Book Description

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate returns with his fifteenth book of poetry, an exciting new collection that offers nearly one hundred fresh and thought-provoking pieces that embody Tate's trademark style and voice: his accessibility, his dark humor, and his exquisite sense of the absurd.

Customer Reviews (4)

surreal, comic prose poems
this book is a fantastic bargain. it's a lesson in how creative a mind can be when able to free associate, but it still shows the craft of a master poet. tate doesn't strain to be weird or resort to gimmicks, he just tells his funny little stories in poetic form and they always go to surprising places. i love his book.

Unique Book.
Yes, the James Tate poems are up to something.As unique a collection of poems as you will find anywhere.In this book are poems that usurp America.

Special Poetry for Everyone
I had the pleasure of hearing James Tate read some of these poems at a writers' conference and was able to get an autograohed copy of this delightful book. The poems, some of which read like short stories, are multi-layered and you'll want to read them many times.

Never Again the Same
James Tate does it, ie does it and does it. James Tate is up to something. ... Read more

Book Description

The 44 stories of Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee-long-awaited by fans of Tate's poetry-will come as a welcome surprise to readers unfamiliar with his previous work. Tate seems both awed and bemused by small town life, with its legends, flights of fancy, heightened emotions, tragedies and small ruptures in the fabric of ordinary existence.

Customer Reviews (2)

a reader from berkley ca writes a damn good review.
brilliant reivew. i'm stunne.d get oyt your wallet.

Not Mush
This is a terrific book. You deserve it. The sparks Tate throws riffing these short stories -- better than nothing you've read recently. Trust me. Get out your wallet. ... Read more

Amazon.com
A selection representative of 25 years of work and nine books, from Lost Pilot (1967) through Reckoner (1986), these poems showcase Tate's talent for surreal entertainment that reveals an underlying serious point. He writes: "I am surrounded by the pieces of this huge/puzzle: here's a piece I call my wife, and/ here's an odd one I call convictions, here's/ conventions, here's collisions, conflagrations . . . " In such high comedy Tate leaves lingering questions about the problems of existence, while leaving too a smile on the reader's face. The book won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.Book Description
The Selected Poems James Tate's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection and his first British publication, gathers work from nine previous books, from the Lost Pilot which was a Yale Younger Poets selection in 1967, through his 1986 collection Reckoner.He is a most agile poet in a precarious world.Life is alarming and absurd, but properly considered that absurdity reveals, often with laughter, the something else by which we live.The poems are about our world, our wrecked, vexed love for it.Tate has been described as a surrealist.If that is what he is, his surrealism issues in a vision of a world delivered back to itself by his unillusioned subversion and candor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A wonderful collection
I came across James Tate's poetry in an anthology of Prose Poems, and immediately fell in love with his style. That has spurred me on to get a representative collection of his writing, and by and large I have not been disappointed. This is a wonderful book, with some of the most imaginative use of images and language that I have come across. However, I believe that Tate's prose poems are superior to the rest of his writings, and would really like to read a collection of those. Overall, however, I do recommend this book to anyone interested in more modern poetry.

Hyperbole just isn't enough
James Tate is THE visionary poet of our age and this is his most comprehensive collection to date.

I have read, reread and read again every piece of Tate's writing I have been able to find since I was first exposed to Tate in a class I took with Rodney Jones (another excellent poet) nearly twenty years ago.

Little can compare with:

The Lost Pilot
Coming Down Cleveland Avenue
F@ck the Astronauts

...except the rest of this selected edition which often makes me forget even these masterpieces.

I have gone through 3 copies of this selected edition as I took a copy of it with me everywhere for years.

Bukowski is Old and Tired and Sensationalistic
...and so to equate him w/ Tate is laughable.Your hexes won't work 'round these parts.

The Man stands on the shoulders of Bukowski
(How does he do it?)
(Open letter to James Tate, stalwart UMass prof. :
you won't get any toys this X-mas -- many months away --
because you've leeched off the writings of Ole Buk and this is
funny because you possess the vitality and soul of a
110-pound Alabama sharecropper.)

LOVE IT!!
I had never even heard of James Tate until we began to study him in my 20th century literature class in college.Now I don't know how I had ever not been aware of this man.I love this book and his overall work.Some of my favorite poems from this collection are:The Pet Deer, Goodtime Jesus, and Neighbors.I was also lucky enough to have Tate come to my college last night and read some of his poems that have not yet been published.They are somewhat different from the ones in this book, but are also wonderful.He is an amazingly funny and talented man in real life, and his poetry and craft is some of the most impressive that I have ever read.Definately check it out!! ... Read more

Amazon.com
Winner of the National Book Award in 1994, The Worshipful Company of Fletchers is fresh and startling. Like his doppelgangers Jeff Koons in sculpture and Stephen Malkmus in rock music, Tate is a self-consciously cool comedian of contrivances, devising bizarre situations and dressing them in a camouflage of the familiar world. To read Tate is to hear as music the ongoing negotiations between language and reality. In this book his main amusement is a game of categories, culminating in "How the Pope Is Chosen":

After a poodle dies
All the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-eleven.
They drink slurpies until one of them throws up
And then he's the new pope.

Customer Reviews (3)

Required Reading
In James Tate's post-Pulitzer volume, "Worshipful Company of Fletchers," he presents a collection of lyric poetry that offers a constant sense of movement, as though he is guiding readers on a series of speculative journeys with the promise that we could wind up...anywhere.Reading Tate requires trust - trust that his "auto-suggestive" flow of language and ideas will result in a payoff - and it does...there is a payoff of discovery within these pages, his poems.In "Porch Theory," for example, he provides the familiar image of a porch, yet in this fairly short poem, we discover that the porch represents several generations of a family.Like his other works, this piece boasts an effective flow.There are wonderfully warm images of ghost stories, rainy nights, children sleeping, the physical sagging of the porch itself, dinner parties, a sleeping uncle, a playful pet and cocktails being served.Importantly, Tate repeats the visual of wicker across the stories of each generation, tying it with the actions of his characters on the porch:"More children / climb on the wicker couch, and grandmother / stares at the croquet set / in the corner, remembering the parrot / her grandfather brought back from the Pacific."This is important because we realize the wicker is permanent, yet the porch's inhabitants are not.We come to understand that Tate's "Porch Theory" is symbolic of life and death, but that he is celebrating the sense of immortality achieved with the arrival of new generations.This becomes evident midway through the poem with the lines, "The willow itself is finally dying...`Look at those clouds,' / someone says.`The face of God is in there, somewhere.'"Regardless of an individual reader's spirituality, Tate's intention is clear.This is a poem of hope, and it carries the sense of movement and speculative journey that ties it with other poems throughout the book.While "Porch Theory" takes place in the setting of one family's porch, it achieves the promise that we could indeed wind up anywhere because so much occurs within - from its ghost stories to its cocktails and, ultimately, in the memories of the grandmother.Through her, we don't "wind up" on the porch at all, but with the visual of a parrot in transit from the Pacific.This is the payoff.It is why we trust a poet with Tate's intuition and talent, and it is as rewarding as an afternoon of daydreaming on the porch.

"The Nitrogen Cycle"
This book is the key to the closet, where we keep everything that we never use and rarely want. Tate has a keen gift of putting a tear in one eye and a wrinkle in the other. This is where he is most commonly misunderstoond. Afriend of mine, after reading Tate's latest book told me that he felt thepoet was merely trying to show how silly and zany that he could be. Hispoems are often funny and even absurd, but there is a painful sadnesshidden in them. "The Nitrogen Cycle" puts a smile on your face.But, the next minute you are pondering the frail nature of the human mind. This book should be read with plate of cookies and dull knife.

Tate will one day be seen for his incredible talent, we hope
The thing that makes me laugh is that Tate has one of the most unique and insightful ways of looking at the world, and yet he is read so very little. It's a classic case of the public at large not catching on to what isreally happening in this world. This book in particular shows a wealth ofmaturity in his work that didn't really show up until the Eighties. He isable to sythesise the forms of speech that people use to plump themselvesup so well that you can only identify with him as a fellow observer. Inparticular, the poem 'I Got Blindsided' isa high point.

While thefield of study into Tate's work may be a little sparse now, I believe thathe has the skill and attention to the details of American life which willmake him one of the truly great writers to come out of the age of thehippies. ... Read more

Book Description

Product Description
A book that tells how turtles survive with the help of protection programs. Sponsored by Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, Manteo, NC. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

fantastic book on Sea turtle conservation you must get it!
I am so happy i got this book for my children. Very well written and illustrated, helps children to learn about the sea turtles and engage their curiosity to learn more on the wild life and the chain reaction /influence of our actions. I Added extra activities and made a project along with the reading of this book that will stay for ever in their minds and hearts -and remember that we are not alone in this planet ...

A GREAT book, teaches children of extinction turtles face
Tammy Turtle is a book about a loggerhead turtle, which follows her lifefrom hatching to reproduction.Amazingly, Tammy returns to the same beachwhere she hatched to lay her eggs. While at the beach, she finds hersister, whom she had not seen since their race to the sea.This book isinformative, teaching children about the reproduction cycle of turtles, howhumans help them in their fight for survival, and how litter poses aserious threat to turtles.Children learn how they can help animals by notlittering. One can easily go online and develop a lesson plan focusing onTAMMY TURTLE.My plan includes geography (map of loggerhead turtlehabitats), dexterity (coloring sheets), and basic math (dot to dots). ... Read more

Product Description
Many facts about the spotted eagle ray, an elegant creature that leaps from the water and soars like an eagle. ... Read more

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All about a spiny-skinned animal, known also as a starfish, that is a marvel of nature. ... Read more

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Fascinating facts about an unusual fish that reverses parental roles. Papa sea horse nurtures the eggs! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stevie B. Sea Horse by Suzanne Tate
This delightful book clearly explains the life of a seahorse and the unusual way their babies are born.My first graders loved it! ... Read more

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An interesting and factual story about the life of a young harbor seal -- popularly known as a "sea dog." ... Read more

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A colorful book about a surprisingly complex creature. Written with guidance from the Lobster Institute, University of Maine. ... Read more

Book Description
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the American-born artist who spent much of his working life in London, played a crucial role in the development of 20th-century modernism. His art was profoundly influenced by the written word, especially the writings of Baudelaire, Swinburne, Mallarmé, and Edgar Allan Poe. This book examines literary and other aspects of Whistler's modernity, discusses his relationship with English and French painting, and sheds new light on his famous libel trial with art critic John Ruskin. ... Read more

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The interesting story of an animal that survives because of its many blue eyes. ... Read more

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A beautifully illustrated book about a great blue heron that surprisingly meets a flamingo. Based on a true story. ... Read more

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Perry Penguin, a story about emperor penguins is Number 30 in Suzanne Tate's Nature Series. It is the story of the family life of penguins, strikingly beautiful birds who live in Antarctica. This book was checked for biological accuracy by Dr. Kooyman, Prof. Emeritus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ... Read more

Product Description
Helpful humans rescue two young dolphins and take them to a science center for rehabilitation. ... Read more