Awards
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Shortlisted for Griffin Poetry Prize
Synopses & Reviews
A Village Life, Louise Glücks eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:
All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.
Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees
The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;
on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.
from tributaries”
Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountains opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.
Glück has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,” as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines expansive, fluent, and full manifesting a calm omniscience. While Glück's manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.
Review
Though it resembles her others least, A Village Life may come to be seen as Glück's most beautiful and moving book so far... [It] shows a ripening of Glück's genius, her mastery for depicting the things of this earth...[and] can be seen as the work of a master poet who has done what many poets long to do: she has written about death immortally.” Rain Taxi
Review
A Village Life magnificently extends the landscapes, the harmonics, and the dramatis personae of Averno ... More than any of Glück's previous volumes, A Village Life has a generous heart, a large spiritual scope in which to imagine the lives of others.” The New Republic
Review
Not many poets can be electrifying while keeping the stakes this hypothermically low. Glück is a master, finely calibrating the shocks and their intervals. This collection, her 11th, is frightening the way a living statue would be frightening if it were to smile at you.” Los Angeles Times
Review
Here is a poet at the unmistakable peak of her expressive power and experience... The characters in A Village Life do what the voice tells them. It says forget, you forget. / It says begin again, you begin again.' Louise Glück begins again, unforgettably, in this profound new collection of poems.” Huffington Post
Review
This 11th book of verse by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück offers beautiful language with a sense of loss and disappointment....The poems in A Village Life combine the intensity of her early work and the longer lines and insight of more recent books. The writing is often hauntingly beautiful....There are stanzas where Glück makes her landscape seem so radiant or exquisite that you don't want to turn the page.” Christian Science Monitor
Review
Like Cavafy's persona pieces, the real subject of these poems is often a particular mood, not the transmission of details that distinguish, say, a child's voice from a farmers.... Glück lets us hear the silence that follows in the confessional. In my favorite poems in A Village Life, she also shows us what one who has heard that silence can now say.” Kenyon Review
Synopsis
A Village Life, Louise Gl ck's eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:
All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.
Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees--
The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;
on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.
--from tributaries
Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountain's opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.
Gl ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry, as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines--expansive, fluent, and full--manifesting a calm omniscience. While Gl ck's manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
A Village Life, Louise Gl ck's eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:
All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.
Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees--
The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;
on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.
--from tributaries
Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountain's opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.
Gl ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry, as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines--expansive, fluent, and full--manifesting a calm omniscience. While Gl ck's manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
A dreamlike collection from the Nobel Prize-winning poet
A Village Life, Louise Gl ck's eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:
All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.
Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees--
The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;
on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.
--from "tributaries"
Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountain's opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.
Gl ck has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as "the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry," as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines--expansive, fluent, and full--manifesting a calm omniscience. While Gl ck's manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.
Synopsis
A Village Life, Louise Glücks eleventh collection of poems, begins in the topography of a village, a Mediterranean world of no definite moment or place:
All the roads in the village unite at the fountain.
Avenue of Liberty, Avenue of the Acacia Trees—
The fountain rises at the center of the plaza;
on sunny days, rainbows in the piss of the cherub.
—from “tributaries”
Around the fountain are concentric circles of figures, organized by age and in degrees of distance: fields, a river, and, like the fountains opposite, a mountain. Human time superimposed on geologic time, all taken in at a glance, without any undue sensation of speed.
Glück has been known as a lyrical and dramatic poet; since Ararat, she has shaped her austere intensities into book-length sequences. Here, for the first time, she speaks as “the type of describing, supervising intelligence found in novels rather than poetry,” as Langdon Hammer has written of her long lines—expansive, fluent, and full—manifesting a calm omniscience. While Glücks manner is novelistic, she focuses not on action but on pauses and intervals, moments of suspension (rather than suspense), in a dreamlike present tense in which poetic speculation and reflection are possible.
Synopsis
Grace Schulman, already known as "an elegiac, highly original religious lyricist" (Harold Bloom), elegantly weaves between generations and continents in her new collection.
Synopsis
“
Without a Claim is a modern Book of Psalms. Indeed, the glory in these radiant sacred songs meld an art of high music with a nuanced love of the world unlike any weve heard before. No matter your mood upon entering this world youll soon be grateful, and enchanted. In any such house of praise, God herself must be grateful.” — Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Failure and
The God of LonelinessGrace Schulman, who has been called “a vital and permanent poet” (Harold Bloom), makes new the life she finds in other cultures and in the distant past. In Without a Claim, she masterfully encompasses music, faith, art, and history. The title poem alludes to the Montauk sachem who sold land without any concept of rights to property, and meditates on our own notion of ownership: “No more than geese in flight, shadowing the lawn, / cries piercing wind, do we possess these fields, / given the title, never the dominion.” She traces the illusion of rights, from land to objects, from our loves to our very selves. Alternatively, she finds permanence in art, whether in galleries or on cave walls, and in music, whether in the concert hall, on the streets of New York, or in the waves at sea.
About the Author
GRACE SCHULMAN is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York Universitys Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978-1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971-2006).
Table of Contents
1
Celebration 3
The Sound 4
Moon Shell 8
Antiques Fair 9
Hurricane 11
Before the Fall 13
Variations on a Line by Whitman 15
Division 16
2
Letter Never Sent 19
Poets Walk, Central Park Mall 23
Street Music, Astor Place 25
Woman on the Ceiling 27
My Fathers Watches 30
Havdalah 33
Charles Street Psalm 35
Walking to Elijah 37
3
Hickories 41
Shadow 42
Yellow 44
Handels Messiah 46
Bells 48
The Last Crossing 50
At the Physical Therapists 52
Danger, 53
4
In Praise of Shards 57
Chauvet 59
Love in the Afternoon 61
The Visit 63
Whelk 65
Green River 68
Fools Gold 69
5
Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire 70
The Night Dancers 75
Cool Jazz 76
At the House of Jackson Pollock 77
Tattoo 79
God Bless the Child 81
100 83
The Printmaker 85
The Unbuilder 87