{"product_id":"selected-poems-of-mona-van-duyn-isbn-9780375709807","title":"Selected Poems of Mona Van Duyn","description":"This generous selection of Mona Van Duyn’s distinguished, award-winning work spans four decades. Beginning with her classic \u003ci\u003eValentines to the Wide World\u003c\/i\u003e (1959), encompassing the intimate voice of \u003ci\u003eBedtime Stories\u003c\/i\u003e (1972) and the moving \u003ci\u003eLetters from a Father\u003c\/i\u003e (1982), crowned by the life-spanning \u003ci\u003eFirefall\u003c\/i\u003e (1993), \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e reacquaints us with a poet whose ear is keenly tuned to the music of nature and human conversation. In lively and varied forms, from her minimalist sonnets to her magisterial longer pieces, Van Duyn captures a multiplicity of worlds within her world, in a tone inflected by both Midwestern pragmatism and a deep metaphysical intelligence. As she contemplates the act of reading in bed, a Rhenish sculpture in the Cloisters, or the loss of her mother, the poet goes beyond context to discover consciousness: an expression of the larger ideas and emotions—finally, the art—in the smallest details of our lives.Mona Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1921 and currently lives in St. Louis. She has taught widely, both in the United States and abroad, and has received many awards for her poetry, including the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was for fifteen years a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She was Poet Laureate of the United States for 1992–1993.Three Valentines to the Wide World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe child disturbs our view. Tow-head bent, she\u003cbr\u003estands on one leg and folds up the other. She is listening\u003cbr\u003eto the sound of her fingernail on a scab on her knee. \u003cbr\u003eIf I were her mother I would think right now of the chastening \u003cbr\u003ethat ridiculous arrangement of bones and bumps must go through, \u003cbr\u003eand that big ear too, till they learn what to do and hear. \u003cbr\u003ePeople don't perch like something seen in a zoo \u003cbr\u003eor in tropical sections of Florida. They'll have to buy her \u003cbr\u003ea cheap violin if she wants to make scraping noises. \u003cbr\u003eShe is eight years old. What in the world could she wear \u003cbr\u003ethat would cover her hinges and disproportions? Her face is \u003cbr\u003epointed and blank, the brows as light as the hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mother, is love God's hobby?\" At eight you don't even \u003cbr\u003elook up from your scab when you ask it. A kid's squeak, \u003cbr\u003eis that a fit instrument for such a question? \u003cbr\u003eEight times the seasons turned and cold snow tricked \u003cbr\u003ethe earth to death, and still she hasn't noticed. \u003cbr\u003eHer friend has a mean Dad, a milkman always kicks \u003cbr\u003eat the dog, but by some childish hocus-pocus \u003cbr\u003eshe blinks them away. She counts ten and sucks in her cheeks \u003cbr\u003eand the globe moves under the green thumb of an Amateur, \u003cbr\u003ethe morning yelp, the crying at recess are gone. \u003cbr\u003eIn the freeness of time He gardens, and to His leisure \u003cbr\u003eold stems entrust new leaves all winter long.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHating is hard work, and the uncaring thought is hard; \u003cbr\u003ebut loving is easy, love is that lovely play \u003cbr\u003ethat makes us and keeps us? No one answers you. Such absurd \u003cbr\u003echarity of the imagination has shamed us, Emily. \u003cbr\u003eI remember now. Legs shoved you up, you couldn't tell \u003cbr\u003ewhere the next tooth would fall out or grow in, or what \u003cbr\u003eyour own nose would look like next year. Anything was possible. \u003cbr\u003eThen it slowed down, and you had to keep what you got. \u003cbr\u003eWhen this child's body stretches to the grace of her notion, \u003cbr\u003eand she's tamed and curled, may she be free enough to bring \u003cbr\u003emind and heart to that serious recreation \u003cbr\u003ewhere anything is still possible--or almost anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eii\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have never enjoyed those roadside overlooks from which \u003cbr\u003eyou can see the mountains of two states. The view keeps generating \u003cbr\u003ea kind of pure, meaningless exaltation \u003cbr\u003ethat I can't find a use for. It drifts away from things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd it seems to me also that the truckdriver's waste of the world \u003cbr\u003eis sobering. When he rolls round it on a callus of macadam, \u003cbr\u003ethink how all those limping puppydogs, girls \u003cbr\u003ethumbing rides under the hot sun, or under the white moon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehow all those couples kissing at the side of the road, \u003cbr\u003ebad hills, cat eyes, and horses asleep on their feet \u003cbr\u003emust run together into a statement so abstract\u003cbr\u003ethat it's tiresome. Nothing in particular holds still in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps he does learn that the planet can still support life, \u003cbr\u003ethough with some difficulty. Or even that there is injustice, \u003cbr\u003esince he rolls round and round and may be able to feel \u003cbr\u003ethe slight but measurable wobble of the earth on its axis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut what I find most useful is the poem. To find some spot \u003cbr\u003eon the surface and then bear down until the skin can't stand \u003cbr\u003ethe tension and breaks under it, breaks under that half-demented \u003cbr\u003e\"pressure of speech\" the psychiatrists saw in Pound,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eis a discreetness of consumption that I value. Only the poem \u003cbr\u003eis strong enough to make the initial rupture, \u003cbr\u003eat least for me. Its view is simultaneous \u003cbr\u003ediscovery and reminiscence. It starts with the creature\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand stays there, assuming creation is worth the time \u003cbr\u003eit takes, from the first day down to the last line on the last page. \u003cbr\u003eAnd I've never seen anything like it for making you think \u003cbr\u003ethat to spend your life on such old premises is a privilege.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eiii\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eYour yen two wol slee me sodenly;\u003cbr\u003eI may the beautee of hem not sustene.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e-Merciles Beaute\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen, in the middle of my life, the earth stalks me \u003cbr\u003ewith sticks and stones, I fear its merciless beauty.\u003cbr\u003eThis morning a bird woke me with a four-note outcry, \u003cbr\u003eand cried out eighteen times. With the shades down, sleepy \u003cbr\u003eas I was, I recognized his agony. \u003cbr\u003eIt resembles ours. With one more heave, the day \u003cbr\u003esends us a generous orb and lets us \u003cbr\u003esee all sights lost when we lie down finally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd if, in the middle of her life, some beauty falls on \u003cbr\u003ea girl, who turns under its swarm to astonished woman, \u003cbr\u003ethen, into that miraculous buzzing, stung \u003cbr\u003ein the lips and eyes without mercy, strangers may run.\u003cbr\u003e An untended power--I pity her and them. \u003cbr\u003eIt is late, late; haste! says the falling moon, \u003cbr\u003eas blinded they stand and smart till the fever's done \u003cbr\u003eand blindly she moves, wearing her furious weapon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeauty is merciless and intemperate. \u003cbr\u003eWho, turning this way and that, by day, by night, \u003cbr\u003estill stands in the heart-felt storm of its benefit, \u003cbr\u003ewill plead in vain for mercy, or cry, \"Put out \u003cbr\u003ethe lovely eyes of the world, whose rise and set \u003cbr\u003emove us to death!\" And never will temper it, \u003cbr\u003ebut against that rage slowly may learn to pit \u003cbr\u003elove and art, which are compassionate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Gentle Snorer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen summer came, we locked up our lives and fled \u003cbr\u003eto the woods in Maine, and pulled up over our heads \u003cbr\u003ea comforter filled with batts of piney dark, \u003cbr\u003etied with crickets' chirretings and the bork \u003cbr\u003eof frogs; we hid in a sleep of strangeness from \u003cbr\u003ethe human humdrum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA pleasant noise the unordered world makes wove \u003cbr\u003earound us. Burrowed, we heard the scud of waves, \u003cbr\u003ewrack of bending branch, or plop of a fish \u003cbr\u003eon his heavy home; the little beasts rummaged the brush. \u003cbr\u003eWe dimmed to silence, slipped from the angry pull \u003cbr\u003eof wishes and will.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then we had a three-week cabin guest \u003cbr\u003ewho snored; he broke the wilderness of our rest. \u003cbr\u003eAs all night long he sipped the succulent air, \u003cbr\u003ethat rhythm we shared made visible to the ear \u003cbr\u003ea rich refreshment of the blood. We fed in \u003cbr\u003eunison with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA sound we dreamed and woke to, over the snuff \u003cbr\u003eof wind, not loud enough to scare off the roof \u003cbr\u003ethe early morning chipmunks. Under our skins \u003cbr\u003ewe heard, as after disease, the bright, thin \u003cbr\u003etick of our time. Sleeping, he mentioned death \u003cbr\u003eand celebrated breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe went back home. The water flapped the shore. \u003cbr\u003eA thousand bugs drilled at the darkness. Over \u003cbr\u003ethe lake a loon howled. Nothing spoke up for us, \u003cbr\u003esalvagers always of what we have always lost; \u003cbr\u003eand we thought what the night needed was more of man, \u003cbr\u003ehe left us so partisan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWoman Waiting\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the gray, massed blunder of her face \u003cbr\u003elight hung crudely and apologetic sight \u003cbr\u003ecrossed in a hurry. Asking very little, \u003cbr\u003eher eyes were patiently placed there. \u003cbr\u003eDress loved nothing and wandered away\u003cbr\u003ewherever possible, needing its own character. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUsed to the stories, we wise children \u003cbr\u003emade pleasant pictures of her when alive, till \u003cbr\u003esomeone who knew told us it was never so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNext, wisely waited to see the hidden dancer, \u003cbr\u003ethe expected flare leaping through that fog \u003cbr\u003eof flesh, but no one ever did. \u003cbr\u003eIn a last wisdom, conceived of a moment \u003cbr\u003elove lit her like a star and the star burned out. \u003cbr\u003eInterested friends said this had never happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeath by Aesthetics\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is the doctor, an abstracted lover, \u003cbr\u003edressed as a virgin, coming to keep the tryst. \u003cbr\u003eThe patient was early; she is lovely; but yet \u003cbr\u003eshe is sick, his instruments will agree on this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs this the place, she wonders, and is he the one? \u003cbr\u003eYes, love is the healer, he will strip her bare, \u003cbr\u003eand all his machinery of definition \u003cbr\u003etells her experience is costly here,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eso she is reassured. The doctor approaches \u003cbr\u003eand bends to her heart. But she sees him sprout like a tree \u003cbr\u003ewith metallic twigs on his fingers and blooms of chrome \u003cbr\u003eat his eye and ear for the sterile ceremony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOh tight and tighter his rubber squeeze of her arm. \u003cbr\u003e\"Ahhh\" she sighs at a chilly touch on her tongue. \u003cbr\u003eUp the tubes her breath comes crying, as over her, \u003cbr\u003eback and breast, he moves his silver thumb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis fluoroscope hugs her. Soft the intemperate girl, \u003cbr\u003edisordered. Willing she lies while he unfolds \u003cbr\u003eher disease, but a stem of glass protects his fingertips \u003cbr\u003efrom her heat, nor will he catch her cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe peels her. Under the swaddling epiderm \u003cbr\u003eher body is the same blue bush. Beautiful canals \u003cbr\u003ecourse like a postcard scene that's sent him often. \u003cbr\u003eHe counts the tiptup, tiptup of her dutiful valves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePain hides like a sinner in her mesh of nerves. \u003cbr\u003eBut her symptoms constellate! Quickly he warms \u003cbr\u003eto his consummation, while her fever flares \u003cbr\u003ein its wick of vein, her wicked blood burns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe hands her a paper. \"Goodbye. Live quietly, \u003cbr\u003emake some new friends. I've seen these stubborn cases \u003cbr\u003ecured with time. My bill will arrive. Dear lady, \u003cbr\u003eit's been a most enjoyable diagnosis.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe clings, but her fingers slip on his starchy dress. \u003cbr\u003e\"Don't leave me! Learn me! If this is all, you've swindled \u003cbr\u003emy whole booty of meaning, where is my dearness? \u003cbr\u003ePore against pore, the delicate hairs commingled,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith cells and ligaments, tissue lapped on bone, \u003cbr\u003emeet me, feel the way my body feels, \u003cbr\u003eand in my bounty of dews, fluxes and seasons, \u003cbr\u003eorifices, in my wastes and smells\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esee self. Self in the secret stones I chafed \u003cbr\u003eto shape in my bladder. Out of a dream I fished \u003cbr\u003ethe ache that feeds in my stomach's weedy slough. \u003cbr\u003eThis tender swelling's the bud of my frosted wish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSearch out my mind's embroidery of scars. \u003cbr\u003eMy ichor runs to death so speedily, \u003cbr\u003espit up your text and taste my living texture. \u003cbr\u003eSweat to hunt me with love, and burn with me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut he is gone. \"Don't touch me\" was all he answered. \u003cbr\u003e\"Separateness,\" says the paper. The world, we beg, \u003cbr\u003ewill keep her though she's caught its throbbing senses, \u003cbr\u003eits bugs still swim in her breath, she's bright with its plague.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Relative and an Absolute\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt has been cool so far for December, but of course the cold \u003cbr\u003edoesn't last long down here. The Bible is being fulfilled so rapidly \u003cbr\u003ethat it looks like it won't be long until Jesus will come in\u003cbr\u003ethe air, with a shout, and all those who have accepted Jesus as \u003cbr\u003etheir own personal Saviour will be caught up to meet him \u003cbr\u003eand then that terrible war will be on earth. The battle of \u003cbr\u003eArmageddon. And all the unsaved people will have to go \u003cbr\u003ethrough the great tribulation. Hope you are both well. Bye.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn aunt, my down-to-earth father's sibling, went to stay \u003cbr\u003ein Texas, and had to continue by mail, still thanklessly, \u003cbr\u003eher spiritual supervision of the family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTexas orchards are fruitful. A card that would portray \u003cbr\u003ethis fact in green and orange, and even more colorfully say \u003cbr\u003eon its back that Doom is nearly upon us, came regularly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat birthday, Easter and Christmas--and sometimes between the three. \u003cbr\u003eThat the days passed, and the years, never bothered her prophecy; \u003cbr\u003eshe restressed, renewed and remailed its imminence faithfully.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMost preaching was wrong, she felt, but found for her kin on Sunday, \u003cbr\u003ein one voice on one radio station, one truth for all to obey. \u003cbr\u003eSalvation being thus limited, it seemed to me\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethere was something unpleasant about that calm tenacity \u003cbr\u003eof belief that so many others would suffer catastrophe \u003cbr\u003eat any moment. She seemed too smug a protegee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOtherwise, I rather liked her. Exchanging a recipe \u003cbr\u003eor comparing winters with neighbors, she took life quietly \u003cbr\u003ein a stuffy bungalow, among doilies of tatting and crochet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had married late, and enjoyed the chance to baby \u003cbr\u003ea husband, to simmer the wholesome vegetables and see \u003cbr\u003ethat vitamins squeezed from his fruit were drunk without delay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough she warned of cities and churches and germs, some modesty \u003cbr\u003eor decorum, when face to face with us, wouldn't let her convey \u003cbr\u003eher vision of Armageddon. But the postcards set it free.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was hovering over the orange groves, she need only lay \u003cbr\u003eher sewing aside, and the grandeur and rhythm of its poetry \u003cbr\u003ecame down and poured in her ear, her pencil moved eloquently.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote it and wrote it. She will be \"caught up,\" set free from \u003cbr\u003eher clay \u003cbr\u003eas Christ comes \"with a shout in the air\" and trumpeting angels play, \u003cbr\u003eand \"the terrible war will be on earth\" on that Judgment Day,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eexpecting all those years her extinction of body would be \u003cbr\u003eattended by every creature, wrapped round in the tragedy \u003cbr\u003eof the world, in its pandemonium and ecstasy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen she died last winter, several relatives wrote to say \u003cbr\u003ea kidney stone \"as big as a peach pit\" took her away. \u003cbr\u003eReading the letters, I thought, first of all, of the irony,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethen, that I myself, though prepared to a certain degree, \u003cbr\u003ewill undoubtedly feel, when I lie there, as lonesome in death as she \u003cbr\u003eand just as surprised at its trivial, domestic imagery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Kind of Music\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen consciousness begins to add diversity to its intensity, \u003cbr\u003eits value is no longer absolute and inexpressible. The felt variations \u003cbr\u003ein its tone are attached to the observed movement of \u003cbr\u003eits objects; in these objects its values are embedded. A world \u003cbr\u003eloaded with dramatic values may thus arise in imagination; \u003cbr\u003eterrible and delightful presences may chase one another \u003cbr\u003eacross the void; life will be a kind of music made by all the \u003cbr\u003esenses together. Many animals probably have this kind of \u003cbr\u003eexperience.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--Santayana\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIrrelevance characterizes the behavior of our puppy. \u003cbr\u003eIn the middle of the night he decides that he wants to play, \u003cbr\u003eruns off when he's called, when petted is liable to pee, \u003cbr\u003ecowers at a twig and barks at his shadow or a tree, \u003cbr\u003egrins at intruders and bites us in the leg suddenly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo justification we humans have been able to see \u003cbr\u003eapplies to his actions. While we go by the time of day, \u003cbr\u003eor the rules, or the notion of purpose or consistency, \u003cbr\u003ehe follows from moment to moment a sensuous medley \u003cbr\u003ethat keeps him both totally subject and totally free.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'll have to admit, though, we've never been tempted to say \u003cbr\u003ethat he jumps up to greet us or puts his head on our knee \u003cbr\u003eor licks us or lies at our feet irrelevantly. \u003cbr\u003eWhen it comes to loving, we find ourselves forced to agree \u003cbr\u003eall responses are reasons and no reason is necessary.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303172919525,"sku":"NP9780375709807","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709807.jpg?v=1767736322","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/selected-poems-of-mona-van-duyn-isbn-9780375709807","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}