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These Details in Preference to Nothing is the story of a relationship, or rather it’s a meditation on one, that is, a mediation on love, faith and an existence caught in transition told from a perspective not fully capable of seeing all angles. The narrative is in the first person and in the present tense as is every love affair between very young adults. The title sums up a lot—These Details in Preference to Nothing—a line lifted from Becket. To quote John Barth “heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill; but what you want is passionate virtuosity.” A story told in intense moments of meditative stupor, it sometimes reads more like poetry, and so it began as an extended sonnet sequence, but emerged into this record—to be added to all the others throughout history--of the truth in the sincere and authentic passion of the young, or at least some of the relevant and more illustrative details. ISBN: 978-1-932023-36-7. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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I have begun every impulse to speak with hesitation, suspended on the edge of doubt, mindful of my inability to say how it was. It was the year of the roar of lions, humid nights, the soft breaths of waterweeds and kisses. It was the first year alone with my son. I had always had enemies of my sleep. I had come to know them. My response was always hesitation. The world was very large. It was true that a specific combination of things often conspired to lead my telling what happened back to an ecstasy of memories of melancholy and through a long, long night. Saudade the Portuguese say, the sadness inside each joy. All my life I have been haunted by a dream of heaven.  It was true. For me, anyway, for the way I told things, and the way I have always told them. I was somewhat absent of myself where the words came to carry the telling from me. I was touched by the words the way the butterfly wants to be still in the hands of the breeze, to be untangled from the air that makes the soft current, carries the preliminary push, something unformed and unclear, to be unsnarled from the waft, to be unfurled as the sound from the trees, to be...

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These Details in Preference to Nothing About the Author Also from William Ralph Press

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Introduction by Cosey Fanni Tutti, legendary performance artist and founding member of Throbbing Gristle ​ Nightmares never seem to make sense when we try to describe them. Neil's genius is that he's written a book in a way that puts you back in that mindset by tapping into the primeval in all of us as a kind of catalyst for the telling of this story. This is a story told in the way that we live out life changing events - it's full of movement. It steps us back, sideways, takes us into seeming irrelevance - maybe as a means of escapism, and all by unpunctuated expertly crafted emotionally evocative (and) beautiful sequences of words. It's akin to poetry, or song lyrics at times. Words are used rather like musical notes, arranged in a sensitive, sometimes aggressive ways, constructing and deconstructing, effectively facilitating your own unique 'nightmare reading' of this story. The words are a means to an end, elements which collectively create a composition, the purpose of which is intrinsic to its completeness.  You should approach this book by abandoning any established preconceptions of the role of narrative or role...

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...  The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,—visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower —Percy Bysshe Shelley ​ it is dark all around listen I say can you hear that she is gone I hear Firefly move uncomfortably in his bed across the room no he says that’s the sound of knives I cannot say he doesn’t hear that it’s not what I hear  Firefly is sleeping that is falling in and out of sleep so many of the people we have known are dead we have not seen each other since I left I’ve ignored him while considering what to do about meeting them and before them a hundred other thems he is caught in a trembling he can’t ascend out of and he lies there cursing resting smelling of illness which is the smell of neglect calling someone every couple minutes to fix or adjust what is wrong in him or what he needs in him what consumes him is unnatural rebuke beg whimper like collecting into a tear that never fully falls as he settles again into a nauseated waiting a concentrated breathing and an occasional ironic chuckle after every stroke my dad threw ...

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A Book of Nightmares About the Author Also from William Ralph Press

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A selection of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's essential poems. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798 with co-author William Wordsworth, marked the beginning for all intents and purposes of English Romanticism and included “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Other notable poems include "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan.” Volume 2 in The Reader's Library Series, ISBN: 978-1-932023-44-2. https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then rea...

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Contents Introduction Sonnet: To the Autumnal Moon A Mathematical Problem To the Rev. George Coleridge I II III IV Sonnet: On Quitting School for College Sonnet: To the River Otter On a Discovery Made Too Late The Eolian Harp Lines in the Manner of Spenser Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement Sonnet: Composed on a Journey Homeward; the Author Having Received Intelligence of the Birth of a Son, Sept. 20, 1796 Sonnet: On Receiving a Letter Informing Me of the Birth of a Son Sonnet: To A Friend Who Asked How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Argument Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Fire, Famine, and Slaughter A War Eclogue Frost at Midnight Kubla Khan Fears in Solitude The Nightingale The Wanderings of Cain Prefatory Note The Wanderings of Cain The Devil's Thoughts I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII Christabel Preface Part I Part II Dejection: An Ode [Written April 4, 1802] I II III IV V VI VII VIII The Language of Birds T...

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A meticulously edited edition of John Keats’ verse collecting all of his poems sans his two long verse plays. Keats was born in London, England, on October 31, 1795. He dedicated his short life to the creation of poetry characterized by its sensuous and vivid imagery, classical themes, technical mastery and sincere and authentic emotional tenor. He died tragically young in 1821 of tuberculosis, a disease that had plagued his life since he took a walking tour of the Lake District in 1818. Volume 5 in The Reader's Library Series. ISBN: 978-1-932023-47-3 https://www.facebook.com/williamralpheditions...

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Ode to a Nightingale I My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains     My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains     One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,     But being too happy in thine happiness,—         That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,             In some melodious plot     Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,         Singest of summer in full-throated ease.   II O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been     Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green,     Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,     Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,         With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,             And purple-stained mouth;     That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,         And with thee fade away into the forest dim:   III Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget     What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret     Here, where men sit and hear each ...

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Contents Introduction Imitation of Spencer On Peace On Death Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles’ Restoration, on Hearing Bells Ringing Song: Stay, Ruby Breasted Warbler, Stay Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl As from the Darkening Gloom a Silver Dove To Lord Byron To Chatterton Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt Left Prison To Hope Ode to Apollo To Some Ladies On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies To Emma Woman! When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain Sonnet to Solitude Epistle to George Felton Mathew To —— (Had I a Man's Fair Form...) To —— (Hadst Thou Liv'd in Days of Old...) I Am As Brisk Women, Wine, and Snuff Specimen of an Induction to a Poem Calidore To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent Oh! How I Love, on a Fair Summer's Eve To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses Happy Is England! I Could Be Content To My Brother George Epistle to My Brother George Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time! On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer Keen, Fitful Gusts Are Whisp’ring Here and There On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hou...

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Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is widely considered to be the best poet of the Augustan age, and perhaps English verse’s best satirist ever. Pope was mostly self-taught having been denied a formal protestant education because of his family’s Roman Catholic beliefs; he also suffered from the effects of Pott’s disease his entire life, which left him deformed and of small stature never growing past the height of four feet six inches. Despite these challenges, Pope flourished in English society and was likely its first professional literary writer having garnered significant income from the sales of books to the public as opposed to traditional patronages, capitalizing mostly on his excellent translations of Homer and an edited edition of Shakespeare. A close friend of Jonathan Swift in their famous Scriblerus Club, he was quite famous in his time, and while his reputation declined in the 19th century, he is now considered the most canonical poet of his era and the true master of the heroic couplet (followed closely by his predecessor, John Dryden) and English poetic satire. This edition of his poems collects all of his major work, and most...

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from "Essay on Criticism" “Tis hard to say if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But of the two less dangerous is th’ offence To tire our patience than mislead our sense: Some few in that, but numbers err in this; Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose; Now one in verse makes many more in prose.     ’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. In Poets as true Genius is but rare, True Taste as seldom is the Critic’s share; Both must alike from Heav’n derive their light, These born to judge, as well as those to write. Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well; Authors are partial to their wit, ’tis true, But are not Critics to their judgment too? “    Yet if we look more closely, we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind: Nature affords at least a glimm’ring light; The lines, tho’ touch’d but faintly, are drawn right: But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, Is by ill col’ring but the more disgraced, So by false learning is good sens...

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Introduction Ode on Solitude A Paraphrase (On Thomas à Kempis) To the Author of a Poem Entitled Successio The First Book of Statius’s Thebais Imitation of Chaucer Imitation of Spenser: The Alley Imitation of Waller: On a Lady Singing to Her Lute Imitation of Waller: On a Fan of the Author’s Design Imitation of Abraham Cowley: The Garden Imitation of Abraham Cowley: Weeping Imitation of Earl of Rochester: On Silence Imitation of Earl of Dorset: Artemisia Imitation of Earl of Dorset: Phryne Imitation of Dr. Swift: The Happy Life of a Country Parson Pastorals I. Spring; or, Damon II. Summer; or, Alexis III. Autumn; or, Hylas and Ægon IV. Winter; or, Daphne Windsor Forest Paraphrases from Chaucer January and May; or, The Merchant’s Tale The Wife of Bath The Temple of Fame Translations from Ovid Sappho to Phaon The Fable of Dryope Vertumnus and Pomona An Essay on Criticism Part I Part II Part III Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s Day Argus The Balance of Europe The Translator On Mrs. Tofts, a Famous Opera-Singer Epistle to Mrs. Blount, with the Works of Voiture Adriani Morientis Ad Animam Epistle to M...

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Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential of all American poets. LEAVES OF GRASS, Whitman's sole book published at his own expense, represents almost the entirety of his poetical output. The first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS, which he would continue to revise over the course of his life expanding and rewriting it until the year of his death, appeared in 1855. This volume represents the final edition, commonly referred to as the “deathbed” edition, and comes with a prefatory note from Whitman asserting that this is the version he most considered full and complete. While it was a commercial and critical failure during Whitman’s lifetime, LEAVES OF GRASS has gone on to become one of the most canonical books of poetry ever written, influencing and inspiring countless artists in the last two centuries. Written in a groundbreaking prosodic style Whitman referred to as “free verse” LEAVES OF GRASS takes the individual and a young American democracy as its themes and illustrates them with a long-lined cadence Whitman coined his “barbaric yawp” along with all the details that constitute them, a few ...

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O Captain! My Captain! O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;                     But O heart! heart! heart!                          O the bleeding drops of red,                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,                                    Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;                     Here Captain! dear father!                          This arm beneath your head!                               It is some dream that on the deck,                                    You’ve fallen cold and dead.   My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed...

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Contents Introduction LEAVES OF GRASS INSCRIPTIONS One's-Self I Sing As I Ponder'd in Silence In Cabin'd Ships at Sea To Foriegn Lands To a Historian To Thee Old Cause Eidólons For Him I Sing When I Read the Book Beginning My Studies Beginners To the States On Journeys through the States To a Certain Cantatrice Me Imperturbe Savantism The Ship Starting I Hear America Singing What Place Is Besieged Still though the One I Sing Shut Not Your Doors Poets to Come To You Thou Reader STARTING FROM PAUMANOK SONG OF MYSELF CHILDREN OF ADAM To the Garden the World From Pent-Up Aching Rivers I Sing the Body Electric A Woman Waits for Me Spontaneous Me One Hour to Madness and Joy Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd O Hymen! O Hymenee! I Am He that Aches with Love Native Moments Once I Pass'd through a Populous City I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ Facing West from California's Shores As Adam Early in the Morning CALAMUS In Paths Untrodden Scented Herbage of My Breast Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand For Y...