Of all the colorful figures on the twentieth-century European cultural scene, hardly anyone has provoked more polarity than Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel (1879 - 1964), mistress to a long succession of brilliant men and wife of three of the best known: composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter[...]
The author of A Secret History of Consciousness and Turn Off Your Mind explores the influence of the occult on history and thought from the Renaissance through the modern age, discussing its impact on Emanuel Swedenborg, Charles Boudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, and many others. Original.[...]
Draws on detailed research to evaluate the possible link between mood disorders and creativity, discussing how individuals with depression or bipolar disorder can overcome personal challenges in order to move forward creatively. Original.[...]
Recounts the life of Henry Chinaski, an indolent blue-collar intellectual, and his male and female friends, in a series of poems and stories[...]
It is traditional wisdom that a composer's popularity wanes for at least ten years after his death. Not so with Poulenc, whose music gained almost universal acceptance immediately after his death at the age of sixty-four. The present documented biography charts a new course in Poulenc scholarship by[...]
A Whole Lot of Inspiration (in a Little Bit of Space!) The Pocket Muse is your key to finding inspiration when and where you want it. With hundreds of thought-provoking prompts, exercises and illustrations, you'll immediately: Get started writing Overcome writer's block Develop a writing habit Think[...]
Understanding a text requires more than the ability to read individual words: it depends greatly on vocabulary knowledge. This important book brings together leading literacy scholars to synthesize cutting-edge research on vocabulary development and its connections to reading comprehension. The volu[...]
With his characteristic talent for finding connections between writing and the stuff of our lives, Peter Turchi ventures into new and even more surprising territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip-side, puzzle-solving. As he tea[...]
Can great art be produced in a police state? Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history. Nevertheless, Stalinist Russia produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense power--from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera "Peter and the Wolf," the fil[...]
Over the course of his career, Jock Sturges' long-term engagement with his subjects has been a cornerstone of his work. Misty Dawn, one of his primary and most popular muses, is one such subject; he has photographed her for 25 of her 28 years. Lithe, beautiful, classically proportioned, she is the p[...]
Does the Devil lie at the heart of the creative process? In "The Devil as Muse", Fred Parker offers an entirely fresh reflection on the age-old question, echoing William Blake's famous statement: 'the true poet is of the Devil's party'. Expertly examining three literary interpretations of the Devil [...]
The inevitability of death-that of others and our own-is surely among our greatest anxieties. Mortality's Muse: The Fine Art of Dying explores how art, mainly literary art, addresses that troubling reality. While religion and philosophy offer important consolations for life's end, art responds in wa[...]
Located in the Cyclades and surrounded by the blue-green water of the Aegean sits whitewashed, windmill-strewn Mykonos, the island of the winds. This ancient island and those surrounding it, mythologized as the bodies of gods felled by Hercules in the time of antiquity, are older legend and have pla[...]
"I'll never want to draw anyone else but you. You are my muse. Without you there is no art in me."
With her pale, luminous skin and cloud of copper-colored hair, nineteen-year-old Lizzie Siddal looks nothing like the rosy-cheeked ideal of Victorian beauty. Working in a London milliner's shop, Li[...]
Erotica author Kate McMannis has crippling writer's block and a deadline in less than two months. When a beautiful woman named Erato appears at her house and claims to be her muse, Kate isn't certain whether Erato is mentally ill or truly her supernatural savior. Either way, when the incredible sex [...]
Cacti, succulents, haunting, craggy landscapes - the desert is a place unlike any other. Celebrate the mystery and color of nature with Desert Muse, featuring 28 illustrations inspired by life in the California desert. Rendered with quirky, hand-illustrated linework, Desert Muse invites you to lose [...]