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    Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014
    Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014
    Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014
    Ebook233 pages2 hours

    Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014

    By Linda Gregerson

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    About this ebook

    In her first book of collected work, prize-winning poet Linda Gregerson mines nearly forty years of poetry, bringing us a full range of her talents.

    Ten new poems introduce Prodigal, followed by fifty poems, culled from Gregerson's five collections, that range broadly in subject from class in America to our world's ravaged environment to the wonders of parenthood to the intersection of science and art to the passion of the Roman gods, and beyond. This selection reinforces Gregerson’s standing as “one of poetry’s mavens . . . whose poetics seek truth through the precise apprehension of the beautiful while never denying the importance of rationality” (Chicago Tribune).

    A brilliant stylist, known for her formal experiments as well as her perfected lines, Gregerson is a poet of great vision. Here, the growth of her art and the breadth of her interests offer a snapshot of a major poet's intellect in the midst of her career.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 1, 2015
    ISBN9780544301689
    Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014
    Author

    Linda Gregerson

    Linda Gregerson is the author of six previous collections of poetry, most recently of Prodigal: New and Selected Poems. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, where she directs the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.

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      Book preview

      Prodigal - Linda Gregerson

      [Image]

      Contents

      Title Page

      Contents

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Acknowledgments

      New Poems

      Sostenuto

      The Wrath of Juno

      The Weavers

      Font

      The Dolphins

      The Wrath of Juno

      Heliotrope

      Pythagorean

      Ceres Lamenting

      And Sometimes,

      FROM Fire in the Conservatory

      FROM De Arte Honeste Amandi

      Geometry

      Maudlin; Or, the Magdalen’s Tears

      Wife

      Much Missed

      Fire in the Conservatory

      Halfe a Yard of Rede Sea

      FROM The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep

      The Bad Physician

      For My Father, Who Would Rather Stay Home

      Safe

      An Arbor

      Good News

      For the Taking

      The Resurrection of the Body

      Bunting

      Salt

      Creation Myth

      With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

      Target

      Bleedthrough

      The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep

      FROM Waterborne

      Eyes Like Leeks

      Noah’s Wife

      Cord

      Maculate

      The Horses Run Back to Their Stalls

      Waterborne

      Pass Over

      Narrow Flame

      Grammatical Mood

      FROM Magnetic North

      Sweet

      Bicameral

      Make-Falcon

      Bright Shadow

      Father Mercy, Mother Tongue

      At the Window

      The Turning

      My Father Comes Back from the Grave

      Over Easy

      Prodigal

      Elegant

      FROM The Selvage

      The Selvage

      Slight Tremor

      Constitutional

      Lately, I’ve taken to

      Getting and Spending

      Dido Refuses to Speak

      From the Life of Saint Peter

      Her Argument for the Existence of God

      Still Life

      Notes

      Index of Titles and First Lines

      Read More from Linda Gregerson

      About the Author

      Copyright © 2015 by Linda Gregerson

      All rights reserved

      For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

      www.hmhco.com

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

      ISBN 978-0-544-30167-2

      Cover design by Jackie Shepherd

      Cover art © Becky Kisabeth Gibbs

      eISBN 978-0-544-30168-9

      v1.0915

      K. A. Gregerson

      1954–2014

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The Kenyon Review: The Wrath of Juno (A wandering husband), Heliotrope, The Dolphins, The Wrath of Juno (It’s the children)

      The New Yorker: Ceres Lamenting

      Poetry: Sostenuto, The Weavers

      Poetry Review (London): Pythagorean

      Raritan: Font, And Sometimes

      Fire in the Conservatory was first published by Dragon Gate Press.

      The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, Waterborne, and Magnetic North were first published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

      The Selvage was first published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

      Kind thanks to my editors: Gwen Head, Peter Davison, Pat Strachan, Janet Silver, Michael Collier, Jenna Johnson. To David Baker and Rosanna Warren, astute counselors. To Steven Mullaney, first reader and occasional (reluctant) persona in these poems. To Emma and Megan. And to my sister Karen. This book is for her.

      New Poems

      Sostenuto

                   Night. Or what

                                             they have of it at altitude

      like this, and filtered

                                    air, what was

      in my lungs just an hour ago is now

                                    in yours,

                                             there’s only so much air to go

                           around. They’re making

      more people, my father would say,

      but nobody’s making more land.

                                                      When my daughters

      were little and played in their bath,

                                    they invented a game whose logic

                           largely escaped me—

                                             something to do with the

                                                      disposition

      of bubbles and plastic ducks—until

                           I asked them what they called it. They

                                    were two and four. The game

      was Oil Spill.

                           Keeping the ducks alive, I think,

                                             was what you were supposed to

                                                      contrive, as long

                           as you could make it last. Up here

                                    in borrowed air,

      in borrowed bits of heat, in costly

                                             cubic feet of steerage we’re

                                    a long

                           held note, as when the choir would seem

      to be more

                                    than human breath could manage. In

                                                      the third age, says the story, they

                           divided up the earth. And that was when

                                    the goddess turned away from them.

      The Wrath of Juno

      (Echo)

                                    A wandering husband

                           peopling the earth

      with my humiliations

                                    which

                           the narrative requires.

      At least I shall never

                                    be out of work.

                           I’m not immune

      to loveliness myself, in fact,

                                    especially

                           in the warmer months,

      so much of it on display: the young

                                    ones in their pretty

                           summer dresses and their open

      shoes, new crops of them every year.

                                    I simply think

                           the better choice, what makes

      for dignity all round, is not

                                    to touch.

                           But try telling that to a

      man who thinks he’s a shower of gold.

                                    What mystifies me,

                           truly, are the ones who guard

      the door. Nothing at stake

                                    but vague

                           contempt for playing-it-all-

      too-straight. You’ll have heard

                                    the girl’s affliction—

                           can’t stop talking, can’t

      say anything original—

                                    was something

                           I did to her after the fact.

      But look where she started.

                                    And listen to what’s

                           become of me.

      The Weavers

      As sometimes, in the gentler months, the sun

      will return

                                    before the rain has altogether

                                                      stopped and through

      this lightest of curtains the curve of it shines

      with a thousand

                                    inclinations and so close

                                                      is the one to the

      one adjacent that you cannot tell where magenta

      for instance begins

                                    and where the all-but-magenta

                                                      has ended and yet

      you’d never mistake the blues for red, so these two,

      the girl and the

                                    goddess, with their earth-bred, grass-

                                                      fed, kettle-dyed

      wools, devised on their looms

      transitions so subtle no

                                    hand could trace nor eye discern

                                                      their increments,

      yet the stories they told were perfectly clear.

      The gods in their heaven,

                                    the one proposed. The gods in

                                                      heat, said the other.

      And ludicrous too, with their pinions and swansdown,

      fins and hooves,

                                    their shepherds’ crooks and pizzles.

                                                      Till mingling

      with their darlings-for-a-day they made

      a progeny so motley it

                                    defied all sorting-out.

                                                      It wasn’t the boasting

      brought Arachne all her sorrow

      nor even

                                    the knowing her craft so well.

                                                      Once true

      and twice attested.

      It was simply the logic she’d already

                                    taught us how

                                                      to read.

      Font

      At the foot of the download anchored

                                                      among

                                             the usual flotsam of ads,

      this link: to plastics-express.com who for

                                                      a fraction

                                             of the retail price can

      solve my underground drainage woes, which

                                                      tells me

                                             the software has finally

      run amok. Because the article, you see,

                                                      recounts

                                             the rescue from a sewage

      pipe of Baby 59, five pounds,

                                                      placenta still

               

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