Product Description

Collected Shorter Poems presents hundreds of lyric, short narrative, comic, meditative, nature, and erotic poems that Hayden Carruth wrote over a forty-five year period. This is a reissue of the book, with new cover design. Noted for the breadth of his linguistic and formal resources, influenced by jazz and the blues, Carruth gives his poems a philosophical resonance. His explorations of rural poverty and hardship— sometimes grim, sometimes funny—are deeply informed by political radicalism and cultural responsibility.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #847135 in Books
• Published on: 1992-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.com Review
For decades Carruth has been admired by other writers for his use of varied forms and styles, and, as did Frost before him, he has won the loyalty of many readers with his keen observations of language and the everyday. This extensive collection ranges widely, from Hayden Carruth's early 1950s traditional works to his later anti-war poems; from his sensual explorations to more narrative works. Carruth includes what others might discard as ugly, and speaks quietly where others might bombast. It is this quality that makes Carruth a talented poet, unique voice and subtle critic. Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.

From Library Journal
From a poet who has "earn[ed] the unqualified admiration of both [his] academic and experimental peers" (LJ 4/1/92), a sampling of a half century of work.-- the unqualified admiration of both [his] academic and experimental peers" (LJ 4/1/92), a sampling of a half century of work.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Abandoned Ranch, Big Bend
Adolf Eichmann
Aeolian
Algeria
Alive
All Things
Almanach Du Printemps Vivarois
Anent Socrates, Or Somebody
Anima
Anxious View Of A Tree
Assignment
August
August 14, 1961
August First
A Backyard In California
The Baler
The Bearer
Bears At Raspberry Time
Billie Holiday
The Birds Of Vietnam
The Birth Of Venus
The Bitcheries Of Madison Avenue
Block
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
Bouquet In Dog Time
The Buddhist Painter Prepares To Paint
Burning Dawn
Cappadocian Song
Capper Kaplinski At The North Side Cue Club
Carnations
Cave Painting
The Chase In Spring
Chicory
Coming Down To The Desert At Lordburg, N.m.
Comparative Iconography
Concerning Necessity
Continuo
The Cows At Night
The Cowshed Blues
Cross My Heart And Hope To Die It Was The Very Same Song ...
Crow's Mark
Crucifixion
Dedicationin These Days
Ekstase, Alptraum, Schlaf In Einem Nest Von Flammen
Emergency Haying
Essay
Essay On Death
Essay On Love
Essay On Marriage
Essay On Stone
Eternal City
Eternity Blues
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 1
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 2
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 3
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 4
The Event Itself
An Excursus Of Reassurance In Begonia Time
Existence Before Essence
The Existing Pool
An Expatiation On The Combining Of Weathers At Thirty ....
Expectantly And Fearfully I Sing
The Fact Of The Matter
Family Reunion
The Far-removed Mountain Men
The Fat Lady
For Papa
For Thon Demgeorne Dreorigne Oft
Fourth
Fragment
Freedom And Discipline
French Hill
Godhulivela
Gods
Green Mountain Idyl
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Hall Five %the Window Bars Are Spider Webs
Ho-hum Again
Homage To John Lyly And Frankie Newton
Homecoming
Horogikos
How Lewisburg, Pa., Escaped The Avenging Angel
How To
Hymn To Artemis
I Could Take
I Know, I Remember, But How Can I Help You
I Tell You For Several Years Of My Madness ...
'i've Never Seen Such A Real Hard Time Before'
If It Were Not For You
The Impossible Indispensibility Of The Ars Poetica
In Deep Winter The Sea Roams
In Memorium
In Tobey Woods
Incident Of May
The Incorrigible Dirigible
The Insomniac Sleeps Well Once And For All
Johnny Spain's White Heifer
The Joy And Agony Of Improvision
Joyhn Dryden
Lady
Lana
The Language Of Flowere, Etc.
A Leaf From Mr. Dyer's Woods
Letter To Maxine Sullivan
Light In The Locust Tree
The Line
Lines Written In An Asylum
Listen
The Little Fire In The Woods
A Little Old Funky Homeric Blues For Herm
Living Alone
Loneliness: An Outburst Of Hexasyllables
The Loon On Forrester's Pond
Lost
Marge
Marshall Washer
Marvin Mccabe
The Master, Grieved With Age
Meadow House
Meditation In The Presence Of 'ostrich Walk'
Mild Winter
Missing The Bow In The Henhouse
Mix The Ingredients
Moon-set
The Mountain
The Mountain Cabin
The Mouse
Museum Piece
My Hut
My Meadow
Names
Naming For Love
New Hartford
New Orleans
No Matter What, After All, And That Beautiful Word So
No Supervening Thought Of Grace
None
Not Transhistorical Death, Or At Least Not Quite
Notes From Robin Hill Cottage
November Jeans Song
November: Indian Summer
Of Brook And Stone
Of Distress Being Humiliated By The Classical Chinese Poets
The Oldest Killed Lake In North America
On A Certain Engagement South Of Seoul
On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam
On Canann Mountain Meadow
Once And Again
Once More
Once On A Night In Spring
Ontological Episode Of The Asylum
Opusthirteen
Ovid, Old Buddy, I Would Discourse With You A While
Pa Mccabe
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Phone
The Poet
Poetical Abstracts:1 Chronological
Poetical Abstracts:2 Metaphysical
Poetical Abstracts:3 Classicalcal
Poetical Abstracts:4 Rhopaloceral
Poetical Abstracts:5 Introspectiona;
The Point
A Post-impressionist Susurration For The First Of November
Pray You Young Woman
The President's Speech
Purana, Meaning Once Upon A Time
Questions
R.m.d.
The Ravine
Ray
Re-acquaintance
Reflexive
Regarding Chainsaws
Renaissance
Return To Love
Rimrock, Where It Is
The Rule Of The Majority Is
Rummage
Sam And Poll Go Back To The City
The Saving Way
Septic Tank
Sex
Shake, Well Before Using
Silence
Simple
The Smallish Son
The Snow: 1
The Snow: 2
The Sociology Of Toyotas And Jade Chrysanthemums
Sometimes When Lovers Lie Quietly Together, Unexpectedly ...
Song
Song Of Two Crows
Song: Luxury
Song: So Often, So Long I Have Thought
Song: The Famous Vision Of America
Song: The Old, Old Man
Song: The Young Man With The Guitar, Testing
Song:so Why Does This Dead Carnation
Songd About What Comes Down: The Complete Works Of Mr. ....
Sonnet
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The Sorrow Song
The Sound Of Snow
Sparrows
Speaking For Them
Spring 1967
Spring Notes From Robin Hill
Stepping Backward
Summer's Early End At Hudson's Bay
Sure, Said Benny Goodman
Survival As Tao, Beginning At 5:00 A.m.
Tabula Rasa
That I Had Had Courage When Young
Thaw
They Accuse Me Of Not Talking
This Decoration
This Song
Three Songs:1 Crossing
Three Songs:2 Afternoon
Three Songs:3 Transportation
To Know In Reverie The Only Phenomenology Of The Absolute
Too Tenuous
Twilight Comes
Two Romantic Pieces
Underground The Darkness Is The Light
Une Presence Absolue
Unnatural Unselection
Valentine
The Way Of The Conventicle Of The Trees
What A Wonder Among The Instraments Is The Walloping Tram...
When Howitzers Began
When I Wrote A Little
Who Cares, Long As It's B-flat
The Wild Swans At Norfolk
Woodsmoke At 70
Words For My Daughter From The Asylum
Words In A Certain Appropriate Mode
The World As Will And Representation
The Wreck Of The Circus Train
Afternoon Of A Faun: Eclogue
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any living writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company. -- The New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews

A Gathering of the Best of the Best
One of the most significant poetry publications at the end of the twentieth century is Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems. For too long Carruth suffered the lack of a consistent publisher; as a result, much of his best work has gone unnoticed or too little noticed. Notable in a volume as diverse as this are Carruth's monologues and poems about characters delivered in lines that echo their speech; as the speaker in "John Dryden" notes, "have you noticed / I can't talk about him without talking like him?" Like Frost, Carruth captures a sense of character and place while subtly presenting a complex set of meanings, discovering the kind of "natural symbol" ordinary people grapple with to understand their lives. One of the most powerful, "Marvin McCabe," is a monologue by an inarticulate speaker whose friend "Hayden" acts as amanuensis for the poem. Marvin McCabe details his upbringing and the accident that left him incapacitated--able to think but not talk. Other poems in this mode include "Johnny Spain's White Heifer," "Lady," "Marshall Washer," and "Regarding Chainsaws."

Carruth's lyrics display a range of diction and vocabulary which allows him to modulate easily from low to high style and to incorporate moments of humor in otherwise serious, even solemn poems without violating that tone. His lyrics often derive from careful observation of the natural world, not merely to see things but to consider. Typically, Carruth presents his observations through details objective enough to allow us to "see" the situation yet in language that renders the emotional construct of the subject.

The later poems in the volume, following Carruth's move to Syracuse, New York, in 1979, shift not only idiom and locale, as in Asphalt Georgics, a group of poems written in syllabic ballad stanzas employing frequently hyphenated enjambments, but open up very different poetic territory in the Whitmanesque-lined and loopingly discursive poems from Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands. The first of these laments the passing of the agrarian lifestyle that provided the basis for traditional georgics while celebrating the persistence of human life amid suburban sprawl that threatens that spirit. The strategies of apparent tangent and indirection Carruth uses to build these poems evolves into structures, in the second, which accumulate like jazz riffs and motifs: they seem to diverge wildly from the "point" of the poem only to swoop around at the end to enlarge the idea of point.

Finally, a collected poems provides a perspective on a poet's career. And this volume demonstrates what some readers have long known: Hayden Carruth possesses greater range of style, scope of subject, and diversity of formal skills than any other poet working in the United States today.

Especially...
Especially poignant is Carruth's poem "Marvin McCabe," the story of a man who loses his power of speech in a drunk-driving accident..