Collected Shorter Poems
by John Peck
Northwestern University Press, 2004
Paper: 978-0-8101-5140-6
Library of Congress Classification PS3566.E247A6 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
Paper: 978-0-8101-5140-6
Library of Congress Classification PS3566.E247A6 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
A selection of poems by a contemporary master
John Peck's poems draw on both modernist and traditional resources, quarrying in the large gaps among contemporary readers of poetry. This definitive collection makes available difficult-to-find works by a remarkable, thoroughly original American poet. Peck's poems continue to attract a discerning, loyal audience of readers up to the challenge of confronting his astonishing range and ambitions.
John Peck's poems draw on both modernist and traditional resources, quarrying in the large gaps among contemporary readers of poetry. This definitive collection makes available difficult-to-find works by a remarkable, thoroughly original American poet. Peck's poems continue to attract a discerning, loyal audience of readers up to the challenge of confronting his astonishing range and ambitions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Peck was born in Pittsburgh in 1941. He taught literature at American and Swiss universities and trained as an analytical psychologist in Zurich. His collection The Broken Blockhouse Wall (Carcanet, 1979) won the Prix de Rome, and his other works include Argura (Sheep Meadow, 1998) and M and Other Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 1996). He lives in Massachusetts.
REVIEWS
"[F]or a small number of readers Peck will always matter tremendously. Be one of them." -- Robert Archambeau, Notre Dame Review
— -"[T]he best poet of my generation . . . as indifferent to academic fashions as he is to those of the poetry market." -- Clive Wilmer
— -"The poems are so...outstandingly beautiful that the desire to 'understand' [places] second to the straightforward need to read on." -- Patrick McGuinness
— -TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
from Shagbark (1972)
Viaticum
The Watcher
Under Virgo
Death of a Stallion
The Spring Festival on the River
section three, The Hobbies
Hunger-Trace
Involuntary Portrait
Lines for Leibniz
Cider and Vesalius
Colophon for Ch'ing-ming Shang-ho T'u
In Front of a Japanese Photoraph
Pointing Pear
For the Engraver
Leaving the Coal Cellar
Turn
Quiet
Vestibule
Dark on Dark
from The Broken Blockhouse Wall (1978)
Letting Up
Family Burying Ground
Lucien
Refinding the Seam
Am Abend da es kühle war . . .
Bounds
Ground Observer Corps
Fog Burning Off at Cape May
March Elegies
To the Allegheny
Redemption
Migration
from the 1970s and 1980s
Cussewago
Let Us Call This the Hill of Sotatsu
A Weaving at the Zollbrücke in Zurich
from Poems and Translations of Hĭ-Lö (1991)
Preface
from Shagbark (1972)
Viaticum
The Watcher
Under Virgo
Death of a Stallion
The Spring Festival on the River
section three, The Hobbies
Hunger-Trace
Involuntary Portrait
Lines for Leibniz
Cider and Vesalius
Colophon for Ch'ing-ming Shang-ho T'u
In Front of a Japanese Photoraph
Pointing Pear
For the Engraver
Leaving the Coal Cellar
Turn
Quiet
Vestibule
Dark on Dark
from The Broken Blockhouse Wall (1978)
Letting Up
Family Burying Ground
Lucien
Refinding the Seam
Am Abend da es kühle war . . .
Bounds
Ground Observer Corps
Fog Burning Off at Cape May
March Elegies
To the Allegheny
Redemption
Migration
from the 1970s and 1980s
Cussewago
Let Us Call This the Hill of Sotatsu
A Weaving at the Zollbrücke in Zurich
from Poems and Translations of Hĭ-Lö (1991)
Preface
Poems
Four Ancient Poems
Ditty for Mayor Fu of Freiburg im Breisgau
Forged Heart Blade
Tally Stick
A Sash for Wu Yün
The Death of Yuri Andropov
Rhyme Prose Three: Chapter of the Nine Rocks
Vega over the rim of the Val Verzasca
Clam Shell with Hunting Scene
Fifteen stars fence polar fire . . .
Sorting Straws
And what they do . . .
Hazelnut
Fantasia for Du Bellay
Osip Mandelshtam in the Grisons
Wind under Sash, Val Ferret
Rhyme Prose Four
Seventh Moon
Spring Housecleaning
Anti-dithyrambics
A Gross of Poems Linked in the Mixed Manner
from Rhyme Prose Six
Hill Country
Ballad
The Cells at Tun-huang
Translations
Honan Folksong
from Folksong Lix of the Greater Odes
Mencius VI.1.viii
Single Seal Quodlibets
Two and Three Seal Medley
Age of Gold
Barometic Reading Incorporating Single Graphs
Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong zhu 6.521
Dawn in Shih-Cheng, Lĭ Hö
from Twenty-three Poems about Horses, Lĭ Hö
Weeping for Ying Yao, Wang Wei
Wang Yang-ming
The Proem (opening), Parmenides
Orphic Fragment
Christian Epigram, Palatine Anthology L.59
from Poem on Divine Providence, Orientius
What enwombed the marrow, Walahfrid Strabo
Travellers to Broceliande
Gouty Brigit, Janus Pannonius
My Country Weeps: 1636, Andreas Gryphius
The Course of Life, Friedrich Hölderlin
The Tombs (conclusion), Ugo Foscolo
Rawlinson Two-Step (including Gottfried Keller)
A Cento from Valais Quatrains, R. M. Rilke
Novgorod: Coming of the Saints, Johannes Bobrowski
House, Óndra Łysohorsky
Century, Ion Barbu
The Last Centaur, Ion Barbu
Yu-Vu Songs of the Na-Khi
from Argura (1993)
Sahara Frescoes, Tassili
The Capital, 1980
Leaving the Central Station
Pilgrims for Bendis
Interleaved Lines on Jephthah and His Daughter
Fire is one . . .
Armin
Canzone of Wood, Paper, Water
By Mummelsee
Six Stanzas in Nine Lines
Times Passing the Breakwater
Jonathan
Hellade Tallies
ides of February
Roman Elegy
Jaruzelski Winter
Begin's Autumn, after the Late Massacre, 1982
In Lazio
Passacaglias
Boat near the Capo Miseno
Campagna
From an iced basin at the window . . .
He who called blood builder . . .
Zurich, the Stork Inn
June Fugue
Cento Bibliogeche Italiane
sections, Little Frieze
Three Little Odes
Turns near Vincigliata
Animula
Before a Journey
Border
Kayak Island
Evening Concert
End of July
fantasia on a Theme from Don Giovanni
Stanzas from the Bridge
Rhapsody for the Gatekeepers
Riposte
Weather over the Lake
'Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?'
Livy
Dearest, Infernal Granite
Seventeen Years after the Tet Offensive
Report from Mendrisio Station
Causerie
Riddle of Peace
sections, Frieze from the Gardens of Copenhagen
Ars Poetica
Round
Parable with Broken Frame
Posthouse
White Deer Running
Thonon-les-bains, Upper Terrace
In a Railway Compartment near Glarus
'Never You, in Those Ships, nor to Those Towers . . .'
'And Fresh Cuttings from Like Things'
Kirschdieb
from Selva Morale (1995)
Towards Naples
Sing and sing me again
To an Unknown Poet
The Well of Saint Regisse
Archeus Terrae
Raina
Lakeside
Weaving at Felsenegg
Two Leukés
The Dream of Arthur
Goad of the Last Chapter
Saint Thomas, Strasbourg, Late August
As steam on forest track . . .
Book of Life
Fireframe
Early Summer Evening, Kanton Zurich
Kesa for the Buddhist Priest Myōe Koben, Kanton Zurich
Tobelwacht
Kesa for Myōe Koben, Tobelwacht
from Spring-through-Fall Epistle to Hakuin
Wadding the year's leaves . . .
Welder
I Struck the Name 'Provider', Assessment Eluding Me
Conductus Argillus
Conductus Lupus
Conductus Albinus
All Souls
Ficino's Rest
Vigil of Parmenides
From Katschenstrick over Einsiedeln
Passage to the Islands
For Radovan Lorković
Opposed to the drift of things . . .
Two Rooms
Monologue of the Magdalene
Reading Late at Night in January
Balcony
sections, For Wind Instruments
To Artemis
Merlin
Anti-Rameau
For My Daughter
In Zion
X and Son
Reichenau Afternoon
Sketch around a Memorial
Causerie, Late Advent 1993
Stars over Evil Dwellings
VI / 93
Tree of Life
Sura of the Dig near Saint Denis
Paragraphs for a Mansion
Triple Frieze
To the Lampbearer
Descending to Ninfa
He, She, All of Them, Aye
from M and Other Poems (1996)
Woods Burial
Autumn Syllabics on Themes from Horace and the Chinese Masters
So the Name of That Place Was Taberah
Anasazi, Ancient Enemies
Getting at What Happens
Wine of the Solitaries
Little Fugue
Occam's Razor Pledges No Hostages to Fortune
Monument
Soundless Tune in the Jewel
First Things
Vestigium Pedis
Frère Jacques, Frère Antoine
Meditation in the Midst of Action
Polybius
On Tiny Obsidian Blades from Peary Land, Greenland
Romanza
Rombeau for Vernon Watkins
Trio Threaded on lines from the Parthian Hymns
Viaticum
For a Small Chorus
Ave
From the Headland at Cumae
Memorandum
Relay Octets
from the 1990s
Incident near Vicenza
Encounter above Stresa
Notes
Incident near Vicenza
Encounter above Stresa
Notes
EXCERPT
"Parable with Broken Frame"
An old architect at a littered worktable
sits through morning, eyes fixed on ocean,
intent through evening at the study window,
motionless though his hand rebuilds years.
Down razory defiles to the rockledge landing
stands of flittergold awash in wind,
and through soft lolling labia of the waves
tiny boats coming in, setting out.
Priest and corpsedresser begin the climb to his house,
their empty craft nibbles at spindrift.
a bridegroom and his man steer for the islands,
plinky music unrolls with their wake.
A last stone has been set in place, final tile,
the bride folds her face in streaming hands,
a black duo mounts to the door and goes in.
All of these I have been, none holds me.
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