In this small, luminous memoir, the National Book Award–winner Patti Smith revisits the most sacred experiences of her early years, with truths so vivid they border on the surreal. The author entwines her childhood self—and its “clear, unspeakable joy”—with memories both real and envisioned from her twenties on New York’s MacDougal Street, the street of cafés. Woolgathering was completed, in Michigan, on Patti Smith’s 45th birthday and originally published in a slim volume from Raymond Foye’s Hanuman Books.…

As if the reader were riding shotgun, this intensely vivid novel captures a life on the lam. “L’astragale” is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin’s heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to freedom. As she drags herself down the road, away from the prison walls, she is rescued by Julien, himself a small-time criminal, who keeps her hidden. They fall in love. Fear of capture, memories of her prison cell, claustrophobia in her hideaways: every detail is fiercely felt.…

New Directions is pleased to announce the relaunch of the long-celebrated bilingual edition of Rimbaud’s A Season In Hell & The Drunken Boat — a personal poem of damnation as well as a plea to be released from “the examination of his own depths.” Rimbaud originally distributed A Season In Hell to friends as a self-published booklet, and soon afterward, at the age of nineteen, quit poetry altogether. New Directions’ edition was among the first to be published in the U.…

For all his charm and intelligence poet Gregory Corso lived a vagabond life. He never held down a regular job. Until his final years, he rarely stayed very long under the same roof. He spent long stretches––some as long as four or five years––abroad. Many of his letters came from Europe––France, England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Greece––as he kept in touch with his circle of friends––among them his best friends Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.…