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Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991
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Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
Author: Hayden Carruth
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $22.00
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
Author: Hayden Carruth
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Average Customer Rating:
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Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9781556590498
ISBN: 1556590490
Label: Copper Canyon Press
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 1992-07
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Studio: Copper Canyon Press
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9781556590498
ISBN: 1556590490
Label: Copper Canyon Press
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 1992-07
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Studio: Copper Canyon Press
Editorial Review of Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991
For decades Carruth has been admired by other writers for his use of varied forms and styles, and, as did Frost before him, he has won the loyalty of many readers with his keen observations of language and the everyday. This extensive collection ranges widely, from Hayden Carruth's early 1950s traditional works to his later anti-war poems; from his sensual explorations to more narrative works. Carruth includes what others might discard as ugly, and speaks quietly where others might bombast. It is this quality that makes Carruth a talented poet, unique voice and subtle critic. Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
Customer Reviews of Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Gathering of the Best of the Best
Review: One of the most significant poetry publications at the end of the twentieth century is Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems. For too long Carruth suffered the lack of a consistent publisher; as a result, much of his best work has gone unnoticed or too little noticed. Notable in a volume as diverse as this are Carruth's monologues and poems about characters delivered in lines that echo their speech; as the speaker in "John Dryden" notes, "have you noticed / I can't talk about him without talking like him?" Like Frost, Carruth captures a sense of character and place while subtly presenting a complex set of meanings, discovering the kind of "natural symbol" ordinary people grapple with to understand their lives. One of the most powerful, "Marvin McCabe," is a monologue by an inarticulate speaker whose friend "Hayden" acts as amanuensis for the poem. Marvin McCabe details his upbringing and the accident that left him incapacitated--able to think but not talk. Other poems in this mode include "Johnny Spain's White Heifer," "Lady," "Marshall Washer," and "Regarding Chainsaws."
Carruth's lyrics display a range of diction and vocabulary which allows him to modulate easily from low to high style and to incorporate moments of humor in otherwise serious, even solemn poems without violating that tone. His lyrics often derive from careful observation of the natural world, not merely to see things but to consider. Typically, Carruth presents his observations through details objective enough to allow us to "see" the situation yet in language that renders the emotional construct of the subject.
The later poems in the volume, following Carruth's move to Syracuse, New York, in 1979, shift not only idiom and locale, as in Asphalt Georgics, a group of poems written in syllabic ballad stanzas employing frequently hyphenated enjambments, but open up very different poetic territory in the Whitmanesque-lined and loopingly discursive poems from Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands. The first of these laments the passing of the agrarian lifestyle that provided the basis for traditional georgics while celebrating the persistence of human life amid suburban sprawl that threatens that spirit. The strategies of apparent tangent and indirection Carruth uses to build these poems evolves into structures, in the second, which accumulate like jazz riffs and motifs: they seem to diverge wildly from the "point" of the poem only to swoop around at the end to enlarge the idea of point.
Finally, a collected poems provides a perspective on a poet's career. And this volume demonstrates what some readers have long known: Hayden Carruth possesses greater range of style, scope of subject, and diversity of formal skills than any other poet working in the United States today.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Especially...
Review: Especially poignant is Carruth's poem "Marvin McCabe," the story of a man who loses his power of speech in a drunk-driving accident..
Review Summary: A Gathering of the Best of the Best
Review: One of the most significant poetry publications at the end of the twentieth century is Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems. For too long Carruth suffered the lack of a consistent publisher; as a result, much of his best work has gone unnoticed or too little noticed. Notable in a volume as diverse as this are Carruth's monologues and poems about characters delivered in lines that echo their speech; as the speaker in "John Dryden" notes, "have you noticed / I can't talk about him without talking like him?" Like Frost, Carruth captures a sense of character and place while subtly presenting a complex set of meanings, discovering the kind of "natural symbol" ordinary people grapple with to understand their lives. One of the most powerful, "Marvin McCabe," is a monologue by an inarticulate speaker whose friend "Hayden" acts as amanuensis for the poem. Marvin McCabe details his upbringing and the accident that left him incapacitated--able to think but not talk. Other poems in this mode include "Johnny Spain's White Heifer," "Lady," "Marshall Washer," and "Regarding Chainsaws."
Carruth's lyrics display a range of diction and vocabulary which allows him to modulate easily from low to high style and to incorporate moments of humor in otherwise serious, even solemn poems without violating that tone. His lyrics often derive from careful observation of the natural world, not merely to see things but to consider. Typically, Carruth presents his observations through details objective enough to allow us to "see" the situation yet in language that renders the emotional construct of the subject.
The later poems in the volume, following Carruth's move to Syracuse, New York, in 1979, shift not only idiom and locale, as in Asphalt Georgics, a group of poems written in syllabic ballad stanzas employing frequently hyphenated enjambments, but open up very different poetic territory in the Whitmanesque-lined and loopingly discursive poems from Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands. The first of these laments the passing of the agrarian lifestyle that provided the basis for traditional georgics while celebrating the persistence of human life amid suburban sprawl that threatens that spirit. The strategies of apparent tangent and indirection Carruth uses to build these poems evolves into structures, in the second, which accumulate like jazz riffs and motifs: they seem to diverge wildly from the "point" of the poem only to swoop around at the end to enlarge the idea of point.
Finally, a collected poems provides a perspective on a poet's career. And this volume demonstrates what some readers have long known: Hayden Carruth possesses greater range of style, scope of subject, and diversity of formal skills than any other poet working in the United States today.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Especially...
Review: Especially poignant is Carruth's poem "Marvin McCabe," the story of a man who loses his power of speech in a drunk-driving accident..