Stay is Douglas Messerli's 12th book of poetry, with poems written from the millennium until the present. The title is both a desire for things to pause for a moment, as in "a stay, " while being also a plea for people to "remain" in his life. The poems reveal his most clear embracement of his adopted home, California.
The eighth volume of Messerli's encyclopedic anthologies of international poetry includes 21 poets of renown, including Adonis, Ilse Aichinger, Dino Campana, C.P. Cavafy, Julio Cort+zar, D.H. Lawrence, Olga Orozco, Robert Sosa, and Tarjei Vesaas.esaas.
In this important new collection, publisher Douglas Messerli has collected 80 lyrics of American folksongs and popular music from the 19th century. Some of these songs, particularly the African-American spirituals, chanteys and cowboy songs-are beautiful paens to the American way of living. But the vast majority, minstrel songs of the 19th century and Civil War ballads, are almost perverse in their black humor and sexual undertones. These lyri...