{"product_id":"natural-history-isbn-9780375711152","title":"Natural History","description":"Dan Chiasson, hailed as “one of the most gifted poets of his generation” upon the appearance of his first book, takes inspiration for his stunning new collection from the \u003ci\u003eHistoria Naturalis\u003c\/i\u003e of Pliny the Elder.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What happens next, you won’t believe,” Chiasson writes in “From the Life of Gorky,” and it is fair warning. This collection suggests that a person is like a world, full of mysteries and wonders–and equally in need of an encyclopedia, a compendium of everything known. The long title sequence offers entries such as “The Sun” (“There is one mind in all of us, one soul, \/ who parches the soil in some nations \/ but in others hides perpetually behind a veil”), “The Elephant” (“How to explain my heroic courtesy?”), “The Pigeon” (“Once startled, you shall feel hours of weird sadness \/ afterwards”), and “Randall Jarrell” (“If language hurts you, make the damage real”). The mysteriously emotional individual poems coalesce as a group to suggest that our natural world is populated not just by fascinating creatures–who, in any case, are metaphors for the human as Chiasson considers them– but also by literature, by the ghosts of past poetries, by our personal ghosts. Toward the end of the sequence, one poem asks simply, “Which Species on Earth Is Saddest?” a question this book seems poised to answer. But Chiasson is not finally defeated by the sorrows and disappointments that maturity brings. Combining a classic, often heartbreaking musical line with a playful, fresh attack on the standard materials of poetry, he makes even our sadness beguiling and beautiful.\u003cb\u003eDAN CHIASSON\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Burlington, Vermont, and was educated at Amherst College  and Harvard University, where he completed a Ph.D. in English. His first book of  poems, \u003ci\u003eThe Afterlife of Objects\u003c\/i\u003e appeared in 2002. A widely published literary critic,  Chiasson is the author of \u003ci\u003eOne Kind of Everything:Poem and Person in Contemporary  America\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writers’ Award, and  teaches at Amherst and Wellesley colleges.  He lives in Sherborn, Massachusetts.\u003ci\u003eLOVE SONG (SMELT)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I say 'you' in my poems, I mean you.\u003cbr\u003eI know it’s weird: we barely met.\u003cbr\u003eYou must hear this all the time, being you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat night we were at opposite ends of\u003cbr\u003ethe long table, after the pungent\u003cbr\u003eRussian condiments, the carafes of tarragon vodka,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe chafing dishes full of boiled smelts\u003cbr\u003eI was a little drunk: after you left,\u003cbr\u003eI ate the last smelt off your dirty plate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTHE SUN\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is one mind in all of us, one soul,\u003cbr\u003ewho parches the soil in some nations\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebut in others hides perpetually behind a veil;\u003cbr\u003ehe spills light everywhere, here he spilled\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esome on my tie, but it dried before dinner ended.\u003cbr\u003eHe is in charge of darkness also, also\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein charge of crime, in charge of the imagination.\u003cbr\u003ePeople fucking flick him off and on,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eoff and on, with their eyelids as they ascertain\u003cbr\u003ewith their eyes their love’s sincerity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe makes the stars disappear, but he makes\u003cbr\u003esmall stars everywhere, on the hoods of cars,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein the compound eyes of skyscrapers or in the eyes\u003cbr\u003eof sighing lovers bored with one another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnto the surface of the world he stamps\u003cbr\u003eall plants and animals. They are not gods\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebut he made us worshippers of every\u003cbr\u003ebramble toad, black chive, we find.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Idaho there is a desert cricket that makes\u003cbr\u003ea clocklike tick-tick when he flies, but he\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eis not a god. The only god is the sun,\u003cbr\u003eour mind–master of all crickets and clocks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTHE ELEPHANT\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel\u003cbr\u003ethat my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion,\u003cbr\u003eonce I was not the elephant I find I am.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched\u003cbr\u003etrick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esomewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness\u003cbr\u003eand, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it\u003cbr\u003ein the lumbering tercets, but in my mind\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man\u003cbr\u003eof cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebreakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments\u003cbr\u003ewith balance, the high-wire act and cones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe elephants are images of humility, as when we\u003cbr\u003eundertake our melancholy migrations to die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid you know, though, that elephants were taught\u003cbr\u003eto write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWorn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,\u003cbr\u003etossing grass up to heaven–as a distraction, not a prayer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat’s not humility you see on our long final journeys:\u003cbr\u003eit’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302729961701,"sku":"NP9780375711152","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375711152.jpg?v=1767733575","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/natural-history-isbn-9780375711152","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}