Awards
2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (Collection)
Synopses & Reviews
The poems in Robert Hass's new collection his first to appear in a decade are grounded in the beauty and energy of the physical world, and in the bafflement of the present moment in American culture. This work is breathtakingly immediate, stylistically varied, redemptive, and wise.
His familiar landscapes are here San Francisco, the Northern California coast, the Sierra high country in addition to some of his oft-explored themes: art; the natural world; the nature of desire; the violence of history; the power and limits of language; and, as in his other books, domestic life and the conversation between men and women. New themes emerge as well, perhaps: the essence of memory and of time.
The works here look at paintings, at Gerhard Richter as well as Vermeer, and pay tribute to his particular literary masters, friend Czesław Miłosz, the great Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, Horace, Whitman, Stevens, Nietszche, and Lucretius. We are offered glimpses of a surprisingly green and vibrant twenty-first-century Berlin; of the demilitarized zone between the Koreas; of a Bangkok night, a Mexican desert, and an early summer morning in Paris, all brought into a vivid present and with a passionate meditation on what it is and has been to be alive. "It has always been Mr. Hass's aim," the New York Times Book Review wrote, "to get the whole man, head and heart and hands and everything else, into his poetry."
Every new volume by Robert Hass is a major event in poetry, and this beautiful collection is no exception.
Review
"Hass critiques humankind's inability to sustain wonder or compassion, then attempts to evoke both with beauty, candor, and protest." Booklist
Review
"The title suggests more hopefully that poetry is a craft, like carpentry: this book contains Hass's best and most careful verse in almost 30 years." New York Times
Review
"These poems filled with modern life at the same time ponder the mythologies that create and bind our often flawed but survivable culture....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Synopsis
Group ad in The Writer's Chronicle
Synopsis
One of Americas most accessible and engaging poets takes readers on a lively and surprising night tour of Americas public places.
Night of the Republicshowcases one of Americas best poets not only working at the height of his powers but pushing into new and exciting territory as well. InNight of the Republic, Alan Shapiro visits a gas station restroom, a shoe store, a convention hall, and a racetrack, among other placesand in stark Edward Hopper–like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike quality of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable spirit of a community of solitude rising from the quiet emptiness. The collection also includes moving meditations of his childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, and of tragic and haunting events such as the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK. WhileNight of the Republicis Shapiros most ambitious, inventive, and accessible collection to date, it is also his most timely and urgent for the acute way it illuminates the mingling of private obsessions with public space.
Synopsis
The tenth collection of poems from Alan Shapiro, author of SONG AND DANCE and OLD WAR
Synopsis
An urgent and timely collection by one of Americas most inventive and accessible poets
In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of Americas public places—a gas station restroom, shoe store, convention hall, and race track among others—and in stark Edward Hopper-like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable solitude rising up from the quiet emptiness.
In other poems, Shapiro writes movingly of his 1950s and 60s childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, with special focus on the house he grew up in. These meditations, always inflected with Shapiros quick wit and humor, lead to recollections of tragic and haunting events such as the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK. While Night of the Republic is Shapiros most ambitious work to date, it is also his most timely and urgent for the acute way it illuminates the mingling of private obsessions with public space.
About the Author
Robert Hass was born in San Francisco. His books of poetry include The Apple Trees at Olema (Ecco, 2010), Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Time and Materials (Ecco, 2008), Sun Under Wood (Ecco, 1996), Human Wishes (1989), Praise (1979), and Field Guide (1973), which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Hass also co-translated several volumes of poetry with Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz and authored or edited several other volumes of translation, including Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer's Selected Poems (2012) and The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (1994). His essay collection Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry (1984) received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He lives in California with his wife, poet Brenda Hillman, and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Table of Contents
Contents I. Night of the Republic
Gas Station Restroom 3
Car Dealership at 3 A.M. 5
Supermarket 7
Park Bench 10
Downtown Strip Club 12
Hotel Lobby 14
Race Track 15
Dry Cleaner 17
Shoe Store 18
Stone Church 20
Playground 23
Gym 25
Indoor Municipal Pool 26
Hospital Examination Room 27
Senior Center 28
Funeral Home 31
II. Galaxy Formation
Triumph 33
Forgiveness 34
Conductor 36
Edenic Simile 37
Close to You 39
Galaxy Formation 41
III. Night of the Republic
Amphitheater 43
Museum 44
Bookstore 45
Barbershop 48
Post Office 50
Convention Hall 51
Government Center 52
Courtroom 53
The Public 55
IV. At the Corner of
Coolidge and Clarence
Beloved 73
Flowerpot 74
The Family 75
Light Switch 76
Sickbed 77
Coffee Cup 78
Cigarette Smoke 79
Piano Bench 80
Dryer 81
Bathtub 82
Family Pictures 83
Color 84
Faucet 85
Bedroom Door 86
Solitaire 87
Cellar 88
White Gloves 89
Shed 90
Hallway 91
The Doorbell 92
Notes 95