Synopses & Reviews
Chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship, The Eternal City revives Princeton's tradition of publishing some of today's best poetry.
With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber's collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim.
Review
"Kathleen Graber is mistress of these graceful inquisitions – and agile cadences. Her wings are unclipped. She convinces as a poet who has the freedom of the city – of the eternal city."
--Kate Kellaway, The Observer
Review
"Her long-lined work grapples with loss, illness, and transience, allowing itself to be highly personal while never losing sight of the larger context of loss: the human condition. It's serious poetry as inviting as an intimate conversation. See for yourself." --Meghan O'Rourke, NPR
Review
Graber is one of the most interesting, slippery and philosophical new poets to come along in a while. . . . [W]hat makes Graber's poems so fresh and wild are the associative slips that happen between the distant past and the urgent present. -- Publishers Weekly [N]othing short of a revelation. Graber is a new poet that we should have always had but didn't until just now. Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud, though not in the tricky, needley way of John Ashbery, but like someone very smart and very well-read trying to get to the bottom of every troubling and exciting thought. She thinks about her day to day life, family and friends, their every day goings on, their deaths and big tragedies, and she thinks about big ideas--life, death, meaning--mostly in the same poem. She name-checks some of the big figures of Western thought--Marcus Aurelius and Walter Benjamin, for instance--but does so as if she were talking to or about friends. She manages to do a scholar's work in these poems without the alienating haughtiness of many scholars. And despite their learned-ness, these are poems anyone could love. . . . If you only read one book of poetry this year, that's not enough, but start with this one. -- Craig Teicher, Publishers Weekly Graber's book--this is her second--is one of the few to come out in 2010 that has joined the little clutch I have of poetry books I read and reread. It's an unusually wise and sturdy book for a poet whose career is so young. . . . Graber isn't a formal innovator, nor is her subject matter--family, love, friendship, death, and the great books of classical literature--new to poetry, but she is nonetheless an absolute original. . . . Which is not to say she is by any means a grandiose poet. She's more of a very smart friend. Her problems are common--how to get along with others, how to make everyday love last and/or hurt less, how to have fun in the midst of a typically difficult life--and her poems offer, if not solutions (for there really are no solutions, are there?), company, and really good reading. -- ig Morgan Teicher, National Book Critics Circle board member A really unusual, engaging second book. Graber writes philosophical, meditative poems in a diction that's strangely natural and conversational; one poem is occasioned by leaving her keys in the apartment complex laundry room and locking herself out, another by rereading Walter Benjamin. The effect is of eavesdropping on the neurotic yet rigorous mind of an admired friend--the kind of unpretentious person who genuinely turns to books for solace. Her long-lined work grapples with loss, illness, and transience, allowing itself to be highly personal while never losing sight of the larger context of loss: the human condition. It's serious poetry as inviting as an intimate conversation. See for yourself. -- Meghan O'Rourke, NPR Graber's poems like to pose as effortless journal entries, but these are highly structured, artfully rendered missives that unfold inward. -- Dean Rader, San Francisco Chronicle Graber, who draws on philosophy and theology, knows how to juxtapose large ideas with small moments. . . . Her careful balancing and sensitive descriptions often feel as refreshing as a cold drink on a hot summer day. That's especially true with the heart of this collection, 12 interlocking poems that begin with quotations from Marcus Aurelius. . . . This series demonstrates why ancient ideas are relevant today, and why Graber deserves to be in the company of such accomplished poets. -- Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post In Graber's poems, past, present, and future states of mind are coexistent with real and imagined worlds. This adds complex layering to her elegant and well-crafted long lines. . . . Shape-shifting and particularity-making, Graber's themes encompass a vast array of subjects, from religious iconography to graffiti to placards of state bureaucracy, yet in her skillful hands, the images cohere and we travel with her, those 285 steps of the Siegessaule. . . . A brilliant new voice is calling out from these exquisitely drawn verses. -- Losana Boyd, First Things [O]utstanding collection. . . . These poems are like cherishable letters from a friend abroad. . . . Graber reminds one that poetry can be the most liberating form. . . . Kathleen Graber is mistress of these graceful inquisitions--and agile cadences. Her wings are unclipped. She convinces as a poet who has the freedom of the city--of the eternal city. -- Kate Kellaway, The Observer Secretary of unwhispered announcements, Kathleen Graber traces the outlines of meaning with a sure, deliberate hand. Her engaging ruminations merge forms: diary, letter, and essay. In this second collection, she extends her reputation as a poet of 'beauty and deeply felt intelligence.' Graber holds the hammer of time at both ends, beating out ideas into images and conversely, images into ideas. History and memory course through the pages, reintegrated into the present by insightful observations. . . . 'Loneliness, the one defendable empire,' never looked better. -- Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Brooklyn Rail Kathleen Graber is an incredibly serious, intelligent and technically-gifted poet. -- John Deming, Coldfront Magazine Kathleen Graber's aptly titled second collection of poetry, The Eternal City, questions the reality and logic of what it means to communicate with the past, present, and future. From the first poem until the last she is in conversation with 'the eternal,' but more specifically with human interaction and thinking that jumps back and forth on an infinite timeline. This trope is one of the most successful, and intriguing, threads throughout her book. . . . The underlying success here is that Graber takes unrelated texts and persons and intricately weaves them together with forceful language and aesthetic resonance. -- Lana Rakhman, TriQuarterly [T]hrough sheer persistence I'll find a book in which almost every poem makes me fall down, so dizzied am I by the world spinning and resolving itself in new ways. Such is the experience I had with Kathleen Graber's The Eternal City. . . . [T]he book is barely able to contain these thought-full poems that spool outward into the world around the poet, both the world of the world and the world of the mind, and curl back on themselves. -- Marilyn McCabe, ConnotationPress.com
Review
"Graber is one of the most interesting, slippery and philosophical new poets to come along in a while. . . . [W]hat makes Graber's poems so fresh and wild are the associative slips that happen between the distant past and the urgent present."--Publishers Weekly
Review
"[N]othing short of a revelation. Graber is a new poet that we should have always had but didn't until just now. Graber is the kind of poet who thinks out loud, though not in the tricky, needley way of John Ashbery, but like someone very smart and very well-read trying to get to the bottom of every troubling and exciting thought. She thinks about her day to day life, family and friends, their every day goings on, their deaths and big tragedies, and she thinks about big ideas--life, death, meaning--mostly in the same poem. She name-checks some of the big figures of Western thought--Marcus Aurelius and Walter Benjamin, for instance--but does so as if she were talking to or about friends. She manages to do a scholar's work in these poems without the alienating haughtiness of many scholars. And despite their learned-ness, these are poems anyone could love. . . . If you only read one book of poetry this year, that's not enough, but start with this one."--Craig Teicher, Publishers Weekly
Review
"Graber's book--this is her second--is one of the few to come out in 2010 that has joined the little clutch I have of poetry books I read and reread. It's an unusually wise and sturdy book for a poet whose career is so young. . . . Graber isn't a formal innovator, nor is her subject matter--family, love, friendship, death, and the great books of classical literature--new to poetry, but she is nonetheless an absolute original. . . . Which is not to say she is by any means a grandiose poet. She's more of a very smart friend. Her problems are common--how to get along with others, how to make everyday love last and/or hurt less, how to have fun in the midst of a typically difficult life--and her poems offer, if not solutions (for there really are no solutions, are there?), company, and really good reading."--Craig Morgan Teicher, National Book Critics Circle board member
Review
"A really unusual, engaging second book. Graber writes philosophical, meditative poems in a diction that's strangely natural and conversational; one poem is occasioned by leaving her keys in the apartment complex laundry room and locking herself out, another by rereading Walter Benjamin. The effect is of eavesdropping on the neurotic yet rigorous mind of an admired friend--the kind of unpretentious person who genuinely turns to books for solace. Her long-lined work grapples with loss, illness, and transience, allowing itself to be highly personal while never losing sight of the larger context of loss: the human condition. It's serious poetry as inviting as an intimate conversation. See for yourself."--Meghan O'Rourke, NPR
Review
"Graber's poems like to pose as effortless journal entries, but these are highly structured, artfully rendered missives that unfold inward."--Dean Rader, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Graber, who draws on philosophy and theology, knows how to juxtapose large ideas with small moments. . . . Her careful balancing and sensitive descriptions often feel as refreshing as a cold drink on a hot summer day. That's especially true with the heart of this collection, 12 interlocking poems that begin with quotations from Marcus Aurelius. . . . This series demonstrates why ancient ideas are relevant today, and why Graber deserves to be in the company of such accomplished poets."--Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post
Review
"In Graber's poems, past, present, and future states of mind are coexistent with real and imagined worlds. This adds complex layering to her elegant and well-crafted long lines. . . . Shape-shifting and particularity-making, Graber's themes encompass a vast array of subjects, from religious iconography to graffiti to placards of state bureaucracy, yet in her skillful hands, the images cohere and we travel with her, those 285 steps of the Siegessaule. . . . A brilliant new voice is calling out from these exquisitely drawn verses."--Losana Boyd, First Things
Review
"[O]utstanding collection. . . . These poems are like cherishable letters from a friend abroad. . . . Graber reminds one that poetry can be the most liberating form. . . . Kathleen Graber is mistress of these graceful inquisitions--and agile cadences. Her wings are unclipped. She convinces as a poet who has the freedom of the city--of the eternal city."--Kate Kellaway, The Observer
Review
"Secretary of unwhispered announcements, Kathleen Graber traces the outlines of meaning with a sure, deliberate hand. Her engaging ruminations merge forms: diary, letter, and essay. In this second collection, she extends her reputation as a poet of 'beauty and deeply felt intelligence.' Graber holds the hammer of time at both ends, beating out ideas into images and conversely, images into ideas. History and memory course through the pages, reintegrated into the present by insightful observations. . . . 'Loneliness, the one defendable empire,' never looked better."--Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Brooklyn Rail
Review
"Kathleen Graber is an incredibly serious, intelligent and technically-gifted poet."--John Deming, Coldfront Magazine
Review
"Kathleen Graber's aptly titled second collection of poetry, The Eternal City, questions the reality and logic of what it means to communicate with the past, present, and future. From the first poem until the last she is in conversation with 'the eternal,' but more specifically with human interaction and thinking that jumps back and forth on an infinite timeline. This trope is one of the most successful, and intriguing, threads throughout her book. . . . The underlying success here is that Graber takes unrelated texts and persons and intricately weaves them together with forceful language and aesthetic resonance."--Lana Rakhman, TriQuarterly
Review
"[T]hrough sheer persistence I'll find a book in which almost every poem makes me fall down, so dizzied am I by the world spinning and resolving itself in new ways. Such is the experience I had with Kathleen Graber's The Eternal City. . . . [T]he book is barely able to contain these thought-full poems that spool outward into the world around the poet, both the world of the world and the world of the mind, and curl back on themselves."--Marilyn McCabe, ConnotationPress.com
Review
Kathleen Graber is an incredibly serious, intelligent and technically-gifted poet. Jeffrey Cyphers Wright - Brooklyn Rail
Review
Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Nonfiction
Winner of the 2012 Book Merit Award in the General Trade, Poetry Series, New York Book Show
Winner of the 2011 Literary Award for Poetry, Library of Virginia
Finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle in Poetry
Finalist for the 2011 William Carlos Williams Award, Poetry Society of America
Review
“Carters is a poetry of a resolute middle distance, firmly of this world: between the dust under the earth and the dust of space there exists the place that the poem can illumine.”—Helen Vendler, New York Review of Books
Review
“[Carter] writes American poetry the way that William Faulkner wrote American novels. . . . [Carters poems] have the homespun flavor of our native music—ballads, country blues, and sweet, clear, understated lyrics.”—Sally A. Lodge,
Publishers Weekly
Review
"Jared Carter writes the kind of poetry that death does not touch. He brings us a very different atmosphere from this crazy techie world, with a command of metaphor and the bones of memory that do not lie. We trust this poet's vision."—Grace Cavalieri, danmurano.com
Review
"Those of us who practice the craft of poetry will want to keep Darkened Rooms of Summer close at hand, so we can study these poems, and wonder how Jared Carter ushers us so seamlessly into his world, and thus, more deeply into our own."—James Crews, basalt
Review
"Jared Carter's poetry is pure, home-spun Americana, full of small-town people and places in the tradition of Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson."—Portland Book Review
Synopsis
Chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship,
The Eternal City revives Princeton's tradition of publishing some of today's best poetry.
With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber's collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim.
Synopsis
Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award
With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber's award-winning second collection of poetry brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim.
Synopsis
Chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship,
The Eternal City revives Princeton's tradition of publishing some of today's best poetry.
With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber's collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim.
Synopsis
For nearly half a century, Jared Carter has been quietly mapping the American heartland. Line by line, his poetry has shown us the landscape, sounded the voices, conjured the music, and tested the silence of the ever-changing and yet ever-constant Midwest that figures so prominently in the American story. And yet what we find in Carters poetry is endlessly new.
Here, in poems selected from his first five books, is the summer-long buzz of the cicada and the crack of the cue ball, the young rebel on his big Harley, and the YMCA secretary who backstrokes her way across the indoor pool. Here, too, are thirty new poems in fixed form that illustrate Carters continued quest for a poetry of “universal interest.” Taken together, these selections are, truly, poetry in the American grain.
About the Author
Jared Carter lives in Indiana. He has received the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Poets Prize, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and two literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Table of Contents
Tolle! Lege! 1
The Magic Kingdom 5
Dead Man 7
Florum Principi 10
The Drunkenness of Noah 14
Fitzcarraldo 16
The Third Day 18
The Heresies 20
UnChien Andalou 22
The Synthetic A Priori 25
The Eternal City 31
Book One 32
Book Two 33
Book Three 34
Book Four 35
Book Five 36
Book Six 37
Book Seven 38
Book Eight 39
Book Nine 40
Book Ten 41
Book Eleven 42
Book Twelve 43
Another Poem about Trains 47
What I Meant to Say 51
Some Great Desire 52
Three Poems for Walter Benjamin 54
Loggia 54
The Telephone 57
The Cabinet 59
No Lightsome Thing 62
Angels Unawares 64
Letter from Cornwall: To Stephen Dunn 68
Letter from Gozo: To Gerald Stern 71
The Festival at Nikko 74
Acknowledgments 75
Notes 77