The Breaking of the Day, a classic book, light damage

The Breaking of the Day

Literature & Fiction

DAVISON, Peter

Poetry

Yale Univeristy Press

Contemporary Drama and the Popular Dramatic Tradition in England

History & Criticism

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

"Peter Davison, for years, has pondered with clear insight the perspectives of affection, attachment, loss, and memory, his language spare and his tone classical and deceptively quiet. The poems of this new collection look at the same world with surprise and speak of it with a startled and startling freedom, feeling 'entitled to / the liberty of breathing easy'--a freedom that brings with it the old clarity and eloquence."--W. S. MerwinThe poems in Peter Davison's exuberant new collection contemplate the paradox of growing old--of having a mind still "a juicy swamp of invention" in a body beginning to falter.Both intimate and generous, these poems celebrate the cycle of the seasons, of death and rebirth: snapping turtles lay their eggs and new ones hatch;  a ruffed grouse drums his spring mating dance. Memory is central: a mother's lost face; a father's voice that "plumbed the marrow of poetry as tenderly / as if a darling had crept into his arms"; a wife's "rueful eyes, cornflower blue." And the poet pays tribute to the literary life--to reading, to the precise moment a word rises to consciousness, to getting over Robert Frost, to the mind of Sylvia Plath.  These are poems that expand time for us and deepen place, whether Davison is taking us on a path along a limestone cliff under canopies of holly and ivy, or is revisiting the instant while recovering from surgery when it becomes clear he is going to heal.  "To learn poetry," Davison writes in his foreword, "we need to take poems into our breath and blood, and that requires us to hear them as we read them, to learn to read with all the senses, especially with the ear." Breathing Room gives us a splendid array of poems that we want to read with all our senses.  

Breathing Room: Poems

KNOPF

“Peter Davison, for years, has pondered with clear insight the perspectives of affection, attachment, loss, and memory, his language spare and his tone classical and deceptively quiet. The poems of this new collection look at the same world with surprise and speak of it with a startled and startling freedom, feeling ‘entitled to the liberty of breathing easy’—a freedom that brings with it the old clarity and eloquence.”—W. S. MerwinThe poems in Peter Davison’s exuberant new collection contemplate the paradox of growing old—of having a mind still “a juicy swamp of invention” in a body beginning to falter.Both intimate and generous, these poems celebrate the cycle of the seasons, of death and rebirth: snapping turtles lay their eggs and new ones hatch; a ruffed grouse drums his spring mating dance. Memory is central: a mother’s lost face; a father’s voice that “plumbed the marrow of poetry as tenderly / as if a darling had crept into his arms”; a wife’s “rueful eyes, cornflower blue.” And the poet pays tribute to the literary life—to reading, to the precise moment a word rises to consciousness, to getting over Robert Frost, to the mind of Sylvia Plath. These are poems that expand time for us and deepen place, whether Davison is taking us on a path along a limestone cliff under canopies of holly and ivy, or is revisiting the instant while recovering from surgery when it becomes clear he is going to heal. “To learn poetry,” Davison writes in his foreword, “we need to take poems into our breath and blood, and that requires us to hear them as we read them, to learn to read with all the senses, especially with the ear.” Breathing Room gives us a splendid array of poems that we want to read with all our senses.

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Dramas & Plays

Rl Innactive Titles

“No one has attempted so knowing and evocative a description of this literary milieu. . . . Davidson’s approach is both novel and illuminating. He presents his authors individually [and as] a group, carefully tracing their relation to one another. . . . He is uniquely qualified to chronicle the complex story. He is the ultimate literary Boston insider―not only the longtime poetry editor for the Atlantic Montly but successively a key editor at three major publishing houses. The author of nine volumes of poetry, he knew all the major characters of his narrative personally. . . . [His book] provides a candid, first-hand account of the mid-century poetic revolution.” ―Dana Gioia, Washington Post Book World This extraordinary account, by a participant who knew them all, offers vivid reminiscences of Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, and many others who interacted with each other and shaped American poetry at mid-century.

The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston, 1995-1960, from Robert Frost to Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

W.W.Norton&Company

The Great Ledge

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

Walking the boundaries: Poems, 1957-1974

Secker and Warburg

An examination of the poet's place in society as seen by a poet who is also a publisher.

One of the Dangerous Trades: Essays on the Work and Workings of Poetry (Poets on Poetry)

Reference

Univ of Michigan Pr

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