Collected Poems - Hardcover

Bowers, Edgar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067945456X ISBN 13: 9780679454564

Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

Reflecting some forty years of literary work, this poetry compilation encompasses both previously published works and new material

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edgar Bowers was born in 1924 in Rome, Georgia. His schooling was interrupted by the second world war in which he served in the Counter Intelligence Corps assigned to the 101st Airborne division and then in Berchtesgaden, Germany. On his discharge in April, 1946, he returned to the University of North Carolina, finishing his graduate studies with a Phd in English at Stanford University. He has taught at Duke University, Harpur College, and finally at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, from 1958 to his retirement in 1991. Among his many awards are two Guggenheim fellowships (1959, 1969) and the Bolligen Prize for Poetry (1989). He now lives in San Francisco.<br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>

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"A Fragment: the Cause"

What I remember is the spell, a mask
Of numbness on the face and on the body
Attention to a silent foreign call,
Rapt murmuring on the lips the one reply;
Later, the fall, the cry profane and life-long,
Convulsion, and our helplessness — a pillow
Under the head, a blanket, and the waiting;
Medicinal hope’s spent brevity, the spent
Bitterness of catastrophe’s relief.
I could remember everything, if I would,
But do not wish to or to tell the story,
Though none will know it when I, too, am dead,
The last of those who shared and witnessed it.

 
"Living Together"

Of you I have no memory, keep no promise.
But, as I read, drink, wait, and watch the surf,
Faithful, almost forgotton, your demand
Becomes all others, and this loneliness
The need that is your presence. In the dark,
Beneath the lamp, attentive, like a sound
I listen for, you draw near -- closer, surer
Than speech, or sight, or love, or love returned.

*************
Plus, commentary by Donald Justice
This dark little poem is about trying to come to terms with some hidden aspect of the self not wholly accessible to reason. The style has the beautiful stark dignity of many of Bowers's poems, but there is another side to his work which should be mentioned as well--a kind of cheerful stoicism that stemmed from his enormous zest for life. But then Bowers is not the first poet to live brightly and write darkly.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 067945456X
• ISBN 13: 9780679454564
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 168
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar