New Releases by Kevin Hart

What is contemplation? How is it distinct from meditation? Is contemplation essentially religious or mystical? What should one contemplate, and how? Are there different styles of contemplation, and why should one practice them? Ought we try to lead more contemplative lives? This book offers a philosophical introduction to the theory and practice of contemplation. Kevin Hart examines a variety of religious, aesthetic, and philosophical notions, shedding light on the singular qualities of contemplation. This book spans topics including the spiritual exercises of the ancient Greeks, overlooked aspects of Christian spirituality, and aesthetic contemplation of nature and art. Contemplation ranges from ancient thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus to Aquinas and other medieval theologians as well as modern philosophers like Kant, Husserl, and Wittgenstein. Though focused on Christianity, it also considers contemplation in other religious traditions, among them Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Paganism. Concise and comprehensive, this book provides both religious and nonreligious readers with a foundational understanding of the history and nature of contemplation as well as the benefits of practicing it.

"Put this beautiful book on your shelf between Frank Conroy''s Stop-Time and Tobias Wolff''s This Boy''s Life."—William Giraldi, author of The Hero''s Body This powerful memoir from poet Kevin Hart traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, a disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another. Dark-Land: Memoir of a Secret Childhood is Kevin Hart’s searing, yet at times hilarious, narrative of his first thirteen years. It is a story of survival and transformation, of deception and recovery, and it passes from a frightening childhood in the East-End of London to a new and bewildering life in sub-tropical Australia. Throughout, Hart draws on John Bunyan’s evocation of “Dark-Land” in Pilgrim’s Progress, the place Valiant-for-Truth leaves in order to seek the Celestial City. But Dark-Land is no allegory. We see Hart’s hidden inner life, his family’s penchant for keeping secrets, and their illusions about the nature of their shared past. We see Hart grow from being the despair of his teachers in a rough primary school to experiencing a “conversion” in a math class in Brisbane, Australia, which turned him into a Christian, a poet, and an academic. Written in elegant, lucid prose, without a trace of sentimentality, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity.

Blanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart. Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot''s emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot''s elusive concept of “the Outside” for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig''s work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the Shoah, with significant implications for Jewish studies more generally.

Wild Track is a compilation of the best of Kevin Hart''s poetry from eight different collections.

Stand-up comedian and Hollywood box-office hit Kevin Hart keeps the laughs coming in an illustrated middle-grade novel about a boy who has big dreams of making a blockbuster superhero film. Perfect for readers of James Patterson''s Middle School series and Lincoln Peirce''s Big Nate series. Marcus is NOT happy to be stuck in after-school film class . . . until he realizes he can turn the story of the cartoon superhero he’s been drawing for years into an actual MOVIE! There’s just one problem: he has no idea what he’s doing. So he’ll need help, from his friends, his teachers, Sierra, the strong-willed classmate with creative dreams of her own, even Tyrell, the local bully who’d be a perfect movie villain if he weren’t too terrifying to talk to. Making this movie won’t be easy. But as Marcus discovers, nothing great ever is—and if you want your dream to come true, you’ve got to put in the hustle to make it happen. Comedy superstar Kevin Hart teams up with award-winning author Geoff Rodkey and lauded illustrator David Cooper for a hilarious, illustrated, and inspiring story about bringing your creative goals to life and never giving up, even when nothing’s going your way.

From celebrity author Kevin Hart comes the laugh-out-loud highly illustrated sequel to Marcus Makes a Movie about a young boy who has big Hollywood dreams--and the hustle to make it happen. "Everybody, grab a ticket and run for a front row seat to Marcus Makes a Movie!" —Judd Winick, New York Times bestselling author of the Hilo series Marcus’s movie, Toothpick vs. the Doom, is a HIT! But the only thing harder than making a movie is making a SECOND one. Marcus needs to come up with another great idea fast. Too bad his film crew (aka friends) are too preoccupied with their MeTube channels to notice. An invite to The Helen Show has Marcus thinking they’ll be back on top, but will nerves, unchecked ambition, and a rivalry between friends shut down this show before it even begins? In the laugh-out-loud sequel, actor and comedian Kevin Hart delivers a message about being creative, working hard, and learning that sometimes the best dreams are the ones you achieve with your friends.

Kevin T. Hart Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Christian Tabernacle Church in Washington DC. Kevin T. Hart Sr. has a Masters in Divinity from Virginia Union University. These pearls of wisdom are excerpts of sermons and messages from Kevin T. Hart Sr. It is our hope that these words will encourage or inspire your heart. May these words provoke thought and spur you to action.

Barefoot is Kevin Hart’s eighth collection of poems; it is rich in elegies, meditations on lost love, and celebrations of new love. The title speaks of mourning, pilgrimage, and the direct sensuous contact of flesh with earth. Harold Bloom has long extolled Hart as a “visionary of desire,” and in this collection we find that vision deepened and that desire extended. Never before has Hart stretched his range of inspiration quite so far; while continuing to draw from Christianity, he also responds to the rich heritage of American Blues, and reveals a wit as sharp as a razor’s edge. The poetry is at once religious poetry and love poetry; indeed, the “religious poetry” is itself love poetry. Always, Hart speaks to us in words that seem inevitable in their simplicity. As he himself has written, “The best conductor of mystery is clarity. The true bearer of complexity is simplicity.” Barefoot will delight poetry lovers everywhere.

Comedian and Hollywood actor Kevin Hart discusses his traumatic early life, his career, and how he has been able to overcome the odds and become successful.

Religious poetry has often been regarded as minor poetry and dismissed in large part because poetry is taken to require direct experience; whereas religious poetry is taken to be based on faith, that is, on second or third hand experience. The best methods of thinking about "experience" are given to us by phenomenology. Poetry and Revelation is the first study of religious poetry through a phenomenological lens, one that works with the distinction between manifestation (in which everything is made manifest) and revelation (in which the mystery is re-veiled as well as revealed). Providing a phenomenological investigation of a wide range of “religious poems”, some medieval, some modern; some written in English, others written in European languages; some from America, some from Britain, and some from Australia, Kevin Hart provides a unique new way of thinking about religious poetry and the nature of revelation itself.

This book portrays the nativity of Christ in bold images of the Australian outback. Most of our Christmas art and verse have been inherited from English and European sources, but the Christian message is universal and other cultures commonly portray the characters and events surrounding Christ''s birth in line with local custom.

What did Jesus mean by the expression, the Kingdom of God? As an answer, Kevin Hart sketches a "phenomenology of the Christ" that explores the unique way Jesus performs phenomenology. According to Hart, philosophers and theologians continually reinterpret Jesus’s teaching of the Kingdom so that there are effectively many Kingdoms of God. Working in, while also displacing, a tradition inaugurated by Husserl and continued by philosophers such as Heidegger, Marion, and Lacoste, Hart puts forward a new phenomenology of religion that claims that ethics and religion are not always unified or continuous.

In Morning Knowledge, Kevin Hart grieves the passing of his father, while continuing his unique interlacing of the spiritual and the sensuous. A book of elegies and love poems, prayers and lullabies, a book in which poems sing about a museum of shadows and about rats and afternoons, all wrapped in quatrains, Morning Knowledge is a major book by a poet read and loved throughout the world.

A collection of poems by only one of Australia''s most important poets and a major figure in world poetry.

Publisher Description

Adopting the role of tour guide, award-winning writer Kevin Hart leads the reader through the pitfalls, conundrums and complexities that characterize postmodernism, while providing an overview of the many different approaches (philosophical, cultural, literary…) to the subject. All the major thinkers are introduced – from Derrida to Blanchot, Irigaray to Foucault, and more besides – while the book is unique among introductory guides in its consideration of the role of religion in a postmodern world.

Kevin Hart traces the vast literary legacy and reputation of Samuel Johnson. Through detailed analyses of the biographers, critics and epigones who carefully crafted and preserved Johnson''s life for posterity, Hart explores the emergence of what came to be called ''The Age of Johnson''. Hart shows how late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain experienced the emergence and consolidation of a rich and diverse culture of property. In dedicating himself to Johnson''s death, Hart argues, James Boswell turned his friend into a monument, a piece of public property. Through subtle analyses of copyright, forgery and heritage in eighteenth-century life, this study traces the emergence of competing forms of cultural property: a Hanoverian politics of property engages a Jacobite politics of land. Kevin Hart places Samuel Johnson within this rich cultural context, demonstrating how Johnson came to occupy a place at the heart of the English literary canon.

Poets'' Voices is an international series of books with audio CD''s which present collections of poems by significant poets whose work is not available in existing publications. Their poems appear in the original language, together with an English translation on the facing page. With each book, whenever possible, there is a CD recording of the poet reading poems in the collection in the original language and when feasible, in the English translations. Poets'' Voices will also feature monographs on key poets about whose lives, works, and influence little is currently available. In Kevin Hart''s seventh collection of poetry he explores the lush tropics of Queensland, Australia where he grew up, the landscapes of the soul, and the rich spirituality of Eros. Harold Blom has claimed Hart as "one of the major living poets in the English language", while Charles Simic has hailed him as "an absolutely original and indispensable poet".

Collection of new poems as well as poems from his four earlier collections TThe Departure'', TThe Lines of the Hand'', TYour Shadow'' and TPeniel''. Includes a table of contents. The award-winning author has also published volumes of criticism and philosophy and has translated from the Italian of Giuseppe Ungaretti. He teaches in the department of English and centre for comparative literature and cultural studies at Monash University.

A.D. Hope has long been Australia''s most internationally renowned poet, yet Kevin Hart''s new critical study of the 85 year old poet is the only one devoted to his work. Hart seeks to read Hope''s poetry and criticism in terms of several overlapping contexts: critical debate about Australian poetry; twentieth-century poetry as a whole (including French, German, and Russian poets who have influenced the poet); Hope''s intellectual and cultural commitments (such as his aesthetic theory, as drawn from Aquinas and others, his interest in science and mathematics, his cultural politics in the university); and contemporary critical theory. Superbly argued, and written by one of Australia''s finest young poets and critics, A.D. Hope is a worthy guide to the career of one of our most notable writers.