Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006

by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Overview

“Genius. Voigt is a poet of knowledge, and knowledge in the living, messy world.”—Robert Pinsky, Washington Post Book World

To witness the maturation of a poet over time is one of the great pleasures of reading. Here Ellen Bryant Voigt gives us that narrative distilled and amplified, arranging selections from six previous volumes to culminate in transcendent recent poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393331448
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/17/2008
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ellen Bryant Voigt is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Messenger, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her numerous honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. She lives in Vermont and Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     11
From Claiming Kin (1976)
The Hen     15
Harvest     16
Dialogue: Poetics     17
Stork     19
Damage     20
The Letter     21
The Visit     22
Snakeskin     23
Tropics     25
From The Forces of Plenty (1983)
Blue Ridge     29
A Fugue     32
The Happiness Poems     36
Talking the Fire Out     38
For My Father     44
Year's End     47
Liebesgedicht     49
Jug Brook     50
Sweet Everlasting     51
From The Lotus Flowers (1987)
The Last Class     57
Visiting the Graves     59
The Photograph     60
The Field Trip     61
The Trust     63
The Farmer     64
Bright Leaf     66
Amaryllis     68
Nightshade     70
The Waterfall     71
Dancing with Poets     73
Feast Day     75
Short Story     77
Stone Pond     79
The Lotus Flowers     80
From Two Trees (1992)
The Innocents     85
At the Piano     86
Variations: At the Piano     88
After Keats     93
Woman Who Weeps     94
Two Trees     96
Variations: Two Trees     98
Soft Cloud Passing     105
Effort at Speech     108
Song and Story     110
From Kyrie (1995) 113
From Shadow of Heaven (2002)
Largesse     153
Winter Field     155
Long Marriage     156
Lesson     158
Himalaya     159
High Winds Flare Up and the Old House Shudders     161
The Garden, Spring, the Hawk     162
The Art of Distance     177
Horace: Ode I.xxxiv     193
Autumn in the Yard We Planted     194
Practice     195
Messenger: New Poems (2006)
The Feeder     199
Deathbed     209
The Hive     210
Harvesting the Cows     212
Rubato     215
Redbud     225
The Tattered Dress     228
Prayer     229
Adagio     231
Messenger     232