The debut work of non-fiction by award-winning slam poet Vanessa Kisuule, this is a love letter to the musicians we adore and an unflinching look at the costs of hero worship

Why do famous musicians mean so much to us? How does the pop culture industry both mirror and magnify the worst aspects of human nature? Why is it so hard to accept that the people we love, famous or not, can be capable of doing terrible things?

As conversations about abuse perpetrated by public figures become louder and from her very personal perspective as a Michael Jackson obsessive, Kisuule examines the nuances of ‘fandom’: of celebrities as symbols and fantasies, of child stars and power imbalances. Neverland invites us to question the dangers of idolising and villainising individuals and asks us to be unafraid of scrutinising the ugly and contradictory aspects of these issues. It also holds space for the joy we all get from music and explores ways we can preserve this.

With verve and incisiveness, Kisuule explores her own experience of being a mega fan and the evergreen question of whether we can, or should, separate the art from the artist. With references to R Kelly, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and other famous figures, this is both a love letter to the musicians we adore and an unflinching look at the costs of hero worship.

Explore Bob Dylan’s (somewhat secret) life and music through 12 periods of artistic evolution.You may think you know Bob Dylan. But this guitarist and American singer songwriter of folk, rock, and other musical genres lived a more fascinating life than you likely know. For example, did you know Dylan is a trained boxer with a private, state-of-the-art boxing facility?

Dylan enthusiast and expert Richard B. Westlein uses the rockstar’s interest in boxing as the framework for 12 Rounds with Bob Dylan. This narrative nonfiction is a fascinating deep dive into Dylan’s life and music, examined through his artistic evolution during 12 windows of time and a fictional boxing storyline woven throughout the text. You’ll be enlightened and inspired as you tour the paths this intriguing music artist has traversed.

You will:

• Broaden your knowledge of Bob Dylan’s nonmusical interests, including art and acting.
• Understand his voluminous body of work chronologically and the impact of his best songs as you read through 12 periods that defined his music.
• Chuckle as you follow the entertaining pugilistic storyline.
• Delve into detailed descriptions of some of the greatest hits among 500+ songs the famous singer has written and copyrighted.
• Find information quickly with biographical bullets, album details, and an overview of major achievements at each chapter’s end.

Follow Bob Dylan’s career through Western popular music history and the cultural issues of the times. Pick up 12 Rounds with Bob Dylan and get to know this popular mystic and modern rockstar!

From a Robert Frost poem on her debut album to the myth of Cassandra on The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are filled with literary connections. Make sure you’re catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influence her songwriting.

Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Taylor Swift canon–from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters to Daphne du Maurier!

• Learn what “New Romantics” has to do with the old Romantics

• Get to know the Gothic monsters haunting Midnights

• Spot Taylor’s many Great Gatsby references

• Discover what Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson have in common

• And find your new favorite tortured poet!

Packed with fun facts, entertaining analysis, and literary-themed playlists that fans will love, Taylor Swift by the Book will turn anyone from a Taylor Swift lover into a Taylor Swift scholar.

With full-color illustrations highlighting the literary eras of Dr. Swift (yes, she has an honorary PhD), it’s a perfect gift for the Swiftie in your life.

An anthology of brand-new poems inspired by Taylor Swift songs, from a powerhouse group of contemporary poets, including Kate Baer, Maggie Smith, and Joy Harjo.Let the decoding begin!

With a record-breaking four Grammy awards for Album of the Year, Taylor Swift stands alone in the world of pop music. One of the most talented lyricists of all time, her music captivates millions of fans throughout the globe with the narrative depth and emotional resonance of her songwriting.

In Invisible Strings, poet, professor, and dedicated Swiftie Kristie Frederick Daugherty has brought together 113 contemporary poets, each contributing an original poem that responds to a specific Taylor Swift song.

In a spirit of celebration and collaboration, poets have taken a cue from Swift’s love of dropping clues and puzzles for her fandom to decode, as each poem alludes to a song without using direct lyrics. Swifties will enjoy closely reading each of the poems to discover which song each poet responded to; each poem responds to only one song.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

Named a Fall Read by Vogue, Esquire, The Washington Post, TIME, Vanity Fair and O, the Oprah Magazine. One of Daily Mail and Financial Times‘s Best Books of 2018.

“There are very, very few people who occupy the ground that Leonard Cohen walks on.” –BONO

The Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world. Featuring poems, excerpts from his private notebooks, lyrics, and hand-drawn self-portraits, The Flame offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist.

A reckoning with a life lived deeply and passionately, with wit and panache, The Flame is a valedictory work.

“This volume contains my father’s final efforts as a poet,” writes Cohen’s son, Adam Cohen, in his foreword. “It was what he was staying alive to do, his sole breathing purpose at the end.”

Leonard Cohen died in late 2016. But “each page of paper that he blackened,” in the words of his son, “was lasting evidence of a burning soul.”

A unique book about opera–personal, impassioned, and provocative.

Weep, Shudder, Die explores opera from the perspective by which the art was originally created, as the most intense form of poetic drama. The great operas have an essential connection to poetry, song, and the primal power of the human voice. The aim of opera is irrational enchantment, the unleashing of emotions and visionary imagination.

Gioia rejects the conventional view of opera which assumes that great operas can be built on execrable texts. He insists that in opera, words matter. Operas begin as words; strong words inspire composers, weak words burden them. Ultimately, singers embody the words to give the music a human form for the audience.

Weep, Shudder, Die is a poet’s book about opera. To some, that statement will suggest writing that is airy, impressionistic, and unreliable, but a poet also brings a practical sense of how words animate opera, lend life to imaginary characters, and give human shape to music. Written from a lifelong devotion to the art, Gioia’s book is for anyone who has wept in the dark of an opera house.

The actress, activist, and once infamous Playboy Playmate reclaims the narrative of her life in a memoir that defies expectation in both content and approach, blending searing prose with snippets of original poetry.

In this honest, layered and unforgettable book that alternates between storytelling and her own poetry, Pamela Anderson breaks the mold of the celebrity memoir while taking back the tale that has been crafted about her.

Her blond bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered in the stands of a football game, she was immediately rocket launched into fame, becoming Playboy‘s favorite cover girl and an emblem of Hollywood glamour and sexuality. But what happens when you lose grip on your own life–and the image the notoriety machine creates for you is not who you really are?

Growing up on Vancouver Island, the daughter of young, wild, and unprepared parents, Pamela Anderson’s childhood was not easy, but it allowed her to create her own world–surrounded by nature and imaginary friends. When she overcame her deep shyness and grew into herself, she fell into a life on the cover of magazines, the beaches of Malibu, the sets of movies and talk shows, the arms of rockstars, the coveted scene at the Playboy Mansion.

When discussing poetry and song lyrics, this trends more on poetry but the style of writing and her flow and story telling meets an old school lyrical rhythm.

Classic and new work by poet and jazz writer A. B. Spellman

A. B. Spellman is an acclaimed American poet, music critic, and arts administrator. He is widely recognized as a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a cultural and literary movement that emphasized Black identity, pride, and artistic expression. Between the Night and Its Music brings together A. B. Spellman’s early work with a collection of powerful new poems.

Spellman’s literary career took flight in 1965 with his debut poetry collection, The Beautiful Days, which introduced his distinctive voice blending elements of jazz, blues, and African oral traditions. In 1966, Four Lives in the Bebop Business established Spellman as a respected music critic and scholar. It was a groundbreaking work that chronicled the lives and struggles of four influential jazz musicians. Spellman held senior positions at the National Endowment for the Arts for thirty years with lasting impact on arts funding for inner cities and rural and tribal communities.

THE TWIST

a dancer’s world
is walls, movement
confined: music

god’s last breath.
rhythm: the last beating
of his heart. a dancer

follows that sound, blind
to its source, toward walls
with others. she cannot dance alone

she thinks of thought
as windows, as ice around the dance
can you break it? move

In a career-spanning selection of poems, August Kleinzahler captures the essence of the West’s greatest music. These poetry and song lyrics really bring together an interesting combination of cultures. 

In A History of Western Music, August Kleinzahler’s rhythmic, wry, kinetic style captures the ineffable power and beauty of great songs and artists, as well as the potency of our response to them. Music is shown as inextricable from life, from landscape, and from the people we remember through it. The poet inhabits the minds and milieus of musicians; he hears arpeggios in the salon of Princesse Edmonde de Polignac and listens to the vibrations of a hummingbird through Béla Bartók. Kleinzahler’s verse not only contains the same sonorous beauty as the compositions he writes of but also the vitality and complexity of the moments we associate with them–the way the soundtrack of one’s life becomes defined by the scenes it scores, and vice versa.

From John Coltrane to Annie Lenox, from opera to bebop and all the jingles and melodies in between, A History of Western Music is a portrait of the vast range of meaning and memory that music creates and contains in one’s life.

The Enduring Legacy of Musical Poets

From timeless ballads to deeply personal poetry collections, these artists remind us that words hold power—whether sung or read. As music and poetry continue to inspire one another, their crossover remains an essential part of creative storytelling, resonating with audiences across generations.

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