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Forbidden City
Contributor(s): Mazur, Gail (Author)
ISBN: 022634956X     ISBN-13: 9780226349565
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $20.79  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: March 2016
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American - General
Dewey: 811.54
LCCN: 2015026529
Series: Phoenix Poets
Physical Information: 0.3" H x 6" W x 8.8" (0.60 lbs) 72 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
from "Mount Fuji"

A draughtsman's draughtsman, Hokusai at 70
thought he'd begun to grasp the structures

of birds and beasts, insects and fish, of the way
plants grow, hoped that by 90 he'd have
penetrated to their essential nature.

And more, by 100, I will have reached the stage
where every dot, every mark I make will be
alive. You always loved that resolve, you'd repeat

joyfully--Hokusai's utterance of faith
in work's possibilities, its reward, that,
at 130, he'd perhaps have learned to draw.

Gail Mazur's poems in Forbidden City build an engaging meditative structure upon the elements of mortality and art, eloquently contemplating the relationship of art and life--and the dynamic possibilities of each in combination. At the collection's heart is the poet's long marriage to the artist Michael Mazur (1935-2009). A fascinating range of tone infuses the book--grieving, but clear-eyed rather than lugubrious, sometimes whimsical, even comical, and often exuberant. The note of pleasure, as in an old tradition enriched by transience, runs through the work, even in the final poem, "Grief," where "our ravenous hold on the world" is a powerful central element.


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.