Perhaps we were pretty big boys - Jack and I. In fact, I'm afraid we were so big that we haven't grown much since. But Ollie was a boy, anyhow; he couldn't have been more than a dozen years old, and we looked upon him as being a very small boy indeed; though when folks saw us starting off, some of them seemed to think that we were as boyish as he, because, they said, it was such a foolish thing to do; and in some way, I'm sure I don't know how, boys have got the reputation of always doing foolish things. "They're three of a kind," said Grandpa Oldberry, as he watched us weigh anchor; "their parents oughter be sent fer." Well, it's hard to decide where to begin this true history. We didn't keep any log on this voyage of the Rattletrap. But I'll certainly have to go back of the time when Grandpa Oldberry expressed his opinion; and perhaps I ought to explain how we happened to be in that particular port.

Praise for Hayden Carruth:

"Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company."--"The New York Times Book Review"

"One of the lasting literary signatures of our time."--"Library Journal," starred review

"Carruth, like Whitman, like Chaucer, is large--he contains multitudes. Dip into his work anywhere, and there is life--and death--as stirringly felt and cogitated as in some vast, Tolstoyan novel."--"Booklist," starred review

Hayden Carruth's "Last Poems" is a triumph--a morally engaged, tender, and fearless volume that combines the last poems of his life with the concluding poems from each of his previous volumes. Introduced by Stephen Dobyns, "Last Poems" is a moving tribute to a towering and beloved figure in American poetry.

From "Father's Day":

"I don't know what fathers are
Supposed to do, although the calendar says
This is "Father's Day." But the day is gloomy
And not at all conducive to visiting or
Celebrating. I know the best thing fathers in
Their prime can do is to make daughters and
More daughters; we can never have enough.
Daughters are our best protection against
Loneliness and the absurd atrocities of
Foreign policy . . . "

Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) lived for many years in northern Vermont, then moved to upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. He won the National Book Award for "Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey," and his "Collected Shorter Poems" received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

"Carruth is] one of the lasting literary signatures of our time."--"Library Journal" (starred review)

"Carruth...contains multitudes."--"Booklist" (starred review)

"Carruth is a people's poet... a virtuoso of form."--"The Nation"

This "portable Carruth" gathers new poems with the essential works from a major American poet. Included are lyrics, short narratives, comic, meditative, and erotic poems that engage politics, music, rural poverty, and the cultural responsibility of artists. As Sam Hamill writes in the introduction:

"Carruth's great body of work is a world... Like the jazz he so loves, his poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local vernacular to righteous oratory, from beautiful complexity to elegant understatement."

From "A Few Dilapidated Arias"

""Our crumbling civilization"-a phrase I have used often
during recent years, in letters to friends, even in
words for public print. And what does it mean? "Can"
a civilization crumble? At once appears the image
of an old slice of bread, stale and hard, green with mold,
shaped roughly like the northeastern United States, years
old or more, so hard and foul that even my pal Maxie,
the shepherd/husky cross who eats everything, won't
touch it. And it is crumbling, turning literally into
crumbs, as the millions of infinitesimal internal connecting
fibers sever and loosen. The dust trickles and seeps away."

Hayden Carruth, a longtime resident of Vermont, currently lives in upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. His many honors include the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 presents all the lyric, short narrative, comic, meditative, nature, and erotic poetry the poet has chosen from the past forty-five years, including a section of new poems not found in his previous twenty-two books. It is an extraordinary literary event. Hayden Carruth has been one of the most widely published and admired American poets for many years. Noted for the breadth of his linguistic and formal resources, influenced by jazz and the blues, Carruth gives his poems--whether sexual political, or narrative--a philosophical resonance that raises them beyond the ego-centered narrowness of much contemporary writing and makes them powerfully moving. Carruth is a New Englander (now living in New York), and many of his best-known poems are about the people and places of northern Vermont. His explorations of rural poverty and hardship, sometimes grim, sometimes funny, are deeply informed by political radicalism and cultural responsibility. Carruth has been editor of Poetry, poetry editor of Harper's, for many years advisory editor of The Hudson Review, and his influential anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us, is the standard collection of 20th-century American poetry. He has published one novel and three collections of essays. He has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bollingen Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (including a 1988 Senior Fellowship), and his work has won many prizes and awards, including the Lenore Marshall/Nation Poetry Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Governor's Medal from the State of Vermont.

It is impossible to imagine what American poetry in the twentieth century might look like without the magnanimity of the late James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions. Among Laughlin's closest friends was poet Hayden Carruth, who served as author, editor, clerk, and typist for New Directions and, at a more personal level, "poetry doctor" for Laughlin himself. Beside the Shadblow Tree is the meditation of one great old poet upon the death of another, upon two lives intertwined in various ways for half a century. And because this book is utterly candid - spontaneous and true to what Carruth calls "the actual mental flow" - it moves us in ways conventional memoirs rarely do.

For fifty years, Hayden Carruth's poetry has been distinguished by the indelible presence of passion, compassion, and radical philosophy. Collected Longer Poems gathers the poet's choice of his narrative work and poems in sequence, including his epic on the nature of romance, The Sleeping Beauty, and meditative poems on the rural northeast that have made him the most accessible "regional" poet since Robert Frost. Our pre-eminent poet of improvisation within form, Carruth's renowned technical genius is perfectly matched to his ear for spoken language and narrative structure. By turns caustic and hilarious, his observations of that life, his own and his neighbors', ring as true as his ear for native speech. Collected Longer Poems completes the two-volume Collected Poems begun with the publication of Collected Shorter Poems in 1992, a volume that was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Hayden Carruth, one of the most acclaimed poets of our age, lives his music-finding the perfect low tones of terrible loss and high riffs of family and friendship.

"Carruth keeps getting better."-"The New Yorker"

"Carruth's new poems are, essentially, songs of praise and celebrations of beauty; for all the real anguish and pain they record, they remain enactments of a fundamental attitude of faith and wonder."-"Times Literary Supplement "(London)

"The elegiac gravity of 'Dearest M-, ' on a daughter's death, refuses to release us until its final syllable."-"Library Journal "(starred review)

Essays on poetry by an acclaimed poet-critic.

There can be no doubt that Hayden Carruth is one of the pre-eminent American poets of the late twentieth century. In these poems written since publication of his Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, he speaks with intimate and urgent clarity of love late in life, and in heartrending poems addresses his daughter's struggle against cancer. In others he engages the loves, friendships, and social concerns of a lifetime. With passion and pathos and great good humor, in poems that could only be written by a mature poet at the height of his powers, Carruth achieves a nobility of vision that is rare in any age.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1899 Edition.

This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again - worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work, tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.

This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again - worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work, tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.

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

Including An Accurate Account Of His Numerous Adventures And The Facts Concerning His Several Surprising Escapes From Death Now First Printed In Full.

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!