Product Description

"He is one of our finest poets, " Anthony Hecht has said of Donald Justice. Winner most recently of a 1996 Lannan Literary Award, Justice has been the recipient of almost every contemporary grant and prize for poetry, from the Lamont to the Bollingen and the Pulitzer. The present volume replaces his 1980 SELECTED POEMS and contains, in addition, poems from the last 15 years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435178 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-01
• Released on: 1997-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1959, Justice's first collection won the Lamont Prize; 20 years later his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer. In 1987, The Sunset Maker (poems and other works) appeared and A Donald Justice Reader, another selection of mostly poems, followed in 1991. This collection features works culled from six previous titles, plus a dozen uncollected poems, among them a pantoum and sonnet (among the 15 poems labeled new are three from Reader, with only minor changes here). Meter and rhyme are featured throughout. If not using?often irregularly?a classic form, Justice improvises one, melding language, meaning and rhythm in a seemingly seamless whole. A haunting four-part sequence, My South, epitomizes his work: two "sonnets" don't rhyme, two only irregularly; one has 13 lines; meters vary. Small revisions of 1991's South are telling, e.g., part 4, "On the Train," now includes the lines "unless/ We should pass down dim corridors again," which give a wider, mysterious meaning to the original, specific phrase "darkened aisle." Until we see a complete collected works, this is probably the definitive Justice.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The definitive Justice so far; from a poet who writes purely and precisely of simple things.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Renowned for the purity of his form and the exactness of his language and considered the one true heir to Wallace Stevens, Justice achieves a precision in his poems that aligns our hearts and minds like north draws a compass needle. This stirring volume replaces Justice's Selected Poems (1980) and includes poems from six earlier collections, beginning with Bad Dreams (1959) and continuing through The Sunset Maker (1987), but its crowning glory is a wealth of beautiful new work. Justice writes about sadness and loneliness, time and memory, and other forces greater than ourselves, such as the turn of the earth and the spread of shadows, the tread of history and the "circuits of the lost." In each poem, Justice's perfectly structured lines carry the current of his brooding emotions like tree limbs channel sap and bones contain the dance of corpuscles, and this sense of controlled motion is echoed in his favorite images: buses and trains, women looking out windows, the path the morning light takes through a house or across a garden. And always, Justice advises us to see "all things for what they are." Donna Seaman

Customer Reviews

One Of Our Best Contemporary Poets
Twenty or more years ago-- it may have been longer-- I heard a poet read his poetry at Emory University in Atlanta. One of his poems seared itself into my brain and heart and I have never forgotten it: "On the Death of Friends in Childhood."

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

Poetry doesn't get much better than this. Yet in this quite wonderful collection, Mr. Justice includes poem after poem that both engage the intellect and wrap themselves around our hearts. There is a beautiful poem about the death of his grandmother entitled "First Death", and a poem about growing old, "Men at Forty": Men at forty/Learn to close softly/The doors to rooms they will not be/Coming back to. "On an Anniversary" is a beautiful love poem written (I assume) to his wife of thirty years: "Time (but as with a glove)/Lightly touches you, my love."

The list goes on and on. Unlike many modern poets, Mr. Justice writes in many styles besides the free verse that has had a kudzu effect on a lot of poetry-- sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, etc.

I mourn Mr. Justice's recent death but take comfort in knowing that he remains very much alive through his marvelous verse.

Justice: New and Selected Poems
Donald Justice expresses himself powerfully through an economy of words. His poignant ideas and feelings penetrate his highly structured poetic forms and rhyming schemes without seeming stilted or academic. In accepting the formal and rather out-of-mode forms of poetry, he could compare to painters Sargent or Whistler.

Gut wrenching, unforgettable poetry
The poems of Donald Justice reach into the deepest recesses of memory, time, and reflection. There is a certain elegance and eerie understatement about his work that is the hallmark of a great talent. While I think it would be unfair to compare him to Philip Larkin, who was far more of a conscious "Nay-sayer" than Justice ever was, his gentle melancholy and razor-blade lucidity pervade even his lighter work:

"On The Death Of Friends In Childhood

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows"

This luminous regret coupled with the appreciation of fleeting beauty is tempered by the not quite ultimate, but certainly undying, hope of a kind of redemption:

"A Birthday Candle"

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish"

For all his seriousness, Justice was not afraid to play around, even sometimes employing Dadaist techniques in the subject matter of his poetry: "Ode To A Dressmaker's Dummy", one of his best pieces, was inspired by the instructions found on the back of a store-front window dummy. This is the kind of work that deserves national attention, and I have little doubt that Donald Justice's poetic legacy will with time become legendary.