| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
viii, 218 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Valentines to the wide world, 1959: Three valentines to the wide world ; The gentle snorer ; Woman waiting ; Death by aesthetics ; A relative and an absolute ; A kind of music ; Toward a definition of marriage -- A time of bees, 1964: Elementary attitudes ; Recovery ; Pot-au-feu ; Notes from a suburban heart ; Quebec suite ; Earth tremors felt in Missouri ; A garland for Christopher Smart ; The gardener to his god ; Sestina for warm seasons ; Open letter, personal ; An annual and perennial problem -- To see, to take, 1970: A Christmas card, after the assassinations ; Causes -; Leda ; The Creation ; The Pieta, Rhenish, 14th C., the Cloisters ; Advice to a god ; Billings and cooings from the Berkeley Barb (want-ad section) ; Footnotes to The autobiography of Bertrand Russell ; Postcards from Cape Split ; In the hospital for tests ; Remedies, maladies, reasons ; Open letter from a constant reader ; The miser ; Relationships ; The twins ; Leda reconsidered -- Bedtime stories, 1972: Bedtime stories ; Three ; Four ; Five ; Six ; Seven ; Nine ; Twelve -- New poems from merciful disguises, 1973: Peony stalks ; Midas and wife ; Economics ; The talker ; The cities of the plain ; A small excursion ; End of May ; What the motorcycle said ; A view -- Letters from a father, and other poems, 1982: Lives of the poets ; Growing up askew ; Photographs ; The stream ; In the Missouri Ozarks ; Moose in the morning, northern Maine ; The learners ; Caring for surfaces ; The vision test ; The Ballad of Blossom -- Near changes, 1990: Birthstones ; Late loving ; Views ; Pigeon eggs ; In bed with a book ; To a friend who threw away hair dyes ; Gardens ; The insight lady of St. Louis on zoos ; The block ; Memoir ; Headlines ; Double sonnet for minimalists ; Sonnet for minimalists -- Firefall, 1993: Addendum to "The block" -- The marriage sculptor ; Poets in late winter ; Rascasse ; "We are in your area" ; Endings ; For May Swenson ; Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat in the kitchen ; Late wishes ; Insiders ; Long stretch ; The beginning ; Miranda grows up ; Closures ; Falls ; The delivery ; Notes to "Firefall." |
| Summary |
This selection of the author's award-winning work spans four decades. Beginning with her classic Valentines to the Wide World (1959), encompassing the intimate voice of Bedtime Stories (1972) and the moving Letters from a Father (1982), crowned by the life-spanning Firefall (1993), Selected Poems reacquaints us with a poet whose ear is keenly tuned to the music of nature and human conversation. In lively and varied forms, from her minimalist sonnets to her magisterial longer pieces, she captures a multiplicity of worlds within her world, in a tone inflected by both Midwestern pragmatism and a deep metaphysical intelligence. As she contemplates the act of reading in bed, a Rhenish sculpture in the Cloisters, or the loss of her mother, the poet goes beyond context to discover consciousness: an expression of the larger ideas and emotions, finally, the art, in the smallest details of our lives. She was the U.S. poet laureate, 1992-1993. |
| Subject |
American poetry -- 20th century.
|
|
Poetry.
|
|
American poetry. (OCoLC)fst00807348
|
|
Poetry. (OCoLC)fst01067691
|
| Chronological Term |
1900-1999
|
| Genre/Form |
Poetry. (OCoLC)fst01423828
|
|
Poetry.
|
| Added Author |
Poets Laureate Collection (Library of Congress) DLC
|
| Added Title |
Poems. Selections
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Van Duyn, Mona. Poems. Selections. Selected poems. 1st ed. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2002 (OCoLC)606787362 |
| ISBN |
0375413693 |
|
9780375413698 |
|
0375709800 (pbk.) |
|
9780375709807 (pbk.) |
|
