone call to his son, Acosta disappeared in the Mexican state of Mazatlán. <br /> <br />Hailed as "a fine, learned homage" (Kirkus), "a kaleidoscopic portrait" (Booklist), and "a game of mirrors" (The Washington Post), <i>Bandido</i> is a veritable tour de force. Through interviews and Acosta's writings (published and unpublished), Ilan Stavans reconstructs--even reinvents--the man behind the myth. Part biographical appraisal, part reflection on the legacy of the Civil Rights era, Bandido is an opportunity to understand the challenges and pitfalls Latinos face in finding a place of their own in America. <br /> </div>
<div> The two primary goals of this ambitious study are to provide a new framework in which to interpret the films of Michael Haneke, including <i>Funny Games</i>, <i>Caché</i>, and others, and to show how the concept of intermediality can be used to expand the possibilities of film and media studies, tying the two more closely together. Christopher Rowe argues that Haneke?s practice of introducing nonfilmic media into his films is not simply an aspect of his interest in society?s oversaturation in various forms of media. Instead, the use of video, television, photography, literary voice, and other media must be understood as modes of expression that fundamentally oppose the film medium itself. The ?intermedial void? is a product of the absolute incommensurability of these media forms as perceptual and affective phenomena. Close analysis of specific films shows how their relationship to noncinematic media transforms the nature of the film image, and of film spectatorship. </div>
<div></div> <i>Poetry Like Bread</i> contains poems by nearly forty poets published by the Curbstone Press during the last twenty years. These poets are probably unlike any you have studied. Their engagement with everyday political and economic realities is as direct as a newspaper, their language as familiar as conversation. Their motto, taken from Roque Dalton for the title of the collection, is that "poetry, like bread, is for everyone." <br /> <br />These poems were not written to be studied. They were meant to be read. Or better yet, heard. Whole or in part. Alone or among friends and strangers. Reading and hearing them, you must respond and react. Some may inspire you, knock the wind out of you--make you indignant, sad, joyous, ashamed. Whether you drop this book, seek out others, join a social action group, write letters to your elected representatives, or write poems of your own, your reaction to the poems will be as political as the poems themselves. <br /> <br />Some of the subjects of these poems may be unfamiliar to you, or very familiar to you. Many relate stories from war-torn Central and South America, where U. S. policy has had a huge impact on people's lives. The rest are the voices of the voiceless here in the U.S: Latinos and African Americans, Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese, prison inmates, blue collar workers, migrant workers, women, the homeless. It's the poet's job to open up and validate these worlds to us. Our job, once roused, is to learn. To learn and to act. <br />
Irresistible in its color and momentum, Greg Alan Brownderville's debut collection explores the competing mysticisms of his boyhood: the Voudou of his native Arkansas Delta and the Pentecostalism embodied by his devil-hunting pastor, Brother Langston. On the one hand, "gust" sonically suggests "ghost," and wind is a metaphor for inspiration and the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, "gust" suggests urge and pleasure, especially of the gastronomic variety, thus evoking the body. <br /> <br />Brownderville commands the complex eloquence of Southerners who love not only local color but also high-flown rhetoric. Instead of reinforcing stereotypes about rural folks' thought and speech, he challenges our assumptions by presenting real life as a festival of mixed diction. Church, as Brownderville enacts it, both quickens and forbids the erotic, whose lightning flashes and crashes everywhere in these poems. Highlights include a press conference with a bizarrely poetic rural sheriff, a Zimbabwean meter never before employed in English, a rock and roll song interrupted by a Walmart intercom, and poems about the exploitation of Italians in Arkansas cotton fields. <br /> <br />At once evoking Yeats and Whitman, Gust recovers the dramatic mode often neglected in contemporary American poetry. Brownder­ville's uncanny lyricism storms through stories that are both moving and humorous.