Works Books

Hirschfield writes about poetry with an intellectual as well as with an emotional clarity that illuminates and clarifies her subject. In doing so she draws from an vast well of deeply considered experience and insight. If you are interested in poetry in its many forms and manifestations I highly recommend this book.

I've owned this book for several years now, and I turn to it again from time to time, dipping into its rich prose and remembering the love I felt for it the first time I opened its covers and began to read. I was so captivated by Hirshfield's words that I read aloud from it to my friends, sharing her sense of beauty and mystery with them, and the joy I was taking not just in the way she formed her arguments, but in the wonderful feeling that came from hearing the words aloud.

I have a shelf full of books on poetry and poetics. I've got volumes of writers' exercises and essays on what poetry is and how to do it. This is the only one I've ever assaulted my friends with. Share it. Pass it along.

Jane Hirshfield's "Nine Gates" is probably the most interesting and insightful book I have read on the art and uses of poetry. While Hirshfield's approach to poetry is very much informed by (and often illustrated through) her knowledge of Asian arts and Buddhist philosophy, one need not be a Buddhist or a scholar to understand and appreciate her vision. Hirshfield is most interested in approaching poets and poetry through the essential work that they perform by helping us to understand the natures of, and the relationships between, the self and the world (that is, community in its largest sense). The book's argument is hardly as abstract or fanciful as this might sound, however. Instead, Hirshfield uses this approach to show how the most basic elements of poetry (rhythm, rhyme, image, and so on) function to help the poem build its meaning and fulfill its purpose. "Nine Gates" is an excellent book to strengthen your ability to read poetry, and to deepen your understanding and appreciation of this vital art.

...sometimes we need a personal classic to draw comfort from.

This past year when both grandmothers passed away, the soft voice of poetic comparison helped ease the heart.

In my small opinion, this is an inspired and gentle voice to turn to and read. And also reread.

I hope you also enjoy this reading experience.

At first I rebelled against the author's devoting pages to a discussion of poetry translation. However, once I dug hard into
her elegant but fairly dense prose, the more I found it fascinating, (including (of all things) certain esoteric aspects of Japanese language and poetry as well as translation.

I have begun reading NINE GATES for a second time, and I suspect not for the last. Although scholarly, the book is also moving, touching and definitely inspiring for any artist, poet or not.

I was given this book as a gift by a friend and enjoyed it so thoroughly that the next step was to purchase the book for other friends.

I gave these sealed as holiday presents because I love this book. The photographs are amazing and the wisdom is wonderful and timely.

Each page is a centering, relaxing finding of the self and connection to timeless essence....if one wishes to be so connected.

This is a book that I return to again and again. It is packed with wise/insightful quotes and gorgeous photos. It's a good addition to any coffee table :-) I 100% recommend this.

This is a book to read every day for many years. It's a treat every morning to look at a breathtaking picture of Tibet and read a wise saying by Buddhist masters. The photographs create a sense of infinite Himalayan grandeur of that stark and gorgeous terrain of rock, snow and beautiful people --the young and the old and always with a twinkle in their eyes , awakening wonder in me of a world so harsh in many ways but with inspired people with an active worship. Great book with a page to turn every day of the year and I am on my second year. I have given it to many friends whether they are Buddhists or not and they find it special and enduring in its beauty and wisdom. .

Zen of Watering Your GardenHi I am the Author and editor of a book that has good to great photographs. All are not as great as these. But my book has a wide array of not just flowers but other wonders to be found in Mother Nature's vegetation. Each photo is paired with an aphorism, poem or thought to encourage the viewer to see where one can easily immerse themselves in the garden process and achieve an inner peace. Matt Cohen

As a fashion designer, I look for inspiration everywhere.
I felt attracted by the picture on the cover and I wasn't dissapointed at all when I received the book.
The author capture trough his vision the simple beauty of nature and gave me that sense of movement and fragility that I was looking for while working with the colors and textures of my next collection.
A real treasure.

I just gave this book to my mother, who paint flowers, and she just love it. A lot of excelent models for painting.

There are many varieties of flowers presented here in beautiful and detailed images. Very little text accompanies the images, but enough to chase down further if other information is needed. It is the images which are the prime focus -- and rightly so.

If I could wish for anything, it would be for more. And more. The design makes me wonder about why each specific flower/composition was chosen, and how many were not. I tend to want to see groupings and images that elaborate on one another.

Receiving this book is like being given a gorgeous and lasting bouquet.

This is a beatiful book with extreme close-ups of many different types of flowers. The large size also is a plus so that each image looks grand and brilliant.

Dazzling and intense works. Good overview of his output. Although this is not the Collected Poetry of Heaney it does contain almost all his best poems up to 1996, as well as his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture (a gem) and an excerpt from his play Cure a Troy. Essential poetry volume.

I needed the book for a class... I went in to reading it like it was going to be garbage... But it actually was a little bit interesting...

strong poems, there is a sadness and a resignation of fog that permeates these poems. this is a melancholy man, one for whom the all-pervading glue of inaction and paralysis bounds him to a bleak world, soiled and grey and drab. this is a weary poet, too nauseated with reality's bruised soldiers, slovenly rudeness, the uncouth glutton, the debauched fiend. i enjoy him, immerse myself in his dust-gloom, his inability to soar into elation and falcon-freedom.

author of Lorelei Pursued and Wrestles with God

After currently studying the quality of Seamus Heaney's poems, i am quite sure that this book will not dissapoint you. The quality of Heaney's poems are somewhat outstanding, they are a shock, as you dont normally read poems of this sort, and once you read one, you have to read the others. One of my personal favourites is Mid-Term Break.

Written by Kirk Aged 14

If you have not read Seamus Heaney, then you are not in touch with what the English language is in its heart. Heaney's simple, unstrained word usage, coupled with a deep knowledge of the rich Anglo-Saxon which is our cornerstone, evokes a strength which comes not so much from what we see and know as from something which is rooted deeply in our psyches as Anglo-Europeans (or at least those living in and a part of such cultures). Heaney also brings to light the beauty of the ordinary, primarily by weighting it with the yoke of history and the various passions of his fellow man.

I bought this collection because I enjoyed others of his works (especially The Spirit Level and Seeing Things), which I uncovered at the library, too much to go long without his poetry. And this collection turns out to have all of my favorites from those volumes, as well as the best and most skilled of the poems of his earlier volumes. Do I recommend it? I wouldn't have prominently displayed the fact that I was reading it in numerous public places if I didn't, now would I?

I read the 2003 paperback of the 2002 book.

Once again, people looked at me strangely when taking a glimpse at the title of the book I was reading. Did I wonder off into chemistry nerdhood? Not really. This book is about a kaleidoscope of issues: the origins of life, sex and sexes; photosynthesis, snowball earth, mitochondria; oxygen poisoning, free radicals, anti-oxidants; ageing, diabetes, dementia; the rise and fall of gigantism in insects and dinosaurs. And the occasional frightening statistic: How many million tons of water are lost to space every year, how many million billion free radicals are taken in with a single puff of cigarette smoke?

This book is a perfect example of how important it is to keep up with the doubling of knowledge every five years. The book was already more than five years old when I read it, yet I felt ancient considering the intake of new knowledge. Keep in mind that much of the book is theories in need to get fine tuned, combined with other knowledge or even turned over. But without such brilliant minds as the author's, we wouldn't be able to.

The minor subtraction in my rating mirrors the slight repetitiveness (slight in relation to other books, which are much more repetitive than this), that some sections are a bit difficult and that occasionally Nick Lane wrote verbosely, i.e. in quite long sections not at all about oxygen, but for a supposed preparation for a better overstanding of the oxygen-issues to come. There's also a considerate overlap with his later book Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, nevertheless recommendable to read in addition.

There are other/additional/supporting/varying theories about some issues he is elaborating on in "Oxygen". For example about ageing read also The Science of Orgasm and Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body. For the origin of sex and sexes read also Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution, Liaisons of Life: From Hornworts to Hippos--How the Unassuming Microbe has Driven Evolution and Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are.

This book is a hard read if you don't have a good background in natural science and chemistry, but if you do it is fascinating.

The author seems to do a very balanced approach to the topics citing references on both sides of the issues discussed.

The book takes you from the formation of the earth to modern times and discusses the changes that occurred to the earth and its inhabitants as free oxygen developed.

A review for science teachers:

Nick Lane in Oxygen: the molecule that made the world [OUP 2002] presents the history of the world as narrated by a biochemist. Controversial, thought provoking and very original, Oxygen synthesises Earth's geology, why there is life on Earth but not on Mars, the evolution of photosynthesis (and respiration), why there are only exactly two sexes and why we age.

Earth's oxygen was liberated when uv light split water; the hydrogen first escaped into space but the oxygen remained, reacting with the rocks, forming reactive free radicals. 3.85 Billion years ago, LUCA (the Last Universal Common Ancestor; a concept not a fossil) had to have antioxidant enzymes, all of which survive in living organisms today: haemoglobin, oxide dismutase, catalase, peroxiredoxins, and could respire oxygen. Twinned catalase units formed the basis for water-splitting, oxygen producing photosynthesis, that arose only once on earth and may be unique in the cosmos, generating a positive feedback cycle where excess oxygen now recombined with hydrogen to form water. Water was the first gift of photosynthesis. The second was oxygen itself.

Every year, there seems to be one outstanding popular science book. I loved this one for its fusion of ideas: snowball Earth; the difference between mitochondria in animals that age quickly with those with high metabolic rates that are long lived, why women's ova remain in suspended animation after birth, not dividing. Oxide radicals are a consistent theme in the explanations.

This is the only really good book I've read about the evolution, history and chemistry of life. It's especially good when it is least philosophical. As when pondering over the likely order of ways to handle elemental oxygen - as it (or it's relatives peroxide or superoxide) most probably had to be handlet even before it was produced by plants. - And here are no tiresome stories about geologists having to travel around. It's on topic and well written.

Although not quite as pulled together as "Power, Sex, Suicide", this is a wonderful account of modern biochemistry. There are fresh ideas on nearly every page and his writing is amazingly clear. I realized halfway through that there are very few diagrams in the text, yet I felt like I didn't need any; a rarity for any science book.

It may be a little tough going if you haven't had some chemistry/biology background, but it seems like it would be accessible to most readers with a undergrad science background.

This well-written book has extensive information and photos on all of the primates in the world, including homo sapiens. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an in-depth look at our own "extended family."

This has every primate and all the stats you could possibly imagine for each one. As I am a stats man, this is all that's needed to make me happy. Also, there's a color photo for each individual primate, except for the EXTREMELY RARE ones. Also holds the record for sparking my interest in PRIMATOLAGY about a month ago.

I bought this primate book as a gift. It has so many beautiful photos, very comprehensive! I would recommend it to anyone looking to discover more about lesser known primates.

I bought this book when I was doing reserach on primate behavior and it was a great resource. This book has wonderful descriptions and beautiful pictures. It's an awesome book for anyone who's interested in primates or for those who simply love them.

Excellent text for veterinarians, research scientists, zoology and/or biology students or anyone interested in taxonomy and classification of primates. The color pictures are stunning, plus the information is informative and concise. The text shows geographical distribution biology and behavior.

This texts is a definite must for primate students.

A wonderful book for silent meditation.
I prefer this book over The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

Having been a long time Brother Lawrence fan I was leery of adding Frank Laubach's journal entires to this ancient classic. I was wrong. Laubach is a modern master who takes Brother Lawrence's simple way and brings it into the 20th century. After reading this short missive my friend and I have agreed together to practice the presence of Christ in everything that we might try this simple and beautiful way ourselves. Read this short guide and commit yourself to walking in the light. It's worth it.

Excellent book for those who believe we exist for the glory and honor of God. It will help you get to the point where your agenda no longer controls your life. It will be his agenda that controls. Two classics in one book.

I've read this book twice already and each time I read it, feels like the first time. This book is really intense. It made me realize how far off the mark I was with keeping God in my thoughts more often than I do. It's a life long practice, but once you read this book you'll never forget it and will keep coming bak to it at least once a year. It's also an excellent book to recommend to others who feel it's impossible to maintain God's presence all the time. The first time I read this book I became so much more aware of how little I think about God through the day and have been working on this practice ever since. I can honestly say I'm making progress. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a closer relationship with God.

This book I believe is a must read by any Christian desiring to live an others centered self sacrificial broken life style before the Lord. This can only be acomplished by staying on our cross and allowing God to have all of us. Practicing His Presence will help us stay focussed on God through out our day. Learning from Frank Laubach and Brother Lawerence's experiences at trying to live this life style can be a blessing to all of us. If you want to know what Heaven will be like, read this book. Because in Heaven we will be in God's presence all the time. So shouldn't we be practicing it here on earth?

This is a book for all the pug lovers out there...I enjoyed all the pictures and stories about people just as obsessed with pugs as I am. Highly Recommended.

Pugs are a unique breed and if you like Pugs or know someone who does they will LOVE this book! It is gorgeous with many great pictures of Pugs all over New York. It doesn't have much information on the breed but that is not the point of it, its a small coffee table book with some lovely anecdotes about Pugs. I am away from home at uni so when I miss my Pug I flip through this book!
I definitely recommend it!

I purchased this book few weeks ago and it is already one of favorite pug books in my personal collection. I am a friend (instead of being called a master or an owner) of several pugs since I was about 8 years old. Now two of them are living with me. Pug is an amazing creature and I have been trying to make others understand why I feel what I feel about pugs. This book is a wonderful way to show others the amazing Pug world!

This book contains pics of pugs. Pugs are perfect. Need I say more??

Nice book about and for people who pamper their Pugs. Not intended to be a "useful training tool" (I don't know where the reviewer below got the impression that it was supposed to be..!) but just a cute fluffy book about a select group of upscale NYC pugs and their eccentric owners. Photos and more info of "Pug Hill" in Central Park would have been nice (but perhaps too common?). Makes a good mini-coffee table book or x-mas gift for your uppity Pug pals.

For a native San Franciscian, this was a thrilling read. I was shocked on what I learned and it is interesting to see how things change. Strongly recommended.

Some very interesting tidbits here, but as a San Francisco resident I kept asking "what's there now?" It would have been great to include more (brief) history on what happened to the properties after these places were no more, or at least the addresses of the buildings that are there now. Some of this info is there, but it's hit or miss. Also, poor editing is a distraction throughout.

I've got an obsession (of sorts) with obscure San Francisco lore...all the different incarnations of the Cliff House, the rise of "hoodlum" culture in the 1800s, the ups and downs of the Barbary Coast, you name it. That said, "San Francisco's Lost Landmarks" is loaded with stories I've never heard before (waterslides in the Upper Haight? Who'd have thought!), mostly related in a prim, rosy-tinted manner by Mr. Smith. The chapter on the 1939 World's Fair, for instance, is mostly a list of who, what and where with no attempt to convey the excitement and novelty of the event. There's plenty here for any student of SF history to enjoy, but it lacks the seductive you-are-there storytelling of a Herbert Asbury or Luc Sante.

I am a fan of the 1960's coffee table, giant picture book histories of urban America distroyed. Lost New York, Lost Chicago, Lost Boston, and the now hard-to find pre hurricane Katrina, Lost New Orleans had a part in urban historic preservation awareness. Lost San Francisco never existed. And that's too bad. James Smith's book, Lost San Francisco Landmarks is a fine, well written work of local history. It explains San Francisco better than anything I've read. The why of Treasure Island, the tolleration of "civic sexuality" and the over use of quake prone land-fill engineering all get aired. It's A great read. RW Los Angeles.

So many books appear yearly on San Francisco that it's easy to miss one - and San Francisco's Lost Landmarks is not one to miss; it holds riches like few others. Where competitors offer listings of dates and facts, San Francisco's Lost Landmarks uses vintage pictures to blend with history to tell of lost pieces of the past. From the Tivoli Opera House and Gardens to Ralston's failed Grand Hotel, San Francisco's Lost Landmarks is history at its best.

Although the famous author's last years brought her much sorrow and depression, she continued to depict the world as it once more became plunged into yet another world war. In her famous journals, she described movies she saw, including GWTW, air conditioning, and the frustration involved with generational gaps. It is a must read for those who followed the previous books.

Obviously this is for fans of L M Montgomery - if you know and love her writing, you will recognise among the friends and acquaintances of her youth the characters that people Anne of Green Gable's turbulent world. But this wonderful journal is much more than that - it is a fascinating insight into a world which is long gone.

We read of Maud's complex family arrangements, her desire to be a good teacher and disappointment with some of her placements. Her small victories selling stories to publications, and the seemingly endless stream of suitors who proclaim love for her (my favourite is the hapless Mr Mustard). It is a tale of love found and not acted on (and the agonies that accompany it), familial obligations, frustrated talents and beautiful Canadian country side. It tells of heppiness, despair, joy and nostalgia, and is as engagingly written as any fabulous novel.

By all means read this if you wish to understand the creator of one of the world's most engaging literary characters, but also to have a glimpse of a world none of us will ever see the likes of.

Poor poor woman. I could scarcely put it down. But it brings up many questions. Why did she think that Mr. Leard, the Love of her life, was not worthy of her? Why did no one ask her husband Mr. McDonald what the heck was bothering him? Why did she not know in 5 years of courtship that something was terribly wrong with him? Poor, poor woman. The synthesis of this book is when she asks herself why a woman that she felt was mean and hateful was happy and she was not. Indeed, why?

IF YOU LOVE THE OTHER DIARIES YOU WILL ENJOY READING ABOUT HER FINAL DAYS. I ENJOYED ALL OF THE OTHER DIARIES BUT THIS ONE IS THE SADDEST. SHE HAS HER GOOD DAYS AND BAD, BUT SADLY SHE STOPPED WRITING IN THE LAST YEARS WHEN LIFE BECAME SO UNBEARABLE THAT SHE COUDLN'T EVEN WRITE ABOUT IT SO THIS DIARY IS INCOMPLETE. YOU WILL LOVE SEEING INSIDE THE LIFE AND MIND OF AN AUTHOR WHO ACHIEVED SUCCESS IN HER OWN LIFETIME AND LIVED TO WRITE ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD TO HER LAST DAYS. THIS DIARY IS HER LAST, BUT LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY WILL CONTINUE TO LIVE ON IN HER WRITINGS. HER DIARY WAS A WAY TO SHARE HER INNERMOST THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS THAT SHE COULDN'T SHARE IN HER NOVELS. YOU TOO WILL FEEL LIKE A KINDRED SPIRIT.

These journals, are beautifully put together. I remember when I found the first one and then each suceeding volume. I knew this one was coming. I even called the author at Guelph University to ask her how much longer I would have to wait.

She said then that they had to wait for some of the people in the journals to die before they could publish them. I would guess Dr. Stuart Macdonald was one of them.

They thrill me and make me feel closer to thise amazing woman. I've read everything she's written now. The sad thing is that once this volume is finished there is nothing new to read.

My greatests thanks to L. M. Montgomery and to Drs. Rubio and Waterson for their great work.