| Windfall: New and Selected Poems Contributor(s): Anderson, Maggie (Author) |
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ISBN: 0822957191 ISBN-13: 9780822957195 Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press OUR PRICE: $18.00 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2000 Annotation: Houses, flowers, dogs, foxes, country music, families, poverty, love, anger and grief are only some of the subjects that this book fills out with closely observed details of day-to-day life. Evoking the landscape and struggles both of town and country in the Appalachian region, this collection includes poems from among Anderson's first three books, along with new work. Poems from Years That Answer focus on learning and growing up, before and after a father's death. Those from Cold Comfort expand that personal outlook to take in the history of the poet's family and the hard life of West Virginia mining towns, while the choices from A Space Filled with Moving contain more extended meditations, including what may be Anderson's finest poem, "Long Story", with its shocking final stanza. With an understated irony, as well as a broad compassion sometimes moved to anger, Anderson's poems reflect an intimate and loving knowledge of the world they evoke, and earn their frustrations honestly. Taken as a whole, however, the poems are largely limited to themes and emotional terrain handled more memorably in the work of other poets, and Anderson's cautions presentations often stall in overly mundane language. This is most apparent in the new poems, which are weighted toward the vicissitudes of academic and artistic life. While it may still be possible to write memorable verse about dogs, arts colonies and European vacations, the poems here lack originality and compelling insight. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - General |
| Dewey: 811 |
| LCCN: 00699522 |
| Series: Pitt Poetry |
| Physical Information: 0.3" H x 6" W x 8.5" (0.32 lbs) 120 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Windfall includes poems from three previous books by Maggie Anderson, along with a generous selection of new work. In this collection we can see over two decades of the growth of a poet memorable for the clarity, strength, and urgency of her voice. Anderson's poems entangle a language, a history, and a group of belongings, and she is both at home and a foreigner in the places she invokes. Every place in these poems seems inhabitable, yet the tensions of these deceptively quiet lines develop out of the clear reluctance or inability of the poet to sit still. Maggie Anderson writes out of deep grief for the political losses of work and money, of life and limb and home in our dangerous times. She remembers and witnesses, and she also speaks eloquently for our private griefs--the loss of family, vitality and self. These poems do not shout; we listen as if following a whisper in the dark. A counterpoint to the sorrows in these poems is a complex and often joyous music, as well as a wry, sometimes self-deprecating humor which saves the work from solemnity. Her rhythms are diverse and intricate; they move deftly from fiddle whine to saxophone, from fugue to blues. |