University of Chicago Press, 1989 Paper: 978-0-226-67707-1 | Cloth: 978-0-226-67706-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3566.O8323I8 1989 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This sophisticated first collection by Jim Powell synthesizes personal and world history to produce a compelling vision of the past, through verse letters to friends and relatives, translations of Horace, Propertius, Sappho, and others, and allusions to ancient figures of history and mythology.
"I find it difficult to overpraise the ease of this writing, which in one act combines succinct physical presentation and explanation of it. . . . It is perhaps here that Jim Powell, not yet forty, most shows his superiority to many of his contemporaries and seniors. He not only understands the way in which opposites are necessary to one another, he achieves his knowledge in the poem, and so we grasp it as we read. . . . he has tapped a subject matter that is endless and important, and by the thoroughgoingness and the subtlety of his exploration shows he has the power to do almost anything."—Thom Gunn, Shelf Life
"His title burns away everywhere in the volume, in the fevers of eros, divination, memory, destruction, and grief. . . . Page for page, there is more sheer fine, clear, yet syntactically subtle and metaphorically gorgeous writing in Powell than I have seen in some time."—Mary Kinzie, Poetry
"Jim Powell's poems, like those of Thomas Hardy, are haunted forms, full of ghosts and mocking gods, shadows and foreshadowings. But Powell is a Hardy whose poems we've never read, a Hardy with his hand in the blaze, not stirring the ash in a cold and wind-torn grate."—Jennifer Clarvoe, The Threepenny Review
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jim Powell, a native of Berkeley, has published poems in many magazines.
REVIEWS
"I find it difficult to overpraise the ease of this writing, which in one act combines succinct physical presentation and explanation of it. . . . It is perhaps here that Jim Powell, not yet forty, most shows his superiority to many of his contemporaries and seniors. He not only understands the way in which opposites are necessary to one another, he achieves his knowledge in the poem, and so we grasp it as we read. In the meeting of opposites--whether of disease and health or of sea-fog and branches or of Circe and Odysseus--he has tapped a subject matter that is endless and important, and by the thoroughgoingness and the subtlety of his exploration shows he has the power to do almost anything."
— Thom Gunn, Shelf Life
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Crooked House
It Was Fever That Made the World
Home Free
Revisiting The Haight
A Letter
Heat
A Drink of Water
Inscriptions
Lighting The Furnace
Sappho: To Aphrodite
Song
Baudelaire On Love
Napoleon Reviendra
The Crooked House Fire Signs
The Weaver A Glass Blower:
A Woman Watering
Mare's-Tails
Broken Bottles
Captives
Time and Light
In The Desert
Circe
Cleopatra
Heights
Snow Drifts
A Ghost
In Late March
Fire Signs
Between The Teeth
Housekeeping
The Piper
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Chicago Press, 1989 Paper: 978-0-226-67707-1 Cloth: 978-0-226-67706-4
This sophisticated first collection by Jim Powell synthesizes personal and world history to produce a compelling vision of the past, through verse letters to friends and relatives, translations of Horace, Propertius, Sappho, and others, and allusions to ancient figures of history and mythology.
"I find it difficult to overpraise the ease of this writing, which in one act combines succinct physical presentation and explanation of it. . . . It is perhaps here that Jim Powell, not yet forty, most shows his superiority to many of his contemporaries and seniors. He not only understands the way in which opposites are necessary to one another, he achieves his knowledge in the poem, and so we grasp it as we read. . . . he has tapped a subject matter that is endless and important, and by the thoroughgoingness and the subtlety of his exploration shows he has the power to do almost anything."—Thom Gunn, Shelf Life
"His title burns away everywhere in the volume, in the fevers of eros, divination, memory, destruction, and grief. . . . Page for page, there is more sheer fine, clear, yet syntactically subtle and metaphorically gorgeous writing in Powell than I have seen in some time."—Mary Kinzie, Poetry
"Jim Powell's poems, like those of Thomas Hardy, are haunted forms, full of ghosts and mocking gods, shadows and foreshadowings. But Powell is a Hardy whose poems we've never read, a Hardy with his hand in the blaze, not stirring the ash in a cold and wind-torn grate."—Jennifer Clarvoe, The Threepenny Review
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jim Powell, a native of Berkeley, has published poems in many magazines.
REVIEWS
"I find it difficult to overpraise the ease of this writing, which in one act combines succinct physical presentation and explanation of it. . . . It is perhaps here that Jim Powell, not yet forty, most shows his superiority to many of his contemporaries and seniors. He not only understands the way in which opposites are necessary to one another, he achieves his knowledge in the poem, and so we grasp it as we read. In the meeting of opposites--whether of disease and health or of sea-fog and branches or of Circe and Odysseus--he has tapped a subject matter that is endless and important, and by the thoroughgoingness and the subtlety of his exploration shows he has the power to do almost anything."
— Thom Gunn, Shelf Life
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Crooked House
It Was Fever That Made the World
Home Free
Revisiting The Haight
A Letter
Heat
A Drink of Water
Inscriptions
Lighting The Furnace
Sappho: To Aphrodite
Song
Baudelaire On Love
Napoleon Reviendra
The Crooked House Fire Signs
The Weaver A Glass Blower:
A Woman Watering
Mare's-Tails
Broken Bottles
Captives
Time and Light
In The Desert
Circe
Cleopatra
Heights
Snow Drifts
A Ghost
In Late March
Fire Signs
Between The Teeth
Housekeeping
The Piper
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE