Poetry

Poetry. Drama. Literary Nonfiction. Hybrid Genre. Latinx Studies. Women's Studies. Inspired by the tale of Juana the Mad, Queen of Spain, JUANA I is Ana Arzoumanian's first full length publication in English. A hybrid genre prose work of experimental, critical historiography, Lila Zembourain describes the book thus: "This book opens with a mantra, 'What I need is a mouth.' Yet the text emits many voices, imagining the circumstances that surrounded the figure of Juana the Mad, the legitimate Queen of Spain in the first half of the XVI century, who was declared insane then silenced and confined to a convent. Ana Arzoumanian subsumes us in a dense and powerful atmosphere in which the liberated mouth unveils with an abject heroism that could be called feminine, the tensions that historical circumstances impose over bodies."

This generous selection from Blake's poems, prose, notebooks, marginalia, and letters is accompanied by many of Blake's illuminations for his own works, some in full color. The spelling and punctuation have been modified for greater intelligibility to modern readers. Almost all of Blake's published writings are here, as well as most of his best shorter poems that remained in manuscript at his death, and much of his most energetic prose. Of Blake's major epics, Milton is printed in full, in its longest version; Jerusalem is represented by selection amounting to one third of the complete poem, and The Four Zoas by briefer excerpts. All the other poetic works are presented complete.