The Poet's Child: A Copper Canyon Anthology

The Poet's Child: A Copper Canyon Anthology

by Michael Wiegers (Editor)
The Poet's Child: A Copper Canyon Anthology

The Poet's Child: A Copper Canyon Anthology

by Michael Wiegers (Editor)

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Overview

When a parent is poet, the child becomes a muse—often wondrous, sometimes terrifying. This anthology explores the vast emotional landscape of parenting, from the serenity of innocent naps to the howling anguish of early deaths. Here are poetic mothers and fathers (and children), across cultures both ancient and modern, trying to make sense—and art—from the sublime mystery and relentless grind of living with children.

Never has there been a collection that so honestly speaks to the parents’ perspective, where moments of tenderness—such as a father abandoning "the most divinely inspired poem" to feed his son—have their counterpoints:

—a nursing mother-poet, who has not slept in 400 nights, going "gradually mad" or —a mother’s realization that her daughter would "drive nails into my tongue"

Remember those older friends we used to envy,
brilliant and glittering with beauty,
Who refused to have children,
not about to sacrifice their careers;
Who refused the mess, the entrapment,
as we toiled over chores and homework,
worried about measles and money—
Have you seen them lately?
They no longer converse in sparkling cadenzas.
They are obsessed with their little dog
who piddles on the Oriental rug,
who throws up on the bedspread…

They way they caress him makes you fairly ill;
the way they call him, "Baby."
from "Children" by Carolyn Kizer

Michael Wiegers is the managing editor at Copper Canyon Press. His most recent anthology is Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2002), co-edited with Monica de la Torre.

Contributors Include:
John Balaban
Marvin Bell
Kay Boyle
Norman Dubie
Susan Griffin
Jim Harrison
Ho Xuan Huong
Rolf Jacobsen
Richard Jones
Carolyn Kizer
Thomas McGrath
W.S. Merwin
Alberto Ríos
Ann Stanford
Su Tung-p’o
T’ao Chien
C.D. Wright

The inaugural volume in the Copper Canyon Press Back to Books Series


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781556591754
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Publication date: 07/01/2002
Series: A Copper Canyon Press Anthology Series
Pages: 120
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)

Table of Contents

Introductionxiii
You Taught Me3
The Hand: "Brightness Falls from the Air"4
Against Writing about Children5
The Doll Believers7
Muse8
What effect has your new son had on your writing life?9
After Kuo Chu-pu's Poems10
The Murmur11
Three Bodies12
A Naturalist13
King's Daughters, Home for Unwed Mothers, 194814
June 2016
"... as soft and as pink as a nursery ..."17
Childish20
Maternity21
What Parents Do Not Yet Know22
What We Need Words For23
The Thermos25
What No One Could Have Told Them26
Daughter29
The Last Thing I Say30
Reading a Story to My Child31
A Daughter's Fever36
Pittsburgh38
Magic Words to Cure a Sick Child40
The Windows41
Three Pieces of Candy42
Don't Forget43
Father's Song44
Mother to Son45
Lynching and Burning47
Childhood48
The American Century49
Unnoticed50
The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals52
Night Strategies55
Words for My Daughter57
Marvelous Father60
The Freight62
"We started home, my son and I"64
Scolding My Sons65
Natural History66
Poem69
Son70
Mothers71
Sor Juana's Last Dream72
Letter to an Absent Son73
The Family Group74
I Sit75
On Nursing76
Mother and Son79
The Gift80
Seed81
Mothers, Daughters82
Another Poem for Mothers84
Cigarettes86
Two, Hers and Mine87
The Cabbage88
A Grandfather's Last Letter89
After Tomasito's Departure92
Notes to My Daughters93
Children98
The Condition of Women101
Yesterday102
The Storm104
Last Will and Testament105
Why Your Father Cried106
Born into a World Knowing108
I Thought Back and109
Ending with a Line from Lear110
She Came to Say Farewell111
Provenance112
If I Leave You118
Comice125
Not Writing Poems about Children126
We Have Known128
Time, Place, and Parenthood129
Celebration130
About the Poets132
About the Editor139
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