Counterpoints Series

A carefully curated selection of stories from “one of the foremothers of 20th-century literature and feminist thought” (The New York Times), known for her deep emotional acuity and nuanced depictions of women

Today, Kate Chopin is widely considered a pioneering and influential feminist voice in American letters. Her fiction, though not embraced in her day, has endured into our own, and grapples with fundamental questions of marriage, sexuality, race, and the role of women in a modern society. The nine stories collected here elaborate on Chopin’s timeless themes while evoking the rich Louisiana setting so often featured in her work.

A master of the short form, Gina Berriault stands somewhere between Chekhov and Isaac Babel in style and psychological acuity.

“Berriault writes real fiction . . . She deepens reality, complements it and affords us the bliss of knowing, for a moment, what we cannot know.” —The Nation

“A wonderful storyteller and a beautiful writer.” —Grace Paley

The seven stories—“Infinite Passion of Expectation,” “Tea Ceremony,” “The Mistress,” “The Overcoat,” “Stolen Pleasures,” “Works of the Imagination,” and “Women in Their Beds”—offer a glimpse into the oeuvre of one of the most celebrated voices in American letters.

 

 

A pocket-sized presentation of the 3 most venerated sutras of Zen Buddhism: the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Platform Sutra

Features easy-to-understand translations and helpful footnotes—all from a legendary practitioner and translator of Buddhist teachings

Three classic Buddhist sutras—often linked to form a trio of texts that have been revered and studied for centuries—are now available together in this single volume. Red Pine, whose acclaimed translations these particular Buddhist texts are considered canon, provides a sensitive and assured treatment of the classic triumvirate in a gift-sized volume, perfect for sharing with anyone seeking guidance and peace.

• The Heart Sutra offers the Prajnaparamita teaching of emptiness
• The Diamond Sutra outlines the bodhisattva path followed by the Buddha.
• The Platform Sutra is an autobiography of Hui-neng, the controversial 6th Patriarch of Zen, whose teachings have served as an introduction to Zen for 1,300 years

In addition to new translations of all three texts, Red Pine has included an introduction that ties all three together and just enough footnotes to explain what needs explaining but not enough to get in the way.

A brief meditation on the role of technology in his own life and how it has changed the landscape of the United States from “America’s greatest philosopher on sustainable life and living” (Chicago Tribune).

“A number of people, by now, have told me that I could greatly improve things by buying a computer. My answer is that I am not going to do it. I have several reasons, and they are good ones.”

Wendell Berry first challenged the idea that our advanced technological age is a good thing when he penned “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” in the late 1980s for Harper’s Magazine, galvanizing a critical reaction eclipsing any the magazine had seen before. He followed by responding with “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine.” Both essays are collected in one short volume for the first time.

Fragmentary, unabashed, erotic―“Lifting Belly” is a singular lesbian love poem from modernist Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) which lays bare desire and easy intimacy—now in a beautifully packaged edition.

What is it when it’s upset. It isn’t in the room. Moonlight and darkness. Sleep and not sleep. We sleep every night.

What was it.

I said lifting belly.

You didn’t say it.

I said I mean lifting belly.

Don’t misunderstand me.

Do you.

Do you lift everybody in that way.

No.

You are to say No.

Lifting belly.

How are you.

Lifting belly how are you lifting belly.

We like a fire and we don’t mind if it smokes.

Do you.

―From “Lifting Belly”

Each palm–size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most–beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting–edge, wide–ranging, and independent.

An excellent introduction to “the best and most representative American poet” (Harold Bloom), this palm–sized, keepsake edition is the first separate publication of this remarkable collection of late poems.

In 1955, shortly before his death, Wallace Stevens earned the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. The collection gathered most of his life’s work, and featured 25 previously unpublished poems. Stevens imagined that those poems would stand alone as their own volume—The Rock. Featuring some of his most memorable poems, including “Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself,” The Rock is a sublime selection of works from one of American’s most brilliant, beloved modernist.

“After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could.” —Robert Fitzgerald

“One might as well argue with the Evening Star and find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the worlds and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity.” —Randall Jarrell

Jesus was a street preacher who taught through story and aphorism. Antedating the Gospels, these 105 sayings were recorded by his followers during and shortly after his lifetime. Through the immediacy of direct quotation, Guy Davenport and Benjamin Urrutia’s bold translation shakes our preconceptions, reintroducing us to the West’s greatest teacher, whose powerful words ring anew.

Two beautifully paired essays, “Tawny Grammar” and “Good, Wild, Sacred,” serve to offer an autobiographical framework for Gary Snyder’s long work as a poet, environmentalist, and a leader of the Buddhist community in North America.

He begins standing outside a community hall in Portland, Oregon, in 1943 and concludes as a homesteader in the backcountry of Northern California more than forty–five years later. A wonderful introduction to Gary Snyder, this will also serve to remind his faithful readers of the thrill of his insights and his commitments crucial to our future on Turtle Island.

Each palm–size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most–beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting–edge, wide–ranging, and independent.

First published in 1972, “Think Little” is cultural critic and agrarian Wendell Berry at his best: prescient about the dire environmental consequences of our mentality of greed and exploitation, yet hopeful that we will recognize war and oppression and pollution not as separate issues, but aspects of the same. “Think Little” is presented here alongside one of Berry’s most popular and personal essays, “A Native Hill.” This gentle essay of recollection is told alongside a poetic lesson in geography, as Berry explains at length and in detail, that what he stands for is what he stands on.

Each palm–size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most–beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting–edge, wide–ranging, and independent.