From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING
Robert Pinsky ?
Against weather, and the random Harpies--mood, circumstance, the laws Of biography, chance, physics-- The unseasonable soul holds forth, Eager for form as a renowned Pedant, the emperor's man of worth, Hereditary arbiter of manners.
Soul, one's life is one's enemy. As the small children learn, what happens Takes over, and what you were goes away. They...
From Sadness and Happiness: Poems by Robert Pinsky CEREMONY FOR ANY BEGINNING
"How I would like to catch the world / at pure idea," writes Jorie Graham, for whom a bird may be an alphabet, and flight an arc. Whatever the occasion--and her work offers a rich profusion of them--the poems reach to where possession is not within us, where new names are needed and meaning enlarged. Hence, what she sees reminds her of what is missing, and what she knows suggests what she cannot. From any event, she arcs bravely into the farthest reaches of mind. Fast readers will have trouble, but so what. To the good reader afraid of complexity, I would offer the clear trust that must...
"How I would like to catch the world / at pure idea," writes Jorie Graham, for whom a bird may be an alphabet, and flight an arc. Whatever the occa...
The outlook such that time is told on waking, Without aid of cock or clock's crow. In fact all the birds are elsewhere, Poised on glossy page or in some fall Migration. Sun up over mountain is precision, Then mist travels, exhaling day. All else, all change, is air, Dew relenting on the blades And mirror rhymes Where water bears resemblance: A strut of hues to pale even Revlon's...
This is the second collection from a Brooklyn poet whose work many readers will know from the New Yorker. Jessica Greenbaum's narrative poems, in which objects and metaphor share highest honors, attempt revelation through close observation of the everyday. Written in "plain American that cats and dogs can read," as Marianne Moore phrased it, these contemporary lyrics bring forward the challenges of Wislawa Szymborska, the reportage of Yehuda Amichai, and the formal forays of Marilyn Hacker. The book asks at heart: how does life present itself to us, and how do we create value from...
This is the second collection from a Brooklyn poet whose work many readers will know from the New Yorker. Jessica Greenbaum's narrative poem...
Scaffolding is a sequence of eighty-two sonnets written over the course of a year, dated and arranged in roughly chronological order, and vividly reflecting life in New York City. In this, her third book of poetry, Elena Rivera uses the English sonnet as a scaffold to explore daily events, observations, conversations, thoughts, words, and memories--and to reflect on the work of earlier poets and the relationship between life and literature.
Guided by formal and syllabic constraints, the poems become in part an exploration of how form affects content and how other poets have...
Scaffolding is a sequence of eighty-two sonnets written over the course of a year, dated and arranged in roughly chronological order, and vi...
Writing about poetry Diana O Hehir says, "I think of poetry as harnessed energy--as a marvelous way of taking the chaotic emotion, the turbulent perception, and recreating them as images that are specific, definite, directed. Miraculously, when this process works, it's one of expansion rather than diminution; the fortunate poet can reach out beyond the walls of separate personality into a general air that everyone breathes. I think of my own poetry as intense, imagistic, surreal, and personal, and try to write about perceptions which have pushed me toward change or renewal."
For the...
Writing about poetry Diana O Hehir says, "I think of poetry as harnessed energy--as a marvelous way of taking the chaotic emotion, the turbulent pe...
Ben Belitt writes, "This volume--my fifth--extends and deepens a preoccupation I have had with the visible and invisible manifestations of people, places, and things. It offers a variety of poems of formal and textural density and, in addition, a system of 'doublings' and 'solitudes' whose oppositions express the drama of reality and appearance."
Originally published in 1978.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These...
Ben Belitt writes, "This volume--my fifth--extends and deepens a preoccupation I have had with the visible and invisible manifestations of people, ...
"The first thing I recognize as the beginning of a poem," writes Richard Pevear, "is a distinct rhythm, not only of stress but of movement. Once I hear it, I can find words for it. But the essential thing, finally, is simultaneity--the completion of a shape, a thought, an emotion, a figure, all at the same time. The Trojan War, the figures of Greek tragedy, certain elements of the Gospels, the stories of Malory, are parts of my personal language."
Originally published in 1978.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available...
"The first thing I recognize as the beginning of a poem," writes Richard Pevear, "is a distinct rhythm, not only of stress but of movement. Once I ...
"The poems are elegies for everything, including myself," writes James Richardson. "Beyond this, I cannot pretend to be certain of much about them. I suppose they reflect a self with only a tenuous grip on its surroundings, threatened by their (and its own) continuous vanishing. The poems respond with a helplessness, fitful control, and not a little tenderness. Like the protagonists of The Encyclopedia of Stones: A Pastoral, I am very slow, both unsettled and inspired by the vertiginous strangeness and speed of events. I suspect these melancholy and disembodied poems are attempts to...
"The poems are elegies for everything, including myself," writes James Richardson. "Beyond this, I cannot pretend to be certain of much about them....
