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Overview
This important collection of poems, which spans a career of nearly fifty years, demonstrates Robert Mezey's development as a notable stylist, thinker, and poet. Moving from adaptations of Latin and Spanish poems to prayers and lamentations, from elegies and plaints of lost love to flights of comic and ribald fancy, his poetry reaches to the extremes of human experience. The death of friends and family, one's self-betrayals and self-infatuations, the comical confusion of a worried mother, the art of a doomed Jewish child in a Nazi concentration camp—all these human dramas play out bravely against the backdrop of the beautiful, indifferent path. Mezey can portray aging and death or sing of love and nature with an accuracy of perception and an intensity of feeling heightened by formal clarity and restraint. With his razor-sharp eye for the singular detail, he describes missed opportunities and moments of human weakness and loss in gestures so real the reader will ache. In capturing the pain of religious doubt, the pangs of tenderness and elation, and the vagaries of fate so honestly, Mezey has wrought a high finish to each poem so that, in the words of Donald Justice, they become "absolute classics of calm and beauty."
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781557286123 |
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Publisher: | University of Arkansas Press |
Publication date: | 07/01/2000 |
Edition description: | New Edition |
Pages: | 324 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Robert Mezey has lived in Claremont, California for many years, where he is an emeritus professor at Pomona College. Lamont Prize–winning author of The Lovemaker (1960), Mezey has edited a number of books, including recent editions of Hardy and Robinson, and his poems and translations have appeared in many anthologies.
Table of Contents
Foreword | xiii | |
Dedication | xv | |
from the Lovemaker | ||
The Funeral Home | 3 | |
A Bedtime Story | 4 | |
Dream of Departure | 6 | |
The Killing | 7 | |
A Coffee House Lecture | 8 | |
Corinna in Vendome | 10 | |
Dream of an Invitation | 11 | |
On a Theme of Sappho's | 12 | |
Dark Head | 13 | |
Epitaph of a Faithful Man | 14 | |
The Lovemaker | 15 | |
Late Winter Birthday | 16 | |
To a Friend on the Day of Atonement | 17 | |
Vetus Flamma | 18 | |
The Wandering Jew | 19 | |
Interlude: The Ballad of Charles Starkweather | 25 | |
White Blossoms | ||
Neither descendant nor lucky ancestor | 33 | |
The End of an Outing | 34 | |
After Hours | 35 | |
You Could Say | 36 | |
A Note She Might Have Left | 37 | |
No Country You Remember | 38 | |
The Friendship | 40 | |
Night on Clinton | 43 | |
The Next Thing Is Always About to Happen | 45 | |
Back | 46 | |
In a Little Park in Fresno | 47 | |
Looking | 48 | |
Reaching the Horizon | 50 | |
The doe standing poised | 52 | |
The Cat | 53 | |
There | 54 | |
Murderer's Wine | 55 | |
My Mother | 58 | |
A Confession | 60 | |
The Underground Gardens | 61 | |
Touch It | 63 | |
White Blossoms | 64 | |
The Mercy of Sorrow after Uri Zvi Greenberg | ||
The Hour | 67 | |
Joy | 68 | |
With My God, the Smith | 69 | |
Like a Girl | 70 | |
The Great Sad One | 71 | |
On the Equator | 72 | |
There Is a Box | 73 | |
How It Is | 74 | |
The Valley of Men | 75 | |
On the Pole | 76 | |
The Door Standing Open | ||
At the Point | 79 | |
How Much Longer? | 80 | |
Terezin | 82 | |
Nolan | 84 | |
California Farewell | 85 | |
A Prayer in His Sickness | 87 | |
Going for a Walk at Night | 88 | |
Going to Heaven | 90 | |
Pisces' Car Song | 91 | |
There Goes Gatten | 93 | |
Poem | 94 | |
New Year's Eve in Solitude | 95 | |
One Summer | 97 | |
In the Soul Hour | 98 | |
I Am Here | 99 | |
In This Life | 103 | |
An Evening | 105 | |
Watching the Invisible | 106 | |
Song | 107 | |
I Am Beginning to Hear | 108 | |
Interlude: Prose and Cons | 109 | |
Small Song | ||
To a Minor Poet of the Anthology | 119 | |
The Fields of the Dead | 120 | |
Looking into the Fire | 122 | |
Small Song | 123 | |
On the Burning Coast | 124 | |
Four-Part Psalm | 125 | |
Twilight under Pine Ridge | 127 | |
Good Fortune by Black Mountain | 128 | |
To Be a Giant | 129 | |
Last Days in Salt Lake City | 130 | |
Unsent Letter to Luis Salinas | 131 | |
The Silence | 132 | |
One of You | 133 | |
Trying to Begin | 134 | |
The Stream Flowing | 135 | |
An Old Story | 137 | |
Before and After Love | 139 | |
N. W. | 140 | |
Ill Lit Blues | 141 | |
A Way of Saying Goodbye | 142 | |
Words | 143 | |
Mercy | 144 | |
Of the Power of Thought | 145 | |
Interlude: Clerihews and Other Sports | ||
Clerihews | 149 | |
Eurocentric Rag | 152 | |
Tailgaters | 153 | |
Greetings | 154 | |
Glosses and Variations | ||
Her Sparrow | 157 | |
Jerry's Stretch | 158 | |
All in the Family | 159 | |
Ancient Epigrams | 160 | |
My Stars | 162 | |
Jerusalem | 163 | |
Graves | 164 | |
On Her Portrait | 165 | |
Lament for Jonathan | 166 | |
David Sings before Saul | 167 | |
The Grave | 168 | |
Julio Campal | 169 | |
To the Likeness of a Captain in Cromwell's Armies | 170 | |
Ballad of the Stranger | 171 | |
Einar Tambarskelver | 173 | |
Johnny Raftery | 174 | |
The Golem | 175 | |
Paris, 1856 | 178 | |
To a Forgotten Poet of 1935 | 179 | |
A Rose and Milton | 180 | |
Not So Simple | 181 | |
The Meaning of Soup | 182 | |
Requiem | 183 | |
Odysseus | 187 | |
I Saw | 188 | |
Gauguin | 189 | |
from Lines for the Death of My Aunt Daniela | 194 | |
Couplets | 205 | |
Some Occasional Poems | ||
A Joyful Noise | 235 | |
Last Words | 237 | |
Joe Simpson | 240 | |
April Fourth | 241 | |
Breathing You | 243 | |
On the Retirement of the Scholar, Thomas Pinney | 244 | |
A Retirement Poem for Dick Barnes | 246 | |
Edgar | 247 | |
A Prayer for the Eighth Day | 248 | |
Interlude: More Clerihews | 249 | |
Evening Wind and Other Poems | ||
Evening Wind | 257 | |
No Way | 258 | |
Fragments of an Endless Ghazal | 259 | |
Slow Sonnet | 261 | |
Lais Dedicates to Aphrodite the Tools of Her Trade | 262 | |
Chin Music | 263 | |
To the Americans | 265 | |
The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words: A Cento | 268 | |
To My Friends in the Art | 272 | |
One-Rime Dream | 273 | |
After Ten Years | 274 | |
Spring Evening by Walnut Creek | 275 | |
From a Sketchbook: Fragments and Epigrams | 276 | |
Owl | 280 | |
A Serious Note | 281 | |
Hardy | 284 | |
Tea Dance at the Nautilus Hotel (1925) | 285 | |
Variation on a Theme | 287 | |
Notes | 291 | |
Index of Titles and First Lines | 297 |
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