Union

by DON SHARE

Overview

Poetry. "'We fought America in ourselves,' Don Share writes, and UNION suggests—in exquisitely lyrical gestures—the breadth and depth of our public and private, civil and uncivil wars. These quietly powerful poems range from the gritty intrigues of New York City to subsistence farms, where 'the dogs are in charge'. Along the way, they witness the vestiges of place embodied in the 'lazy-built, leaky drawl' of regional accents and the eloquence of artifacts that comprised an epoch—the Triptiks, Reader's Digest Condensed, Castro Convertibles, and Olds 88 of post World War II American culture. But UNION also sings the eternal concerns of love and time, death and longing. And 'sing' is the right verb for Share's passionate, richly realized work. Few poets manage such dexterous and fresh music. Few books are as lovely or profound."—Alice Fulton

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908998101
Publisher:	Eyewear Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	70
Product dimensions:	5.42(w) x 8.18(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry magazine in Chicago. His books include Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and most recently a new book of poems, Wishbone (Black Sparrow). He is the editor of BUNTING'S PERSIA (Flood Editions, 2012), a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year and Paris Review Editors' Choice selection; he has also edited a critical edition of Bunting's work for Faber and Faber. His translations of Miguel Hernández, collected in I Have Lots of Heart (Bloodaxe Books) were awarded the Times Literary Supplement / Society of Authors Translation Prize and Premio Valle Inclán, and will appear in a revised edition from New York Review of Books Classics.

Table of Contents

I	"I have seen, my Celalba..."
	Signals over Hill	3
	Dilemma	5
	Wine	6
	Saviour	8
	Faithful	10
	Self-portrait in the I-Zone	11
	For Laura	12
II	"The last darkness that closes my eyes"
	Refrains	17
	Spiced	19
	Ending is a True Marriage	20
	Semele Speaks to the Wind	24
	Old Highway 78	25
	Leaf	27
	The Story	28
	My Luck	30
	Rivers	31
	Divorced	32
III	"Birds live their lives in air"
	Sweet Life	39
	In Order	40
	Spiritual	41
	Stones	43
	Prayer	44
	Shady Grove	46
	Grit	47
	At Seventeen	48
	Dispatches from the McDonald's on Union Avenue	49
	Pax Americana	51
	At Forrest Park	53
	To the Angels	56
	Union	57
	Arch	66
	Notes	67

What People are Saying About This

Warren

Union presents a moving and original combination of vernacular directness, subtlety of tone and cadence, and imaginative vigor. Poems of mythologized autobiography - grief for a smashed marriage, for a lost childhood - are framed within the larger historical and political context of the poet's pained reckoning with his native Tennessee. Grounded in recognizable American experience and deeply influenced by Spanish lyric, Share's poems belong both to earth and to air, to conscience and to imagination. Like his frozen winter branches, they both 'flex and sing.

Alice Fulton

We fought America in ourselves,' Don Share writes, and Union suggests - in exquisitely lyrical gestures- the breadth and depth of our public and private, civil and uncivil wars. These quietly powerful poems range from the gritty intrigues of New York City to subsistence farms, where 'the dogs are in charge.' Along the way, they witness the vestiges of place embodied in the 'lazy-built, leaky drawl' of regional accents and the eloquence of artifacts that comprised an epoch - the Triptiks, Reader's Digest Condensed, Castro Convertibles, and Olds 88 of post World War II American culture. But Union also sings the eternal concerns of love and time, death and longing. And 'sing' is the right verb for Share's passionate, richly realized work. Few poets manage such dexterous and fresh music. Few books are as lovely or profound."

David Baker

The premise of unification in Don Share's fine first book is less a promise than an irony. At every turn, as Yeats foresaw, things fall apart. And a self seeking its place in history (as Share seeks) finds its faith (whether spiritual, marital, or national) everywhere assailed. Share's quest takes him back into the green heart of the country, looking down Union Avenue in Memphis where the Arkansas joins the Mississippi, flowing toward the Gulf, and where “the past still hurts, and gets sung about.” Like those earlier singers, Whitman and Dickey, Don Share discovers again the distinctly American narrative, “the original catastrophe of our history,” as he calls it: “We fought America in ourselves.” And still fight, I might add. I delight in the precision of these chiseled poems and in the sizeable, important ambition of Share's imagination."

Editorial Reviews

"Share is one of the more gifted craftsmen we have writing in America today." — Erin Belieu, Boston Review

From the Publisher