ABOUT THIS BOOK

What is good fortune? The Golden Coin asks—and answers—this question in poems about youth, conflict, travel, family love, and the joys and fears of getting old. Aboard his sailboat, Feldman draws lessons from the sea about time and history. His gaze tempered not by nostalgia or longing but by satisfaction and happiness, he finds wry joy in the Havana airport's sniffer dog napping near the impounded luggage. In acknowledging the inevitability of change, he reports from the battle zones of an essentially lucky life, with only as much sadness and terror as ordinary life inevitably requires.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alan Feldman is a poet whose many books and chapbooks include A Sail to Great Island and Immortality, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He is professor emeritus of English at Framingham State University in Massachusetts.

REVIEWS

"A poet whose emotional resources are immense. From book to book, Alan Feldman continues to widen and deepen his poetic reach until even the stars are drawn down to his writing table." —Bill Zavatsky, author of Where X Marks the Spot

"Any humanist's hero, Alan Feldman writes poems that distill from honest observation and a generous, discerning heart. The only thing that mitigates the regret of leaving the self-deprecating confidence and expansive vision of these poems is the instructive memory of their sensibility." —Jessica Greenbaum, author of The Two Yvonnes

"These vivid, occasionally hilarious, exquisitely crafted poems never lapse into despair, but cradle us with their wisdom and energy. Feldman takes us into the complexities of memory, to countries beyond the United States, and, over and over, out into the sparkling sea." —Wendy Barker, author of One Blackbird at a Time

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I. First Light
Breakfast
The Far Away House
The March of Dimes
In the Cabana
What I Loved: Waiting for Our Luggage in Havana
Molly’s Charm
The Art of Daydreaming
Bus Trip
Provincetown Harbor: Last Chronicle
A Journey
The Golden Coin

II. Rocket’s Red Glare
Scituate: September 2001
Putting Iron
A Language of One
On the Beach in Cassis
Idioms
The Poem I Lost Called “Cuba”
The Last Responders
Snagged
What He Remembers About His Trial
Alan in Poland
At the Meeting

III. House Lights
Elegy for a House
Togetherness
No-see-ums
Alan, the Wheels on My Car Just Collapsed
Pencil
Future Value
If I Could Buy Anything
Akane
Squall
The Bell
What to Tell Martha

IV. Firelight
As I Was Carrying the Child
Herman Grad
Repairing the Deck
My Grandfather Speaks
Crossing the Durance
Life Is a Cruise Waterfront Property
Fiddler Crabs
Alan in France
Desperate
A Voyage

Notes