For five decades, Gerald Stern has been writing his own brand of expansive, deep-down American poetry. Now in his nineties, this “sometimes comic, sometimes tragic visionary� (Edward Hirsch) engages a lifetime of memories in his poems, blending philosophical, wide-ranging intellect with boisterous wit. Memory unites the poems in Blessed as We Were, which reach back through seven collections written over almost two decades. Stern explores casual miracles, relationships and the natural world in Last Blue (2000); offers a satirical and redemptive vision in Everything Is Burning (2005) and Save the Last Dance (2008); meditates on the metamorphosis of ageing in In Beauty Bright (2012); and captures the sensual joys of life—even when they are far in the past—in the wistful love poems and elegies of Galaxy Love (2017). The volume concludes with over two dozen new poems that combine the metaphysical with the domestic, from the passage of time and the cost of love to the profound banality of cardboard and its uses. With his characteristic exuberant, oracular voice animating every line, Stern reminds us why he is one of the great American poets, one who has long “been telling us that the best way to live is not so much for poetry, but through poetry� (New York Times Book Review).

The lyric poems of In Beauty Bright, although marked by the same passion and swiftness as Gerald Stern s previous work, move into an area of knowledge even wisdom that reflects a long life of writing, teaching, and activism. They are poems of grief and anger, but the music is delicate and moving. from "In Beauty Bright": In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake s lily and though an angel he looked absurd dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping, nor was it useless you who know it know how useful it is and how he would be dead in a minute if he were to lose it though how do you lose a lily?"

Divine Nothingness is a meditative reflection on the poet's past and an elegy to love and the experience of the senses in the face of mortality. From the Jersey side of the Delaware River in Lambertville, Gerald Stern explores questions about who and why we are, locating nothingness in the divine and the divine in nothingness.

National Book Award winner Gerald Stern's wistful and lively poems span countries and centuries, reflecting on memory, aging, history and mortality.

For five decades, Gerald Stern has been writing his own brand of expansive, deep-down American poetry. Now in his nineties, this "sometimes comic, sometimes tragic visionary" (Edward Hirsch) engages a lifetime of memories in his poems, blending philosophical, wide-ranging intellect with boisterous wit. Memory unites the poems in Blessed as We Were, which reach back through seven collections written over almost two decades. Stern explores casual miracles, relationships, and the natural world in Last Blue (2000); offers a satirical and redemptive vision in Everything Is Burning (2005) and Save the Last Dance (2008); meditates on the metamorphosis of aging in In Beauty Bright (2012); and captures the sensual joys of life-even when they are far in the past-in the wistful love poems and elegies of Galaxy Love (2017). The volume concludes with over two dozen new poems that combine the metaphysical with the domestic, from the passage of time and the cost of love to the profound banality of cardboard and its uses. With his characteristic exuberant, oracular voice animating every line, Stern reminds us why he is one of the great American poets, one who has long "been telling us that the best way to live is not so much for poetry, but through poetry" (New York Times Book Review).

Table of Contents
I.
Epistle
The Gift
Persimmons
The Weight Of Sweetness
From Blossoms
Dreaming Of Hair
Early In The Morning
Water
Falling: The Code
Nocturne
My Indigo
Irises
Eating Alone
II.
Always A Rose
III.
Eating Together
I Ask My Mother To Sing
Ash, Snow, Or Moonlight
The Life
The Weepers
Braiding
Rain Diary
My Sleeping Loved Ones
Mnemonic
Between Seasons
Visions And Interpretations

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

Poetry. Winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, this is the first book put out by the American Poetry Review, selected and with an introduction by Gerald Stern. Five long poems tell, among other things, my story, the bullfighter's story, Old Watermelon Hands's story, a father's story, a son's story, your story-our stories. What is certain is that the disappearance/of anything is dreadful, stuffed with anxiety./That the unbalanced life is far worse/than the good or bad lives./That the tragic and comic dreams/of falling and climbing/are more desirable than the dreams/of mirrors and puzzles (from Purple Heart Highway). Beckman's poems fall and climb, both thematically and formally. Joshua Beckman's line breaks: are the lines, sensations, account as if overlapping thrown forward as by a speaker who becomes breathless in the extension of the sentence] sometimes to minute, concentrated platelets as extension by slight disparities...-Leslie Scalapino. If you were a scientist/you would understand things differently/the m

For decades one of our most honored and beloved poets, Gerald Stern is also, it turns out, a prolific doodler. Sometimes charming, sometimes scathing, sometimes both, the odd little figures and scenes here are reproduced from drawings on napkins, hotel stationary, and the margins of what seem to be lecture handouts. These are remarkable expressions of a quirky world and a clear vision.
Long recognized as one of the most original poets in America, Stern is known for his tragi-comic, irascible vision that has been vividly rendered in hundreds of poems. All along, he has also been drafting these whimsical sketches. The Thurber-esque drawings represented here are daft, graphic expressions of Stern's fearless and shameless sense of self.
In addition to expressing a forgiving and cavalier attitude toward aging, these saucy drawings, until now a well-kept secret of Stern's creative life, capture something essential about his character. By turns profane and playfully romantic, they are another expression of the cutting wit and inimitable charm of Gerald Stern.

Gerald Stern calls upon his own life as a ground for his poems. Showing a horror of lies, treachery, and war, he offers redemption through stark language and plain speech.

Following his National Book Award winner, This Time, Gerald Stern further explores history and memory, the casual miracles of relationships, and his irrevocable connection to the natural world. The weight of history and the bouyance of memory, the casual miracles of relationships, and his irrevocable connection to the natural world are some of Gerald Stern's ongoing themes in this new book. The poems in Last Blue range in tone from the joyously unrestrained to the quietly somber. A Stern poem can begin with the majestic cadences of an Old Testament psalm, turn on an almost invisible hinge, and bring into focus the smallest detail. Here is a radiant collection from an essential voice in American poetry.

The centerpiece of Gerald Stern's ninth collection is a long poem titled "Hot Dog," named for a beautiful street woman who lives in and around Tompkins Square Park. Other characters in this poem are St. Augustine, Walt Whitman, Noah, Gerald Stern himself, and a ninety-year-old black preacher from the Midwest. In "Hot Dog," and throughout, Stern wrestles with the issues hope, memory, faith that have always occupied him."

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

The author says in his introduction: "These aphorisms, petite narratives, whatever they are, were written over a period of two weeks in the Spring of 2002. They represent my feelings during that time, feelings that were angry, arch, focused, political, and unified. They also reflect both my reading and the sheer accident of my experience."

One of our most acclaimed poets wrestles with the issues - love, hope, memory, faith - that have occupied him "in the second half of my sixth decade on beautiful earth". The centerpiece of Gerald Stern's ninth collection is a long poem titled "Hot Dog" named for a beautiful street woman who lives in and around Tompkins Square Park. Other characters in this poem are St. Augustine, Walt Whitman, Noah, Gerald Stern himself, and a ninety-year-old black preacher from the Midwest. In "Hot Dog", and throughout this collection, Stern examines the long journey towards redemption and justice and the bitter struggle - and battle - over our minds and souls.

In Save the Last Dance, Gerald Stern gives us a stunning collection of his intimately personal yet always universal, and always surprising poems, rich with humor and insight. Shorter lyric poems in the first two parts continue the satirical and often redemptive vision of his last collection, Everything Is Burning, while never failing to carve out new emotional territory. In the third part, a long poem called "The Preacher," Stern takes the book of Ecclesiastes as a starting point for a meditation on loss, futility, and emptiness, represented here by the concept of a "hole" that resurfaces throughout."

An exhilarating new collection by the poet often acclaimed as the modern Walt Whitman, his "spiritual reincarnation."

"This healthy collection of new poems and selections from seven previous volumes is remarkable for its generosity of spirit, manifested in a warm surrealism that is often turned with humor toward his own past as a way of understanding the recurrent questions of growing old: 'Why did it take so long / for me to get lenient? What does it mean one life / only?' " — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Gerald Stern's achievement is immense. In this beautiful gathering . . . one encounters a poet who praises and mourns in turn and even at once." — Grace Schulman, The Nation

"Stern is one of those rare poetic souls who makes it almost impossible to remember what our world was like before his poetry came to exalt it." — C. K. Williams

The lyric poems of In Beauty Bright, although marked by the same passion and swiftness as Gerald Stern's previous work, move into an area of knowledge-even wisdom-that reflects a long life of writing, teaching, and activism. They are poems of grief and anger, but the music is delicate and moving. from "In Beauty Bright" In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake's lily and though an angel he looked absurd dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping, nor was it useless-you who know it know how useful it is-and how he would be dead in a minute if he were to lose it though how do you lose a lily?