Synopses & Reviews
Hayden Carruth is a major literary figure and no survey of American poetry is complete without inclusion of his work.
In this newest book of poems—the first since his 1996 National Book Award—Carruth confronts the threadbare memories of old age and the fading winter view. From the bleakest circumstances—the death of his daughter, physical and mental pain, poverty—Carruth defiantly reclaims dignity and beauty. His poetry is at once classical and modern. With the spit and bop of a great jazzman playing all the right notes, Carruth lives his music, finding the perfect low tones of terrible loss, the highs of family and friendship. Yet he is also the wise old sage of classical Greece, warning, riddling, giving generous counsel and insight.
"At Seventy-Five: Rereading an Old Book"
My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
And prayers—
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.
Hayden Carruth has won nearly every major award in poetry, including the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's circle Award. He is the author of 24 previous books of poetry and prose. He lives in Munnsville, NY.
Synopsis
Hayden Carruth is a major literary figure and no survey of American poetry is complete without inclusion of his work.
In this newest book of poems-the first since his 1996 National Book Award-Carruth confronts the threadbare memories of old age and the fading winter view. From the bleakest circumstances-the death of his daughter, physical and mental pain, poverty-Carruth defiantly reclaims dignity and beauty. His poetry is at once classical and modern. With the spit and bop of a great jazzman playing all the right notes, Carruth lives his music, finding the perfect low tones of terrible loss, the highs of family and friendship. Yet he is also the wise old sage of classical Greece, warning, riddling, giving generous counsel and insight.
At Seventy-Five: Rereading an Old Book
My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
And prayers-
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.
Hayden Carruth has won nearly every major award in poetry, including the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's circle Award. He is the author of 24 previous books of poetry and prose. Helives in Munnsville, NY.
Synopsis
Poetry. In this newest book of poems Carruth confronts the threadbare memories and fading winter view of old age. His poems rise from death, physical and mental pain and poverty to reclaim dignity and beauty. His poetry has the spirit and rhythm of a great jazz musician, living the music, finding the perfect low tone of terrible loss, the highs of family and friendship. "Carruth is a people's poet, readily understood, a tribune of our common humanity, welfare, and plight" - The Nation. Carruth is the author of 24 previous books of poetry and prose, including RELUCTANTLY: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS, SELECTED ESSAYS: HAYDEN CARRUTH, and SCRAMBLED EGGS AND WHISKEY: POEMS.
Synopsis
Carruth is a people's poet, readily understood, a tribune of our common humanity, welfare, and plight.--The Nation
About the Author
Hayden Carruth was born on August 3, 1921, in Waterbury, Connecticut, and educated at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago, where he earned a master's degree. His first collection of poems, The Crow and the Heart, was published in 1959. Since then, he published more than thirty books, including Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2006) and Doctor Jazz: Poems 1996-2000 (2001). Other poetry titles include Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995 (1996), which received the National Book Award for Poetry; Collected Longer Poems (1994); Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 (1992), which received the National Book Critics' Circle Award; The Sleeping Beauty (1990); and Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across Nacreous River at Twilight Toward the Distant Islands (1989). Known also for his criticism, Carruth is the author of several prose collections, including Selected Essays and Reviews (Copper Canyon Press, 1996) and Sitting In: Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics (1993), as well as nonfiction works, including Beside the Shadblow Tree: A Memoir of James Laughlin (Copper Canyon Press, 1999) and Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays (1998). He is also the author of a novel, Appendix A (1963), and has edited a number of anthologies, including The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (Bantam, 1970). Informed by his political radicalism and sense of cultural responsibility, many of Carruth's best-known poems are about the people and places of northern Vermont, as well as rural poverty and hardship. About Carruth and his work, the poet Galway Kinnell has said, "This is not a man who sits down to 'write a poem'; rather, some burden of understanding and feeling, some need to know, forces his poems into being. Thoreau said, 'Be it life or death, what we crave is reality.' So it is with Carruth. And even in hell, knowledge itself bestows a halo around the consciousness with, at moments, attains it." Carruth received fellowships from the Bollingen Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 1995 Lannan Literary Fellowship. He was presented with the Lenore Marshall Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Vermont Governor's Medal, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Whiting Award, and the Ruth Lilly Prize, among many others. He taught at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and at the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University. Carruth lived in Vermont for many years before residing in Munnsville, New York, with his wife, the poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth. He died September 29, 2008.