Flight: New and Selected Poems

Be the first to write a review

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$5.99

NOOK Book

——

$5.99

Flight: New and Selected Poems (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/2/2008 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
$1.59

$19.11

Hardcover

$1.59

$19.11

Flight: New and Selected Poems Pub. Date: 10/2/2008 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

Advertising

Overview

From this critically acclaimed and award-winning poet, a stunning volume of new and selected works that display her signature intelligence, depth, and vigorous originality.

Hailed as 'visionary' by The New Yorker and 'radiant' by The New York Times Book Review, Linda Bierds returns with a collection that gives us the best of her astonishing work, and then gives us more: the gift of fifteen new poems. As a poet, she has always shied away from the easy indulgences of confessional poetry, turning her attention instead to the things that unite us in our common humanity? art, science, music, history-and bringing alive people (some famous, some little-known) who have made contributions to these spheres. The new poems are no less vital, transporting the reader from medieval to modern-day Venice to the moon; from anatomical sketches to primitive mapping and early naturalism? returning always to the empathy that guides her work.

These tightly woven poems are linked organically through repeating imagery, reflected and refracted through the prism of Bierds's singularly rich imagination. Her language itself communicates just as much as this visuality; as Stanley Plumly has said, 'The autobiography of her imagination would only be half as intense were the writing itself less beautiful and clear, less perfect to pitch.'

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

The eighth volume and first retrospective from MacArthur winner Bierds (First Hand) makes her powers clear while showing how little her work has changed since the 1980s. She uses the English language as a composer of symphonic music might use an orchestra, taking romantic sighs, noble passages and high-flown trills from a full range of vocabulary and reference. She applies her lyrical, humane sensibility and her way with descriptive language to her own life occasionally, but far more often to the lives of eminent artists, writers, inventors and scientists-Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Anton van Leeuwenhoek (who invented the microscope), Marc Chagall, Dr. Tulp (of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson), Dorothy Wordsworth, the British physicist and public lecturer Michael Faraday. Ever alert to loss, Bierds finds the human and natural worlds worthy of fragile praise. In her marriage of research with appreciation, Bierds can recall Amy Clampitt, though she may lack Clampitt's range. In one of several new poems set in Venice, Bierds watches "the sea quickly cast/ its daily mass, herringbone brick by brick." An older poem sees farmers in an English village grind cow horns into translucent house windows, whose "moth-wing haze... softened our guests with the gauze light/ of the Scriptures." (Oct.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780399155253
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 10/2/2008
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 1,050,665
Product dimensions: 5.80 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Linda Bierds is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently The Profile Makers, for which she won the PEN West Poetry Prize and was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Her work has appeared widely, including in The Atlantic Monthly, Field, The New Yorker, and Parnassus. Among her other awards are two National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as fellowships from the Ingram Merrill, John Simon Guggenheim, and Wolfers—O'Neill foundations. She lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

From Flights of the Harvest-Mare (1985) and The Stillness, the Dancing (1988)

The Stillness, the Dancing 3

Mirror 6

Tongue 7

Child in the Wagon 9

Pearl 11

Reviving the Geyser: Reykjavik, Iceland, 1935 13

Erebus 15

From the Ghost, the Animal 17

Wonders 18

Lesson: The Spider's Eighth Eye 20

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: Amsterdam, 1632 22

Zuni Potter: Drawing the Heartline 25

Wedding 26

The Klipsan Stallions 28

Mid-Plains Tornado 30

Strike 31

From Heart and Perimeter (1991)

The Shakers 35

For the Sake of Retrieval 37

April 39

Ringing 41

Bird in Space: First Study 42

White Bears: Tolstoy at Astapovo 44

In the Beeyard 46

Nancy Hanks Lincoln in Autumn: 1818 48

Traumerei 50

The Grandsire Bells 53

From The Ghost Trio (1994)

The Winter: 1748 59

Memento of the Hours 61

Windows 63

The Reversals 65

Phantom Pain 67

The Swallows: 1800 69

Hunter 71

Held 73

Westray: 1992 75

Desire 77

Flood 79

Seizure 81

The Skater: 1775, Susannah Wedgwood at Ten 82

Lautrec 84

Care: Emma Wedgwood Darwin, 1874 86

The Fish 88

From The Profile Makers (1997)

Six in All: Preface 93

Six in All: One 95

The Three Trees 97

Altamira: What She Remembered 99

Six in All: Two 101

The Geographer 103

Van Leeuwenhoek: 1675 105

Six in All: Three 107

Shawl: Dorothy Wordsworth at Eighty 109

The Suicide of Clover Adams: 1885 111

Vespertilio 113

Six in All: Four 115

Edison: 1910 117

Muybridge 119

Six in All: Five 121

Burning the Fields 123

Depth of Field 126

After-Image 127

Six in All: Six 128

From The Seconds (2001)

The Seconds 133

"Will You Walk in the Fields with Me?" 135

The Last Castrato137

Testament: Vermeer in December 138

The Magic Mountain 140

Pasteur on the Rue Vauquelin 142

The Highland 143

Concentration 147

Orbit 149

Latitude 150

Grand Forks: 1997 152

The Circus Riders 153

From First Hand (2005)

Prologue 159

Time and Space 160

Counting: Gregor Mendel in the Prelacy 161

Thinking of Red 162

Matins: Gregor Mendel and the Bees 164

Prodigy 165

Gregor Mendel in the Garden 167

Tulips, Some Said 168

Stroke 170

Gregor Mendel and the Calico Caps 172

DNA 174

Questions of Replication: The Brittle-Star 175

Redux 176

Desires 177

Nineteen Thirty-four 179

Vespers: Gregor Mendel and Steam 180

Sonnet Crown for Two Voices 181

New Poems

Sketchbook 187

Meriwether and the Magpie 189

Durer near Fifty 191

Navigation 92

Thoughts Toward the First Christmas Lecture 194

Fragments from Venice: Albrecht Durer 196

Biography 198

From Campalto 200

Accountancy: Durer in Antwerp 202

Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice 204

Details Depicted: Insect and Hair 206

Acqua Alta 208

Salvage 210

From the Sea of Tranquillity 211

Flight 212

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review

( 0 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(0)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble