| Zeppo's First Wife: New and Selected Poems Contributor(s): Mazur, Gail (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226514471 ISBN-13: 9780226514475 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $29.70 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2005 Annotation: from "Enormously Sad" . . . Sad, so sad-compared to what? To your earlier more oblivious state? It never was oblivious enough- always those presentiments of sadness prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, "Get outside" "yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out--" but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand, and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing! And you, standing there in the salty scouring air- will you still be" enormously sad," While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time that you have for your puny enormous sadness. Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur's poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. "Zeppo's First Wife," which includes excerpts from Mazur's four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur's explorations of "this fallen world, this loony world" are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility--evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized "Baseball," a stunning bird's-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects--from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world wherepower and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - General |
| Dewey: 811.54 |
| LCCN: 2005043095 |
| Series: Phoenix Poets (Hardcover) |
| Physical Information: 0.93" H x 6.34" W x 8.84" (1.45 lbs) 264 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: from Enormously Sad . . . Sad, so sad-compared to what? To your earlier more oblivious state? It never was oblivious enough- always those presentiments of sadness prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, Get outside yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out-- but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand, and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing And you, standing there in the salty scouring air- will you still be enormously sad, While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time that you have for your puny enormous sadness. Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur's poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo's First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur's four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur's explorations of "this fallen world, this loony world" are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility--evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized "Baseball," a stunning bird's-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects--from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak. |
Contributor Bio(s): Mazur, Gail: - Gail Mazur is the founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry series and the author of six previous books of poems, including They Can t Take That Away from Me, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Insitute of Radcliffe College as well as the St. Botolph Club Foundation Distinguished Artist Award. |